Russian Sledges

Gerard Puigmal posted a photo:

Iceland

www.gerardpuigmal.com / Twitter / Facebook / Instagram

" Lace collar possibly cut loose from a camicia or a linen partlet (there are still linen strips in the bottom half, Venetian ca. 1610 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). "

Inspired by William Morris’ poem; ‘Iceland First Seen’, the Liberty design team travelled to Iceland on an exploration of the senses to create a series of designs relating to the wonders of sight. Manning is a digital design created using photographs of Icelandic Glaciers and mountains.

On July 22, the American Historical Association (AHA) released a “Statement on Policies Regarding the Embargoing of Completed History PhD Dissertations” recommending a lengthy embargo option in policies designed to make dissertations freely available through online repositories. The Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC) believes that the AHA recommendation will do more harm than good for scholars, including doctoral students. The AHA provides no evidence to support its chief recommendation [... which] contradicts evidence gathered in a recently published article in College & Research Libraries (C&RL), which explores the impact of making social sciences and humanities dissertations openly accessible. The AHA’s call for a six-year embargo is an extreme measure given the results of a 2011 survey of publishers that was conducted by the authors of the C&RL article. According to the authors’ survey, “[t]he majority of responses (72%) from university press directors and journal editors indicated that manuscripts that are revisions of openly accessible [theses and dissertations] are always welcome for submission” (p. 372). The AHA statement argues that “the AHA seeks to balance two central though at times competing ideals in our profession – on the one hand, the full and timely dissemination of new historical knowledge; and, on the other, the unfettered ability of young historians to revise their dissertations and obtain a publishing contract from a press.” The AHA recommendation does not strike that balance. Instead, it restricts access to important research from new scholars without significantly improving the likelihood of publication in book form.

But first we need to address this farcical statement from the American Historical Association asking institutions that adopted ETDs to provide embargoes on OA of up to six years.  The AHA says it is afraid that ETDs may inhibit opportunities for students to publish their dissertations; they specifically claim that “an increasing number of university presses are reluctant to offer a publishing contract to newly minted PhDs whose dissertations have been freely available via online sources.”  But they offer no evidence for this claim, and the evidence that is out there, including this most recent survey, directly contradicts the assertion.  This is not the way a society of professional scholars should work; policy should be based on data, not merely fear and rumor.  And factual claims should be sourced.  Every scholar knows this, of course, but the AHA asserts an “increasing number” without citing any source, possibly because the available sources simply do not support the claim.  It is ironic that the AHA, in a statement purporting to defend the interests of graduate students, models such bad scholarly practice for those very students.

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Internet must be on at all times

fuckyeahdementia:

fuck it, its friday!

Anna Anthropy just remade 1990 Nintendo Power magazine’s Dragon Warrior Text Adventure as a playable online choose-your-own-adventure Twine game. You can find it and play it online right here. -LT

spikemaze:

DRAGON WARRIOR TEXT ADVENTURE

Oren Kaplan, long-time member and guitarist for Gogol Bordello, recently filed suit on behalf of himself and the rest of the band against lead singer Eugene Hutz. The lawsuit spawns almost entirely from a dispute over money, and specifically the money that Hutz allegedly took from the band's group accounts and moved into accounts only accessible by him. Kaplan also alleges that Hutz took over the business operations of Gogol Bordello without telling anyone, and he arranged a promotional Coca-Cola deal without informing Kaplan.

To make things all the more uncomfortable, according to the lawsuit, “Hutz accomplished this ruse by feigning concern for plaintiff (whose mother had just passed away) and encouraging plaintiff to take an extended leave of absence from the group, during the very time when the group would be recording its song for the Coca-Cola commercial.” 

Kaplan and the rest of the group are suing Hutz ...

Read more

The owner of the Boston Red Sox, John Henry, has reportedly purchased the Boston Globe.

A dead WalMart in McAllen, Texas has been remodelled as a library, making it the largest single-floor library in the USA. It's award-winning design makes excellent use of all that space -- two football fields' worth -- and includes an acoustically separated teen space.

The library even has an acoustically separated lounge for teens as well as 6 teen computer labs, 16 public meeting spaces, 14 public study rooms, 64 computer labs, 10 children’s computer labs and 2 genealogy computer labs. Other new features include self check-out units, an auditorium, an art gallery, a used bookstore and a cafe.

While you can still see hints of what the library once was in its sprawling shape and industrial ceilings, it seems like an entirely new space. According to PSFK, the library saw new user registration rise by 23% within the first month following the new library’s opening.

Abandoned Walmart is Now America’s Largest Library [Steph/Web Urbanist]

See also: Walmart closes, Community builds a giant library

Saturn is often called the most beautiful planet because of its striking rings, but its myriad moons also fascinate and inspire scientists. Now scientists know how the ringed world controls the impressive ice geysers on one if its moons, Enceladus. In 2005, the Cassini probe discovered plumes of water jetting out of the south pole of Enceladus, making the tiny moon (about 300 miles wide) one of the few destinations in the solar system with observed geological activity. Though astronomers

African-American, Muslim, folk-guitar-strumming Minnesota representative Keith Ellison celebrates gay marriage coming to Minnesota:

You've got to admit, it's a great country.

“Climbing equipment needs to be high enough, or else it will be too boring in the long run,” Dr. Sandseter said. “Children approach thrills and risks in a progressive manner, and very few children would try to climb to the highest point for the first time they climb. The best thing is to let children encounter these challenges from an early age, and they will then progressively learn to master them through their play over the years.” ¶ Sometimes, of course, their mastery fails, and falls are the common form of playground injury. But these rarely cause permanent damage, either physically or emotionally. While some psychologists — and many parents — have worried that a child who suffered a bad fall would develop a fear of heights, studies have shown the opposite pattern: A child who’s hurt in a fall before the age of 9 is less likely as a teenager to have a fear of heights.

The City Council could take up the issue in its Aug. 6 meeting and still meet the state deadline for a low-interest loan.

OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

@chris

Original Source

	Courtney shared this story from drinking miller high life on the ferris wheel:
	I shared this on tumblr but you know what...I need it here too.

---

god-damn-it-jim:

ibelieveingallifrey:

winterblazes:

combat-honey:

The Worindlve

Played by Human GhJack

i can’t fucksing stop laughinb

You had one job

The ACLU's Jameel Jaffer and Brett Max Kaufman have compiled a NSA lexicon, listing the made-up, nonsensical meanings that the NSA has assigned to common words, in order to defend their criminality. For example:

Surveillance. Every time we pick up the phone, the NSA makes a note of whom we spoke to, when we spoke to him, and for how long—and it’s been doing this for seven years. After the call-tracking program was exposed, few people thought twice about attaching the label “surveillance” to it. Government officials, though, have rejected the term, pointing out that this particular program doesn’t involve the NSA actually listening to phone calls—just keeping track of them. Their crabbed definition of “surveillance” allows them to claim that the NSA isn’t engaged in surveillance even when it quite plainly is.

Collect. If an intelligence official says that the NSA isn’t “collecting” a certain kind of information, what has he actually said? Not very much, it turns out. One of the NSA’s foundational documents states that “collection” occurs not when the government acquires information but when the government “selects” or “tasks” that information for “subsequent processing.” Thus it becomes possible for the government to acquire great reams of information while denying that it is “collecting” anything at all.

Relevant. The NSA’s call-tracking program is ostensibly based on the Patriot Act’s Section 215, a provision that allows the government to compel businesses to disclose records that are “relevant” to authorized foreign intelligence investigations. The theory, it seems, is that everybody’s phone records are relevant today because anybody’s phone records might become relevant in the future. This stretches the concept of “relevance” far beyond the breaking point. Even the legislator who wrote Section 215 has rejected the government’s theory. If “relevance” is given such a broad compass, what room is left for “irrelevance”?

Targeted. The call-tracking program is only one of the NSA’s surveillance efforts. Another is what’s been branded PRISM, a program that involves the acquisition of the contents of phone calls, emails, and other electronic communications. Americans need not worry about the program, the government says, because the NSA’s surveillance activities are “targeted” not at Americans but at foreigners outside the United States. No one should be reassured by this. The government’s foreign targets aren’t necessarily criminals or terrorists—they may be journalists, lawyers, academics, or human rights advocates. And even if one is indifferent to the NSA’s invasion of foreigners’ privacy, the surveillance of those foreigners involves the acquisition of Americans’ communications with those foreigners. The spying may be “targeted” at foreigners, but it vacuums up thousands of Americans’ phone calls and emails.

How to Decode the True Meaning of What NSA Officials Say (via Techdirt)

What can the institutions of the state teach us? How could I possibly be educated by a prison colony, or could you be educated by, let’s say, the Russia-1 TV channel? Joseph Brodsky said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “The more substantial an individual’s aesthetic experience is, the sounder his taste, the sharper his moral focus, the freer—though not necessarily the happier—he is.”  In Russia, we have again found ourselves in circumstances in which resistance, including quite importantly aesthetic resistance, has become our one remaining moral option and civic duty.

meowmaniaaa:

carambamamba:

carambamamba:

In the past month, my family’s life has been turned upside down. I am a domestic violence survivor and have been raising my five year old son alone since the day he was born. Death threats, harassment, and continued emotional abuse drove me to obtain a restraining order against my ex-husband. Shortly thereafter he filed for emergency custody of my son in South Carolina, and after dealing with jurisdictional issues, I was ordered to “return" my son to an abusive father he’s had very little contact with. 

I am not being allowed to bring evidence to my defense, I am not allowed to see my son for a month, I am not allowed to contact him regularly and we have NEVER spent this much time apart. 


The judge and attorneys have made it clear that my queer, “immoral lifestyle" is worse than being with an abusive father and that I should prepare myself for the worst. 


I need help.


My rights as a parent and as a human being are being denied and I need to hire an attorney with experience in gay rights issues and family law. Retainers/fees are generally between $5,000-$10,000 and I cannot afford that. My son and I live in Massachusetts and we are being denied the right to go back home together. 


Please help if you can by donating or spreading this around, any little bit counts.

Thank you.

http://www.gofundme.com/3scfjw

LINK.

for a good friend. please, please signal boost 

“I had a feeling that someone was trying to kill this bill,” she said recently. “You know, after a while, you get a feel for what the movements are. And all of a sudden, I get passed this picture of a pacifier. They had my bill [number] on it and said that I was trying to make Texas a ‘Nanny State.’” The bill had nothing to do with motherhood or childcare. The flier had been produced by the Texas Civil Justice League—a conservative legal reform organization opposed to the bill. Thompson decided to ignore it. But that afternoon, she encountered another nanny-state flier. Instead of a pacifier, this one had an image of a woman’s breast. Thompson was outraged. It was the same session that saw the Legislature cut funding for women’s health care and family planning by two-thirds, and pass a bill requiring women to endure a pre-abortion sonogram. It was also the session in which Tuffy Hamilton, during a debate about Franklin Mountains State Park, made a boob joke to Marisa Marquez. (“Young lady, would you please tell us why your mountains are better than any of our mountains, and are they man-made or are they real mountains?”)

It might seem strange to point out, but not all things written by women are feminism. Nor are all things that are written by women in the name of feminism–at least if you define feminism as fighting for the right of women to have equal personhood and participation in society.

Plato believes that rhetoric is a way to alter the truth while Aristotle believes that rhetoric is an adequate mechanism of communication and a conventional way of finding validity (Yahoo.com: Plato vs. Aristotle par1).  I, on the other hand, believe that rhetoric is just a fancy word for B.S.