Russian Sledges

mirousworlds:

renaissancedweeb:

…..I might have to get a Twitter account now.

Be sure to read the blog, too. :)

brickfrog:

my fav ontd headline in a long time

An aeroplane approaches landing as starlings gather at Fiumicino international airport in Rome.

A tumblr for you to follow, Medieval People of Color.  It updates quite often, and will take you to good places.  

Original Source

Proposed new German words for the human condition

Although Ötzi the Iceman has been dead for 5,300 years, his legacy is still kickin' in newly-found living relatives. Researchers discovered the family members by performing DNA tests on blood donated by 3,700 people in western Austria, not far from the Alps where Ötzi was found melting out of a glacier in 1991. The results showed 19 of those donors shared a unique genetic mutation with the mummified ice man. “These men and the Iceman had the same ancestors,” said forensic scientist Wal

kaanbaykoca:

Black Cordovan Boots by MEERMIN

Former South Carolina GOP Executive Director, Todd Kincannon has publicly declared that some Americans should be interned in “camps.” Kincannon went on to refer to a trans person as a “goddamn he-she” and stated that trans people were “disgusting mentally ill weirdos.”

While certainly worded with cruel intent, how does Kincannon’s message of exclusion differ in substance from the stated position of the South Carolina GOP? The South Carolina Republican party is very clear about their views of LGBT people and their stated aims and goals with regard to LGBT people:

We oppose efforts to redefine the marriage unit to accommodate proponents of homosexual “marriages” and oppose any legislation that legally recognizes same-sex marriage, civil unions, or allows such couples to adopt children or provide foster care. Morally and pragmatically, the Party considers homosexuality a lifestyle detrimental to the health and well-being of individuals and therefore opposes its promotion as simply “an alternate lifestyle.” We applaud the state for prohibiting same sex marriage and adoptions, and consider such as detrimental to the peace and tranquility or our state.

We affirm the wonderful differences with which each gender is created and oppose efforts to blur or disregard the uniqueness of male and female genders. Furthermore, we affirm that one’s gender is fixed at birth and that no citizen should be entitled to special treatment or accorded any special benefits not accorded to others of the same birth gender regardless of how they have altered their anatomy or appearance. We oppose federal, state, county, or municipal laws, regulations or ordinances that require a person to be granted special rights or protections based on his or her “perceived” gender identity.

 - South Carolina Republican Platform, pp 13 – 14

While the South Carolina GOP (SCGOP) won’t go as far as interning specific classes of American citizens, it clearly favors a society in which some classes of law-abiding American citizens are favored over others. It’s clear that SCGOP believes that only select groups of American citizens should have access to 14th amendment constitutional rights. In this way Kincannon and SCGOP are in agreement: full constitutional rights are the domain of cisgender heterosexual Americans only; LGBT Americans are immoral and unpragmatic in their aspirations for equality as American citizens.

HT to Papierhache!

Original Source

Something has gone terribly wrong in this most progressive of American cities.

Under a deal announced Thursday, a proposed ferry service linking Portland with Nova Scotia is expected to begin nightly trips out of Maine on May 1 of next year. The agreement between the Canadian province and a team led by Eliot-based ferry operator Quest Navigation calls for Nova Scotia to invest $21 million over seven years in the company’s service to the region, and requires the ferry to comply with a daily May 1-Oct. 31 schedule. For Portland travelers, that agreed-upon itinerary will feature regular 8 p.m. departures from Maine’s largest city and arrivals in the port town of Yarmouth, N.S., the following mornings at 7 a.m. Return trips will leave Yarmouth at 9 a.m. and reach Portland at 5 p.m.

I started making my own Kombucha (fermented tea), and now have new Scoby's available (the main ingredient necessary to make your own Kombucha). Haven't been able to find anyone who wants to take any off my hands... My Scobys are grown in bottled wat [...]

Dustin Pedroia only listens to West Coast hip hop. If you're playing NWA or Ice Cube, you're doing good.

The American Psycho musical is now a perfect meld of cult fandom. It was announced today that Matt Smith—best known for playing the Eleventh Doctor on the long-running British series Doctor Who—will star in the show with music from Duncan Sheik, who composed the score for Spring Awakening, the musical that garnered a fervent fan base of angsty teens in 2006. This show is becoming a veritable melting pot of nerd. 

The musical is based on Bret Easton Ellis' 1991 novel about banker/murderer Patrick Bateman living in 1980s "greed is good" era New York. While not an obvious choice for a musical adaptation, Sheik knows how to handle material that seemingly doesn't lend itself to the format. His Spring Awakening was based on a nineteenth century German play by Franz Wedekind, and yet ended up being a popular Tony-winner that had a fervent following amongst theater kids. (This writer? Guilty.) 

Sheik played a song from American Psycho during a concert last month in New York. The New York Times's Stephen Holden described the song, "This is Not an Exit," as "a grim, metaphysical reflection on the annihilation of self, voiced by the novel’s murderous protagonist, Patrick Bateman. The character claims not to exist, so consumed is he is by the trappings of what the song calls 'late capitalism.'" Playing Bateman, famously inhabited by Christian Bale in the 2000 film, will definitely mark a turn for Smith, whose Doctor was known for his childlike trappings. Still, Smith has likely learned from his time as the Doctor how to take an iconic character and make it his own. 

The BBC reported that the show, which will run at London's Almeida Theatre, was sold out nearly instantaneously after it was announced Smith had been cast. The frenzy resembles the run for tickets to see the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant, play Hamlet in 2008. Luckily there will likely be more chances to see this show. Plays often transfer from the Almeida Theatre to the West End, and we can only imagine that after Sheik's success with Spring Awakening a move to Broadway is in the show's future. 

The BBC have released six new promotional images from The Day Of The Doctor, the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special. The 75 minute episode which will be simulcast worldwide by TV broadcasters on Saturday 23rd November stars Matt Smith, David Tennant, Jenna Coleman, Billie Piper and John Hurt

View more images here:










View the BBC Day Of The Doctor photo gallery here

Find out more about The Day Of The Doctor on our website

If "addictive" is one of the most irritating food adjectives, at least it's accurate for restaurants in Southern China: Chinese FDA inspectors reported that in 2012, nearly 10 percent of hotpot soup bases in one province contained traces of poppy seed powder, ostensibly added to the food to make it addictive and "ensure diners would come back for more." Said one spice store owner who carried the seeds: "Most of the restaurants add 'the shells' otherwise the customers won't come back." [Epoch Daily] [Photo: Flickr]

Groundskeepers have given up on their efforts to catch the canid.

animalnewyork.com


@amarkdman

CitiBanksy and Bansky of America

An exclusive Esquire-NBC News survey shows us that everything we are told about politics in America today—that there is no middle ground between left and right, blue and red, us and them—is wrong. The data, compiled by the Benenson Strategy Group (pollster for Obama for America '08 and '12) and Neil Newhouse of Public Opinion Strategies (lead pollster for Romney for President), show us there is a large group of American voters—even a majority—who make up a New American Center that is passionate, persuadable, and very real. They are merely waiting for Washington to find them.

With pricing starting at $6.99 per linear foot and over 30 standard styles, we provide you with shelf-ready books that will display attractively and offer your clients great value. We love working with Interior Designers to get the project just right. We can quote unit pricing should your specifications require. We will gladly stage your order on shelves and send images for your approval. Choose from any styles below or for personal service at no extra charge contact Designer Services.

October 31st will live in infamy as the night we threw a Labyrinth Halloween party and everyone did the entire Magic Dance sequence in sync out of nowhere due to some mysterious David Bowie curse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViftZTfRSt8 Featuring Labyrinth-inspired cocktails and a costume contest with prizes for the best Jareth the Goblin King (Bowie) and Sarah (Jennifer Connelly). Now, you have thirteen hours in which to solve the labyrinth, before your baby brother becomes one of us... forever.

An "Academy School" (like US charter schools) in south London has banned "slang" from its student body, under the mistaken apprehension that English has a language academy that determines what is and is not correct speech. The argument is that privileged British people look down on people who talk "poor" -- using words like "woz" and "ain't" -- and that the inability to code-switch into rich-person's English makes it harder to get a job. There is some validity to this (that is, rich people are indeed bigoted against poor people), but my experience in my own neighbourhood is that people are perfectly capable of code-switching to formal registers if they want to.

In the meantime, the school is throttling the expressive potential of their kids' English (as a writer, it's totally obvious to me that "I wasn't doing nuffink" has a totally different flavour from "I did nothing" or "It wasn't me").

Academy Schools have a lot of freedom to diverge from the curriculum, to hire unusual instructors, and to try variations on school meals and other conventions. In theory, this makes room for schools that are freer and more student-oriented. In practice, many of them are run by Young Earth Creationists who teach that the universe is 5,000 years old; or sell sugary drinks and candy bars as a source of profit for the school's investors; or do sweetheart deals with preferred suppliers for mandatory, overpriced school uniforms that include some form of kickback for the school; or hire totally unqualified ideologues to teach the kids.

Academies are "selective schools," meaning that they can suck all the high-scoring kids out of the local state schools, which brings down the average performance of the state schools, costing them budget and ensuring that parents will try to keep their kids out of them. And Academies are only accountable to the national government, instead of the local council, so if your local Academy is screwed up, your only real remedy is to ask your MP to raise a question about it in Parliament.

It's great if your neighbourhood Academy is a progressive hotbed of exciting educational ideas that uses community-based experts in its instruction and grows a garden to supplement the school dinners. But if it's a rent-seeking hotbed of loony Creationism and dumb ideas about policing language, it's still likely to be the only game in town for your kids, after the state school has been drained of any kid with the chance to go somewhere else, and then punished for failing.

In a statement, the school said: "In addition to giving students the teaching they need to thrive academically, we want them to develop the soft skills they will need to compete for jobs and university places.

"This particular initiative is just one of the many ways in which we are building the vocabulary of our students and giving them the skills they need to express themselves confidently and appropriately for a variety of audiences."

Terry Victor, editor of the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English said: "It's wrong.

"You cannot censor a young person's language, they're not talking about words that are offensive, they're talking about some of the words that politicians use.

"[The word] 'ain't' was around in the 19th Century, people like Dickens used it... and how many politicians have you heard say "basically" to begin a sentence?

"Yes, it's irritating but it's part of deliberate language."

Slang banned from Croydon school to improve student speech

How is “schoolgirl” a possible Halloween costume for a school-aged girl? We are now at a point in our society where a child can dress up as the pornification of a child getting an education. (The fact that a child getting an education is a topic in porn is a problem to begin with, but I have neither the space nor the time to address that can of worms here.)

The Enemy of the World: Trailer - Doctor Who - BBC

A Norfolk man who made more than £35,000 by selling fake autographs of celebrities including Doctor Who stars has been jailed.

Andrew Sullivan, of Heath Road, Lyng, exploited fans by selling pictures on eBay that he claimed had been signed by TV and film celebrities, including cast members of Doctor Who such as David Tennant, Billie Piper and Karen Gillan. He would supply a fake certificate of authenticity with each purchase.

The 51-year-old admitted forging 3,500 autographs between 2009 and 2011. He also pleaded guilty to selling pictures of stars without their permission. Sullivan was exposed after a tip-off to Norfolk County Council's Trading Standards team. Investigators found a container of ripped-up and discarded signed photographs, which were later pieced together to reveal what looked to be mistakes. His office computer was found to be storing many copyrighted images.

The investigation was supported by BBC Worldwide, which holds copyright on the images used. They gave evidence that the images used were owned by the BBC and they had not given permission to reproduce or generate an income from them.

Sullivan was sentenced to 21 months in prison.

In better times, vessels over five tons were supposed to have a valid “certificate of documentation,” the maritime version of a car’s registration papers. But with the government shutdown, the Coast Guard has stopped renewing them. So on Tuesday, the Coast Guard announced that commercial vessels on voyages between United States ports could operate with an expired certificate, as long as other requirements were met. But at foreign ports, where the Coast Guard does not have jurisdiction, vessels with expired certificates “may be subject to denial of entry or detention,” the Coast Guard warned. Registrations for recreational vessels are not affected; those are funded by fees.