I think that since I've been chatting about art quite a bit lately, it's time we had an art-based Sporcle quiz.
You will be shown the lifespans of 101 different painters, along with two of their major works. Your task, of course, is to identify the artists. The clock is set for 15 minutes.
You will need every single one of them. As of right now, only 11 of the artists have been identified by even half of the test-takers. Only 38 of them have gotten even 25% recognition.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Dawwwwwwwwww
Over the 4th of July weekend, Fast Company ran a piece by Eric Jaffe that, unsurprisingly, drew my attention partly through using the image of a doe-eyed kitten. It was clickbait, of course, but it also was relevant: the article addresses why cute things are as irresistible as they are.
The key word to note is 'kindchenschema'. It's a word invented by zoologist Konrad Lorenz, who had a rather unfortunate World War 2, though not as unfortunate as many of the people he encountered. He was hoping to get into motorcycle maintenance around that time, something not directly violent, but was instead assigned by the Nazis (his studies to that point had led him to believe there was something to eugenics) to evaluate, long story short, reproductive ability based on racial concerns and, by extension, who got shipped off to concentration camps. He was taken as a POW by the Soviets shortly after arriving at the Eastern Front in 1944 and, really, that was just fine by him. He basically spent the rest of his life apologizing for his role in the Holocaust, even after he'd been forgiven enough to earn a 1973 Nobel Prize (shared with Niko Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch) for much more productive things, namely pioneering ethology, the study of animal behavior. By the end of his life, he had aligned with Austria's Green Party.
You can see in Lorenz's Nobel lecture (PDF) that he had learned some hard, hard lessons from his World War 2 years. He closed with this paragraph:
Anyway. Kindchenschema basically means features not unlike that of a baby. Big eyes, big forehead, rounded features. This is the most effective kind of cuteness. We are, as you might expect, naturally hardwired to be protective of our young. We're more careful, we're more loving, we don't want to hurt the baby. Anything that is physically reminiscent of a baby, puppies and kitties included, is kindchenschema- baby schema- and evokes the same cooing, protective emotions. (Why are big eyes evocative of babies? Simple: your eyes don't grow with the rest of you. You're born with the eye size you're always going to have, so while you're a baby, your eyes are disproportionately large to the rest of your head.
Every once in a while someone looks into this, often invoking Japan and their culture of kawaii, aka deliberately making things as cute as possible. The results of studies done are rather resilient, namely awwwww lookit the cute widdle babby i just wanna eat you right up yes i do!
With one exception: if you're being directly reminded of how you're acting, you can be snapped out of it. The Fast Company article cites (PDF, Page 13) an experiment run by Gergana Nenkov of Boston College and Maura Scott of Florida State in which subjects were shown a normal cookie and a cookie with a cute lion face on it. As expected, the subjects shown the lion cookie were less inclined to eat healthy after that when they were told they came from "The Cookie Shop". But when they were told the cookies came from "The Kid's Cookie Shop", the effect dissipated.
So there is such a thing as cute overload.
The key word to note is 'kindchenschema'. It's a word invented by zoologist Konrad Lorenz, who had a rather unfortunate World War 2, though not as unfortunate as many of the people he encountered. He was hoping to get into motorcycle maintenance around that time, something not directly violent, but was instead assigned by the Nazis (his studies to that point had led him to believe there was something to eugenics) to evaluate, long story short, reproductive ability based on racial concerns and, by extension, who got shipped off to concentration camps. He was taken as a POW by the Soviets shortly after arriving at the Eastern Front in 1944 and, really, that was just fine by him. He basically spent the rest of his life apologizing for his role in the Holocaust, even after he'd been forgiven enough to earn a 1973 Nobel Prize (shared with Niko Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch) for much more productive things, namely pioneering ethology, the study of animal behavior. By the end of his life, he had aligned with Austria's Green Party.
You can see in Lorenz's Nobel lecture (PDF) that he had learned some hard, hard lessons from his World War 2 years. He closed with this paragraph:
"Between the conservative representatives of the “establishment” on the one hand and rebelling youth on the other, there has arisen a certain enmity which makes it difficult for each of the antagonists to recognize the fact that the endeavours of both are equally indispensable for the survival of our culture. If and when this enmity escalates into actual hate, the antagonists cease to interact in the normal way and begin to treat each other as different, hostile cultures; in fact they begin to indulge in activities closely akin to tribal warfare. This represents a great danger to our culture, inasmuch as it may result in a complete disruption of its traditions."I think I've pretty much sucked all the cuteness out of this article now. You're welcome.
Anyway. Kindchenschema basically means features not unlike that of a baby. Big eyes, big forehead, rounded features. This is the most effective kind of cuteness. We are, as you might expect, naturally hardwired to be protective of our young. We're more careful, we're more loving, we don't want to hurt the baby. Anything that is physically reminiscent of a baby, puppies and kitties included, is kindchenschema- baby schema- and evokes the same cooing, protective emotions. (Why are big eyes evocative of babies? Simple: your eyes don't grow with the rest of you. You're born with the eye size you're always going to have, so while you're a baby, your eyes are disproportionately large to the rest of your head.
Every once in a while someone looks into this, often invoking Japan and their culture of kawaii, aka deliberately making things as cute as possible. The results of studies done are rather resilient, namely awwwww lookit the cute widdle babby i just wanna eat you right up yes i do!
With one exception: if you're being directly reminded of how you're acting, you can be snapped out of it. The Fast Company article cites (PDF, Page 13) an experiment run by Gergana Nenkov of Boston College and Maura Scott of Florida State in which subjects were shown a normal cookie and a cookie with a cute lion face on it. As expected, the subjects shown the lion cookie were less inclined to eat healthy after that when they were told they came from "The Cookie Shop". But when they were told the cookies came from "The Kid's Cookie Shop", the effect dissipated.
So there is such a thing as cute overload.
Friday, July 4, 2014
How to Light Off Your Quasi-Legal Fireworks
1. Do not point them right above, in fact nearly AT, your next-door neighbor's house.
I am talking to you, neighbors across the street who are probably out still lighting them now. Seriously? Do not make me go get that annual consumer-safety video where they blow the crap out of training dummies.
I am talking to you, neighbors across the street who are probably out still lighting them now. Seriously? Do not make me go get that annual consumer-safety video where they blow the crap out of training dummies.
Failed Game Show Pilot Repository
There is no higher purpose for this today. The thing is, I'm a game show junkie, and these are the kinds of things someone decided weren't good enough for me to spend all day watching in my childhood years, or my early adult years, or my not-born-yet years. None of these game shows made it to air. You will usually deduce why fairly quickly.
I will show them in alphabetical order.
$50,000 A Minute (note how they swiped the theme music for This Week In Baseball, and they weren't the only game show to do it)
Caught In The Act (Snopes might help regarding something a contestant mentions here)
Decisions, Decisions (with celebrity player David Letterman)
Finders Keepers (I think I'm high now)
Get Rich Quick
Going Going Gone (in two parts; Part 2 here; note that this is from the time when women didn't always get to have their first names announced on television)
How Do You Like Your Eggs? (only aired locally to 200 households in Columbus, Ohio)
Monday Night Quarterback (Part 2 here; Part 3 here; Part 4 here; oh, Jerry Kramer, don't do the Packers like this)
Party Line
Says Who?
Talking Pictures (hosted by Ted Allen prototype Allen Ludden)
Top Secret (I don't think contestant Wendy knows how riddles work)
Twisters
I will show them in alphabetical order.
$50,000 A Minute (note how they swiped the theme music for This Week In Baseball, and they weren't the only game show to do it)
Caught In The Act (Snopes might help regarding something a contestant mentions here)
Decisions, Decisions (with celebrity player David Letterman)
Finders Keepers (I think I'm high now)
Get Rich Quick
Going Going Gone (in two parts; Part 2 here; note that this is from the time when women didn't always get to have their first names announced on television)
How Do You Like Your Eggs? (only aired locally to 200 households in Columbus, Ohio)
Monday Night Quarterback (Part 2 here; Part 3 here; Part 4 here; oh, Jerry Kramer, don't do the Packers like this)
Party Line
Says Who?
Talking Pictures (hosted by Ted Allen prototype Allen Ludden)
Top Secret (I don't think contestant Wendy knows how riddles work)
Twisters
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
High Art Is Overrated
I'm going to pay dearly for this, I just know it.
Well, I guess I had this coming after the jazz talk yesterday about music genres being cyclical and there not being anything wrong with that. Because on my wires today, there's an article about classical music. Namely, the Nielsen numbers for the top-selling classical albums. The writer, Norman Lebrecht, doesn't consider the top three items on the list to be truly 'classical' music, and they sold a dismal 1,789, 253, and 173 copies respectively. Lebrecht doesn't even bother to list the numbers below that, dismissing them as "peanuts".
His headline: "Last Week, No Classical Music Was Sold In The USA".
You could probably guess that, as classical music has found itself in some embarrassingly low-profile situations in recent years. Not too long ago, I linked to Forgotify, a site that plays tracks that have never been downloaded on Spotify a single time. I don't think I've heard so much classical music in my life. And then there's this ad, which I think you're probably familiar with, even though it's opera, which is really in the same boat so let's toss it in:
This is what opera companies and symphony orchestras will do these days just to get mass-market work. That and video games. A fair amount of the music you hear in video games over the past decade or so is created by orchestras, several of which get entire shows specifically out of playing it. As far back as 2002, EA Sports made a huge show of showing off how they wrangled the services of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra for that year's official World Cup title, which now might only be unusual in the sense that they didn't go get licensed music instead. It's right there in the game's intro:
And used in an actual game context:
And really, if we're going to declare any genre as actually 'dead', classical would be it, as these are some of the few places where you can reliably hear new classical music, along with TV and movies (the London Philharmonic has a very good working relationship with Doctor Who). You're sure not hearing it on a radio, and although you'd think you'd hear new music played by the local symphonies, that's not the case. An article by Greg Sandow from 2003- and the situation hasn't changed since- explains that the people who buy the bulk of the tickets to orchestras greatly prefer familiar music. New works- and 'new' in this sense basically means any point after World War 2- are derided as 'too challenging'. Thus, orchestras don't play them, because they would like to not go broke because their regulars won't show up anymore. They stick to Mozart and Beethoven and Vivaldi. If you're actually out there making new classical music, good luck finding anyone willing to play it for you no matter how good it is, unless of course you want to put it in a video game or a movie or a TV show. It's like speaking Latin.
Honestly, though, and I may not make many fans by saying this, but I've felt classical music to be a little overrated. It, opera, particular artists and works, just in general the things that are widely accepted as 'high art'. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with them per se, but the mindset that these are the things you have to start liking in order to be truly cultured has always grated at me a bit. I think it has something to do with where and when it was modern and popular: typically, Western Europe, during the age of exploration, conquest and colonialism. The time when the most influential and powerful region of the world was at the peak of its global influence. It would only be natural to be nostalgic about the time when your little corner of the world was at its best, or at least its most powerful. I think that's where it comes from, at least in part. But it kind of gets done at the expense of the rest of the world.
When I was at the Milwaukee Art Museum, for instance- and it's a good museum, mind you; we're not talking some backwater thing here- I went around and wrote down all the nationalities of the pieces on display that day. There were two rooms devoted to Haitian art, so good on them for that, but in the bulk of the museum, it was overwhelmingly European and American. In the tourist map supplied by the museum, you'll find rooms labeled 'Renaissance Treasury', 'Northern Renaissance', 'Southern Renaissance', 'Northern Baroque', 'Southern Baroque', '18th-Century English and Italian', '18th-Century French', '19th-Century German' and '19th-Century European'. All on the first floor, not far from the entrance to the collection (which starts you off with the real antiques, the things from ancient Greece and Rome and Egypt).
Meanwhile, in the entire museum, there was one piece from Canada. One from India. There was one piece from Central America; it was from Mexico. There was one piece from South America; it was from Chile. Tucked off in a corner of the top floor, there was one room devoted to the whole of China; one room next to it devoted to the rest of eastern Asia (including more China), and one small room dedicated to the entire continent of Africa. And the Asian and African works weren't even modern. The Asian works were chiefly ancient, centuries or even millennia old, and the African works were... is anthropological the right word? I don't want to go that far, really, but it was all tribal; things representative of an entire people. Never the name of an individual artist; never a purpose-built piece of explicit art. It all had a functional or cultural purpose to it. A scarf here. A mask there.
You'll notice I haven't mentioned Oceania or western Asia. That's for a reason. Save for the presence of Israel, the Middle East was totally absent. No Australia or New Zealand or any of the Pacific islands.
I don't think the Milwaukee Art Museum means that kind of geographical or chronological bias; I don't think they really even know they're doing it to that extent. And it's not like they're exactly the only one; I'd be willing to bet if you looked around the art museum near you and did the same once-over, you'd see something not all that far off what I got in Milwaukee. Domestic art plus a whole lot of 15th-19th-century Western Europe.
My point is that the world's got a lot of culture to it. Culture is simply anything people do together. That's all it is. Art is any form of expression. They're very broad, very simple concepts at their core. For us to declare that any one particular culture at a certain place and time is 'best' and that you have to consume it in order to be 'cultured' is wrongheaded.
There's a guy ESPN hired as part of their World Cup coverage, a local artist named Jambeiro. Jambeiro's been commissioned to create a mural telling the story of the Cup. He's been given 180 feet of wall stretching from ESPN's studio out to Copacabana Beach, and every day of the Cup, he's supposed to cover six feet with the biggest image of the day. (No word on how he's supposed to handle days like today, which have no scheduled games.) This is a tough, tough assignment the guy's been given, but the thing is, this is art that's done all the time where he lives. This is part of their artistic expression. This is part of their culture, and it's going to stick around a while and stay part of their culture after the Cup is over and the rest of us go home. And to ignore that, to ignore or even actively suppress any culture, because some other culture is 'better' or their art 'higher' only works to help destroy that culture. (There is the assorted case where it probably should be destroyed, but that's a whole other talk.)
One should not also automatically assume that our own era's culture is just silly little 'pop culture'. After all, all that high art, opera, classical music, ballet, half the stuff in Florence, it was shiny new pop culture once too.
Well, I guess I had this coming after the jazz talk yesterday about music genres being cyclical and there not being anything wrong with that. Because on my wires today, there's an article about classical music. Namely, the Nielsen numbers for the top-selling classical albums. The writer, Norman Lebrecht, doesn't consider the top three items on the list to be truly 'classical' music, and they sold a dismal 1,789, 253, and 173 copies respectively. Lebrecht doesn't even bother to list the numbers below that, dismissing them as "peanuts".
His headline: "Last Week, No Classical Music Was Sold In The USA".
You could probably guess that, as classical music has found itself in some embarrassingly low-profile situations in recent years. Not too long ago, I linked to Forgotify, a site that plays tracks that have never been downloaded on Spotify a single time. I don't think I've heard so much classical music in my life. And then there's this ad, which I think you're probably familiar with, even though it's opera, which is really in the same boat so let's toss it in:
This is what opera companies and symphony orchestras will do these days just to get mass-market work. That and video games. A fair amount of the music you hear in video games over the past decade or so is created by orchestras, several of which get entire shows specifically out of playing it. As far back as 2002, EA Sports made a huge show of showing off how they wrangled the services of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra for that year's official World Cup title, which now might only be unusual in the sense that they didn't go get licensed music instead. It's right there in the game's intro:
And used in an actual game context:
And really, if we're going to declare any genre as actually 'dead', classical would be it, as these are some of the few places where you can reliably hear new classical music, along with TV and movies (the London Philharmonic has a very good working relationship with Doctor Who). You're sure not hearing it on a radio, and although you'd think you'd hear new music played by the local symphonies, that's not the case. An article by Greg Sandow from 2003- and the situation hasn't changed since- explains that the people who buy the bulk of the tickets to orchestras greatly prefer familiar music. New works- and 'new' in this sense basically means any point after World War 2- are derided as 'too challenging'. Thus, orchestras don't play them, because they would like to not go broke because their regulars won't show up anymore. They stick to Mozart and Beethoven and Vivaldi. If you're actually out there making new classical music, good luck finding anyone willing to play it for you no matter how good it is, unless of course you want to put it in a video game or a movie or a TV show. It's like speaking Latin.
Honestly, though, and I may not make many fans by saying this, but I've felt classical music to be a little overrated. It, opera, particular artists and works, just in general the things that are widely accepted as 'high art'. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with them per se, but the mindset that these are the things you have to start liking in order to be truly cultured has always grated at me a bit. I think it has something to do with where and when it was modern and popular: typically, Western Europe, during the age of exploration, conquest and colonialism. The time when the most influential and powerful region of the world was at the peak of its global influence. It would only be natural to be nostalgic about the time when your little corner of the world was at its best, or at least its most powerful. I think that's where it comes from, at least in part. But it kind of gets done at the expense of the rest of the world.
When I was at the Milwaukee Art Museum, for instance- and it's a good museum, mind you; we're not talking some backwater thing here- I went around and wrote down all the nationalities of the pieces on display that day. There were two rooms devoted to Haitian art, so good on them for that, but in the bulk of the museum, it was overwhelmingly European and American. In the tourist map supplied by the museum, you'll find rooms labeled 'Renaissance Treasury', 'Northern Renaissance', 'Southern Renaissance', 'Northern Baroque', 'Southern Baroque', '18th-Century English and Italian', '18th-Century French', '19th-Century German' and '19th-Century European'. All on the first floor, not far from the entrance to the collection (which starts you off with the real antiques, the things from ancient Greece and Rome and Egypt).
Meanwhile, in the entire museum, there was one piece from Canada. One from India. There was one piece from Central America; it was from Mexico. There was one piece from South America; it was from Chile. Tucked off in a corner of the top floor, there was one room devoted to the whole of China; one room next to it devoted to the rest of eastern Asia (including more China), and one small room dedicated to the entire continent of Africa. And the Asian and African works weren't even modern. The Asian works were chiefly ancient, centuries or even millennia old, and the African works were... is anthropological the right word? I don't want to go that far, really, but it was all tribal; things representative of an entire people. Never the name of an individual artist; never a purpose-built piece of explicit art. It all had a functional or cultural purpose to it. A scarf here. A mask there.
You'll notice I haven't mentioned Oceania or western Asia. That's for a reason. Save for the presence of Israel, the Middle East was totally absent. No Australia or New Zealand or any of the Pacific islands.
I don't think the Milwaukee Art Museum means that kind of geographical or chronological bias; I don't think they really even know they're doing it to that extent. And it's not like they're exactly the only one; I'd be willing to bet if you looked around the art museum near you and did the same once-over, you'd see something not all that far off what I got in Milwaukee. Domestic art plus a whole lot of 15th-19th-century Western Europe.
My point is that the world's got a lot of culture to it. Culture is simply anything people do together. That's all it is. Art is any form of expression. They're very broad, very simple concepts at their core. For us to declare that any one particular culture at a certain place and time is 'best' and that you have to consume it in order to be 'cultured' is wrongheaded.
There's a guy ESPN hired as part of their World Cup coverage, a local artist named Jambeiro. Jambeiro's been commissioned to create a mural telling the story of the Cup. He's been given 180 feet of wall stretching from ESPN's studio out to Copacabana Beach, and every day of the Cup, he's supposed to cover six feet with the biggest image of the day. (No word on how he's supposed to handle days like today, which have no scheduled games.) This is a tough, tough assignment the guy's been given, but the thing is, this is art that's done all the time where he lives. This is part of their artistic expression. This is part of their culture, and it's going to stick around a while and stay part of their culture after the Cup is over and the rest of us go home. And to ignore that, to ignore or even actively suppress any culture, because some other culture is 'better' or their art 'higher' only works to help destroy that culture. (There is the assorted case where it probably should be destroyed, but that's a whole other talk.)
One should not also automatically assume that our own era's culture is just silly little 'pop culture'. After all, all that high art, opera, classical music, ballet, half the stuff in Florence, it was shiny new pop culture once too.
Speaking Of Saves
It's the end of America's excursion in Brazil, though goalkeeper Tim Howard did absolutely everything in his power to keep from having to board the plane home. His 16 saves- which proved to be one fewer than was required in the 2-1 extra-time loss- is the most by any goalkeeper in the World Cup since the stat began to be tracked in 1966. The previous recordholder was Ramon "El Loco" Quiroga of Peru, who in Argentina 1978 fended off the Netherlands 13 times en route to a scoreless draw in the group stage. (Quiroga, though, still has the record after 90 minutes; as Howard had 11 saves entering extra time.)
Howard, of course, would trade them all for a win.
So I looked for other things being saved right now.
*Pets. Should your home catch on fire, unfortunately, sometimes the pets aren't able to be scooped up and brought out of the building in time, and they're subject to the same oxygen-deprivation problems as humans. Today- Tuesday- an anonymous someone dropped off 36 pet oxygen masks, which is a lot, at the St. Paul (MN) Fire Department. They're planning to put one on each of their fire trucks; if you're suddenly deciding you want one for your dog or cat, it'll run you $48 personally, or you can arrange for a donation to your local fire department here.
*A bear. Bear with its head in a jar, folks.
*Jazz.
...hahahaha. Nothing's saving jazz. See, I don't really think music genres get 'saved'. Rock and roll lived and died in the 60's. Disco lived and died in the 70's. Hair metal lived and died in the 80's. Grunge lived and died in the 90's. They just evolve and combine and morph into new genres. There is nothing wrong with that, either. Music genres are just a reflection of the times. You make music in a way that mirrors how you see the world. The genre doesn't literally die, even; it's just nobody really using it anymore. It's still there anytime you want to pick it up again. If Bruno Mars wanted to make a ragtime song tomorrow, there's nothing stopping him. But at the same time, there is also nothing stopping him from crossing ragtime with bossa nova and hair metal to make an entirely new genre, except of course for the forces of sanity.
Really, folks, rule of thumb: if you ever find yourself saying "X genre isn't dead; it's just getting started!" or any form of that sentiment... it's dead. You do not say that when it isn't dead. You don't feel like you have to defend its life when it's not dead. You just make the music and get on with it. It's beyond saving as a popular force.
Even if Tim Howard were singing it.
Howard, of course, would trade them all for a win.
So I looked for other things being saved right now.
*Pets. Should your home catch on fire, unfortunately, sometimes the pets aren't able to be scooped up and brought out of the building in time, and they're subject to the same oxygen-deprivation problems as humans. Today- Tuesday- an anonymous someone dropped off 36 pet oxygen masks, which is a lot, at the St. Paul (MN) Fire Department. They're planning to put one on each of their fire trucks; if you're suddenly deciding you want one for your dog or cat, it'll run you $48 personally, or you can arrange for a donation to your local fire department here.
*A bear. Bear with its head in a jar, folks.
*Jazz.
...hahahaha. Nothing's saving jazz. See, I don't really think music genres get 'saved'. Rock and roll lived and died in the 60's. Disco lived and died in the 70's. Hair metal lived and died in the 80's. Grunge lived and died in the 90's. They just evolve and combine and morph into new genres. There is nothing wrong with that, either. Music genres are just a reflection of the times. You make music in a way that mirrors how you see the world. The genre doesn't literally die, even; it's just nobody really using it anymore. It's still there anytime you want to pick it up again. If Bruno Mars wanted to make a ragtime song tomorrow, there's nothing stopping him. But at the same time, there is also nothing stopping him from crossing ragtime with bossa nova and hair metal to make an entirely new genre, except of course for the forces of sanity.
Really, folks, rule of thumb: if you ever find yourself saying "X genre isn't dead; it's just getting started!" or any form of that sentiment... it's dead. You do not say that when it isn't dead. You don't feel like you have to defend its life when it's not dead. You just make the music and get on with it. It's beyond saving as a popular force.
Even if Tim Howard were singing it.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
And Now For Someone Who Didn't Qualify
One of the first things you think of regarding Brazil, alongside soccer and Rio and Carnival and all that is on display in Carnival, is the Amazon. We're done in there for the Cup, as no more games are scheduled in Manaus, but one of the main things you probably know about the Amazon- aside from anything you might have gotten out of those videos I linked you to earlier in the Cup- is that it's been getting progressively deforested for decades. Likely, you think of it as the world's most dramatic deforestation.
Until recently, you'd be right on that point, but according to a study by the University of Maryland (the original of which is behind a $32 paywall), while they're still not looking good at all, Brazil no longer has the title. It's been rather forcefully taken by Indonesia. In 2012 alone, Indonesia lost 840,000 hectares (3,243 square miles, aka nearly the size of Puerto Rico) of primary forest, a rate that is accelerating; Brazil lost 460,000. Indonesia is a quarter of the size of Brazil, mind you.
At least 40% of the Indonesian logging was illegal logging. At least. That's how much was done in areas explicitly off-limits to logging. There's no word on how much more of it is illegal, as the data had to be taken from satellite photos because official government data was deemed unreliable.
As the World Cup isn't going to Indonesia anytime soon, let's hope this isn't the last you hear of it.
Until recently, you'd be right on that point, but according to a study by the University of Maryland (the original of which is behind a $32 paywall), while they're still not looking good at all, Brazil no longer has the title. It's been rather forcefully taken by Indonesia. In 2012 alone, Indonesia lost 840,000 hectares (3,243 square miles, aka nearly the size of Puerto Rico) of primary forest, a rate that is accelerating; Brazil lost 460,000. Indonesia is a quarter of the size of Brazil, mind you.
At least 40% of the Indonesian logging was illegal logging. At least. That's how much was done in areas explicitly off-limits to logging. There's no word on how much more of it is illegal, as the data had to be taken from satellite photos because official government data was deemed unreliable.
As the World Cup isn't going to Indonesia anytime soon, let's hope this isn't the last you hear of it.
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