historyinposters:

English Railways poster (1952)

1枚で色々なシュチュエーションで使える便利なボタンダウンシャツ

特別公開された鑑真和上坐像（奈良市の唐招提寺で）＝永尾泰史撮影

“Heads of the church have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy,” he told the 89-year-old journalist (and atheist) Eugenio Scalfari.

As the first potentially deadly hurricane of the season nears the Gulf Coast, government employees are working around the clock to monitor it and issue warnings. And they're doing it for free, because of the government shutdown.

A clean and simple way to read Pinboard articles later.

Paperback also lets you easily archive and tag links from your Pinboard ‘unread’ queue once you’ve read them, and it keeps track of your progress, too, so you can flit from device to device while reading a lengthy piece.

Bob Goldstein isn't just an awesome scientist who works with tardigrades (AKA waterbears, the LOLcuties of the microscopic world). He's also a fantastic graphic designer, who creates these rock posters for scientific lectures at UNC Chapel Hill where he works. Check out his latest creations!

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There are a number of reports that a man set himself on fire at the National Mall in D.C. this afternoon.

The news first spread on Twitter, where witnesses described the scene:

Just witnessed the craziest thing ever... a man set himself on fire and danced down the Mall. #horrifying

— Vanessa Sink (@LiveMusicGirl) October 4, 2013

Witness tells me incident on Mall may involving camping stuff/belongings of a homeless person. Very strange. @nbcwashington

— Jackie Bensen (@jackiebensen) October 4, 2013

A D.C. Metro Police spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that they were responding to a report of a man on fire at the National Mall. The spokesperson added that the man was conscious and breathing, and that the incident began around 4.24 p.m.

A number of Twitter users have been posting pictures of police at the Mall:

Police respond to self immolation on the mall pic.twitter.com/QDEo4QiTz3

— Laura Wernick (@wernick7633) October 4, 2013

Massive fire & EMS response on National Mall. Medivac helicopter just took off from scene. Developing... pic.twitter.com/uY155U8nOs

— Jeff Goldberg (@jgoldbergABC7) October 4, 2013

Holy shit, someone just lit himself on fire in the middle of the National Mall pic.twitter.com/qzGgl9OuUo

— Ellie Hess (@Smellie03) October 4, 2013

According to reports on social media, the fire was put out by bystanders:

A runner and passerby put the flames out. It was incredible.

— Vanessa Sink (@LiveMusicGirl) October 4, 2013

My mom was near the guy who lit himself on fire on the Mall. Says these guys put it out with their shirts pic.twitter.com/xJToYEurqI

— Justin Sink (@JTSTheHill) October 4, 2013

The incident occurs barely 24 hours after police shot and killed 34-year-old Miriam Carey after a dramatic car chase outside the Capitol.

Join the conversation about this story »

Some people might find televised sports such as snooker painfully slow to watch, but imagine viewing five hours of non-stop knitting. Norwegian national broadcaster NRK is to air "National Knitting Night" next month, in which competitors will attempt to break the world record for producing a sweater, from shearing a sheep to final stitches. The Times reports that the show is part of the country's "Slow TV" phenomenon, which has previously included a leisurely multi-day cruise through the fjords, and 10 hours' coverage of a train journey between Oslo and Bergen. The most controversial show so far has been "National Firewood Night", which featured showing wood being chopped and then eight hours of a fireplace burning the logs. One of the show's creators told the New York Times: "We received about 60 text messages from people complaining about the stacking in the programme. Fifty per cent complained that the bark was facing up, and the rest complained that the bark was facing down. One thing that really divides Norway is bark."

"The Church, all of us should divest ourselves of worldliness," a visibly emotional pope said, adding: "Worldliness is a murderer because it kills souls, kills people, kills the Church." "Without divesting ourselves, we would become pastry shop Christians, like beautiful cakes and sweet things but not real Christians," he said.

Ornithologists working in Oman say an owl discovered in a remote, mountainous region could be a new species.

Pope Francis visits Assisi for the first time to honour the saint whose name he adopted for a papacy aimed at promoting peace and helping the poor.

ベルルスコーニ伊元首相（ロイター）

First time accepted submitter wmr89502270 writes "Doctor Who is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The special The Day of The Doctor will be broadcast simultaneously in over 75 countries and hundreds of cinemas in the UK. Across the world the hotly anticipated special episode will be screened simultaneously in full 3D. According to Copyright law of the United Kingdom, the copyright in a broadcast program expires 50 years from the end of the year in which it is broadcast, which means the first episodes will fall to public domain next year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

“Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter.” ― Buster Keaton

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Morrissey Gets a Job, Brian Brooks

bornofanatombomb:

I want to go to this bar.

Banksy in NY

The Library has restored access to all sites in addition to our legislative information sites. Other legislative branch agencies, and many executive branch agencies with information functions similar to the Library, are granting public access as well.

Chinese couples seeking American women for surrogate pregnancies:

Last Sunday Leon Neyfakh wrote about the surprising ways Boston is trying to attract Chinese tourists. Marketing angles include the city’s history, it’s universities, and—more remarkably—it’s relative harmony with nature, especially compared with big Chinese cities. It didn’t mention, though,…

Just watching the Met’s latest production of Siegfried, with the wonderful and infinitely variable / mobile stage set, and the brilliant projected water effects… and suddenly flashed on how very much the staging of this sequence reminded me of the scene between Bilbo and Gollum in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

And then what do the Wanderer and Mime start doing but playing the Riddle Game… and discussing a mighty Ring that gives its wearer power to rule the world, and the Dragon who sleeps guarding an incredible hoard of treasure…

Of course Tolkien was familiar with both the Nibelungenlied and what Wagner did to / with it. Doesn’t make this kind of confluence / synergy any less cool.

(shivers)

(goes back to watching the Old Wise Guy with Something that Looks Like A Staff dump a broken sword in poor Mime’s lap and tell him to hurry up and get it reforged…)

Big data reveals Republican policies in America's healthcare law

ON THE surface, it looks totally partisan. Not a single Republican voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare". But the law is filled with concessions to them. A new computer analysis counts the GOP policy ideas that overlap with other bills that made it into the law: 3% from the House and 8% from the Senate. In fact, when "mark-up" bills are excluded—basically, amendments and legislative re-writes—11% and 28% of policy ideas from Congressional and Senate Republicans, respectively, align. John Wilkerson of the University of Washington and his colleagues studied the legislative history using big data. They ran the PPACA through a text-analysis system that could spot similar wording in previous legislation with a better than 90% accuracy. That let them identify the date and sponsor of earlier bills that ended up in the law, indicated as circles in the chart. Hence, proposals by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa on nursing home transparency in March 2009 were incorporated by Democratic lawmakers in later bills, before appearing in the law. So was it really necessary to shut down the government?

They’re all great, but Dr. No and Moonraker are my favorites of the bunch.

"I was young. It was just the kind of sh*t that actresses have to go through. Somebody told me I was fat, that I was going to get fired if I didn't lose a certain amount of weight. They brought in pictures of me where I was basically naked, and told me to use them as motivation for my diet. It was just that. [Someone brought it up recently.] They thought that because of the way my career had gone, it wouldn't still hurt me. That somehow, after I won an Oscar, I'm above it all. 'You really still care about that?' Yeah. I was a little girl. I was hurt. It doesn’t matter what accolades you get. I know it'll never happen to me again. If anybody even tries to whisper the word 'diet,' I'm like, 'You can go f*ck yourself.'" - Jennifer Lawrence speaking to Harper's Bazaar UK. Love this lady. So hard. (via Tipster Danni, Huffington Post) Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

Without delving into the dysfunctional politics that has led to the shutdown of most U.S. Government services, we thought it might be helpful to our library and archives colleagues to point out some alternatives to various library authority sources that have been shuttered at the Library of Congress.

In some cases (for example, LCSH vs. FAST) they are not exactly equivalent, but they might be useful during this period nonetheless. Please note that we cannot verify the accuracy or completeness of the Internet Archive copy of any of these sources.

This is a summary of some of the most widely available resources, but please note that bibliographic data, classification schemes and authority files traditionally provided on the loc.gov site are also available in subscription services from the Library of Congress (Cataloger’s Desktop and Classification Web) [note: these LoC services continue to be made available to subscribers during the shutdown], from OCLC (for cataloging service subscribers), and from other service providers.

Also, for a  more complete list of alternative resources, see this spreadsheet (Excel .xslx file, courtesy of Eric Childress).

Name Authorities

• Library of Congress Source: LC Name Authority File  (unavailable as of this writing)
• OCLC Alternative: LC Name Authority File and the  Virtual International Authority File
• Wayback Machine Alternative: Archived LCNAF

Subject Authorities

• Library of Congress Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings (unavailable as of this writing)
• OCLC Alternative: Library of Congress Subject Headings and FAST Headings
• Wayback Machine Alternative: Archived LCSH

MARC Documentation

• Library of Congress Source: LC MARC Documentation (unavailable as of this writing)
• OCLC Alternative: OCLC MARC Documentation
• Wayback Machine Alternative: Archived LC MARC Documentation
• ITS MARC Alternative: ITS MARC Documentation.

Classification

• Library of Congress Source: LC Classification (unavailable as of this writing)
• OCLC Alternative: OCLC Classify Service
• Wayback Machine Alternative: Archived LC Classification

Genre Headings

• Library of Congress Source: LC Genre Forms Headings (unavailable as of this writing)
• OCLC Alternative: LC Genre Forms Headings
• Wayback Machine Alternative: Archived LC Genre Forms Headings

 Thesaurus for Graphic Materials

• Library of Congress Source: Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (unavailable as of this writing)
• OCLC Alternative: Thesaurus for Graphic Materials and Thesaurus for Graphic Materials: Genre Terms
• Wayback Machine Alternative: Archived Thesaurus for Graphic Materials

We hope these are useful, but even more we hope that very soon we will be back to business as usual. Even then, though, you may find some of these other sources helpful. If you know of other reasonable alternatives, leave a comment below.

The notorious drug market Silk Road was shut down Tuesday by the FBI and its alleged owner arrested, but for some reason the site's active forums remain intact. Since yesterday's news, they've been been filled with commiserating and frantic organizing by dealers headed to safer passage. It's like the last day of camp, only with more felony charges. One post stood out: The teary farewell of Silk Road employee named Libertas.

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