I have reading the bin Laden papers, those documents that were taken in the raid that killed Osama….fascinating stuff……there are some that I question are original…..the context is not the same as some of the others……anyway….time for a couple of days away from the stuff……

The weekend and I will write about something that hits dear to my heart…..ART.

Me?  I can screw up stick drawings….but my daughter and granddaughter have all the talent……I have several of their pieces hanging in my living room…..

I like art a lot…..impressionism and abstract are my two faves….I also like art that has social commentary value….and there is where this post is going…..

To me the best social commentary artist is the Graffiti artist, Banksey….if you are unfamiliar with his work let me introduce you to it……

Banksey travels the world and painting his stuff in some of the most desolate places…..like Gaza….

He has been an enigma for years….but that may be about to be resolved……

Reclusive street artist Banksy has been playing hide-and-seek with British authorities for years, in an effort to conceal his identity. A new study claims to have identified him, using a technique developed in criminology to track down serial offenders.

A group of scientists at Queen Mary University of London explained in their study (in the Journal of Spatial Science), they had used the so-called “Dirichlet process mixture (DPM) model of geographic profiling.” This is a mathematical technique developed by criminologists. Researchers analyzed the spatial patterns of Banksy’s artworks in Bristol and London and matched them up to places where a short list of suspects lived and worked. All the locations, a pub, playing fields and several residential addresses among them, led to a man called Robin Gunningham. The researchers concluded, with a fair degree of certainty, that Mr Gunningham is Banksy.

“Our analysis highlights areas associated with one prominent candidate (e.g., his home), supporting his identification as Banksy. More broadly, these results support previous suggestions that analysis of minor terrorism-related acts (e.g., graffiti) could be used to help locate terrorist bases before more serious incidents occur, and provides a fascinating example of the application of the model to a complex, real-world problem,” they wrote.

Publication of the study, entitled Tagging Banksy, was delayed after Banksy’s lawyers reportedly contacted the university, apparently voicing concerns over how the study would be promoted.

The first report claiming to identify Banksy as Gunningham, an artist originally from Bristol, appeared in 2008 in the Daily Mail. The newspaper said it managed to identify the “guerrilla artist” from an old photograph taken in Jamaica, showing a man kneeling by a spray can.

Banksy made his name as an unconventional, daredevil artist in 2006, when he “smuggled” a life-size replica of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner into California’s Disneyland. He was aiming to raise awareness of the plight of suspects held at the notorious US detention center in Cuba.

“Our analysis highlights areas associated with one prominent candidate (e.g., his home), supporting his identification as Banksy. More broadly, these results support previous suggestions that analysis of minor terrorism-related acts (e.g., graffiti) could be used to help locate terrorist bases before more serious incidents occur, and provides a fascinating example of the application of the model to a complex, real-world problem,” they wrote.

Publication of the study, entitled Tagging Banksy, was delayed after Banksy’s lawyers reportedly contacted the university, apparently voicing concerns over how the study would be promoted.

The first report claiming to identify Banksy as Gunningham, an artist originally from Bristol, appeared in 2008 in the Daily Mail. The newspaper said it managed to identify the “guerrilla artist” from an old photograph taken in Jamaica, showing a man kneeling by a spray can.