Russian Sledges

I've been in a "how to teach technical writing" workshop the past few days and probably the best thing I've gained from it is the term 'vomit draft'. And now I am sharing it with you. Education for all!

SCIENCE THE WORLD: Are you a K-12 teacher/educator who would like to use science and engineering research-inspired demonstrations, discussions, and experiments in your classroom? We want to collaborate with you! For more information, learn about our group.

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The inevitable has happened. Tempus Fugit Spirits has sent me a cease and desist letter asking me to stop using the Abbott's Bitters name as they feel they have a legitimate trademark on it. I disagree and I will explain why below. Though the letter is polite, like all cease and desists, it is implied that it will get much less pleasant if I ignore them. Consider this the first response. And it should be noted that legal arguments are complex and this post isn't an attempt to deal with all the issues, but instead it is being done to shine a light on something important that the cocktail community should be made aware.   

The more the days go by, the more I feel that Japan might quickly be becoming the mecca for fine footwear and amazing shoemakers. It is known that when the Japanese culture takes ahold of something, whether it be blades, yo-yo-ing, technology or shoemaking, that once they go for it and immerse their culture into it, they don't stop until it is perfected and they become the best at doing it. Kanperkina/Perfetto is proof of that perfection as well as the fact that they continuously sell out when their shoes go on sale.... And because of this brand (among the many others), it just might be that in reality, they have simply started to conquer the shoemaking industry and I say that wholeheartedly. I will admit that my favorite makers (of which you probably know, but I won't name) are still from Europe, but the more and more that I see Japanese shoemakers and the beautiful creations that they make, the more that I think that Japan is the place where  term 'exceptional shoemaking,' should now be synonymous with. That may be a bold statement, but I am not exaggerating when I say that they deserve it.








While one would look at these shoes and think (due to their aesthetics) that they were made in England (by Edward Green if I were to make an educated and naive guess) it is actually the fact that they are made locally in Japan. If this is truly the case (which I presume that it is as they state it on the website), then man, do I tip my hat to the factory, as this type of making is hard for any factory, even the ones that have been around for over 100 year's. Spat boots, for those that don't know, are probably the hardest pattern to get right, and be executed well. And one can tell when looking at these, that they did a brilliant job at it. Hopefully soon, I will suss it out completely and find out exactly where they are made, and then take a trip to the factory, as I would love to see these in production, and more so just factory itself, especially if it is in Japan!! Nevertheless, I will say that these boots are simply amazing and while not entirely practical for the average person, still a treat to see and even more so, to own. If I could afford it, I would have them all!!

Look at the last shape of that brown check boot on the right.....to die for!!!!

It is truly exciting to see where the shoe industry is heading, particularly when brands like this come out and are so popular that you have to be on a waiting list just to get their shoes. That's true success and makes me happy to know too, as it shows the progress that we, as humans, are having with our personal styling when it comes to footwear (while we have been free in our attire for many years -- hence people not being embarrassed to wear bell-bottoms/square toes etc, I do believe that in our footwear, we have been far behind and are only now really starting to break out and be truly creative and daring -- in a good way). These boots are probably among the coolest shoes that I have ever seen, truly....And I can only hope to one day own a pair....as soon as I figure out how to get on that list!!

Pictures Courtesy of: Dress Like A, En Grande Pompe & Upper Shoes

CLEVELAND (AP) -- In the tight-knit neighborhood near downtown where many conversations are spoken in Spanish, it seems most everyone knew Ariel Castro.

He played bass guitar in salsa and merengue bands. He parked his school bus on the street. He gave neighborhood children rides on his motorcycle.

And when they gathered for a candlelight vigil to remember two girls who vanished years ago, Castro was there too, comforting the mother of one of the missing, a neighbor said.

Neighbors and friends were stunned by the arrest of Castro and his two brothers after a 911 call led police to his house, where authorities say three women missing for about a decade were held captive.

Castro and his brothers, ages 50 to 54, were in custody Tuesday but have not been formally charged.

Ariel Castro was friends with the father of Gina DeJesus, one of the missing women, and helped search for her after she disappeared, said Khalid Samad, a friend of the family. He also performed music at a fundraiser held in her honor, Samad said.

"When we went out to look for Gina, he helped pass out fliers," said Samad, a community activist who was at the hospital with DeJesus and her family Monday night. "You know, he was friends with the family."

Tito DeJesus, one of Gina's uncles, said he played in a few bands with Castro over the past 20 years. He remembered visiting Castro's house after his niece disappeared, but he never noticed anything out of ordinary, saying it was very sparsely furnished and filled with musical instruments.

"That's pretty much what it looked like," DeJesus said. "I had no clue, no clue whatsoever that this happened."

Ariel Castro's son, Anthony Castro, said in an interview with the Daily Mail of London that he now speaks with his father just a few times a year and seldom visited his house. On his last visit two weeks ago, he said, his father would not let him inside.

"The house was always locked," he told the newspaper. "There were places we could never go. There were locks on the basement. Locks on the attic. Locks on the garage."

Juan Perez, who lives two doors down from the house, has known Castro for decades.

"He was always happy, nice, respectful," Perez said. "He gained trust with the kids and with the parents. You can only do that if you're nice."

He said Castro had an ATV and a motorcycle and would take children on rides. Nothing seemed wrong with it then, he said, adding that he now thinks that was one way Castro tried to get close to the children. He also worked until recently as a school bus driver.

Castro's personnel file with the Cleveland public school district, obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information request, shows he was hired in 1990 as a bus driver after saying on his application that he liked working with children.

The personnel file includes details on his dismissal, approved by the school board last fall after he left his bus unattended for four hours.

Police identified the other two suspects as the 52-year-old's brothers, Pedro Castro, 54, and Onil Castro, 50.

A relative of the three brothers said their family was "as blindsided as anyone else."

Juan Alicea said he hadn't been to the home of his brother-in-law Ariel Castro since the early 1990s but had eaten dinner with him at a different brother's house shortly before the arrests Monday.

Lucy Roman lives next to a house she said is shared by Pedro Castro and his mother. She said police arrested him Monday night.

"I feel sorry for her," Roman said of the mother. "She's a very nice lady."

Several residents said they saw Ariel Castro at a candlelight vigil for the missing girls.

Antony Quiros said he was at the vigil about a year ago and saw Castro comforting Gina DeJesus' mother.

One neighbor, Francisco Cruz, said he was with Castro the day investigators dug up a yard looking for the girls.

Castro told Cruz, "They're not going to find anyone there," Cruz recalled.

Castro's Facebook page identifies him as a Cleveland resident and says he attended the city's Lincoln-West High School. His interests include Virginia Beach, the Chinese crested dog breed and Cuban-born salsa singer Rey Ruiz.

On April 11, he wrote to congratulate "my Rosie Arlene" and wish her a fast recovery from giving birth to "a wonderful baby boy. That makes me Gramps for the fifth time. Luv you guys!"

___

Associated Press writers Mike Householder, Thomas J. Sheeran, Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Cleveland and Meghan Barr and Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.

Miss Sarajevo, 1993

The variety of dress that we have become accustomed to since globalization began has greatly increased our acceptance of differences in style. Difference has not always been so accepted. I have always remembered the story of the small riot caused by the first man to venture out in London wearing a top hat, and, on a more personal level, apprehension about the reaction of my peers kept my opera pumps in the closet for several years after their purchase.

Today of course most of that sensitivity towards what others might think tends to be confined to the social set in which we move. A man may be self conscious about wearing a fedora on the street, but he soon finds that he is the only one who is paying attention. That is a form of opportunity, if you will.

Clothing should be more than just practical, and house shoes are one of the better ways for a man to have fun with his clothes and pay lip service to tradition without raising too many eyebrows too high. The Albert slipper, for example, was often worn in the evening outside the bedroom and remains a perfectly acceptable choice today. A comfortable velvet slipper with a hard leather sole, Alberts are suitable for away from home activities that do not include long walks on pavement, such as long airplane flights, black tie events, evenings at a man's club or more basic occasions like dinners out.

Part of the tradition of the Albert is a design on the vamp, either initials or a representation of a hobby or lifestyle choice. Which brings us back to opportunity. Wit is perfectly acceptable, witness the embroidered skulls on G. J. Cleverley's Alberts in the photographs. Should a friend notice, let him in on the joke. No-one else will pay attention.

South Carolina Election Results 2013: Mark Sanford Wins First District Race:

Sanford 54.5%, Colbert Busch 45%

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) has won the race for the state’s 1st District congressional seat, CNN and the Associated Press reported. Sanford, who served as governor of the Palmetto State from 2003 to 2011, defeated businesswoman Elizabeth Colbert Busch (D). Sanford had said Tuesday that if he did not win, he would not run for office again, the Associated Press reported.

Update 10:22 p.m.: Following the USA Today report, Cleveland Police walked back on their previous statement and admitted that they had actually received two 911 calls regarding the Castro house, neither of which appears to be related to the kidnappings. The police statement reads:

Upon researching our call intake system extensively, only two calls for service from police are shown at that address. One call was from the resident, Ariel Castro, reporting a fight in the street. The second call was in relation to an incident regarding Ariel Castro and his duties as a bus driver.

Original Post: The case of the three women held captive for a decade in Cleveland reaches a new level of absurdity with a Tuesday night report detailing the many warning signs that police appear to have ignored. USA Today says that not one not two but at least three neighbors called the police between 2011 and 2012 to report suspicious activity at the house where Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight escaped their years-long imprisonment on Monday. We're not talking about the watering-the-flowers-at-midnight brand of suspicious activity. We're talking women-being-led-around-the-yard-on-dog-leashes suspicious. Some might just call that sick. (Add it to the list.)

Cleveland Police missed something. That much is clear. Despite the department's obviously extended effort to find the victims, the sheer volume of tips that would have led them to the Castro home is starting to looking pretty condemning. While some are calling the USA Today report "mostly hearsay," it's hard to believe that so many different neighbors would've made such similar calls. Some reported inexplicably large amounts of McDonalds being carried into the house by Ariel Castro, one of the three brothers and a school bus driver. Others reported seeing women standing in the windows of the Castro house and at least once incident of a woman pounding on a window, after which they called the police. 

The leash stuff really is twisted, though. "[Neighborhood] women told Lugo they called police because they saw three young girls crawling on all fours naked with dog leashes around their necks," the report reads. "Three men were controlling them in the backyard. The women told Lugo they waited two hours but police never responded to the calls." Again, this is just one of several incidents that neighbors say they reported to police, incidents that the Cleveland Police didn't follow up on. It's not just the USA Today piece that's making these claims either. Local news outlets are issuing similar reports.

Despite the volume of reports — The New York Times published a similarly condemning story after USA Today's — Cleveland Police not only say they did nothing wrong. A police spokesperson told CNN on Tuesday that they never even received any calls. Hard to believe? You bet. Understandably evasive? Sure. But it's certainly no get-out-of-jail free card. (Pardon the bad pun.) As Reuters' Jim Roberts put it, "Hard to see how this Cleveland story ends well for the Police Department there."

Have you heard? There’s a new swell in town named Gatsby, and he’s bringing flapper flair back into fashion. Baz Luhrmann’s latest cinematic spectacle—his take on The Great Gatsby—promises to be a sensational commercial for Prada and Brooks Brothers, who partnered with Luhrmann’s wife, costume designer Catherine Martin, on the film’s clothing.

But if you think flappers were only about drop-waist dresses, fox furs, cloche hats and excessive celebration, you’re missing the point. The trouble with Gatsby is, as beautifully as F. Scott Fitzgerald describes the opulent world of 1920s high society in his novel, he gets flappers all wrong. That’s because he portrays this liberated “New Woman” through the eyes of men.

Through their writings, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald—the young, glamorous literary couple du jour—defined the Jazz Age as we know it. Scott declared his Southern belle wife, whom he married in 1920, “the first American flapper.” The inspiration for Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, Zelda was known for her wild antics, like drunkenly jumping, fully clothed, into the fountain at New York’s Plaza Hotel.

In her June 1922 piece for Metropolitan Magazine called “Eulogy on the Flapper,” 22-year-old Zelda only hints at the radical edge of the flapper movement:

The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure, she covered her face with powder and paint because she didn’t need it and she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do.

But in the 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, Scott depicted a more dire view of flappers. Narrated by a man, the cautionary tale seems to warn against the wiles of The New Woman—the feminist ideal of an educated and sexually liberated woman that emerged in the 1900s. So instead of intelligent, independent women telling their own stories of rebelling and rejecting their mother’s values, you have male war buddies sharing how vapid, spoiled socialites carelessly wrecked their lives. In “A Feminist Reading of the Great Gatsby,” Soheila Pirhadi Tavandashti points out the pattern:

The novel abounds in minor female characters whose dress and activities identify them as incarnations of the New Woman, and they are portrayed as clones of a single, negative character type: shallow, exhibitionist, revolting and deceitful. For example, at Gatsby’s parties we see insincere, ‘enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names,’ as well as numerous narcissistic attention-seekers in various stages of drunken hysteria.  … a drunken young girl who has her ‘head stuck in the pool’ to stop her from screaming; and two drunken young wives who refuse to leave the party until their husbands, tired of the women’s verbal abuse, ‘lifted [them] kicking into the night.’

Indeed, Zelda, who was ultimately diagnosed with schizophrenia and died at an insane asylum, spent most of her marriage struggling to define herself as an artist and her own person. Her husband copied liberally from her journals and letters for his novels. When she finally wrote an autobiographical novel of her marriage in 1932, Save Me the Waltz, he edited out several of the stories that he intended to use for his own, 1934’s Tender Is the Night.

But Zelda, as fearless and trail-blazing as she was, can’t even embody the flapper movement fully. For one, it was not all white women, as NYU’s Modern America reports: “For the time being, the bob and the entire Flapper wardrobe, united blacks and whites under a common hip-culture.” Secondly, the flapper’s rebellion against Victorian sexual mores didn’t start among the high-society debutantes but in “working-class neighborhoods and radical circles in the early 1900s before it spread to middle-class youth and college campuses.”

The flapper movement wasn’t simply a fashion trend, as Emily Spivack at Smithsonian.com’s Threaded blog explains; it was a full-blown, grassroots feminist revolution. After an 80-year campaign by suffragists, women were finally granted the right to vote in the United States in 1920, when the 19th Amendment was passed. When the U.S. entered World War I in April 1917, many women entered the workforce, and when the soldiers returned in November 1918, their female counterparts were reluctant to give up their jobs.

As a result, young, unmarried women experienced far greater financial independence than they’d ever had before. Bicycles, and then cars, allowed them to get around town without a male escort. The spread of electric lighting allowed nightclubs to flourish, just as the Prohibition Amendment of 1919 forced them to go underground. Drinking at illegal “speakeasies” became a thrilling part of flapper culture.

Inspired by Cubist art and Art Nouveau haute couture, flappers rejected the dramatic, hyper-feminine S-shaped Edwardian silhouette created by tight, time-consuming corsets for sheath dresses that gave them boxy boyish shapes. This straight up-and-down figure was so extreme that curvier women went out of their way to squeeze into girdles and bandage their breasts flat. These radical women pushed the boundaries of androgyny even further by chopping off their long Edwardian locks for bobbed hairstyles.

At the same time, flappers revealed a shocking amount of skin. The older generation was absolutely outraged by the site of bare knees and arms, which flappers would highlight with loads of bangles. They were also appalled by the red lips, rouged cheeks and kohl-lined eyes of flappers, as previously only prostitutes had worn makeup. So flappers were derided for being both too masculine and too titillating.

Importantly, most flappers felt no particular hurry to get married, since they were working and able to provide for themselves. They dated casually, flirting, kissing, petting, and even had sex with men they had no interest in committing to. It’s not surprising that artistic men like Fitzgerald would find them so attractive—and terrifying enough to make them the center of his novel cautioning against self-indulgence and hedonism.

Flapper fashion had lost its edge by the mid-1920s, when department stores and mail-order companies had discovered the money-making potential of this radically new look. It wasn’t long before the Great Wall Street Crash of 1929, which led to the Great Depression of the 1930s, crushed the fun, free spirit of Jazz Age, forcing men and women alike to get less materialistic and more practical about money.

But the flapper’s influence on American culture could not be undone. She rejected the notion that women should be submissive and keep to their “separate sphere” of the home. She proved that women could work and live independent from men—and party just as hard. She opened up new conversations about dating, sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases.

Keep all this in mind while you watch the new Gatsby. Like the 1926 Sears catalog, Hollywood is exploiting an ever-popular cultural phenomenon to sell you something. These vain, manipulative characters wrecking havoc onscreen in their fabulous Prada shifts are not the true flappers.

Cover of Flapper magazine from 1922, showing actor Billie Dove in football uniform, from Wikimedia Commons

This is an edited version of a longer piece with more illustrations at Collectors Weekly.

 

Tilda Swinton on the set of David Bowie’s music video The Stars (Are Out Tonight) photographed by Floria Sigismondi

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has improved his signature (Salon)

A team of researchers has come up with a list of two dozen “ultraconserved words” that have survived 150 centuries. It includes some predictable entries: “mother,” “not,” “what,” “to hear” and “man.” It also contains surprises: “to flow,” “ashes” and “worm.” The existence of the long-lived words suggests there was a “proto-Eurasiatic” language that was the common ancestor to about 700 contemporary languages that are the native tongues of more than half the world’s people. “We’ve never heard this language, and it’s not written down anywhere,” said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary theorist at the University of Reading in England who headed the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “But this ancestral language was spoken and heard. People sitting around campfires used it to talk to each other.”

trainer-vortex:

ＴＲＥＥＳＴＡＲＳ

T̷̨̨́̋͒́̽ͩ͒̈́ͣ̾̒ͪ͞҉̙̻̰̖̞̖̝̟̝̱͚̳̙͍͈̥̟̜ͅR͓̺͚͔̱͕͚͔̟̥̥̗̹̲̖͉͖̈ͤͣ̃̈́͠E̸̛ͫͦͧ̒ͫͯͧ̂̐̎ͬ̒͌̄̉̋̊̀҉͈̤̩̦͓̠̳̠͚͎͎̮̜̠̥̺͚Ȩ̴͂ͯ̊̔ͧ͒̈̔ͫ͆ͨ҉̡̻̣̹͇̺̮̼͇͈͜S̡͓̦̼̻̟̖̽͐̑ͤ̈́̅͗ͥͭ͋̊͟͡ͅT̸̶͎͇̜̜̱̯̜̮͇̗̟͈͇̓ͬͩͩͦ͐̋̿̉ͧͩ̎ͧͫ͛ͦ̀̚̕͜A̵̛̤̪̮͍̠ͯ̐̃͛̈̂̍̿̌ͦ̊̋ͨ̓̅͟͜͡R̴̨̡̧͇̝̣̱̳̰͈̯͕̫̻̫̱͓̩̪̖̆͒ͪ̓͟ͅͅS̒ͮ́ͫ̅̉̽̋̃̇̂̏ͥ̋ͫͨ͠͏͙͓̺͇̬͓̞̘̲̹͎͍̤̫̟̩́͢ͅͅ

'Wonderland' began in 2009 as a series of works dedicated to the memory of her mother, an English teacher "who spent over thirty years inspiring generations of children." 

While grieving the  loss of her mom Mitchell took to "creating an unexplained storybook without words, dedicated to her, that would echo the fragments of the fairytales she read to me constantly as a child."

Now four years later the storybook is nearing completion and it is filled with 75 stunning works.














Wow! Wow! Wow! and just think - this is only the bookish part of 'Wonderland'

Prints available here

Kirsty Mitchell's website

Victoria amazonica water lilies can reach 20 feet in circumference and support up to 300 pounds each. Perching children atop the massive leaves was all the rage in water gardens of the time. Salem, North Carolina, c. 1892.
Photograph by Frank Hege, National Geographic

The bar with a tardis.


Mondays- $4 drafts
 Tuesdays- $4 well
drinks Wednesdays- $5 Jameson all night long
 Fridays 4-8pm- Teachers Appreciation Happy Hour


The most awesome of steampunk tap systems serving local craft beers.




It's larger on the inside.


Jetpack by Doc.


The Best Little Music Venue in Brooklyn


Music 7 nights a week.


Steam punk guitar by Joe Jung.


Bands from around the corner and around the world.

holzmantweed:

iamababs:

People keep saying “there should be a Doctor Who bar!” 

May I introduce you to Brooklyn’s “The Way Station”?

For the record, the Tardis photographed above really is larger on the inside.

I shit thee not.

Larger.  On.  The. In. Side.

Plus, it’s been autographed by Matt Smith and Karen Gillian.

On the inside.

Which is larger than the outside.

I have been inside it and I can attest to the truth of this statement.

RSS is dead! Long live RSS! This interview was recorded the week after Google announced the death of beloved feed parsing app, Google Reader. The headlines regarding Reader’s demise  have been predictably and wonderfully hyperbolic. Elena Bulygina and Anton Tolchanov, two of the three co-founders of The Old Reader, help us make sense of a post-Google Reader world. Props to @ChazFrench for […]

The Answer Is No is a Twitterbot that calls out shoddy journalism by answering headlines that end in a question mark with the answer: “No.” It is based on Betteridge’s law of headlines, which states that “any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” As the law’s originator, British technology journalist Ian Betteridge explains it:

The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it. Which, of course, is why it’s so common in the Daily Mail.

Does Laughing Squid use question marks in our headlines? No. *Unless we’re mentioning the title of an artwork, video, or other work that is in the form of a question.

No. RT @slate: Is psychiatry a fundamentally dishonest profession? slate.me/10d5Al0

— The Answer Is No (@YourTitleSucks) May 5, 2013

No. RT @salon: Is the new Superman movie Pentagon propaganda? slnm.us/ZUV9itI via @alternet

— The Answer Is No (@YourTitleSucks) May 6, 2013

No. RT @theatlantic: Study: Does yoga have a cellular effect on our bodies? theatln.tc/11FLyw2

— The Answer Is No (@YourTitleSucks) May 3, 2013

No. RT @forbes: Can Google convince teens to pay for YouTube videos? bit.ly/17IqMjc

— The Answer Is No (@YourTitleSucks) May 7, 2013

via Jason Eppink

The catering riders were very comprehensive, so Hargreaves decided to narrow down on some of the quirky and unusual requests found in the contracts. To challenge himself, Hargreaves partnered with prop stylist Caitlin Levin to compose the rider items in the manner of Flemish still life paintings.

Not only predicted the hardware design of Google Glass, but also the glasshole personality of its users. (Thanks to Kieran Healy.)

See also: Fred Armisen on SNL Weekend Update, reviewing Glass.

It’s Felis bipedus, spotted on Google Street View and posted here.

I have no idea how this happened, but I’m sure a tech-savvy reader can explain. It apparently involves the compression of images by the Google Street View cars, a vehicle that I never thought about.  Matthew Cobb, who sent me the photo and links, also noted that “There’s an art form whereby people tool around on street view and see what they can find. Some are funny, others beautiful, others bleak.”  You can see examples here and here.

The second link explains how they make the street views, a process involving a fleet of hybrid automobiles that cruise the world, each carrying nine cameras on a single pole, with pictures snapped every 10-20 meters. The photos are electronically stitched together, probably explaining the moggie above.

Frankenstein has many references to religion.  The Bible also has many references to religion.

Mr. Dalliard has created an informative flowchart of Simulated Reality in Movies. A larger version of the image is available at his website. Previously, we posted about another one of Mr. Dalliad’s flowcharts, Time Travel in Movies.

image via Mr. Dalliard

via I Love Charts

The funeral home where 26-year-old Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is having the hardest time finding somewhere to bury him. The city of Cambridge, Mass. where the Tsarnaev family settled when they came to the U.S. from Dagestan won't take him. 

The Boston Globe reports the city has declined a request from Peter Stefan, the owner of the Worcester, Mass. funeral home where Tamerlan's body currently resides. Stefan told reporters earlier Sunday that he would ask Cambridge to arrange something for Tsarnaev after a number of cemeteries denied his requests to bury the suspect there. Earlier reports said cemeteries in New Jersey and Connecticut also denied requests to bury Tamerlan there. Tamerlan's uncle Ruslan (seen above) arrived with three men at the funeral home Sunday morning to prepare Tamerlan's body for burial, per muslim tradition, despite not having a destination lined up. Stefan has said that if Cambridge denied Tamerlan be buried there, he would appeal to state officials for help arranging a grave site for the suspect. 

In Sunday's edition of The New York Times, Tamerlan was painted as an overbearing older brother who imposed his influence on the younger 19-year-old surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Tamerlan used to force Dzhokhar and his friends read scripture and exercise if they were to hang out at their home instead of playing video games and hanging out like normal teenagers. As Tamerlan's devotion to Islam became more intense and radicalized, Dzhokhar showed signs of his brother's influence but avoided speaking about his family with his close friends. 

GUNS!!!!! Right, ladies?? You like GUNS, don’t you? What do you mean, “Not really, no”? All Americans like GUNS because GUNS are totems of our essential Americanness. Consider the great GUN movies through the history of the American cinema — Top Gun, The Naked Gun, The Guns of Navarone, and, of course, Thunder Gun. They all have the word “gun” right there in the title, but they may as well be stamped with the Stars ‘n Stripes. Liking — no, loving — guns with a strange materialistic fixation is the most patriotic thing American citizens can do, but we need to be honest about something: up until now, gun culture has largely excluded women.

Read more...

This cocktail is called an old-fashioned because that's pretty much what it is, and ordering it at any bar at any time is something only special sorts of dickheads do, because they know it's a pain in the ass to prepare -- there is a sugar cube and muddling involved.

Baby Monster