Caravaggio

This program is at maximum capacity; you are welcome to add your name to the waitlist. We will be hosting additional Death Cafes in the future; please be sure to join our electronic mailing list (at the bottom of this web page) to be alerted of future dates. Thank you for your interest!

Join us in Bigelow Chapel for our first Death Cafe!

Following the model developed by Jon Underwood (based on the ideas of Bernard Crettaz), a Death Cafe is an opportunity for people to eat cake, drink tea, and discuss death. The goal is to “increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.”

This is not an end-of-life planning event, bereavement group, or grief counseling. We hope that you will come with an open mind, prepared to discuss the topic of death with strangers in a safe, respectful environment.

Peg Lorenz, of Peaceful Passage at Home, will join us as a facilitator.

Learn more about the Death Cafe movement.

Space is limited. Please pre-register.

little ringed plover mama and her babies.

Other apps have offered up similar types of rapid serial visual presentation to enhance reading speed and convenience on mobile devices in the past. However, what Spritz does differently (and brilliantly) is manipulate the format of the words to more appropriately line them up with the eye’s natural motion of reading. The “Optimal Recognition Point” (ORP) is slightly left of the center of each word, and is the precise point at which our brain deciphers each jumble of letters. The unique aspect of Spritz is that it identifies the ORP of each word, makes that letter red and presents all of the ORPs at the same space on the screen. In this way, our eyes don’t move at all as we see the words, and we can therefore process information instantaneously rather than spend time decoding each word.

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historicaltimes:

Aboriginal North Japanese warrior from the tribe of the Ainus, 1904

Yes!  The Ainu!  An awesome picture, an awesome beard.  Click here to read their wiki article.

allied nightjar(s).

CNN says:

Pope Francis reaffirmed the Catholic Church's opposition to gay marriage on Wednesday, but suggested in a newspaper interview that it could support some types of civil unions.

The Pope reiterated the church's longstanding teaching that "marriage is between a man and a woman." However, he said, "We have to look at different cases and evaluate them in their variety."

Am I being overly hopeful, or is this huge news? In the past, civil unions have seemed to represent the first tentative step toward acceptance for gay marriage opponents. Catholic bishops have supported civil unions, but this marks the first time a Pope has ever expressed support for the idea. Civil unions are separate-but-equal bullshit, but for the Catholic Church, this seems like a big step in the right direction if Francis actually holds true to his word.

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If you could impart one piece of advice to our readers, what would it be? Try things out of your comfort zone. Some of the best bartenders and bars are off the beaten path like Vikram Hedge at Sarma in East Somerville. Try a cocktail with ingredients you've never heard of.

The Eastern Phoebe is the first flycatcher to arrive in the northeast in the spring. It is even likely that when the first Phoebe shows up at MountAuburn there may still be ice on the ponds and snow on the ground. The Phoebe’s song is a two-note rendition of its name, an emphatic pheee-bee or a shorter and softer sweedEE.  The Phoebe is not outstanding in plumage but is very active; constantly wagging its tail as it sits upright on usually a very conspicuous perch and occasionally sallies out to snatch insects on the wing.

It was formally known as the Bridge Pewee, the Phoebe insists on having a roof over its nest be it a bridge, a porch, or even a window sill. It also will nest on rock out cropping or anywhere providing a roof. William Brewster writes in his Birds of the Cambridge Region (Memoirs of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1906) that as recently as 1898 Mr. Walter Deane observed a pair which had a nest on the timbers of a bridge that spans one of the ponds at the Cemetery. Mr. Brewster would be pleased that even now, Eastern Phoebes continue to nest under the bridge at Auburn Lake.

From Drinks

[Photos: Liz Clayton]

For those who didn't get their fill of Mardi Gras, or perhaps overfilled, a tall glass of chicory coffee may be just the thematic antidote. At Serious Drinks we've been eager to document chicory coffee's legacy. But far from the French Quarter, in the outer boroughs of New York City, you'll find a coffee shop slinging a different twist on the classic combination.

Sweetleaf Coffee, with shops in both Brooklyn and Queens, offers a beverage they call "Rocket Fuel"—a chicory and cold-brew coffee based drink that recalls its predecessors at Cafe du Monde and Blue Bottle. Yet unlike Cafe du Monde's woody, canned blend or Blue Bottle's intensely viscous, almost boozy brew base, Rocket Fuel's a crisp yet rich take on the Louisiana tradition. Its intense, creamy, bakers-chocolate notes—tempered with maple syrup but no taste of maple—wash over the sharpness of nutty chicory—the perfect accelerant to the day after Mardi Gras...or any sluggish afternoon.

We crashed the party at Williamsburg, Brooklyn's Sweetleaf outpost to get some step-by-step tips on this drink from barista Nikita Flavius-Gottschalk.

1. Prepare the cold brew base

You'll make a cold-brew iced coffee, using basic cold brewing principles—only this time, you're adding chicory.

The team at Sweetleaf suggests selecting a coffee that's well-suited to the nutty, woody tones of chicory. "You don't want floral and berry notes in your Rocket Fuel," advises Flavius-Gottschalk. Sweetleaf uses a balanced, rich coffee as their base, like Stumptown's Hairbender blend, while the company gets its feet on the ground roasting its own Sweetleaf brand coffee. Measure out a 1:3 ratio of chicory to coffee—darn right, that's a lot of chicory! ("We had a huge crisis last summer when all the distributors in the New York area were out of chicory," said Flavius-Gottschalk. Hopefully that won't happen to you.)

Coffee should be ground to a filter drip setting: Sweetleaf's team of careful measurers prefers the coffee extract very slowly alongside the chicory, so while some prefer a coarser grind for cold brew, they err towards the finer. Think of a texture more towards coarse salt or cornmeal, rather than the coarser, near-French press grind often advised for cold brewing. Mix the chicory and coffee together before adding to the large container you'll fill with water.

Standard cold brew ratios are 1 part coffee to 4.5 parts water. Rocket Fuel is a little more demanding, so 1 part coffee/chicory mix you'll use 6 times that in water. Add the coffee and chicory mixture to the water, and stir completely. Leave the brew to do its work at room temperature, and in 12 to 18 hours time, filter the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve or cloth—twice if you can. Flavius-Gottschalk says you can expect about a gallon of concentrated Rocket Fuel base to result from the slow-brew.

Now that you've got your base, you're ready to make cups of Rocket Fuel.

2. Administer the maple syrup

As with Blue Bottle's New Orleans drip, the next stage after cold brewing is to add a sweetener. Sweetleaf uses Grade B maple syrup to provide the dark and earthy base sweetener for this drink. Add syrup to taste—approximately one tablespoons for every four ounces of cold-brew concentrate.

3. Add ice

Self explanatory.

4. Add milk or dairy substitute

Add your dairy or substitute now—whole milk will be creamiest, but whatever you like the most—in equal proportion to the coffee concentrate. "Milk is the last to go in," says Flavius-Gottschalk, "in case you want an alternative. We want everyone to have rocket fuel." Plus, pouring in the milk last over ice yields a cascading, dairy waterfall effect that will make your eyes glaze over happily like a sleepy animal.

5. Stir and serve!

The final result? A creamy yet brisk drink of intriguing flavors, with the cold-brew coffee enveloped in the full, round, and slightly bittersweet taste of chicory. Bon temps? Why the heck not.

About the author: Liz Clayton drinks, photographs and writes about coffee and tea all over the world, though she pretends to live in Brooklyn, New York. She is the creator of Nice Coffee Time, a book of photographs of the best coffee in the world, published by Presspop, is the New York City correspondent for Sprudge.com, and contributes to other outfits worldwide.

cleolinda:

hyvapaiva:

Madonna performs Vogue, 1990

If you’ve never seen it, you gotta see it. As opposed to the black and white video directed by David Fincher (!). 

I had never seen it. I HAVE SINCE CORRECTED THAT.

This program is at maximum capacity; you are welcome to add your name to the waitlist. We will be hosting additional Death Cafes in the future; please be sure to join our electronic mailing list (at the bottom of this web page) to be alerted of future dates. Thank you for your interest!

If you want to eat at a conveyor belt sushi (回転寿司 or "kaiten zushi") restaurant, kids in Japan need to have their parents take them. Not anymore! Soon, they'll be able get aboard the sushi train at home.

Read more...

The Encyclopaedia Britannica has begun to refer to Hong Kong as Xianggang, the Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) pronunciation of the name.

The above screen shot is from the Facebook group "Hong Kong & China NOT the SAME 中港大不同". Needless to say, not only are the people of Hong Kong unamused by this attempt on the part of the EB editors to please the Beijing government, they are quite upset.

For a Hong Konger, the top line in Chinese (see above) registers as "Has Hong Kong become soeng1 gaan1?!". The last two characters, 傷姦 (pronounced shāng jiān in Modern Standard Mandarin [MSM]), literally mean "injure-rape", but are here being used to transcribe in Cantonese the MSM pronunciation of 香港 ("Fragrant Harbor"), viz., Xiānggǎng. In Cantonese, 香港 would be pronounced Hoeng1gong2, whence our "Hong Kong".

As another example of the rapidly encroaching Mandarinization of Hong Kong, a while back the new Cantonese opera complex was referred to as "xìqǔ" 戲曲, using the MSM Pinyin spelling of its name instead of Cantonese romanization hei3 kuk1, in English texts written about it. The name for Cantonese opera is actually jyut6 kek6 粵劇 (MSM yuèjù).

The imposition of MSM terms and pronunciations over local language preferences is being carried out aggressively throughout China, not just in Hong Kong. For example, in Xinjiang, Kashgar, by central government fiat, has become 喀 什 Kāshí and Ürümchi has become Wūlǔmùqí 乌 鲁木齐.

The changes in Tibet are even more drastic. The Chinese insist on calling the place Xīzàng 西藏 ("West Zàng") instead of Tibet, by some form of which it is known to much of the world. Xīzàng is a relatively new place name, having been coined only in the late 18th-early 19th century. Literally, zàng 藏 means "storehouse; depository; (Buddhist / Taoist) canon"), but in the name Xīzàng 西藏 ("West Zàng") refers to a traditional province in western and central Tibet. I suppose, but am by no means certain of this, that zàng 藏 in this transcriptional sense may be linked to the name of an ancient Tibeto-Burman people called Qiang (sometimes referred to as proto-Tibetans).

The Tibetans themselves call their country Bod བོད་ (transliterated as Bhö or Phö and pronounced [pʰøʔ]) or related terms based upon it. For instance, when referring to Greater Tibet — all the Tibetan-speaking areas collectively, which range far beyond the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) — one would say Bod-chen-po.  Historically, from around 1698 at least, there does seem to have been a sense of a greater Tibet (Bod-chen), which appears to have mapped more to the spread of Gelukpa (Yellow Hat sect) monasteries than to any other feature.

In addition to the TAR, there are also Tibetan-speaking populations in the PRC provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan, which would be included in Khams and Amdo in traditional usage.

This is a grossly simplified account of the names for Tibet across time and space.  For a detailed discussion of the historical and linguistic evidence concerning a whole range of names for Tibet in different languages, see this excellent Wikipedia article.

[Thanks to Bob Bauer, Matthew Kapstein, Robbie Barnett, Gray Tuttle, and Patricia Schiaffini]

 

Barkhad Abdi earned $65,000 for film that took in $200 million

Jane Elizabeth Lazarz has added a photo to the pool:

watchdog Images (Olympus E5 - E3 pics) has added a photo to the pool:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

snooker2009 has added a photo to the pool:

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis finds the hype that is increasingly surrounding him "offensive," according to an interview published Wednesday, even as the Vatican itself is marking the anniversary of his election with commemorative stamps and coins and a DVD with never-before-seen footage of the pope.

Read More →

Half of Americans believe that the U.S. Constitution gives gays and lesbians the right to marry, according to a new poll.

Read More →

Selfies have always been a must among fighter jocks and you can find thousands taken by military pilots in the most unusual flight conditions. However, selfies taken while launching missiles are much more rare because firing activities involving the launch of an air-to-air missile don’t take place too often.

As a disabled person who wears leg braces and uses a wheelchair, finding clothes I can even wear has always been a challenge.

Trousers and shoes are the worst. My clothes shopping experience usually involves a lot of sighing at the endless rails of skinny jeans, leggings and high heels before returning home to search for boyfriend jeans on eBay (to pair with Ugg boots on days when my feet can’t handle any other shoes, naturally). Anything to stop me having to spend every day in sweatpants. Wide-legged trousers are always a welcome change, but don’t get me started on harem pants or those deceptive dropped-crotch trousers that were popular a couple of years ago. Sure, they fit over my braces, but at what cost? Accidentally cosplaying as a member of X-Factor-era One Direction?

As I grew up, I began to think that standing out can be a wonderful thing, that having an awkward or different looking body opens up all manner of possibilities of challenging what a “normal” or “natural” body should look like. I started dressing in bolder clothes. Clothes that helped tell the world who I was, clothes that challenged the stereotype of disabled people as a pitiful, unattractive, sexless homogeneous mass. It made me feel great. After all, clothes are supposed to be fun, right?

It turns out I needn’t have bothered. The latest on-trend, anti-trend trendy trend is here, and it’s called normcore, coming soon to your local independent vegan cafe. The tagline: Normal, the New Different! (or something.)

Normcore, as Fiona Duncan puts it in NY Mag, is a “self-aware, stylized blandness.” It’s Uniqlo windbreakers, unbranded sweatpants and nondescript running shoes. “Embracing sameness” is postured as a way of freeing yourself from the tyranny of a world where looks are everything. Normcore offers “a blank slate and an open mind” to those who swap their skinny jeans for straight up dad-jeans.

“Brilliant,” you might think. “No more try-hard posturing and letting our clothes do the talking.” Normcore is an equalizer.

The only problem? Not all bodies are created equal. Or, to be more precise, not all bodies are not valued equally. To approach the situation in any other way is bullshit.

What passes for a self-aware rejection of fashion on one person will be seen in a completely different way on another body. I think back to activist Eddie Ndopu’s brilliant article on what clothing means to him as a self-described “black queer crip,” and how he uses fashion as a way of challenging ableist assumptions of disabled people’s place in the world. As he puts it: “Sweats and clothes labeled ‘frumpy’ engender pity. And that is why I refuse to wear them in public.” Normcore may be one form of resistance, but dressing to the nines is his.

Original Source

Jefferson's Bourbon's Ocean II Jefferson's Bourbon introduces Jefferson's Ocean II: Aged at Sea. Blended in Kentucky, Jefferson's Ocean II is comprised of bourbons aged 7 and 8 years before being loaded on a ship. More than 62 barrels were sent around the world, stopping at over 40 ports at sea and bottled at a 90 proof (45% ABV). This is the second ocean-aged bourbon to be released by Jefferson's and will be available March 1; the first debuted in August 2012 with 250 bottles released nationally. The constant rocking of the ocean, fluctuation in temperature and saline-rich air help mature...

[Visit Alcademics.com for the full post.]

crimexturtle:

Spending my night ruining the free world

Early signs suggest that US president Barack Obama’s health care overhaul is driving the cost of healthcare lower, according to Goldman Sachs analysts, spotlighting yesterday’s data on consumer spending and prices.

“Cuts to Medicare payments that were used to finance some of the new benefits under the law have resulted in significant slowing in the health-related components of the PCE price index,” wrote Goldman analysts in a note to clients.

They note that the decrease in January health care prices is related to cuts to Medicare, the US program of health care for the elderly, which were made in the Affordable Care Act in order to pay for coverage of the uninsured:

Rather than reducing the quantity of services provided, the law mandates a smaller annual increase in the prices Medicare pays for services. This increase happens once a year in January or October, there should be little additional effect on the change in prices from the ACA for the next several months, though we expect the effect on the level of prices to persist.

While the Obamacare overhaul remains controversial in the US, budget geeks are nearly unanimous in spotlighting runaway health care costs as a long-term driver of the US national debt. And cross-country comparisons show that US health care spending is clearly out of line with international norms.

In other words, early indications that the Affordable Care Act is starting to control health care inflation is a good thing.

beatonna:

I love reading bad reviews of classic books on Amazon and Goodreads