Russian Sledges

Passion Play postcard

Today I learned that this photograph I often come across floating around the net, is not a fabrication of Photoshop. In fact, the sole purpose of this post is pretty much just to confirm that yes, such a place exists on Earth and hell yes, you can stay there– because if you’re going to stay on a dreamy tropical island, you might as well make it a heart-shaped one.

This is the island of Tavarua in Fiji, five miles by boat from the main island of Viti Levu. It is 29 acres in size and surrounded by a coral reef. While the internet might know it as the heart-shaped island, Tavarua is a longtime beloved spot for surfers who journey to its unusual coastline for the world-class waves it creates. As recently as the 1970s, the island was completely uninhabited, until a Californian teacher, Dave Clark, came to the island in 1982 after a tip-off about some incredible-looking waves. Clark spent two months with his cousin camping and surfing on Tavarua until realising he never wanted to leave their heart-shaped island.

Clark and professional surfer Scott Funk met with the three local Fijian tribes and soon enough, they began building their surfing resort. The early version of Tavarua Island Resort could accommodate just 24 surfers in basic cabins for rent at about $100 a day. Word spread amongst the global community of wave-hunters and soon the secret was out that Tavarua boasted some of the world’s finest oversized waves ever ridden.

Today the island has 15 cabins and hosts annual pro surfing contests, but the small island resort still has its simple charm and remains largely undiscovered by mainstream tourism.

So, if heart-shaped islands in paradise are your kinda thing, maybe add Tavarua to your bookmarks.

Images via 1, 2, 3, 4

By Joseph P. Laycock and Natasha L. Mikles

* This post now appears in expanded form in the Bulletin for the Study of Religion journal.

While discussing construction of the upcoming Karma Kagyu Tibetan Buddhist practice center near Loch Ness, Lama Gelongma Zangmo of Scotland has suggested that the Loch Ness Monster can be regarded as a naga—a serpent-like creature from Hindu and Buddhist mythology, which is said to live in underwater cities and is commonly associated with kingship and wealth.  Zangmo has herself made offerings to the alleged monster in order to show respect and bring prosperity.  Formerly a Tibetan Buddhist nun of the Kagyu lineage, Zangmo became the first person in Britain to be promoted to the rank of Lama.  The media, which continues to be fascinated with reports of Nessie, has focused primarily on the implications of Zangmo’s offering for theories of cryptozoology—are there precursors of the Loch Ness monster in Asian mythology? Could the Loch Ness monster be a spirit being, rather than a flesh and blood monster?  But Zangmo’s offerings have far more significance to Buddhism.  Making Buddhist offerings to a creature from Scottish folklore marks an important moment in the arrival of Buddhism to the West: While Western intellectuals have historically favored Buddhist philosophy over ritual praxis and Buddhist theories of mind over cosmology, Zangmo’s offerings demonstrate how Westerners are finding new uses for Buddhist cosmology as a lens through which to frame their own experience of the world.

Zangmo first began cultivating her relationship with local nagas at the Sangye Ling monastery on the River Esk—about four hours south of Loch Ness—where a cone shaped structure by the river has been used to leave offerings.  Zangmo has announced that the practice will continue at the new Buddhist center opening near the shores of the Loch this fall.  Traditionally, offerings are made to nagas in exchange for prosperity.  A famous story relates how the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna dove through the water to enter the kingdom of the nagas and reclaim the Prajnaparamitra sutra, which the naga kings had protected since the time of the Buddha. For Zangmo, however, making offerings to Nessie seems tied more to a performative environmentalism than the acquisition of lost treasures: she claims that honoring Nessie as a sentient personification of the Scottish landscape helps to cultivate respect and appreciation for the land, which in turn promotes wellbeing.

Zangmo’s Loch Ness offerings also mark the environment in other, more profound, ways.  Much of Tibetan Buddhist history and folklore has been concerned with genii loci.  According to legend, the Tantric master Padmasambhava arrived in Tibet in the eighth century and tamed its numerous demons and spirits.  Many were converted to become “Dharma protectors” who employ their supernatural powers for the good of the Dharma.  The Tibetan land itself is understood to be an enormous supine demoness held in place by strategically located monasteries.  Other Buddhist countries have generally accepted Indian cosmology and mythological creatures as part of their adoption of the religion. However, Buddhism’s rich tradition of gods and spirits has struggled to make the journey to the West. Many religious cultures have local, geographical features such as pilgrimage sites are features that cannot be transported directly to new soil—with the possible exception of  Chinese stories of flying mountains. But Buddhism in particular has been divorced from much of its cosmology when adopted by Westerners.  In what Jan Nattier has called “import” or “elite” Buddhism, Western intellectuals have historically embraced Buddhism as a “philosophical” tradition that is superior to Christianity because it is not reliant on belief in supernatural entities.

Zangmo’s strategy of adapting localized practices from Tibetan Buddhism to a Scottish context, therefore, signals a number of shifts in Buddhism’s move West: namely, it demonstrates that Western Buddhists are no longer as keen to abandon traditional doctrines and practices concerning gods, spirits, and the supernatural. Furthermore, Zangmo’s practice demonstrates Tibetan Buddhism’s capacity to structure and order a Western cosmology. As demonstrated by Stephen Prothero in The White Buddhist and David McMahan in The Making of Buddhist Modernism, during Buddhism’s initial adoption by western practitioners, the “totalizing” power of Buddhist thought was frequently relegated to the larger “totalizing” discourse of Protestantism. Zangmo’s actions reassert the totalizing potential of Buddhist thought and show that any phenomena, including hypothetical lake monsters, can be located within a Buddhist worldview and incorporated into Buddhist practice.  Finally, by using a traditional Tibetan Buddhist framework to “Buddha-ify” Nessie, Lama Zangmo is perhaps developing her authority and charisma within the larger Tibetan Buddhist community: Zangmo’s position as a Caucasian woman who has achieved the rank of lama is virtually unprecedented in Tibetan tradition. The adaptation of a local Tibetan practice works to situate her as an authentic participant within the sphere of Tibetan culture.  In fact, by taming a local naga she is acting somewhat like a modern-day Padmasambhava.

While Westerners often imagine Tibet as an exotic land of magic and mystery, modern Westerners have enchanted their own landscape with stories of monsters and demons. Monsters and missionaries have always gone together.  Nessie fans claim that before the original 1933 sighting of the monster, Nessie appears in a seventh-century hagiography of the Irish abbot and missionary Saint Columba.  In that story, Columba impressed a group of Picts by making the sign of the cross to rebuke a man-eating “water beast.”  The juxtaposition of cryptozoology and Buddhism holds fascinating possibilities for the future—Is the Mothman really a garuda? Will stupas be built to contain marauding Bigfoots like the famed demoness of the Tibetan soil?  Will a modern-day Buddhist saint persuade the chupacabra to become a Dharma-protector?  Zangmo’s practice suggests that not only can these creatures gain new meaning within the Buddhist framework, but that the creatures themselves can be a resource in bringing local practices to new soil.

About the Authors

Joseph Laycock is an assistant professor of religion at Texas State University.  His forthcoming book is entitled The Seer of Bayside: Veronica Lueken and the Struggle for Catholicism (Oxford University Press).

Natasha L. Mikles is a doctoral student at the University of Virginia. Her research centers on the hell episodes of the Gesar epic, as well as Tibetan literature and bibliography more generally.

Janelle Monáe - “Heroes” (from Pepsi Beats of the Beautiful Game LP) (by janellemonae)

Growing Up in Arcades is a Flickr pool dedicated to cataloging vintage photos taken in arcades between the years of 1979 and 1989. The nostalgia-driven collection features shots of Pac-Man, skee ball, Chuck E. Cheese’s, short shorts and other miscellany of the era.

via Dangerous Minds

bobbycaputo:

National Guard Soldier Brings Back Artistic Photos from His Time in Afghanistan

Sean Huolihan isn’t the first soldier to spend some of his time overseas looking through a viewfinder instead of a rifle scope, but there’s a certain quality to the photos taken by the Iraq/Afghanistan Veteran that you don’t frequently find in images of war.

For 7+ years, Communications Section Chief Huolihan was a member of the Wisconsin National Guard, but his service took on a different dimension when he picked up a Nikon D90 and began taking pictures after a tour in Iraq. By the time he was deployed to Afghanistan a few years later, he had advanced to the point where he felt comfortable volunteering as the historian for the unit B 1-121FA HIMARS.

The images he came back with are more ‘artistic’ than you typically see. Pictures of rockets and machines of war are juxtaposed against silhouettes and star trails, making for a very interesting collection of photographs indeed.

(Continue Reading)

lostsplendor:

"Glamor of the Allies": French Postcard Set c. 1917 via Tuckdb

Give me the strength not to go write essays about these immediately.

1690s book with filigree silver binding - National Library of Sweden

This binding is an exquisite example of Danish filigree technique 
from the 1690s.It belongs to the National Library’s Huseby 
Collection and was once owned by Karren Mogensdotter Skoug.
 Her name and the year 1692 are engraved on the inside of the clasps. -(x)

reifman (786887) writes "San Francisco's gender imbalance is so bad that a startup recently proposed flying women in from New York City for dates. But, if you're a straight male thinking of moving to Seattle to work in technology, think again. Seattle's gender ratio is even more imbalanced and it's about to get much worse for men. Amazon is building out enough space to employ 5% of the city population and its workforce is 75 percent male. By the end of 2014, Seattle will have 130 single men for every 100 single women."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spanish architects Amparo and Andres Martinez Vidal paired bulky concrete with delicately folded steel to create this mausoleum in Murcia (+ slideshow).

Located at one of the Spanish city's cemeteries, the mausoleum was designed by Martínez Vidal Design Office (MVDO) at the request of an engineer and features an intricate structure intended to embody the complex nature of religion.

"Religion translates complex situations, polarising and placing them opposite in hell and heaven, two antagonistic ends," said Amparo Martinez Vidal. "Our purpose was to make difficult what was simple, and to turn what was sober into something innovative."

Externally, the structure is visually separated into two sections. The first is a rectilinear concrete body, broken up by sliced horizontal openings, and the second is a lacquered steel volume that accommodates the entrance.

Neither of these materials represent a load-bearing structure – this function is carried out by a steel framework concealed behind.

"Concrete in this project is nothing but facing and it delegates its traditional carrying function to steel, the truly structural skeleton," said the architect.

The two sliced openings trace a route around the perimeter of the structure, allowing daylight to permeate the interior. They connect with a tree motif that perforates one wall, and also meet a cross-shaped window positioned above the entrance.

"What is physical, what is tectonic, represented by reinforced concrete, seems to stand up between two glass horizontal figures, which connect the internal and the external sides of the construction," said Martinez Vidal.

At the request of the client, limestone was used for the walls and flooring inside the building, alongside enamel-coated steel panels.

An iron statue of Christ is the only object in the space and sits below a skylight, ensuring it is always illuminated by sunlight.

"The iron sculpture, treated with an oxidation that simulates Christ nail's blood, appears to be floating," added the architect.

Here's a project description from Martínez Vidal:

---

Pantheon for an engineer

A trompe-l'œil (French for "deceive the eye") is by definition a technique which tries to deceive the eye by means of the architectural surrounding environment, the perspective, the shading, and other optical illusions, creating an "intensified reality" or a "substitution of the reality".

Religion translates complex situations, polarising and placing them opposite in hell and heaven, two antagonistic ends. Our purpose was to make difficult what was simple, and to turn what was sober into something innovative. Concrete in this project is nothing but facing and it delegates its traditional carrying function to steel, the truly structural skeleton. What is made with stone materials is weightless. Therefore, concrete somehow gravitates whereas glass, traditionally a weightless material has a carrying function. What is physical, what is tectonic, represented by reinforced concrete, seems to stand up between two glass horizontal figures which connect the internal and the external sides of the construction.

The lacquered sheet folder indicates the entrance and shows the way to the altar. Once again, it looks as if it was overflying the ground. The stone material was almost a requirement of the developer. The innovation consists in the loss of the carrying function of the stone material. On the other hand, the use of concrete was in line with our purpose of using lasting and sober materials, which would generate a perpetual dialogue. The idea was to reinterpret them in a contemporary context.

In the altar, Christ is illuminated with a skylight. The iron sculpture, elaborated by Fernando Saenz de Elorriaga, and treated with an oxidation that simulates Christ nail's blood, appears to be floating. In the interior, the alabaster controls the light keeping the colours of the reinforced concrete with a higher arid proportion.

Our ancestors used to build cathedrals which straightened to the sky to uplift our prayers. The material homogeneity is in this case what sends us to the monumental scale, what makes us think that there might be something bigger than ourselves which transcends us, just like the magic of the heavy material which levitates.

The post Concrete and steel mausoleum for an
engineer completed at Spanish cemetery appeared first on Dezeen.

Fincher told her he wanted to create a modern-day Lady Macbeth. He wanted her to really use the emotional calluses of aging. And he wanted her to be a partner in Claire's creation. "David assured me that this would be a collaboration, that I could help create the character as we went along, that we would make discoveries together," she says. "And David and Beau stuck to their word." Once Wright signed on, Willimon "scrapped" every Claire scene he had written. "It was deeply embarrassing," he says of the first draft of the first episode, "because Claire was arm candy. I had to rethink her."

Original Source

Is consciousness contingent on a functioning brain? Audience says yes, by a narrow margin.

The Satanic Temple's Lucien Greaves sets the record straight on the lecture/performance-turned-controversy.

Cositas que me envía mi hermano… #StreetArt #PuertoRico pic.twitter.com/se19qDLtt8

A couple of years ago, Billy Corgan, a longtime wrestling fan, helped start Resistance Pro Wrestling, an independent wrestling league in Chicago. A few months ago, we learned that AMC was developing a reality show about Corgan and his involvement in the company. And now we learn that Billy Corgan and his pro grappler associates will indeed be coming to our televisions, and on the same network that brought us Don Draper and Walter White. TV By The Numbers reports that AMC has ordered the show, which still has no title, to series. It’s one of three new AMC reality shows, along with Visionaries, about Hollywood set builders, and something called Celebrity All-Star Bowling. Here’s how Corgan’s show is described: “Corgan will take us behind the scenes of this fascinating world, from creating storylines to choreographing fights to managing intense post-match locker room arguments, and will reveal that the most dramatic stories often take place outside of the ring.” The hour-long show has an initial order of eight episodes. I’m kind of excited? At the very least, I’m interested to see what they do with the unavoidable reality that Billy Corgan is taller than most pro wrestlers.

In Boston alone, farmers markets have more than doubled in the past 10 years, and Massachusetts ranks third in the nation in number of farmers markets per person. The Boston Public Market, a nonprofit organization founded in 2001, hopes to improve upon these statistics even more. With a nearly final 85-year lease for an indoor public market above the Orange and Green lines Haymarket T station, this seems within their grasp. The Boston Public Market will be a permanent, year-round, self-sustaining market that provides local, healthy food to consumers of all levels. The market will offer farmers, fishermen and specialty food producers in Massachusetts and throughout New England a vibrant Boston marketplace in partnership with the City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

The credits have rolled on the last late-night screening, the box office curtain is closed, the ushers have done their rounds and popcorn machines are turned off. Now is our chance; we emerge from our hiding place in the back row. The cinema is ours.

This is the sort of private tour that French photographer Franck Bohot likes to take you on when hunting for California’s most incredible Art Deco spaces …

The Paramount, Oakland

Oakland’s Paramount Theatre is one of the finest remaining examples of Art Deco design in the United States. Completed in 1931, after its initial brief blaze of “movie palace” glory in the 1930′s, this remarkable auditorium suffered three decades of neglect and decline until its rescue by the Oakland Symphony, the City of Oakland and numerous private donors. A painstaking and authentic restoration was completed in 1973 and the theatre was entered in the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1976  the Paramount Theatre became a California Registered Historic Landmark and in 1977, was declared a National Historic Landmark. The theatre hosts a year-round schedule of popular music concerts, variety shows, theatre, and of course, movies. Website / Facebook

 

 

Orinda Theatre, Orinda, CA

The Orinda Theatre was opened in 1941 and later slated for demolition in 1984 before it was saved through the efforts of preservationists and reopened in 1989. Two additional screens were added, one of which features mural saved from the Garden Theatre in San Jose when it was demolished.  The original lobby and main theatre were left intact as they were built in 1941.

Website

 

 

The Crest Westwood, Los Angeles, CA

Opened in 1940 as a stage venue called the Westwood Theatre, it went through several changes in ownership, name, and design over the next seven decades before closing its doors in 2011. (This, in spite of the fact that it had been declared a Cultural Historical Monument three years earlier). Since its re-opening in 2013, the theatre is sure to stand out from the multiplex crowd.

Website / Facebook

 

 

The Grand Lake Theatre, Oakland

This cinema has been around since 1926, before talking pictures replaced Vaudeville shows and silent films. On Tuesdays, you can see any film here for $5.

Website.

 

 

The Alameda, San Francisco

Built in 1932 in Alameda, California, it was the last grand movie palace built in the San Francisco Bay Area. It closed in the 1980s as a triplex theatre and was later used as a gymnastics studio. A restoration and expansion project was completed in 2008, making the historic theater the primary anchor of an eight-screen multiplex.

Website

 

Discover more fantastic wide empty spaces by Franck Bohot.

The sands of the Sahara have all but swallowed Chinguetti, a near ghost town found at the end of a harsh desert road in Mauritania, West Africa. Its majority of abandoned houses are open to the elements, lost to the dunes of a desert aggressively expanding southward at a rate of 30 miles per year. While predictions suggest this isolated town will be buried without a trace within generations, Chinguetti is probably the last place on Earth you would look for a library of rare books.

(c) lead image by Martin Hülle

(c) Groundhopping Merseburg

(c) Olivier Blaise

(c) Martin Hülle

(c) John Spooner

This was once a prosperous medieval metropolis, home to 20,000 residents and a centre for scholars of science, religion, law, medicine, mathematics and astronomy in West Africa. A principal gathering place for pilgrims on their way to Mecca, it even became known as a holy city in its own right and over time, it was recognised as the seventh holy city of Islam, the “City of Libraries”.

(c) Jason Finch

Today all that remains of the scholarly and holy city is a collection of deserted streets and mud houses left behind by the Moorish Empire with a few signs scrawled above doorways…

(c) Groundhopping Merseburg

(c) See the World pics

But against all odds, behind these walls sleep 6,000 books, some kept (for the most part) in tact since the 9th century in the dry desert air…

(c) Jason Finch

(c) Ibiss

(c) Abec Photographe

As recently as the 1950s, Chinguetti was home to an impressive thirty family-owned libraries, but severe drought saw the town’s residents disappear, taking their books passed down from generations with them. Today there remains less than ten libraries in the old town, catering to scholars that occasionally visit the isolated town, but mostly to tourists who pass through to see the priceless texts and experience a traditional nomadic hospitality of the Mauritanian desert.

(c) Smithsonian

Among some of the world’s most important Islamic manuscripts on religion, science and literature, the books are written on gazelle skin and protected by goatskin. The wealthiest library, which houses the most important collection in the old quarter and is considered one of the oldest libraries of Islam, is owned by the Mohammed Habbot family. The 1,600 books in this collection are stored in iron cabinets and despite its unlikely location, the library somewhat resembles a traditional library, with administrative filing cabinets and reading desks.

(c) Olivier Blaise

The other handful of libraries still surviving in Chinguetti however are very much time capsules of the medieval era in which they were first built, storing the ancient books in simple cardboard binders on open shelving, vulnerable to the elements. Just about the worst environment for storing ancient books, Chinguetti is an unfortunate victim of climate change that is causing seasonal flash flooding and severe erosion as well as increased desertification and frequent sandstorms.

(c) Jason Finch

source

source

The best hope of preventing the deterioration of these priceless books would be to limit their contact with light and dust. But for the few remaining residents of Chinguetti, tourism is their livelihood and the nomadic librarians are obliged to expose the ancient texts to show to passing tourists, spoiling them a little more everyday.

(c) Olivier Blaise

Recognising the endangered status of the city, UNESCO has designated Chinguetti a World Heritage Site. Cave paintings from the Stone Age found near Chinguetti, depict the region as a lush grassland where wildlife once flourished. However, delaying the effects of climate change would require a sustained commitment using highly advanced technology, and with the current political turmoil plaguing West Africa, the fate of Chinguetti’s libraries looks about as promising as that of our own independent bookshops.

(c) Olivier Blaise

If you’re buying press-on fingernails and fake eyelashes and nylon wigs to glue onto human figures made of old queen-size support pantyhose, Matt Maranian has a warning for you... Read the rest

All my Lady Oscar’s cosplay made since now :

- informal version manga

- blue manga

- dress uniform anime

- red uniform anime

- blue uniform anime

- son of Mars anime

- ball gown manga

For more pics you can find me here : https://www.facebook.com/pages/LADY-OSCAR-by-Kurimi-Italian-Cosplayer/383839975050085?ref=stream&hc_location=timeline

Amazon promotes books from Hachette Books Group while discouraging people from buying them. After the retailer's aggressive stance became public last week, criticism and complaints mounted. But Amazon seems confident it will get what it wants in the end.

With several Star Trek themed rooms and a number of other incredible 'adult living as a child' features, this Florida mansion looks incredible!

Read the rest

Me as lady Oscar in blue anime uniform

Palazzo Pfanner - Lucca (Italy)

Photo by Elisabetta Urdis

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Here are some of my favorite shots from a story I did for the latest issue of IO DONNA featuring Linda Rodin and Jenny Hirschowitz.( styling by Valentina Ilardi Martin) I always love working with these incredible ladies. Check out the full story HERE.

circuit-city:

My friend and I were in some new age store today and he answered a phone call and instead of asking him to not use phone the owner handed me this

cabell:

harrysflaccidcock:

Someone at my school made these in response to my principal announcing a dress code that, as usual, only applied to girls, and I’m kind of proud

If one of my kids did this, their bedtime would be never.

the-real-goddamazon:

lenadreamsingold:

pokadot78:

iputbeyonceonmyback:

workbitchs:

The truth has been revealed: Katy Perry is nothing but a copy of a 50s’ comic book character called “Katy Peene”

Literally her entire career…. Is based on a comic book.

Now I overstand why CTGOD keeps calling her the nubian white queen, she is as fake as Rick “law enforcer” Ross. 

Wat…

LMFAO um…