You’ll want to go full screen.

You’ll want to go full screen.

A WHALE OF A CATCH: A metro train blasts through its stop near the Dutch city of Rotterdam but is saved by the fluke of a giant whale sculpture. https://t.co/U20Z6U2jzm

— AP Europe (@AP_Europe) November 2, 2020

Werner Herzog releases 11,000 hand-painted rats to the streets of Delft.

Ratak Mondosico:

On his arrival, Herzog went to some pains to assure the press that the film crew were not coming as ‘an invading army’ – but that they might ’cause some inconvenience once in a while’. However, when word got out about his plans to use rats, tremors of apprehension began to spread through the ancient town.

‘My film is about a community that is invaded by fear,’ he explained in an attempt to assuage the unease he sensed building up. ‘The rats are a very decisive element, almost a key to the film because they signify this invasion of fear.

‘We are using laboratory rats from Hungary,’ he went on. ‘They are albinos with red eyes and very beautiful. Very beautiful and very scary! They are also quite small and distinct from savage rats; they are tame, and will be sterilised so that they cannot reproduce. We only want to release them in controllable places, like very narrow streets. We will block all the escape routes; we will close the doors; we will build a fence. Not one single rat in the whole world can escape!’

However, as the newspaper stories which followed these pronouncements graphically reveal, Herzog’s optimism was not fulfilled.

A total of 11,000 rats were bred in Hungary for the scenes, and then imported to the barn of a local farmer where they were to be kept until required. Upon seeing them, however, Herzog was not satisfied with their appearance and had them all painted grey…

Even so, Herzog was still faced with the local burgermeister’s refusal to grant permission for the rats to be freed in the streets.

‘I had to resort to a stratagem,’ he explained. ‘I pretended to pack up and leave Delft – but before anyone could stop me I suddenly released the rats and shot the scenes. A lot of them ran away, I’m afraid. We never found them.’

Beekse Bergen African Wildlife Drive-Through Park.

Why not get out of the car for a better view? And, hey! how about let’s take a little walk, too.

HTL Vanderleun.

Hendrik Gerritsz Pot, Floraes Mallewagen (Flora’s wagon of fools), c.1640.

Anne Goldgar explains that the cautionary story of the great 17th century Dutch Tulip Bubble is mostly wrong.

Why have these myths persisted? We can blame a few authors and the fact they were bestsellers. In 1637, after the crash, the Dutch tradition of satirical songs kicked in, and pamphlets were sold making fun of traders. These were picked up by writers later in the 17th century, and then by a late 18th-century German writer of a history of inventions, which had huge success and was translated into English. This book was in turn plundered by Charles Mackay, whose Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds of 1841 has had huge and undeserved success. Much of what Mackay says about tulip mania comes straight from the satirical songs of 1637 – and it is repeated endlessly on financial websites, in blogs, on Twitter, and in popular finance books like A Random Walk down Wall Street. But what we are hearing are the fears of 17th-century people about a 17th-century situation.

It was not actually the case that newcomers to the market caused the crash, or that foolishness and greed overtook those who traded in tulips. But this, and the possible social and cultural changes stemming from massive shifts in the distribution of wealth, were fears then and are fears now. Tulip mania gets brought up again and again, as a warning to investors not to be stupid, or to stay away from what some might call a good thing.

RTWT

And to the production of computer viruses.

In the Netherlands, private enterprise has found it.