Russian Sledges

1900s Edwardian Lapis Signet Ring, 14K Gold, $650

"Revival" Sword

• Dated: 19th century
• Place of Origin: Persia
• Measurements: overall length: 32in (810mm). Blade length: 26.5in (670mm)  

An interesting Persian straight sword known as a Revival sword, as this type of sword revives the use of 15th Century style Islamic straight swords. The example has a beautiful, and very sharp, steel blade, forged from “Sham” wootz, with two central hollow ground fullers and an Islamic cartouche either side of the blade. The blade is secure in the hilt, which has traces of gold koftgari.

Source: Copyright 2014 © Akaal Arms

Today's item from the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group implant catalog:

SOMBERKNAVE

(TS//SI//REL) SOMBERKNAVE is Windows XP wireless software implant that provides covert internet connectivity for isolated targets.

(TS//SI//REL) SOMBEKNAVE is a software implant that surreptitiously routes TCP traffic from a designated process to a secondary network via an unused embedded 802.11 network device. If an Internet-connected wireless Access Point is present, SOMBERKNAVE can be used to allow OLYMPUS or VALIDATOR to "call home" via 802.11 from an air-gapped target computer. If the 802.11 interface is in use by the target, SOMBERKNAVE will not attempt to transmit.

(TS//SI//REL) Operationally, VALIDATOR initiates a call home. SOMBERKNAVE triggers from the named event and tries to associate with an access point. If connection is successful, data is sent over 802.11 to the ROC. VALIDATOR receives instructions, downloads OLYMPUS, then disassociates and gives up control of the 802.11 hardware. OLYMPUS will then be able to communicate with the ROC via SOMBERKNAVE, as long as there is an available access point.

Status: Available -- Fall 2008

Unit Cost: $50K

Page, with graphics, is here. General information about TAO and the catalog is here.

In the comments, feel free to discuss how the exploit works, how we might detect it, how it has probably been improved since the catalog entry in 2008, and so on.

EDITED TO ADD (2/6): It's implants like this that illustrate why I believe the world's major intelligence services have copies of the entire Snowden archive. While I don't believe they can decrypt Snowden's archive, they can certainly jump the air gaps that the reporters have set up.

Turms is an Italian company that many associate with Belfast. Why? Because the producer of shoe-related products has a policy of only selling to physical shops – not purely online stores. One of its stockists is The Bureau, a lovely shop in Northern Ireland, and because The Bureau also sells through its website, it is the top result for any search for ‘Turms’.

Turms is not Irish. It is a small family company in Montegranaro and it makes some original and beautiful shoe products. I met Samuele from Turms at Pitti this year, having admired the products previously, and it was then that he informed me of the company’s policy.

“We like to develop a strong relationship with a company – someone who understands our product and is as passionate about it as we are,” he said. While the phrasing may be familiar, the resulting policy is not.  

Among my favourite Turms products are the travel shoe trees – with brush and polish built in – and the penny loafer-inspired shoe kit. The latter is (to use a word that rarely appears on these pages) cute.

The ultimate, however, is the shoe rack built of individual glass-fronted wooden drawers (shown top). It is a modular system. Each box slots into its neighbour to produce a solid chest, so you can start with one, or two, and gradually build storage to fit your whole shoe collection.

As with all Turms products, they are beautifully made and therefore not cheap. The Bureau sells a set of 12 drawers for £2,416 (plus VAT). Even with my extensive powers of self-delusion and value-justification, I have never pushed the button. But I highly recommend them. 

Photography: Luke Carby

pyitp:

Hand drawn by David Lynch, this poster explains the workings and terminology of Transcendental Meditation and illuminates the unified field theory.

This is the one hotel room @Sochi2014 have given us so far. Shambles. #cnnsochi pic.twitter.com/RTjEkmyan3

— Harry Reekie (@HarryCNN) February 4, 2014

As journalists descend on Sochi for the most corrupt Olympics in history, they're discovering the region's Potemkin hospitality industry. The hotels that were meant to billet them while they reported on the games are half-built, unbuilt, falling to bits: but at least they've had their portraits of Vladimir Putin installed. Slave labor just isn't what it used to be.

Amid continued debate over whether or not Sochi is prepared to host the 2014 Olympics, which begins Thursday, reporters from around the world are starting to check into local hotels — to their apparent grief. Some journalists arriving in Sochi are describing appalling conditions in the housing there, where only six of nine media hotels are ready for guests. Hotels are still under construction. Water, if it’s running, isn’t drinkable. One German photographer told the AP over the weekend that his hotel still had stray dogs and construction workers wandering in and out of rooms.

Journalists at Sochi are live-tweeting their hilarious and gross hotel experiences [Caitlin Dewey/Washington Post]

(via Super Punch)

Last year, workers at Conservation Lower Zambezi discovered a 2-week-old hippo that had been abandoned by his mother. They flew him to Chipembele Wildlife Rescue where he was dubbed Douglas and is now being raised until he is able, ideally, to take care of himself in the wild with other hippos.

In the meantime, his constant companions at Chipembele are terriers Molly and Coco. Despite their increasing difference in size as Douglas grows to thousands of pounds, the three animals seem to best of friends…

(via The Daily Mail)

theartofanimation:

Ann Marcellino

The latest update to Evernote for Mac adds some new query syntax to make searching faster.

"Recipes with photos tagged vegetarian"

That's pretty nice. Natural language search is great when it works but you must know the rules. It looks like Evernote provides a lot of modifier syntax so it should be pretty flexible. For example, by exposing the source attribute you can create a query like Notes from email to only show results that were emailed into Evernote. Neat.

Created by Indianapolis-based professor and artist Anila Quayyum Agha, Intersections consists of a heavily patterned hollow 6.5′ wooden cube hung from the ceiling that casts shadows of said pattern within a 35′ by 32′ space thanks to a light bulb inside.

The Intersections project takes the seminal experience of exclusion as a woman from a space of community and creativity such as a Mosque and translates the complex expressions of both wonder and exclusion that have been my experience while growing up in Pakistan. The wooden frieze emulates a pattern from the Alhambra, which was poised at the intersection of history, culture and art and was a place where Islamic and Western discourses, met and co-existed in harmony and served as a testament to the symbiosis of difference.

images via Anila Quayyum Agha

via reddit, TwistedSifter

beatonna:

Sent along by a reader, this French Revolution Digital Archive by Stanford University Libraries is impressive and well organized.  We are so spoiled these days, I don’t even know what I would have done with myself if I had access to this kind of thing growing up.  Sure beats the stack of encyclopedias from 1993 in the school library.  

I asked 22 self-identifying creationists at the Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate to write a message/question/note to the other side. Here’s what they wrote.

Matt Stopera / BuzzFeed

Matt Stopera / BuzzFeed

Matt Stopera / BuzzFeed

Matt Stopera / BuzzFeed

View Entire List ›

California's SB 1172, which the 9th Circuit upheld in August, prohibits state-licensed psychiatrists, psychologists and counselors from using sexual-orientation change therapy on patients younger than 18. After the full court refused to hold an en banc rehearing of the case, the challengers requested a stay of the mandate so that they can petition the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari. The appellate panel in turn granted a 90-day stay late Monday. "In the event that the petition for writ of certiorari is timely filed, the stay shall continue until final disposition by the Supreme Court," according to the brief order. Counselors, psychiatrists and their patients filed two cases against Gov. Jerry Brown over the ban, which they challenge as a violation of their free speech rights.

KEVIN

BBC The Life of Birds

headlikeanorange:

Red-legged seriema (Wild Brazil - BBC)

sassybirds = headlikeanorange’s #1 fan

Paula Lyles is a conservative Christian wife and mother who loved her friends, her church and her family’s home in Ohio. But last fall, she packed up and moved to the Promised Land of Colorado Springs.

“God said, ‘It’s time for you to go, and I will be with you,’” says Lyles.

She didn’t come to the city nestled at the foot of Pikes Peak for the mountains and sunshine. She didn’t move across the country to work for Focus on the Family or any of the dozens of major ministries that have inspired some to dub the city “the Vatican of evangelicalism.”

She came for marijuana.

Paula and Jordan Lyles

Lyles crossed the country to gain legal access to a unique form of medical marijuana called Charlotte’s Web that has given new life to her 18-year-old daughter Jordan, who suffers from Dravet syndrome, a severe and sometimes fatal form of epilepsy.

She’s not alone. Lyle’s family is just one of more than 100 that have relocated to Colorado to treat their children with Charlotte’s Web. They include Muslims, Buddhists, and “nones” with no religious affiliation.

Most are Christian families, and dozens of these pot pilgrims have settled in the Springs, where they have formed a tight-knit community based around their shared suffering and hope. Some of the moms recently started a weekly Bible study.

“We are a strong group of Christians out here together,” says Lyles. “We are a family of faith, and it is beautiful!”

Marijuana moms

These parents didn’t head to Colorado to smoke pot themselves, and most oppose legalizing recreational marijuana. And few had given much thought to medical marijuana before hearing stories about Charlotte’s Web.

“[P]eople need to see that God made this plant, just like any other plant, to be used for His glory.”

They’ve changed their tune since seeing for themselves how marijuana dramatically relieved their children’s suffering after years of failed therapies, expensive pharmaceuticals with destructive side effects, and gruesome surgeries that carved up their children’s brains.

Colorado’s Christian marijuana moms are enthusiastic evangelists for the benefits of medical marijuana, which remains illegal in most states. And they are praying that fellow evangelicals join them in overturning outmoded Justice Department regulations that classify marijuana alongside heroin, LSD, ecstasy and other Schedule I drugs that have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

“I am one of the most straitlaced people you’ve ever met,” says Lyles. “I dislike the smell of marijuana smoke. But people need to see that God made this plant, just like any other plant, to be used for His glory. It is only humans that turn the good things God created into something bad.”

“Seizurepaloozas” and the new normal

Lyles was serving as the children’s nursery director at Bay Presbyterian Church, a 3,000-member evangelical congregation in Bay Village, Ohio, when her life was suddenly upended.

Jordan Lyles

Jordan was still napping in her crib upstairs. When Lyles heard Jordan cry out and then go silent, she went up to check, expecting to find a peaceful, sleeping baby. Instead, she saw Jordan writhing in the violent throes of her first grand mal seizure.

“Her face was turning blue. She was convulsing. She was foaming at the mouth and gasping for air. I grabbed her out of her crib, yelled to my husband to call 911, and ran to the curb in front of our house, where I held Jordan until the paramedics arrived.”

Seizures, 911 calls, and emergency room visits and hospitalizations became the “the new normal.” Expensive medicines did little to help but unleashed powerful side effects that slowed Jordan’s learning and made normal childhood activities impossible.

Lyles quit her job so she could be with Jordan every second of the day and night — eating, sleeping, bathing, and going to the bathroom with her.

Then there were the “seizurepalooza” episodes, like the night Jordan had more than 70 grand mal seizures in 12-hours.

One day when Jordan was two years old, she packed a few items in her small Pocahontas suitcase and walked toward the front door. When asked where she was going, Jordan said she was going to the driveway to wait for Jesus to come take her to her real home in heaven.

Just drugs, or something good that God has made?

In 2012, Lyles read a conversation thread on a website for Dravet families claiming that medical marijuana could help, but she immediately rejected the idea of giving her daughter the drug.

The medicine has totally changed Jordan’s life. She has 85% fewer seizures, has been gaining weight, talking more, and enjoying life more.

“My dad was a major general in the Army,” she said. “I grew up in a very conservative home. Drugs were bad. Smoking was bad. Drinking was bad. Marijuana was something potheads used.”

But Lyles sensed God moving her to reconsider. “He put it on my heart to look into this.” Friends offered to provide her with illicit marijuana, but Lyles was concerned about consequences.

“The only thing worse than seeing Jordan seize would be not being able to see her at all because I was in prison.”

Last fall, Lyles decided to “trust God” and “step out in faith,” leaving behind her husband of 28 years, her older daughter, her beloved home near Lake Erie, her extended family and friends, and her faithful church community to move to Colorado.

A church friend shared a verse from Matthew 18 that confirmed the decision: “If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off?”

Lyles felt she was “stepping off a cliff,” but soon after she arrived in Colorado Springs last October 3, she stepped into a close-knit community of fellow pilgrims gathered here for Charlotte’s Web.

Named after Charlotte Figi, the first epileptic child to experience its benefits, the medicine is a marijuana oil which contains little of the THC that gives recreational marijuana its “buzz” but is rich in Cannabidiol, a chemical compound that has shown promise in a variety of medical applications.

Inside the Stanleys’ cannabis greenhouse

The plants used to make the Charlotte’s Web oil were cultivated by Jesse Stanley, one of six Stanley siblings — all committed Christians — who own and operate businesses that breed, grow, process, and sell medical marijuana. (See OnFaith’s “Marijuana Ministry” companion story on the Stanley family.)

The oil, which looks like motor oil but smells like plants, is made available to patients through the Stanleys’ charitable organization, Realm of Caring, which operates under the same 501(c)3 non-profit designation that many Colorado Springs evangelical ministries use.

Twice a day, Lyles uses a small plastic syringe to squirt a few drops of the oil (less than one milliliter per dose) into Jordan’s mouth. The medicine has totally changed Jordan’s life. She has 85% fewer seizures, has been gaining weight, talking more, and enjoying life more.

For now, Lyles and Jordan consider Colorado her home. Meanwhile, Lyles writes to Ohio’s state representatives and supports the work of Ohio Right Group, which is seeking to place the Ohio Cannabis Rights Act on the 2014 ballot. The act would allow medical, therapeutic and industrial uses of marijuana.

“It is all about educating, talking to people, clearing up misconceptions and allowing people to be informed on what medical cannabis can do,” she says. “I was uninformed on the subject, but now I see the truth for myself. Medical cannabis is saving lives using something good that God made!” 

Finding a new home

Dara Lightle’s wild decade of “looking for love in all the wrong places” made her all too familiar with the perils of recreational drugging and drinking. That’s why she “scoffed” when people wanting to help her daughter Madeleine sent her videos about medical marijuana.

“I thought, So you want me to give my child pot? That’s really ridiculous!”

Lightle says she ran away from an abusive home at age 14. When she was 24, her boyfriend Aaron invited her to McLean Bible Church, an evangelical, multi-campus megachurch in Vienna, Virginia. Soon, she invited Jesus into her life and prayed to him to help her go 100% clean from drugs and alcohol.

A vial and syringe of Charlotte’s Web

Dara and Aaron got married. Life was good until her pregnancy got complicated. Madeleine experienced a stroke in utero and was born 11 weeks premature with cerebral palsy. The endless cycle of epileptic seizures and medical procedures came later.

“The focus of my whole life was keeping her well, and when that didn’t work, life was just sad.”

Then a close missionary friend posted a web link to Sanjay Gupta’s “Weed” program on CNN. The show touted the healing properties of Charlotte’s Web.

“I really trusted this woman’s spiritual walk,” says Lightle, “so when I saw she was recommending it, I thought, Wow, I should watch this!”

Last summer, Lightle was weighing her options. Giving Madeleine more pharmaceutical medications didn’t offer much hope. She didn’t want to subject her daughter to additional brain surgery. As for medical marijuana? That was out of the question.

“Because of my past drug use, and I saw things through that lens.”

She prayed an angry prayer to God: ”Fine. You are going to do what you want to do anyway, so what’s the use of me praying? I don’t have any say in this any longer.”

Struggling to discern what would be best for Madeleine, Lightle spiraled downward into a deep depression. She had herself committed to a hospital psychiatric ward so she wouldn’t fall back into drugs and alcohol. When the crisis calmed, she received the divine guidance she had been seeking.

“I was praying about what to do, and I knew God was saying, ‘Go.’ And when God says go, you obey. It was like a fire was lit underneath me. There was no turning back.”

Within three weeks, Lightle and Madeleine were in their new home in Colorado Springs. Lightle also brought along her mother, who volunteers at Focus on the Family.

Lightle believes Colorado Springs is where God wants her, and Aaron is on his way as soon as he sells the family’s home and wraps up affairs.

But finding a church in this city of churches and other ministries was difficult. After Lightle introduced herself and Madeleine to the pastor at one church (a church she prefers not to name), the pastor told “mean stories” about medical marijuana and “stoners” during his next two weekly sermons, eliciting laughter from the congregation.

Pots holding the strain of cannabis used to make Charlotte’s Web

Thankfully, Lightle found a warmer welcome at Woodmen Valley Chapel, a dual-campus evangelical congregation with weekly attendance of 5,700. A spokesman succinctly summarized the megachurch’s position.

“Woodmen Valley Chapel welcomes all people with disabilities, and Woodmen Valley Chapel does not endorse any type of medical treatment,” said Paul Rude, pastor of the church’s Impact Ministries, which includes ministries for special needs families and community outreach.

Lightle stands 100% behind Charlotte’s Web, which has dramatically improved Madeleine’s quality of life.

“She had so many bad days she wouldn’t even remember having good days. Now her short-term memory is improving and she is reading for the first time and enjoying reading. This is huge.”

But Lightle is understandably worried about recreational marijuana laws like the ones passed by voters in Colorado and Washington state.

“I do not believe marijuana should be legal recreationally. And part of me does not even understand why alcohol and cigarettes are legally available. But if I have to sit there and compare which of the three should be legal, I would pick marijuana.”

“God’s calling…us to speak boldly about medical marijuana”

“Why?” is the question Job repeatedly asked in the Old Testament book about human suffering that bears his name. It’s a question former missionaries Francis and Cristi Bundukamara have been asking for years.

Francis, Reggie, Miah, and Cristi Bundukamara

The couple served with Mission to the World, an outreach of the Presbyterian Church on America, ministering to street children in Mexico and serving as medical missionaries in Peru. But their good works didn’t save them from tragedy. As they’ve seen time and time again, bad things happen to devout people.

The couple adopted five children, but one died and another was imprisoned. Their two birth children, Reggie and Miah, are afflicted with dentatorubral-pallidoluysian atrophy, or DRPLA, a progressive brain disorder that causes seizures, involuntary spasms and jerks, falling episodes, and a variety of emotional and mental problems.

Francis passed DRPLA on to his children before he knew he had the disease himself. “I gave that to them,” says Francis. “Why?”

“When I prayed to God, I asked him about this. I said: We were missionaries. We served you. With fed the poor and hungry and gave to those in need. I did anything you asked of me. Now this. Why me, Lord? Why me?”

Last fall, after they heard about Realm of Caring and Charlotte’s Web on CNN, it seemed God might be answering the couple’s prayers.

“Our faith had been shaken so much that we were scared to be hopeful,” said Cristi. But Francis had hope. He quit praying, “Why me?” and started praying a new prayer: “Lord, if we are to go to Colorado, open the door for us to go.”

Doors opened. They received financial gifts from their friends at Pinelands Presbyterian Church, from staff and students at Redland Christian Academy, the Christian school their children attended, and from complete strangers who had heard about their plight. And nearly two-dozen volunteers helped them pack, paint and prepare their Miami house for rental.

Francis didn’t want to send Cristi and the kids to Colorado alone, so he quit his job teaching special education and coaching football at South Dade Senior High School in Miami, Florida. “There were no ifs, ands or buts,” he says. “I’m the head of the family, and I don’t want to see this family split,” he says.

Cristi, a lieutenant in the Naval Reserves, quit her job as a nursing professor at Miami Dade College.

As the family started their driving west, they felt like the Job years were over. Now they felt more like Noah.

“God didn’t just tell Noah to go onto the ark,” says Francis. “He went with him. And we believe God went with us when we got in our car and left behind everything we knew.”

The family arrived in Colorado Springs November 3. Charlotte’s Web has helped Miah decrease her seizure medication, which corrected her hypothyroidism, allowing her to gain weight. Reggie’s seizures have been dramatically reduced.

But that doesn’t mean everything’s perfect. It has been hard to find a church, and Francis says people at one church they were attending kicked them out after Reggie became overly excited during the worship period.

“Reggie loves praise music, and he was worshipping in his own way,” says Francis. “I guess they thought that was a disruption!”

The family misses their friends, their home, their children and their granddaughters, but they can’t go back to Florida as long as they treat their kids with medical marijuana. They hope Floridians will vote this November to allow medical marijuana in the state.

“We are passionate about God’s calling to us to speak boldly about medical marijuana,” says Cristi. “But for now, every day is a step of faith.”

Photos by  Lisa Anderson. 

The post Pot pilgrims appeared first on OnFaith.

London Lounge member Mihn recently posted some remarkable scans of old issues of Esquire and Apparel Arts, all originally published around the 1930s or so. Apparel Arts was a quarterly large-format publication, started by Arnold Gingrich, who was also the founder of Esquire. Where Esquire was aimed at the consumer, Apparel Arts was for the trade. You see, buyers who work for clothing stores today typically rely on lookbooks, tradeshows, and fashion magazines to decide what they should stock each season. This wasn’t so in the 1930s. Back then, small independent shops relied on Apparel Arts to figure out what the best dressed men wore, and consequently what they should offer to their customers.

For a number of reasons, the usefulness of Apparel Arts declined after the end of the Second World War, so it was transformed into GQ in 1957. One of the conspicuous things you’ll notice is that – along with scantily clad women – GQ today has small caption boxes listing the brands of the clothes they’re promoting. Fashion spreads will say things such as “Suit by Ralph Lauren $2,875; Shirt by Brioni $475; Tie by Zegna $185.” In Apparel Arts, there were no such captions. It was a publication simply about how to dress well given different settings.

It’s for this and many other reasons why men who enjoy classic men’s clothing often look back to Apparel Arts with fondness. These illustrations are also some of the few examples we have left for what we mean when we say “classic men’s dress.” This is the coat-and-tie look worn without the twee-ness of the modern GQ, the frumpiness of Men’s Wearhouse, or the peacocking of Pitti attendees. Though, it’s perhaps good to mention that the styles shown here were also the peacocking of their day. A friend of mine once emailed me a funny cartoon from a 1935 issue of The New Yorker, where a man is shown at a swanky social gathering while dressed in a peak lapel, windowpane jacket; polka dot ascot; and patterned trousers. A pocket square is spilling out of his breast pocket, and people around him are seen whispering, “They say he reads ‘Esquire.’” A modern version of this cartoon might show people saying, ”They say he’s a blogger.” 

In any case, enjoy these illustrations. Minh shared hundreds of them, but for the sake of brevity, I’ve only posted about fifty here. Colin McDowell penned a nice piece today at The Business of Fashion, where he talks about how fashion reporting has suffered greatly from the decline of fashion illustration. One needs to only do a search on Google Images for old Vogue covers to see what he means. These, in some ways, are the menswear equivalents.