Russian Sledges

Diver tells of bodies packed into wreck of vessel that caught fire and capsized within sight of Italian island last week

Divers searching for victims of last week's migrant boat disaster off the Italian island of Lampedusa entered the hold of the sunken vessel for the first time on Monday to find dozens of corpses packed in so tightly they were still on their feet.

A team of about 50 divers from Italy's military and emergency services took turns to pull 17 bodies from inside and around the wreck of the boat, which caught fire on Thursday and sank within sight of Lampedusa.

The discoveries on Monday took the number of bodies recovered to 211. With 155 survivors plucked from the water on Thursday that left more than 100 of the roughly 500 passengers, mostly Eritreans, still unaccounted for, many crammed into the hold of the boat which lies on its side at a depth of 47 metres.

"The divers are using their hands to pull out the bodies," said Massimiliano Pugliese, the head of a team of divers sent by Italy's fire service.

One diver, Salvo Vagliasindi, told the Italian news agency Adnkronos: "The image I cannot shake from my mind is of those bodies packed into the wreck, almost all with staring eyes and their arms raised, as if they were calling for help."

Another diver, Antonio D'Amico, started to cry as he described pulling a child free from the boat on Sunday. "He was turned away from me. I delicately pulled him free from the hull and his face hit mine," he told La Repubblica. "It could have been my son."

D'Amico said the operation was being rushed to stop the current dragging the bodies out to sea. "That mustn't happen," he said. "They have already suffered enough."

Luca Cari, a fire service spokesman, said some of the divers were veterans of the search for bodies around the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship in Tuscany. "I have seen everything, but the fact the migrants in the hold had absolutely no chance to escape is what makes this so shocking," he said.

Captain Giampaolo Trucco, a spokesman for divers from the Italian navy, said: "Going inside the boat is the toughest job, psychologically, since visibility is low and the numbers of bodies is extremely high."

The Vatican's daily newspaper reported that each diver descending to the ship was carrying a rosary blessed by Pope Francis. Father Konrad Krajewski, a representative of Francis, travelled to the site of the sinking on a coastguard dinghy on Monday.

Bodies recovered are being loaded into refrigerated fish trucks. Documents found on them and around the wreck are being used for identification. Survivors now sleeping outdoors in Lampedusa's migrant holding centre are assisting with the task, as are relatives who have travelled from Germany and Sweden.

The boat, which had sailed from Misrata in Libya, was overloaded because the sailing season was coming to an end. The pending onset of bad weather prompted another 350 migrants, most from Egypt and Syria, to risk the sailing at the weekend. They were picked up safely by merchant vessels off the coast of Sicily.

Visiting Lampedusa on Sunday, Cecile Kyenge, Italy's first black minister, took issue with the Italian law that makes clandestine immigration a crime. "We must reflect on the absurdity that the survivors of a shipwreck are put under criminal investigation," she said.

Last year, URL shortening service bitly and Forbes made a map that showed popular news sources by state. However, the map was based on a static month of data, so what it showed then doesn't necessarily apply to now. Bitly took it a step further this year and shows media consumption in real-time.

They also categorized media sources into newspapers, tv and radio, magazines, and online only for a more detailed view. And to top it off, you can click on states to see a list of top sources, and you can see links driving traffic to the listed sites.

One key thing to keep in mind as you read the maps: They show disproportionality rather than raw counts. So when you see that Texas is a TMZ fiend, that doesn't mean they click more on the celebrity news site more than on Huffington Post. Rather, it means the relative volume of TMZ-clicking from Texas versus other states is higher versus the relative volume of Huffington Post-clicking.

Original Source

sarahj-art:

Okay, I admit to laughing while making this one.

“These pediatricians clearly shut down when I bring up vaccination ideas,” said Popp, who goes to a pediatric practice in Northampton. “When you leave now, you get a little form that tells you everything that’s been done, and down at the bottom is this coyly worded, ‘Has a history of undervaccinations.’ And although it’s certainly phrased very objectively, it feels judgmental.”

"So of course first they think I'm just lying. But they are fast learners. ... They are all very smart, intelligent people. It's only because their job limits them to a very limited position. ... One day they came back in to interrogate me some more and they were very happy, as if they had made a great breakthrough in the case: 'OK, we found out! You're part of Dada.' I said, 'Ahh, yes, you're a little closer.'" Salon 09/28/13

Have you ever interviewed a professional athlete? That’s what I am,” says Eleanor Friedberger on a recent Monday morning. She fires off a deep, lo-fi laugh that sounds like shots from a BB gun. As the rest of the neighborhood is shuffling to the subway to get to work, the former Fiery Furnaces front woman is crouched on a baseline of the McCarren Park tennis courts, on the edge of Greenpoint, not far from her apartment.

Friedberger, 37, has squeezed in a quick rally with her new tennis partner, Andre Razo, a creative director at Spike TV, before flying off to Barcelona later this afternoon to play a few shows on the Iberian Peninsula. (She’ll be back for a sold-out CMJ show at Bowery Ballroom on October 18.)

Her brown hair is pulled into a ponytail, and her makeup-free face is fringed by dark-brown bangs. (“I don’t think bangs are a trend. It’s a way of life for me.”) Her tennis uniform looks almost serious: little white Fila shorts, with pockets that fit two tennis balls each, and bright-white sneakers paired with a loose baby-pink T-shirt that reads SUN IS FUN. “Every once in a while, I get tempted to buy fancy tennis gear, but fortunately I stop myself,” she says.

For more than a decade, Friedberger was one half of the art-rock duo the Fiery Furnaces, putting out nine albums with her brother, Matthew, including one they recorded with their grandmother Olga. “It didn’t feel weird at the time,” she says. “But putting it in perspective, sharing a hotel room with my older brother for however many years—it’s just odd.” The band operated in the space just above critical success and just below a commercial payday. Which is to say, she flies to Europe regularly but still feels like Brooklyn is too expensive.

In 2011, the band took a break, and Friedberger put out her first solo LP, Last Summer, which, with airy piano and rich bass, delves into her pre-rock-star days working as a temp in New York. Her second album, this year’s Personal Record, feels like another statement of autonomy from the family business, with simpler arrangements, bouncier pop melodies, and lyrics co-written with novelist Wesley Stace, better known as the musician John Wesley Harding. On the album cover, she’s reaching through a swim stroke in an indigo pool. It’s both sexy and physically tough, as is her display this morning.

“My backhand has gotten better,” she says, as she thwacks the ball across the net.

“Everything just comes back,” says Razo, who, for his part, is wearing shiny geometric Ray-Bans and socks with a marijuana-leaf pattern. “But we’re both weird at the net. When she comes close, she gets a little spazzy.”

Watching her slide across the court, it’s clear why her former boyfriend, Franz ­Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, reportedly wrote her into the band’s track “Eleanor Put Your Boots On.” “You look so elegant,” he sings, “when you run.”

Friedberger extends her racket to a ball, firing it inches above the net with a smidgen of topspin. “When my parents split up, my dad wouldn’t know what else to do with us, so we’d play tennis for hours,” she says, working up a light sheen of sweat. Later, in high school, she played softball, basketball, and soccer. “I just think it’s a different type of performance. I never did any kind of theatrical performing until I was in my twenties. But as a catcher, I had to get out in front of home plate and shout out the plays, and it gave me a sense of power.”

Off court, she’s been popping up regularly on comedy lineups, including tour dates with the Portlandia band and a quirky McSweeney’s radio play. She’s friends with comedians Eugene Mirman and Bobby ­Tisdale, who often ask her to join their acts. “I like going on after two dudes telling weird jokes,” she says. “I don’t know how I fit in exactly, but I like the contrast.”

A month ago, she performed with Patti Smith—to whom she’s often compared, both physically and musically—in artist Doug Aitken’s “Station to Station” project, traveling from Minneapolis to Santa Fe by rail, playing stops along the way. On the plane back from that tour, she met a fortysomething Indian man who gave her a blanket from Taos, told her about a Sufi-temple chanting ceremony led by a seventy-something woman in Tribeca, and tipped her off to $10 Thursday lunches at the Hare Krishnas’ outpost in Downtown Brooklyn. He also left her with some cardamom cookies and wisdom about allowing life to take new directions.

“The whole thing sounds like a Wes Anderson movie—going on the train and then meeting the Indian guru?” Razo says, taking a sip from his water bottle.

“A lot of things like that have been happening recently,” she says. “I haven’t fallen into the yoga hole yet. It’s a lifestyle, and I haven’t gotten there yet,” she says, though she cops to attempting to go on a juice fast. “I finally broke down and got ice cream on the last day.” And she did check out the chanting at the Sufi temple. “You sit down for an hour or so, and then you stand up and you spin around in circles. It’s shockingly easy to let go.”

*This article originally appeared in the October 14, 2013 issue of New York Magazine.

Read more posts by Katie Van Syckle

Filed Under: encounter ,eleanor friedberger ,the fiery furnaces ,new york magazine ,music ,personal record

Shepherds led a flock of 2,000 sheep through the streets of Spain’s capital on Sunday, in defense of ancient grazing, droving and migration rights.

sigkate:

loriadorable:

Let’s all pay more attention to Janelle Monae and forget about Sinead O’Connor, shall we?

Always pay attention to Janelle Monaé.

rurone:

nosdrinker:

i’ve never been happier in my entire life

I know I’ve posted this before, but have a pit bull with soft tiny creatures

HOLDE MINE HAIR

ye olde partie times

Verily, thou art such a lightweight.

Things ye can’t: even.

Thou only liveth once

#YOLOTH

#Topsfield update: t-shirt acquired. I feel like I won the fair. pic.twitter.com/lrQ3jzgfvg

Morrissey would like to stress that he has not been consulted over any takedown request to remove the Tumblr blog named 'This Charming Charlie'. Morrissey is represented by Warner-Chappell Publishing, and not Universal Music Publishing, (who have allegedly demanded that the lyrics be removed). Morrissey is delighted and flattered by the Peanuts comic strip with its use of Morrissey-Smiths lyrics, and he hopes that the strips remain.

Thirty-three-year-old Daryush Valizadeh, known to his predominantly heterosexual male fan base as Roosh, is a well-known pick-up artist within the worldwide “Seduction Community,” which relies on pop evolutionary psychology to teach the art of getting laid. Its origins date back … {…}

The jury is still out on whether Burger King should immediately fire or immediately promote its executive vice president of French fries.

the-doctor-deduces-camelot:

daveshady:

virtutethecat:

nonphallic-eclairs:

majorstranger:

‘It’s no different to having a dog or cat’: The Texas couple who share their home with an EIGHT-STONE capybara named Gary… and even let him sleep in their bed.

It’s GARI, Y’ALL

It’s not fair that I don’t have a capybara :((((

literally an ROUS

They’re like giant… baby rats.

For a moment, @TheEconomist's trending graph included a pentagram next to the phrase "Golden Dawn." pic.twitter.com/DzcRcjYGV8

tabby dude that is weird


duly noted


hi firehose


hangin' out with librarybrandy




first try on card catalog; found a better piece of furniture to use though


I love this game


uh....

Animal Crossing imagedump

karenhurley:

An absolutely shocking campaign that is truly brilliant. These images are of actual human rights abuse victims taken by traveling journalists form a variety of countries that have been placed into Switzerland’s surroundings. The shock of seeing these individuals right in front of the public eye certainly shed new light on the issue and caused a global stir. 

Watch the video

Campaign: Not here, but now 
Agency: Walker, Switzerland Via

Because nothing says fun, amusement and good times for all the family like bible studies, there was Holy Land USA, a Christian tourist attraction filled with religious exhibits in Waterbury, Connecticut between 1958 and 1984. At its height, Holy Land attracted up to 40,000 visitors a year to the park.

We might not see the end result for another two months, but it's official: The Eleventh Doctor has left the building.

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MajikJon writes "The BBC junking policies of the '60s and '70s resulted in the loss of hundreds of episodes of the classic series in its earliest years. Through the work of ardent fans over the succeeding decades, dozens of these lost episodes have been painstaking recovered and added back into the BBC archives. Now, it seems, the searchers have struck the mother lode. According to the Wikipedia, there are currently 106 missing episodes of the serial. If reports are correct, we may finally get to see all the episodes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Polanzani, Francesco, 1700- La penna da scrivere all’ uso corrente, [1768?]

TypW 725.68.706

Houghton Library, Harvard University

Ornamental (wood & metal) turning in late 18th century France was an art form most associated with the upper ranks of society and particularly the royal court. Publishing a how-to manual on turning under your own name in the 1790s against the backdrop of the French Revolution wouldn't have been the most sensible of life choices because the author's association with the hated aristocracy would be printed in black and white for all to see.

So the true author of The Turner's Manual - 'Manuel du Tourneur' - (the eminent lawyer, Louis Georges Isaac Salivet) decided against using his own name on the title pages of the first two volumes when they were released in 1792 and 1796, respectively (together making up the 1st edition).

Instead, Salivet employed two allonyms (like pseudonyms, but real people), Louis-Eloy Bergeron and his son-in-law, Pierre Hamelin-Bergeron, with whom Salivet was said to be at least acquainted, if not actual friends. There is no record as to whether or not the substitutes agreed to their names being used in this way. Citations online are divided between authors Salivet and Bergeron, but the latter probably dominates.

Salivet (or perhaps one of the Bergerons) was said to have owned a Paris firm "that sold rose engines, tools, lathes and materials for turning. This seminal work contains numerous engravings of various objects and patterns from which to model both turning equipment and turned objects." [source]

There appears to be only occasional commentary available online with respect to the technical qualities of the volumes. There are sparse references to its having merit in the first half of the 19th century both because it was an assiduous chronicle of continental development in the field of lathe-work and turning, and because there was no comparable literature available at the time in England (in fact, I don't think Salivet's Manual was fully translated** until just a few years ago). The 'Manuel du Tourneur' was specifically aimed at the amateur craftsman with the machines, models and techniques outlined relating to woodworking (most) and metalwork, with modest primers on glass engraving and ivory work.

A musical instrument journal article - predominantly a translation of text - about the flute and related instrument machining (illustration plate seen above) found inconsistencies in some of Salivet's descriptions and measurements. They conclude he wasn't a flautist himself, but very probably had obtained descriptions from (a) Parisian flute-maker(s), and he didn't have the background to adjust the information for context.

The revised 2nd edition of 'Manuel du Tourneur' (1816) was enlarged to include an atlas volume containing engravings by Nicolas Louis Rousseau from drawings by Gallet. The earlier edition had a smaller series of illustrations after designs by Louis-Jacques Goussier (known for his technical drawing contributions to Diderot's 'L'Encyclopédie' and illustration redesigns for 'Les Anatomies' by Vesalius). The atlas contains more than seventy regular and hand-coloured engravings in total.

**Just prior to posting this entry I found details about the 2010 translation of the Bergeron/Salivet 'Manuel du Tourneur' into English, and the following quote is found here (it's only mentioned at a couple of sites, both listed among the bullet points down below):

"The Society of Ornamental Turners has released in hardback a translation of Bergeron's 'Manual du Tourneur'. Volumes I and II are text only and contain no plates; the third volume often (called the 'Atlas') contains all the Plates referred to in Volumes I and II. Editor Jeremy Soulsby has translated the previously un-translated 239 pages as well as extensively revising the style and content of the earlier works so as to clarify obscure terminology and techniques. He has fully indexed the volume and provided a glossary and extended notes.

As described from the SOT website: 'First published during the turbulent times of the French Revolution, Bergeron's Manuel du Tourneur or The Turner's Manual has been admired for over two hundred years as a comprehensive record of all the tools, machinery and techniques required by an eighteenth century amateur wishing to establish a fully equipped workshop for the hobby of turning. This, the second volume of text which uses the 1816 revised and expanded second edition by P. Hamelin-Bergeron, is available for the first time in an English translation. It deals with the more elaborate elements of the subject and gives instruction in the use of the complex lathes of the period which were used to make many of the artefacts now to be seen in museums'."

• 'Manuel du Tourneur' is available online in full through the Swiss National Collaborative Libraries host portal, e-rara. [note the links lower left to each of the three volumes; thumbnail page views are available]
• Woodworker's Manuals 1900 and Before.
• Books on Ornamental Turning from *Ornamental Turning - The online resource for "OT" enthusiasts*.
• Bergeron at Circuitousroot (commentary on the article below & web edition listings).
• Bergeron book translation listing at The Society of Ornamental Turners - contains more information and sample pages {SOT homepage}.
• 'Bergeron on Flute-Making' by Michael Wright IN: The Galpin Society Journal (Vol 29. May 1976. pp. 26-34).
• Amazon listings for Salivet publications.
• Previously: The Wood Book and, more generally: Machines.
• Thanks John!
• This post first appeared on the BibliOdyssey website.

Dinosaur erotica is a real thing. Repeat: There are modern stories about women being taken and ravished by pterodactyls and triceratops. The Cut did God’s work and tracked down two popular dino-rotica authors, Alara Branwen and Christie Sims, for an interview.

In the talk, twentysomething college students Branwen and Sims (not their real names, because would you write dino porn under your real name?) reveal that together, they make more than their friends who are engineers and accountants combined. They’ve written about 200 short, erotic stories, most of them about dinosaurs or monsters of some sort, and Branwen, for one, got into the business because she realized that she could make more money writing stories about “dragons having their way with busty maidens” than she could as a supermarket clerk. Fair enough, really. Someone’s got to do it. 

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Mason Shaker: Glass, Stainless Steel, 9"x 4.5"x 4.5"

Labor disputes engulfed the Minnesota Orchestra. Bankruptcy shuttered the New York City Opera. Even Carnegie Hall had to cancel its opening-night gala. What gives?

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