Mark Hatch, for one, shows no concern that proximity to power might compromise his movement’s revolutionary potential. “Now, with the tools available at a makerspace, anyone can change the world,” he writes in “The Maker Movement Manifesto.” “Every revolution needs an army. . . . My objective with this book is to radicalize you and get you to become a soldier in this army.” How radical is Hatch’s project? At the start of the acknowledgments that open the book, he thanks Autodesk, Ford, darpa, the V.A., Lowe’s, and G.E. His talk of becoming an army soldier may not be a metaphor.
Cabinet Magazine profiles the a polish immigrant who revolutionized Hollywood makeup in the 1920s. Pictured above is the "Beauty calibrator", a nightmarish machine he invented to measure your face and determine what sort of makeup you needed. [Cabinet Magazine via Metafilter]
But even with the most expert application, greasepaint was a crude medium. It was stiff and dense, and tended to aggravate skin conditions that then required more greasepaint. There was no solution for the seams that were visible along the hairline and collar, and, as the name suggests, the substance was nearly impossible to wash off. Most vexing of all, greasepaint remained perfectly intact only when the face was slack. A lifted eyebrow or a smile caused the makeup to craze with hairline cracks. Though imperceptible to a distant theater audience, the defect was catastrophic on film. Silent-film comedians were the first fans of a new “flexible” greasepaint introduced in 1914 by a small wig and cosmetic shop in Los Angeles.
Chinese and Russian ships immobilized near Antarctica broke free Tuesday, news agencies reported, while a United States Coast Guard icebreaker called in to help rescue them was days away.
One die-hard Cal Bears fan was so impressed with UCLA's approach that she nearly encouraged her son to become a Bruin or, worse in her mind, a Stanford Cardinal.
Those schools "have personal tutors, good counselors, mandatory study hours that have to be kept, and they monitor the student athlete's progress on a weekly basis. It's really great," said the mother.
Doesn't Cal do the same?
Walsh named Joyce Linehan, perhaps his closest political adviser, to be chief of policy, and named Joe Rull, another close adviser, to be director of operations.
Linehan, who has been seen as one of the architects of Walsh’s election platform and campaign and has also worked on the campaigns of Governor Deval Patrick and US Senator Elizabeth Warren, had previously insisted that she would not join the administration.
my favorite pr person ever has finally given in to her political destiny
It would seem that I am the only one who is truly surprised by this. As I have notified family, friends and clients, it has become apparent that this is not unexpected by anyone but me. I will be winding down with my existing clients, who have been great to me – ArtsEmerson, the ICA and the Boston Book Festival. I can’t shake Pernice though, and will continue to co-run the best little indie record label in Dorchester.
“WE ARE a city upon a hill,” said Marty Walsh, Boston’s new mayor, during his inaugural address this morning, referencing a famous speech by John Winthrop, a founding father of the Massachusetts colony. Mr Walsh went on to say that the city is not just the shining light of Beacon Hill. “It’s Savin Hill, where I live. It’s Bunker Hill, Bellevue Hill and Fort Hill. It’s Pope’s Hill, Jones Hill and Telegraph Hill. it’s Copp’s Hill, Mission Hill and Eagle Hill.”
With each hill, the listening crowd cheered. The litany of neighbourhoods recalled the local pride of Tom Menino, Boston’s longest-serving mayor and Mr Walsh’s predecessor. For two decades Mr Menino tirelessly worked the city’s streets, pressing flesh at school plays and ribbon cuttings alike. Mr Menino once bragged to your correspondent that he had met half the city’s population in person, a claim polls appear to back up. Still popular, he decided not to seek a sixth term. Now 71, he said his poor health meant he no longer able to be in “in the neighbourhoods all the time” as was his way.
It is not yet clear what Mr Walsh’s way will be....Continue reading
'As I’ve said in previous blog posts, I’m not immune to hate mail—and some messages are racist in nature and some aren’t. It comes with the territory of doing what I do and I completely understand that. However, do you know what’s funny? Oftentimes when a dude posts a public hateful comment on my FB page or Twitter feed, it’s followed up by his wife or girlfriend emailing me privately to apologize for his behavior. These women will tell me that their men are angry that I’m making them “look bad” because they aren’t holding up their end of the bargain when it comes to parenting. Here’s the thing: I don’t make anyone look bad. These guys are doing a fine job on their own according to the women in their lives.'
The only thing Doyin Richards wanted to do was get his daughter ready for school. He had no idea the viral outrage that would cause.
The death of 107-year-old Hong Kong entertainment mogul Run Run Shaw, often credited as the creator of the modern kung fu film genre, is the latest sign of the decline of the city-state’s once vibrant film industry.
Shaw, who died in his home on Jan. 7, was best known for his Shaw Brothers film studio—home to kung fu classics like “Five Fingers of Death,” “The One-Armed Swordsman” and nearly 1,000 others.Shaw’s gritty, low-budget martial arts dramas explored themes of loyalty and sacrifice, inspiring the work of director Quentin Tarantino as well as hip hop group the Wu-Tang Clan.
The kung-fu dramas represented the heyday not just of Shaw’s studio but the entire Hong Kong film industry. A former employee of Shaw Brothers founded Golden Harvest Films and signed Bruce Lee, whose rise to fame further put Hong Kong cinema on the map in the 1970s and 1980s.
By the late 1990s, Hong Kong’s film industry had slowed dramatically and has largely failed to recover. Local film production has fallen from around 200 movies a year in the mid-1990s to 55 in 2005. To survive, most Hong Kong studios collaborate with mainland counterparts and target mainland audiences, who make up the world’s second largest movie market by box office sales. Hong Kong-made movies—once characterized for their populist bent, graphic imagery, and use of Cantonese instead of Mandarin—are now increasingly subject to Chinese censorship.
Thus, while Kung fu films are seeing something of a resurgence, it’s often through kitschy, over-the-top films like “Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons,” China’s top grossing film in 2013. The film by Hong Kong directors Stephen Chow and Derek Kwok, is a reinterpretation of a Chinese literary classic that combines martial arts, comedy, and period drama fantasy. That’s a far cry from Shaw’s gritty halcyon days.
“You mean the generation that paid three times as much for college to enter a job market with triple the unemployment isn’t interested in purchasing the assets of the generation who just blew an enormous housing bubble and kept it from popping through quantitative easing and out-and-out federal support? Curious.”
FALLEN
Lorelei Subscription Series
Friday, May 23, 8pm - Memorial Church, Harvard University
Saturday, May 24, 8pm - Marsh Chapel, Boston University
Travis Alford: World Premiere, on texts from Hildegard von Bingen's Scivias
Sungji Hong: Ficus enim non florebit (2013, World Premiere)
Yuri Yukechev: Gotóvo sértse moyó (My Heart is Ready)
Sofia Gubaidulina: Aus den Visionen der Hildegard von Bingen
Selections of Znamenny Chant
A facade of translucent plastic pillows can be pumped up to alter lighting and temperature inside this domed tropical greenhouse in Aarhus by Danish firm C. F. Møller (+ slideshow).
C. F. Møller worked with membrane facade specialist formTL to create the ETFE plastic facade of the new Tropical House, located at the Aarhus botanical gardens. This provides an energy-efficient envelope with a quilted texture around the 18-metre-high structure.
The light and heat conditions within the building can be adapted by increasing or decreasing the air pressure inside the pillows, which then changes the translucence of the facade.
A grid of ten steel arches gives the greenhouse its curved shape, designed to create a large interior space using the lowest possible surface area.
"The domed shape and the building's orientation in relation to the points of the compass have been chosen because this precise format gives the smallest surface area coupled with the largest volume, as well as the best possible sunlight incidence in winter, and the least possible in summer," said the architects.
An assortment of tropical plants, trees and flowers fills the interior of the greenhouse. A pond is located at the centre of the space, while an elevated platform allows visitors to climb up above the treetops.
The building was constructed to replace an existing hothouse built by the same architects in 1969. This structure was renovated as part of the project and will now be used to house a botanical knowledge centre.
Heated conservatory at the Botanical Gardens, Aarhus
Transparent roofing made of ETFE foil cushions with an interior pneumatic shading system planned by formTL and C. F. Møller Architekten.
The new tropical conservatory at the Botanical Gardens in Aarhus is like a drop of dew in its green surroundings. Its transparent dome set on an oval base extends the existing greenhouse built in 1969. A special feature of this structure is that is allows for the greatest interior volume with the lowest possible surface area, leading to high energy efficiency.
The support structure consists of 10 steel arches, which fan out around a longitudinal and a transverse axis, creating a net of rectangles of varying sizes. formTL planned and designed a cover for these arches made mainly of double-layered ETFE cushions, which are affixed with biaxially bent profiles due to their complex structure.
On the south-facing side, the cushions used were made with three layers, two of which were printed. Through changes in pressure, the relative positions of these printed foils can be adjusted. This can reduce or increase, as desired, the translucence of the cushions, changing the light and heat input of the building.
Structural diagram - roof plan
Dimensions
Cushion surface area: 1,800 m²
Base area: 1,145 m2
• Rise of arches up to 17.5 m
• Span of arches up to 41 m
Structural diagram - elevation one
Materials
• Nowofol ETFE foil, strengths of 150 µm and 250 µm
• Biaxially bent cushion edge profiles made of aluminium
The Library of Congress's website hosts a high-resolution scan of a rare edition of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" illustrated by Gustave Doré. The title-page is at page 11, the list of illustrations is on page 14.
The illustrations are amazing, like no other illustrated Poe I've seen. I've collected my favorites below, and there are a lot of them -- honestly, it was impossible to choose.
