Napolitano on the theft of the Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa – an influential painting

“I hate art”. “That is quite a strong statement darling, why have you broken with art at such an early stage in your life?” “Well, we have this assignment to describe how we feel about the Mona Lisa and quite frankly I don’t feel anything. To me it just looks like an average portrait. I really don’t understand all the fuss about it.” “I do not blame you my darling, I was never the artistic type myself but the Mona Lisa really is a very influential painting. Actually, you might even say that it had an impact on my personal life.

This has nothing to do with smile though. For me, as Secretary of Homeland Security, the Mona Lisa, or more specifically the theft of the painting in 1911, made way to the mean of identifying people we use today: The fingerprinting system. Its predecessor, Bertillonage, worked quite differently. In Bertillonage, which was invented in the 19^th century by the Frenchman Alphonse Bertillon, several distinctive body features, like width of head or length of right ear, were measured and catalogued. So when a criminal was caught his body measurements were compared to those in the catalogue in the hope of getting a match. This system contained a number of flaws, for example were the measurements often inexact as every officer took them a lit bit differently.

 Critcs’ voices rose but it was the theft of our lovely smiling lady that was the undoing of Bertillonage. As the theft had caused a public uproar and one conspiracy theory chased the other the government wanted the case resolved as soon as possible. Bertillon was personally summoned to the crime scene and even managed to secure a fingerprint. He and his colleagues engaged in seven months of comparing I with thousands of data cards but found no match.

When the painting was finally regained two years later it turned out that the thief had actually beenin Bertillone’s files all along. They just could not find a match because it was the left thumbprint that was left on the crime scene and the right one that was in the files. Needless to say, this incident caused the police to rethink their tactics.

Average Joe - biological warfare

The Threat

Like every morning when his alarm clock struck seven, this stupid country song started playing. If there was one thing Joe really hated it was country music and everything related to it. That’s why his wife had given it to him. How much she laughed when he first heard this song one morning and, according to her, made a face like he had seen an alien. Now that she was so far away, he had actually grown to like it. After stretching out once more he got out of bed and threw an indifferent look out the window. Ever since Utopia threatened to infect US citizens with a deadly and highly contagious mutation of the smallpox virus, weather was something that could only be perceived from inside. He went to wake up his children, Bernard and Eve. Bernard was easy to get out of bed but with Eve it was a struggle every single morning. She was so much like her mother. “Dad, I hate this porridge, why can we only have fruit on Sundays? “, she complained. “You know why darling, fruit and vegetables are scarce.” She gave him a grumpy look and started picking at her food. While the kids continued their breakfast, Joe went to prepare their protection suits and their gas masks. They had to be checked for holes or any other breakages every morning. Joe also hated the artificially-prepared food, the gas masks, the countless blinking virus detection censors and all of the other safety regulations that had to be met after the Threat on the 2^nd of July in 2033.  This day had a huge impact on every US citizen but for Joe it was even tougher than for most others. At the time of the Threat his wife, who is a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, was working in Spain, covering the economic crisis. Then not even an hour after the Threat, US borders were hermetically closed. From this moment on the US government has been allowing 5 citizens per month to return home as part of the US Citizen Repatriation Program. His wife currently held the 124^th position. So if nothing else was going to happen, they would finally see each other again in two years. “Dad can you help me with my suit please?”, Eve was yelling from the other room. After they were both dressed up, looking like child soldiers, he went to unbar the front door. As he was just about to deactivate the viral screen door a deafening wail of a siren made him turn into a pillar of salt. “No, no, no, no please let this be a false alarm and not a real attack”, he thought but he knew that this wail just took his wife another couple of years away.

Rube Goldberg - "Creme that egg"

Rube Goldberg Machines

The name of the youtube video I chose is "creme that egg". Although the purposefull of this Rube Goldmachine might be doubted as it results in a delicious looking chocolate egg being smashed I found it quite amusing. Even appetizing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=vrCb_fNmSTA#t=10s

List of nouns

flummi

sloping surface

ski jump

cup

seesaw

string

marble

paper tube

kettle

lever

turning bridge

pulley

ramp

hammer

handle

edge

pendulum

carton box

List of verbs 

fall down into

be catapulted onto

bounce up into

roll down/along

pull

move upwards

activate

release

lower

pour into

tip over

hit from behind

drop into

knock over