Why Knights Fought Snails in the Margins of Medieval Books

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When thinking of a symbolic foe to battle in a medieval book, many creatures come to mind: dragons, wolves, or perhaps rabbits, but the poor defenseless snail? It hardly makes for a powerful image. But it turns out, as with most artwork, the answer is more symbolic than literal. In the 1960s a book historian named Lilian Randall thought the illustrations found in the margins of illuminated books required more attention, leading to the publication of her own book, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts. In this episode of Vox Almanac, Phil Edwards shares what Randall learned as she investigated the curious snail fights.

See related posts on Colossal about books, medieval, video.

VALIDnation by Stacey L. Kirby on Vimeo

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VALIDnation by Stacey L. Kirby from STACEY KIRBY on Vimeo.

VALIDnation by Stacey L. Kirby

from [STACEY KIRBY][38]

VALIDnation is a performative interaction by Stacey L. Kirby. This mobile interactive performance piece pops up at various locations and cultivates conversation with the public about identity, community and belonging. [stacey-kirby.com][39]

Clinton’s misplaced criticism of the DNC as a cause of her defeat

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Of all the reasons Hillary Clinton thinks she lost the 2016 election to President Trump, the least among them was the state of the Democratic National Committee. That it was a mess long before she became a candidate was well known. That she did nothing about it sooner was her own mistake. But had she done so, it probably would have made no difference in the outcome.

Clinton appeared in public Wednesday at a conference sponsored by Recode, where she was interviewed at length by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. Her bottom line about 2016 was summed up with this comment: “I take responsibility for every decision I made, but that’s not why I lost.”

Her main takeaway was that she lost in large part because of Russian interference, hacking and meddling, because of possible collusion by Trump campaign associates (she walked right to the edge of the line in directly accusing Trump of having been an active colluder) and because of conditions beyond her control (for example, that letter from James B. Comey that brought her email issue back to center stage in the final week of the campaign).

Based on the discussion with Swisher and Mossberg, she has spent many hours deep in the weeds of the 2016 campaign, analyzing data from a variety of sources and replaying events so that now, nearly seven months later, it is as if all this happened yesterday. She is fluent in the vernacular of how the Russians interfered, tossing out comments about “bots that are just out of control” and the proliferation of fake news through social media as she long has done with details of health care or Third World microlending practices.

Her complaints about the Russians are understandable, and the multiple investigations swirling around the president, his campaign and his White House are testament to the importance of a full unearthing of what happened and whether the Trump team or people close to the campaign were active or passive players in the drama. Whether they will ultimately prove the primary cause of Clinton’s defeat is a different question.

Hillary Clinton speaks in New York on April 6. (Mary Altaffer/AP)

Clinton has made up her mind about one basic question. She believes the Russians had help. The Russians could not have known how to weaponize information to have maximum impact on the election unless they were “guided by Americans and guided by people who had polling and data information.” That conclusion, she said, was “based on the intel and counterintel people I’ve talked to.”

One example she cited was the timing of leaks of campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails by WikiLeaks just hours after the infamous “Access Hollywood” video was made public in early October. She called the contents of those emails “anodyne” and typical of the internal communication in a hard-fought campaign. Nonetheless, the emails generated a stream of stories that campaign aides at the time described as a troubling “drip, drip, drip” of distractions.

[_Clinton’s post-election appearances focus on President Trump]_

It was, however, Clinton’s decision to cite the DNC as a sore spot that caught many Democrats by surprise and that, in the hours since her appearance, has generated lots of private comment and commentary by erstwhile Clinton allies, who cannot understand why she decided to make a public fight out of this.

One problem for Clinton as she was beginning her 2016 candidacy was a time warp about the way things were or should have been. Her perspective about the role of the DNC and the Democrat Party apparatus was shaped by experiences from Bill Clinton’s campaigns in 1992 and 1996 and his (and her) approach to the party.

In those days, the DNC was a more robust and battle-ready institution, and Bill Clinton as candidate and president paid attention to it. President Barack Obama did not. Under Obama, the DNC was neglected and left to atrophy.

“The DNC has not played any dynamic role except just on a rare occasion since Obama was president,” said a former party official.

Obama’s two campaigns were built largely separate from the DNC. Data produced by Obama for America and its various other names was proprietary and not readily shared with the party. Compounding the problem was the selection of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) as DNC chair. She was an ever-present spokeswoman for the Democrats but, as a part-time chair, not a party builder in the tradition of several past DNC leaders.

All this was well known to Clinton’s 2016 campaign team, if not to her personally. The DNC was a problem that no one wanted to address. Obama was not interested in taking responsibility for the situation heading into the 2016 campaign, and Obama’s advisers did not have the desire to try to push aside Wasserman Schultz early in the 2016 cycle, believing that it wasn’t worth the pain.

Wasserman Schultz was forced out only after hacked emails from inside the DNC were leaked on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. At that point, the Clinton team was insistent that she go. Before that, they let the situation fester.

In the early stages of the Democratic nomination contest, the DNC appeared to be far more an ally to Clinton than a hindrance. Certainly Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and his team (and the others who ran against Clinton) saw the DNC as doing whatever it could to help the former secretary of state.

Why else, they argued, would the DNC limit the number of debates in 2015 and then schedule several of them on Saturday nights? (One answer: Broadcast networks preferred Saturdays to avoid messing with their weeknight prime-time programming, while cable networks loved weeknights.)

[_Former DNC staffer contests Clinton’s claims]_

Before and throughout the nomination process, the DNC was an island of neglect. But it was Clinton’s blunt words that surprised and disturbed people Wednesday. What happened when she became the nominee? “I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party,” Clinton told Swisher and Mossberg. “I mean, it was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it, the DNC, to keep it going.”

Partially true. The DNC was short of funds and her campaign did have to put a significant amount of money into the operation. But all that was foreseeable long before she became the nominee.

“There’s no doubt the DNC was a shell of what it could have been and should have been,” said a Democrat who worked there in the past. But this person added, “If I could think of all the problems at the DNC, the data was not at the top of the list.”

Clinton drew a comparison to what Trump inherited from the Republican National Committee and what was available to her campaign from the DNC. “He is basically handed this tried and true, effective foundation,” she asserted.

She was correct that what the Republicans had built for 2016 was far better than what existed four years earlier. Under then-RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, the Republicans had spent millions to improve what had been an inferior data operation. Trump was lucky to have it.

But Clinton’s criticism was misplaced, according to knowledgeable Democrats. Clinton’s advisers had decided two things: first, to take full control of data operations — all the modeling and analytics — for the 2016 campaign and not to count on the DNC to take the lead. And second, they nonetheless chose to rely on the data foundation that existed at the time at the DNC, which some Obama campaign veterans believed was shaky from the start.

In the end, the Clinton campaign models proved to be faulty, as her team learned on election night as they watched first Florida and then North Carolina and then the Upper Midwest fall to Trump.

That was not the fault of the DNC, and Clinton’s lament, in the eyes of many Democrats, was a needless and potentially harmful attempt to deflect criticism and point fingers at things that were not fundamental to her defeat.

Sharpening versus Midtone Contrast — Ask Tim Grey

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Today’s Question: I was always taught that the High Pass filter was a superior method of sharpening in Photoshop.  And although I was aware of it, I didn’t use it much.  I only learned recently that with a very small radius and use of the Hard Light mode, I can produce significant, but not overly obvious, sharpening of images with a bit of blur.  What are your thoughts about High Pass? And is there a way to achieve any of these kinds of effective sharpening in Lightroom?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The “High Pass” technique is similar in overall effect to sharpening, depending on the settings used. In general practice it tends to provide more of a midtone contrast enhancement for accentuating detail, rather than a true sharpening effect. Lightroom provides similar options with Clarity and Dehaze.

More Detail: Sharpening involves (in a very general way) enhancing contrast where contrast already exists. In the context of a typical motivation for sharpening, that involves enhancing the contrast for fine details in an image in order to improve the perceived sharpness of the image.

Of course, it is also possible to “expand” that sharpening effect across a larger area so that instead of sharpening fine detail you are enhancing overall midtone contrast, reducing the appearance of haze, and adding impact to the photo in the process. This is really just a variation on a theme when it comes to sharpening.

Because there are different motivations for applying a sharpening effect (among other reasons), there are seemingly countless approaches you can take to improve perceived sharpness, increase the appearance of detail, and reduce the appearance of haze in an image. The “High Pass” technique is one of those.

The High Pass approach to sharpening (or detail enhancement) involves duplicating the Background image layer, changing the blend mode for the duplicate layer to one of the “contrast” options (such as Overlay or Hard Light), and then applying the High Pass filter to that duplicate layer (with a Radius value of somewhere around 10 pixels, though the optimal setting can vary significantly).

This approach can be very beneficial for enhancing overall detail with minimal risk of problematic halos in the image. As such, it is a technique I highly recommend. I would simply add that it isn’t really an alternative to sharpening in most cases, but rather something of a creative effect.

As for Lightroom (or Adobe Camera Raw), you can achieve a very similar effect to the High Pass sharpening technique by using a positive value for the Clarity adjustment, or for the Dehaze adjustment. The Dehaze adjustment is primarily focused on reducing the appearance of haze in a photo, while the Clarity adjustment is more focused on overall midtone contrast and enhancement of texture and detail.

Quick and Dirty Guide to Replacing Skies in Photoshop

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The weather. Of the many things I wish I could control, this is certainly one of them. Recently, my home of Seoul has had some of the clearest skies and nicest puffy clouds that I’ve seen in my 11 years of living here, but typically this is not so. On the few days of the year we get nice clouds, fisty-cuffs determine your tripod’s resting place at the popular photo spots, and the Internet is afire with the chatter of excited shutterbugs. However, there are so many days of the year where the haze is too thick or a monotone blanket of clouds covers the sky. I have come up with a quick and dirty method of dropping in skies from my library that I use when the job calls for it. I’d like to share that with you today.

Step 1: Collect Skies

Every time I see a nice sky, at any time of day, I will grab a quick photograph of it. I like to do this with my “real” camera as it gives me a raw file that can be manipulated later on to match the target scene, but I will use my phone in a pinch as well. I collect skies at all times of day so I know that I can replace them for any shoot I do; some are extremely dramatic sunsets and others are simply puffy white clouds at midday.

Here is a sample of the skies I collect as I walk around the city.

Step 2: Analyze Your Target Image

The biggest mistake I see people make when they try to replace a sky is trying to force the sky they want to use onto an image it simply doesn’t fit with. More often than not, this is to do with the color and direction of light in their original image. You cannot fit a fiery sunset into a scene that was shot in harsh midday sun.

When selecting the sky to bring into your finished piece, be aware of where the light is coming from in the target image and what time of day it is. Of course, you can rotate your sky images and adjust contrast and color to a degree, but the original direction of light must be mimicked for an easy blend to occur.

Here you can see that the sun has set to camera left and there is a warm glow coming across the sky. This is what I will look for in my sky collection.

Step 3: Bring in the Sky

Once you’ve selected the sky you will use, you’ll need to drag it in on top of the target image. The very first thing we’re going to do, before even resizing or moving it, is to switch the blending mode of the sky layer to Multiply. Now that we can see through to the layer underneath, it will be easier to position and blend. This, I have also found to be the blending mode that gives the most seamless final result.

Here is the sky I chose brought in using Normal blending mode.

Nothing has changed here except the blending mode, which is now set to Multiply. Notice that the edge of the sky layer is still visible in the mountains. We’ll deal with that in the next step.

Step 4: Blend

This is where it gets a little tougher. There are several techniques that I like to use and once you get a little practice in, these shouldn’t take you more than a minute or two.

Select and Feather

This is perhaps the simplest technique, and it can work on many images. We need to make a selection of the original sky using your favorite tool. This could be the Select Color tool, the Quick Select tool, or the simple Lasso tool.

Once you have selected the whole sky, we’re going to feather (Selection>Feather) it a little so that we don’t get an obvious transition between the original image and our new sky. The amount of feather will depend on the type of edge between the background and the sky, and also the resolution of your image. For buildings jutting into the sky, a small feather may be needed, whereas out of focus trees and mountains may require more feather for a subtle transition.

Here the sky was easy to select using the quick selection tool because of the hard edge of the mountains. From here we can feather it slightly to give a more natural transition for the sky.

Blend If

The second technique is Blend If (double click layer outside of layer name). We can use this tool to all-but-automatically stop the new sky from encroaching on our foreground. It works simply because generally speaking, your sky will be brighter than the rest of your scene. The feathered blend within the Blend If dialog will give you control enough to get your sky blended using just one tool.

“Blend If” here gives a one-step solution as I am able to feather the sky over the mountains easily.

The Paint Brush

Of course, you can opt to use the simple paint brush tool as well. Create yourself a layer mask on the sky layer, and use a 5 or 10% opacity brush to bring in parts of the sky that you want in your final image. You can also use this technique to fine-tune the previous two techniques if there are areas that don’t look good. This is particularly useful around complex edges like foliage, etc.

Step 5: Match the Density and Focus of the Original Image

Finally, it’s time to get the sky to match perfectly. You can do this by first reducing the opacity of the sky layer to more closely match the density of the sky in your original image. This simple technique can significantly help to blend your new sky realistically.

One final thing to note is the focus of your original image. If you are bringing an in focus sky into a portrait shot at f/1.4, the original image is likely to have a very blurry sky. You’ll need to match this level of blur as well using Photoshop’s Gaussian Blur or Lens Blur tools.

In the end, I went for a little more magenta in the sky to help the buildings stand out. But the same techniques were used.

In Conclusion

As with anything in Photoshop, the number of ways to do anything are only limited by your imagination. This is one easy way I use to begin blending in skies when I need them. I would love to hear your techniques below in the comments.

OS X Mavericks and OpenMeta tags

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I have been checking Mavericks ability to handle OpenMeta tags which are essential for organizing academic reference files. I really hoped that the tags integrated in OS X would be compatible with my existing tagging system. At the moment I have the following  observations:

1. Clarification by St.ClairSoft (updated October 25, 2013)

St.Clair Software (the makers of DefaultFolderX) provided the following illuminating clarification in this Google Groups discussion thread in July this year:

The difference [between OpenMeta and Mavericks tags] is_ that the [_file]_ attribute name is kMDItemUserTags instead of kMDItemOMUserTags . … OpenMeta tag data will need to be migrated … in order to be seen natively by Mavericks. (emphasis mine — AC).

2. HoudaSpot: perfect handling of tags!

HoudahSpot seems to be the first app that made this difference crystal clear and provided a tool for migrating OpenMeta to Mavericks tags for selected files. Well done!

HoudahSpot ability to select OpenMeta and Mavericks Tags, compare and merge them

3. Tags in Spotlight and Finder (updated October 25, 2013 )

Initially (before October 25) Spotlight default search attributes did not differentiate between OpenMeta and Mavericks tags as shown below:

As of October 25, Mavericks Spotlight added the OMTags to its search. (However, see comment by Tom Andersen who thinks it’s just because I use a specific tagging software)

Updated Spotlight search differentiates between OM and Mavericks OS X tags

4. DefaultFolderX (updated October 28, 2013)

Tags added through DefaultFolderX are OpenMeta tags. To add Mavericks tags one need to type them in at the top part of the Save dialogue.

Save dialogue supported by DefaultFolder X

5. DevonThink

DevondThink 2.6 and higher advertise that it both imports Mavericks tags and exports with such tags. Indeed, I was able to tag a file in OS X and then import it into DevonThink with preserving that tag. The reverse process did not work for me: exporting documents from DevonThink did not export tags (although one could add tags as in any Save dialogue in OS X — but what’s the point then?). Neither did assigning tags in DevonThink result in these tags being available in Finder (although perhaps Finder just does not see them yet — see above).

6. Leap (updated October 31, 2013)

Leap (version 3.x) allows to assign Tags which are both OM and Mavericks. Earlier versions of Leap tagged with OpenMeta — so if you used these for tagging you may want to merge them using HoudahSpot or another tool. Leap search handles both OM and Mavericks tags.

7. MailTags (updated October 28, 2013)

MailTags assign OpenMeta, not Mavericks tags to email messages. Mavericks tags cannot be assigned to email from within Apple Mail. However, HoudahSpot can migrate OpenMeta to Mavericks tags to mail messages as well (see above).

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About Aleh Cherp

Aleh Cherp is a professor at Central European University and Lund University. He researchers energy and environment and coordinates MESPOM, a Masters course operated by six Universities.