Russian Sledges

Justin Kemp Proclaiming my love at a scenic overlook on top of a mountain  ::  Uknown Artist

A tip: If someone has recently passed away in the presence of their loved ones and family priest, it’s OK to rearrange the chairs afterwards.

Submitted by Dimi, for which thanks.

Do excuse us. We’ll come back later.

Submitted by Zoe Stockdale, for which thanks.

“So many of my highs and lows in Doctor Who are encapsulated by John [Barrowman] pulling his pants down.”

-

Catherine Tate

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/sep/28/doctor-who-companions-billie-piper-catherine-tate-karen-gillan

(via enough-effing-owls)

Call Fox Mulder.

Police in Augusta, Maine, fielded two calls from the public last week reporting there was a UFO beaming a bright light up in the sky, but it turns out that the spectacle was just a giant spotlight set up by Margaritas Mexican Restaurant to celebrate its grand reopening. “I was at Margaritas eating dinner with my family and can verify it was a light and not a UFO,” Augusta police dispatcher Aaron Farrell tells the Kennebec Journal, which definitely sounds like a cover-up to us. [Kennebec Journal]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: phone home, maine, ufo

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager shot in the head by the Taliban last year because of her push for education for girls in Pakistan, has been traveling the world calling for greater access to education, and for peace and equality.

On Friday the 16-year-old took that message to Harvard University.

“I want the students and the girls of Pakistan to be educated in the same amazing and historical places as this Harvard University is,” Malala told a gathering of reporters and onlookers in Harvard Yard. “So I hope that one day when I’ll go back to Pakistan, I will build a university like Harvard.”

Malala is here to receive the Harvard Foundation’s 2013 Peter Gomes Humanitarian Award.

The Taliban admitted to shooting Malala on a bus in October 2012 because of her outspokenness. Remarkably, she recovered from the shooting after several surgeries in England, where she is now living, going to school and continuing to speak out.

“Those people consider themselves powerful just because of having guns in their hands,” she said of the Taliban and other terrorists. “But I think I am powerful and I will be powerful if I empower myself with education and with knowledge. And if you are with me, and if we all are together, and if we raise our voice and if we speak up for our rights, then no one can defeat us. And we shall not be afraid of anyone.”

Malala spoke at the United Nations on her 16th birthday in July and said the shooting has given her a new sense of courage. Her efforts have led to her becoming the youngest Nobel Peace Prize nominee in history.

“So, if we want to see peace in the world, we must take an action,” she said Friday. “And we must raise up our voice. And I hope that this university and the people of Boston will support me in my campaign and a day will come — the day every girl will be at school and she will be getting her education.”

And to help make that happen, Malala said she no longer wants to be doctor, but a politician.

“A doctor can only treat patients. A doctor can only help the people who are shot or who are injured,” she told the crowd. “But a politician can stop people from injuries. A politician can take a step so that no person is scared tomorrow.”

Apparently pandas are not "essential" government workers to be spared from furloughs.

Satellite images and animations here. More about the geological events that led to its formation here.

By Christine Sismondo

“Where everybody knows your name.” Easily one of the best phrases ever written.

That string of five words summed up the idea of the “local,” a refuge from the dynamism of modernity where a small clutch of people get together nearly every day to shoot the shit over a pint — or four. At the time — it first appeared 31 years ago, on 30 September 1982 — the phrase succinctly introduced the basic premise of the show, Cheers, and, today, still brings Sam, Diane, Carla, Norm, Cliff and Coach to mind, the staff and regulars from what may be the best-known bar in the world.

The engine that drove the plot forward was the tumultuous and unlikely-seeming relationship between a former ball player-turned bar owner and his waitress, a pretentious graduate student who is at loose ends. The mismatched pair is, to say the least, from different worlds. But so is everyone else at Cheers: a tough-talking single mom; an underemployed accountant; a postal worker; an old-school, dim-witted baseball coach. This group would eventually be joined by a pompous psychiatrist and a sweet and innocent …well, bumpkin, from Indiana. It’s an eclectic group. And, yes, their differences sometimes produce conflict. But they are also community that looks after one another. Even Carla would defend her clan — especially if it was under threat from the gang at rival Gary’s Old Towne Tavern.

Cheers is a fictional show, of course. But anybody who has ever been a regular or worked in a neighbourhood bar knows that the show did a great job at capturing the spirit of the “local.” Funnily enough, though, the show’s debut came around the time that the neighbourhood tavern was becoming an endangered species. Ray Oldenburg, in his 1989 book The Great Good Place, would write about the rise of BYOFs (Bring Your Own Friend Bars) and how they were replacing taverns. Oldenburg argued that American cities were losing one of their important institutions in this transition, since, along with coffee shops, bookstores and barber shops, bars act as ventilation units in the modern urban landscape, where people establish community. Heading to the local is a very different activity from going out after work with the rest of the office (a valuable activity in its own right). The neighbourhood tavern encourages people to mingle with people from outside their regular work and social circles. Like they did in Cheers.

While plenty of local taverns still exist, their numbers have dwindled, largely due to the rise of car culture, which has meant that, for all but those of us who live in one of a handful of walking cities, bars are simply too hard to get to — or, rather, to get home from. Even in urban areas, where bars thrive, the majority of new bars — be they cocktail dens, faux-dives, or sports bars — are moving away from the model of cultivating a community of regulars and are instead aiming to become destinations in their own right. People don’t tend to go to these places on their own; they’re the new face of BYOFs.

And, hey, a range of options is great. I’m certainly never going to argue that the downside of gentrification is that I now have a bar with a great deejay, solid cocktails, and oyster nights at the foot of my street. But it’s too bad that it seemed to come at the expense of the local.

At the end of the day, they may have much better drinks than Sam Malone ever made, but nobody down there is ever going to know my name.

Cheers.

Christine Sismondo is a writer and lecturer in Humanities at York University in Toronto. She has written numerous articles about film, literature, drinking, and vice, as well as the book Mondo Cocktail, a narrative history of cocktails. She is the author of America Walks into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops.

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The post Cheers to the local bar appeared first on OUPblog.

The screenplay, based on a novel by Davis Grubb, is credited to James Agee, one of the icons of American film writing and criticism, then in the final throes of alcoholism. Laughton's widow, Elsa Lanchester, is adamant in her autobiography: “Charles finally had very little respect for Agee. And he hated the script, but he was inspired by his hatred.” She quotes the film’s producer, Paul Gregory: “. . . the script that was produced on the screen is no more James Agee's . . . than I'm Marlene Dietrich.” Who wrote the final draft? Perhaps Laughton had a hand. Lanchester and Laughton both remembered that Mitchum was invaluable as a help in working with the two children, whom Laughton could not stand. But the final film is all Laughton's, especially the dreamy, Bible-evoking final sequence, with Lillian Gish presiding over events like an avenging elderly angel.

Sen. Collins denounces Tea Party legislative hostage taking strategy.

Factories are finding that years of doing business overseas has withered what once was a thriving textile and apparel work force in the United States.

The leader of Greece's far-right Golden Dawn and four more party MPs are formally charged with belonging to a criminal organisation.

Eux Autres are a band. They sound like the unrequited love song Doug Martsch would have penned for Francoise Hardy, had the time/space continuum collapsed.

The Night of the Hunter was not a success with either audiences or critics at its initial release, and Laughton never directed another film.

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There's something kind of remarkable about just how awful chains like Regal Cinemas have managed to make the moviegoing experience, with one of the biggest components of that awfulness being the barrage of obnoxious, loud advertisements that hit you with before each and every movie. (*Shakes canes at sky, loses control of bladder*) ANYWAY, hey, good news! By which I mean terrible news! Now they want those ads to start showing up on your phone, too! Take it away Kurt Hall, CEO of the National CineMedia advertising firm and my nemesis!

Hall proposed sending advertising messages directly to audience member phones. The ads could be tied to the onscreen content, and that’s “a hell of a lot stronger than having it just come up on screen.” That’d tie in with another expanding component of National CineMedia’s business: helping manufacturers, especially auto makers, launch new products in trailers. “There’s some good news out there about the number of product launches,” he said. “That’s good news for cinema.” (Via.)

I have no idea how they'd make this work, but if there's enough money in it, I don't doubt they'll find a way. Anyway, this is just a reminder to patronize your local, independent movie theaters—the ones that don't make you spend a movie's entire runtime thinking about how nice your TV and couch are.

(Thanks for the heads up, The Dissolve.)

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art-of-swords:

European Dagger

• Date: 1475-1500 (blade); 19th century (hilt)
• Culture: European
• Place of origin: Flanders (region), Belgium (the hilt later, made)
• Medium and Techniques: steel, wood, silver

This dagger would originally have been stored in a sheath and attached to a belt at its wearer’s back. The dagger was a practical everyday tool attached to the belts of men of all ranks. A small sheath might contain several knives and tools for hunting, eating, personal grooming and self-defence. For the gentleman, the more expensive and robust dagger was a costume accessory. This dagger has a rare engraved silver pommel characteristic of silver work at the end of the 15th century.

Source: Copyright © 2013 V&A Images

Hunter College High School, filled with many of the city’s top performing students, was labeled the saddest place in Manhattan, based on a study that gauged the emotions of New Yorkers by their Twitter messages.

le Bat

  Follow Your Town News On The Courant's Hartford Facebook Page

HARTFORD — Officials at Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy have told families that students will no longer participate in a slavery re-enactment during future school field trips to Nature's Classroom.

For Field Notes’s twentieth season, the company has designed a new release around a beverage that is extremely close to their hearts — beer. In two sets, named Ales and Lagers, the signature mini notebooks come in colors like “stout, amber ale, India pale ale, pilsner, bock and pale lager.” Also included are descriptions of each type of beer in detail and coasters for your refreshing choice of the beverage. Available for purchase starting tomorrow, September 25.

Field Notes DRINK LOCAL EDITION Notebook Sets is a post by Elaine YJ Lee on Selectism.

Archery Hall and Boxing Club | FT Architects | Shigeo Ogawa

Original Source

We knew it was only a matter of seconds before someone pointed out an instance of a woman sitting spread eagle on the subway, just like Antonin Scalia. Precisely 20 hours and 52 minutes after we wrote about the scourge of man-sitting, we received a triumphant email from a tipster who managed to find the exception to our self-proclaimed rule. [ more › ]

Per Politico, Wendy Davis, the abortion-extremist who unsuccessfully attempted to filibuster Texas's late-term abortion ban in July, will run for governor of the state:Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis and her advisers have begun informing influential Democrats that she intends to run for governor in 2014, according to multiple sources familiar with Davis’s conversations.The Fort Worth legislator made a national name for herself in June when she mounted a filibuster against new proposed abortion clinic regulations. Texas Republicans ultimately passed those restrictions into law in a special session called by outgoing Republican Gov. Rick Perry.Davis advisers declined to confirm that she
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houghtonlib:

In recognition of Banned Books Week, two early modern censored books, one by ink and one by pasted slips.

Voltaire, 1694-1778. Historia de Carlos XII rey de Suecia, 1740. *FC7.V8893.Ek740u

Strigel, Victorinus, 1524-1569. Victorini Strigelii viri cl. In Ivstinvm Trogi abbreviatorem commentarius, 1602.  *SC6.V5805.A613s

Houghton Library, Harvard University

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ninosarabutra.com


ninosarabutra.com

100,000 Miniature Porcelain Skulls