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The Sun (Front page) Joke!
High-tech photography may be answer to vandalism on trail
Las Vegas Sun — 117 days ago
The Clark County Commission will look at a high-tech way to combat graffiti Tuesday, illuminating a connection between vandalism, parks and wasted dollars.
Are knuckleheads spray-painting our parks?
In a sense. Ne'er do wells are vandalizing, dumping trash and attacking people on the Flamingo Arroyo trail, according to a Clark County staff report.
The urban trail, when it's complete, will stretch 8 miles from the Clark County Wetlands Park to Maryland Parkway, near UNLV. The county received $14.4 million in Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act funding to build the trail. The money comes from federal land sale proceeds and is typically used to build parks and trails. (The Clark County Shooting Park, a portion of which is expected to open this fall, was built with about $64 million of the land-sale money.)
The county now hopes to get a chunk of the federal money to use in a different way.
What way is that?
To purchase high-tech security cameras to catch the people who are vandalizing, assaulting people and dumping garbage on the trail.
At Tuesday's meeting, the commission will consider requesting an additional $141,000 in SNPLMA funding for that purpose. If approved, the money will pay for 23 cameras, 43 mounting brackets, eight dummy cameras and their installation.
Word is the cameras are on par with the robot sentries in Robocop, including the ability to call out warnings and such.
They are high-tech, but they aren't equipped with any kind of weaponry, like in the movie. According to the county, the cameras are solar-powered and sense motion within 100 feet. When they detect movement, the cameras take high-resolution digital photos. They are equipped with a flash for nighttime work and can identify license plate numbers up to 250 feet away in total darkness, the county report states.
And they can talk.
They can what?
The cameras have a voice message option that can broadcast a verbal warning to the trespasser, the county report says.
Have they been tested?
The county borrowed two such cameras from Las Vegas and mounted them in areas riddled almost nightly with graffiti for three weeks. One area was graffiti-free for more than a week and was only tagged a few times in the remaining two weeks. The second area was vandalized but only in areas beyond the visual reach of the camera.
So what do these vandals have to do with parks — other than defacing them, that is?
If they didn't carry out the vandalism that created the need for the cameras, the $141,000 would be available for park building.
Wednesday was the 100th birthday of Clark County. To commemorate the milestone, the county last week unveiled a touring history exhibit in the rotunda of the Clark County Government Center.
For a governmental body, 100 years isn't much. But you wouldn't believe how much you don't know about the county's history.
Try these questions, courtesy of county museum Director Mark Hall-Patton, who just published a book on the history of Clark County street names, Asphalt Memories.
Where is the oldest operating post office in the county?
Bunkerville
True or false: Clark County wasn't recognized in the Nevada Constitution until 1980?
True. Voters had to approve the constitutional change to include Clark County; it was not a unanimous vote.
In what year did the first car make an overland trip to Clark County?
In 1916, from Los Angeles. Before that, Hall-Patton said, cars were shipped in by train.
How is Oquendo Road related to a bar?
It's named after a Rudy L. Oquendo, who tended bar at the Thunderbird Bar in the 1940s and 50s.
What odd tale is connected to downtown's Colanthe Avenue?
Colanthe was the real name of Florence Murphy, who helped found the North Las Vegas Air Terminal and was the first female vice president of Bonanza Airlines. She agreed to have a street named after her only if Colanthe was used and only if Larry G. McNeil, Bonanza Airlines' president, agreed to allow his middle name, Gilmary, be used to name another street — Gilmary Avenue.
Joe Schoenmann can be reached at 455-6175 or at joe.schoenmann@lasvegassun.com.
Copyright 2009 Las Vegas Sun
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Friday, May 15, 2009
VANDALISM
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable. Such action includes criminal damage, defacement, graffiti and crass erection of an eyesore.
Though vandalism in itself is illegal, it is often also an integral part of modern popular culture. French painter Gustave Courbet's attempt to disassemble the Vendôme column during the 1871 Paris Commune was probably one of the first artistic vandalist acts, celebrated at least since Dada performances during World War I. The Vendôme column was considered a symbol of the past Napoleon III empire, and dismantled as such.
After the burning of the Tuileries Palace on May 23, 1871, Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche himself meditated about the "fight against culture", wondering what could justify culture if it were to be destroyed in such a "senseless" manner (the arguments are: culture is justified by works of art and scientific achievements; exploitation is necessary to those achievements, leading to the creation of exploited people who then fight against culture. In this case, culture can't be legitimised by art achievements, and Nietzsche writes: "I {also} know what it means: fighting against culture". After quoting him, Klossowski writes: "The criminal fight against culture is only the reverse side of a criminal culture"
As destruction of monument, vandalism can only have sense in a culture respecting history, archeology - Nietzsche spoke of monumental history. As destruction of monumental history, vandalism was assured a long life (as Herostratus proved): Performance art could make such a claim, as well as Hakim Bey's poetic terrorism or Destroy 2000 Years of Culture from Atari Teenage Riot. Gustave Courbet's declaration stated:
"As the Vendôme column is formally considered a monument devoid of any artistic value, tending to perpetuate with its expression ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, that are reprobated by a republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet is to emit his wish that the National Defense government will allow him to dismantle this column."
Hence, painter Courbet justified the dismantlement of the Vendôme column on political grounds, downgrading its artistic value. Vandalism poses the problem of the value of art compared to life's hardships: Courbet thought that the political values transmitted by this work of art neutralized its artistic value. Anyway, his project wasn't followed, however, on April 12, 1871, the dismantlement of the imperial symbol was voted by the Commune, and the column taken down on May 8. After the assault on the Paris Commune by Adolphe Thiers, Gustave Courbet was condemned to pay part of the expenses. As any good vandal, he preferred flying away to Switzerland.
In 1974, Norman Mailer glorified the art of vandalism in Faith of Graffiti, which likened tagging in New York City to the work of Giotto and Rauschenberg. New York City responded by coating subway walls with Teflon paint, jailing taggers and requiring hardware stores to keep spray paint inventories under lock and key.
Tags, designs, and styles of writing are commonplace on clothing and are an influence on many of the corporate logos with which we are familiar. Many skateparks and similar youth-oriented venues are decorated with commissioned graffiti-style artwork, and in many others patrons are welcome to leave their own. There is still, however, a very fine line between vandalism as an artform, as a political statement, and as a crime. An excellent example of one who walks this threefold line is Bristol born guerrilla-artist Banksy, who is revered as a cult artistic figure by many, but seen by others as a criminal.
Though vandalism in itself is illegal, it is often also an integral part of modern popular culture. French painter Gustave Courbet's attempt to disassemble the Vendôme column during the 1871 Paris Commune was probably one of the first artistic vandalist acts, celebrated at least since Dada performances during World War I. The Vendôme column was considered a symbol of the past Napoleon III empire, and dismantled as such.
After the burning of the Tuileries Palace on May 23, 1871, Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche himself meditated about the "fight against culture", wondering what could justify culture if it were to be destroyed in such a "senseless" manner (the arguments are: culture is justified by works of art and scientific achievements; exploitation is necessary to those achievements, leading to the creation of exploited people who then fight against culture. In this case, culture can't be legitimised by art achievements, and Nietzsche writes: "I {also} know what it means: fighting against culture". After quoting him, Klossowski writes: "The criminal fight against culture is only the reverse side of a criminal culture"
As destruction of monument, vandalism can only have sense in a culture respecting history, archeology - Nietzsche spoke of monumental history. As destruction of monumental history, vandalism was assured a long life (as Herostratus proved): Performance art could make such a claim, as well as Hakim Bey's poetic terrorism or Destroy 2000 Years of Culture from Atari Teenage Riot. Gustave Courbet's declaration stated:
"As the Vendôme column is formally considered a monument devoid of any artistic value, tending to perpetuate with its expression ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, that are reprobated by a republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet is to emit his wish that the National Defense government will allow him to dismantle this column."
Hence, painter Courbet justified the dismantlement of the Vendôme column on political grounds, downgrading its artistic value. Vandalism poses the problem of the value of art compared to life's hardships: Courbet thought that the political values transmitted by this work of art neutralized its artistic value. Anyway, his project wasn't followed, however, on April 12, 1871, the dismantlement of the imperial symbol was voted by the Commune, and the column taken down on May 8. After the assault on the Paris Commune by Adolphe Thiers, Gustave Courbet was condemned to pay part of the expenses. As any good vandal, he preferred flying away to Switzerland.
In 1974, Norman Mailer glorified the art of vandalism in Faith of Graffiti, which likened tagging in New York City to the work of Giotto and Rauschenberg. New York City responded by coating subway walls with Teflon paint, jailing taggers and requiring hardware stores to keep spray paint inventories under lock and key.
Tags, designs, and styles of writing are commonplace on clothing and are an influence on many of the corporate logos with which we are familiar. Many skateparks and similar youth-oriented venues are decorated with commissioned graffiti-style artwork, and in many others patrons are welcome to leave their own. There is still, however, a very fine line between vandalism as an artform, as a political statement, and as a crime. An excellent example of one who walks this threefold line is Bristol born guerrilla-artist Banksy, who is revered as a cult artistic figure by many, but seen by others as a criminal.
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