OH and don't know what to say about the person driving while freakin legally blind!

Oh and Hedy Lamarr. Sort of inventor of the cell phone! (OK so she invented one technology that is used in cell phones rather than the cell phone itself.)

My coworker sent around the following Hedy Lamarr quote last week:

I must quit marrying men who feel inferior to me. Somewhere there must be a man who could be my husband and not feel inferior. I need a superior inferior man.

Hedley!

(Sorry.)

I was thinking the same thing the whole time, Steph.

They have not enabled the network port at my new (cramped) desk. Does that mean I shouldn't do any actual work? Well, I definitely can't use my phone. But I guess I could log into the VPN.

Cash - is she is driving illegally then I think you are well within your rights to NOT help her to break the law by getting her a new windshield.

Well, that's the philosophy I'm sticking to.

OH and don't know what to say about the person driving while freakin legally blind!

Yeah, you'd think that would be a no-brainer. Blind? Well, let's just run out and DRIVE! Were it not for the obvious family resemblance, I'd swear I was adopted.

Why have you not mentioned Hedy Lamarr? What's wrong with you?

My list of Ada and Grace was not exclusive! Just representative.

Hedy does belong in the Nerd Girl Pantheon, though.

Cashmere, all I can say is "egad."

Steampunk Santa postcards

The reason I know about Rose Valland is because I was just reading the book Stealing the Mystic Lamb (kind of a dumb title, actually).

Which is all about the history of Van Eyck's Ghent Alterpiece, one of the most significant works in the history of Western Art and the most stolen. Which is itself curious since it's eight panels painted on solid oak and weighs about two tons altogether.

Anyway, it's last big theft was by the Nazis during their great art looting, which is such a bizarre and amazing and fascinating story.

Lincoln Kirstein (founder of New York City Ballet among many other cultural institutions) was assigned to a special squad assigned to front line troops intent on tracking down and finding and protecting caches of stolen art. They'd give lectures to the GIs before every town they took on their march up through Italy, telling them which churches not to blow up, among other things.

Anyway, the Nazis had several massive caches of stolen art, but the biggest was in a salt mine in Austria, Alt Ausse. It was packed with Rembrandts and Raphaels and Titians and Van Eycks, and in the waning days of the war the zealous commander of the area was intent on destroying it all, blowing it all up and flooding the mine rather than let the allies get it back.

So there was this desperate scramble among the Austrian resistance (which was busy among the very salt miners who worked at Alt Ausse), General Patton (who diverted his army so their route would take them to Alt Ausse), double agents, and even some sympathetic Nazis to save the art.

Ultimately the miners secretly removed the bombs which had been installed in the mines, and planted small charges around the mouth of the mines to seal it off. Then the resistance fighters held off the Germans who came with flame throwers until the U.S. Army arrived.

There are just so many amazing stories about trying to keep the art out of the Nazis hands. The Wreck of the Medusa (which is massive) was smuggled out of Paris concealed among theatrical flats from the Comedie Francaise.