Aebmiller

Brooklyn-based Pop Chart Lab just released their latest print and it’s all about bicycles. The 18″x24″, $27 print features 75 detailed illustrations showing The Evolution Of Bicycles from 1780 to present day. From Victorian Era, to BMX, to mountain bikes, this print tracks the history of your favorite two-wheeled mode of transportation.

You can even finish the print off with their new custom framing that lets you choose from three frame colors, their easy-to-hang rail system, or their new panel mounts.

Looking into the background of the idea that modifiers are immoral, I read Richard Lanham's Style: An Anti-Textbook (available as an ebook from amazon and google), and found this description of writing instruction:

What we have now is a tedious, repetitive, unoriginal body of dogma—clarity, sincerity, plainness, duty—tarted up every week in a new, disposable paperback dress. The dogma of clarity, as we shall see, is based on a false theory of knowledge; its scorn of ornament, on a misleading taxonomy of style; the frequent exhortations to sincerity, on a naïve theory of the self; and the unctuous moralizing, on a Boy Scout didacticism.

I can't resist quoting Lanham at greater length — though you should keep in mind that his book dates from 1974:

[I]t is not earnestness that composition texts lack. It is joy. Their earnestness lies upon the spirit like wet cardboard. The moral imperative above all characterizes these texts, a bizarre class of endeavor which, as I made my way through them, spontaneously christened themselves “The Books.”

Good prose, The Books tell us, is a duty. Their conception of prose is utilitarian and moral. If language is the means of conscious life, then Good Prose, like Cleanliness, must stand next to Godliness. This perpetual moralizing about language haunts all modern writing about style. [...]

Thus in The Books, in most writing about style, the imperative mood prevails. Here is a list of exhortative chapter headings from one of The Books:

Do not take yourself too seriously
Consider your readers
Make your writing talk
Be a good mechanic
Sharpen your thesis
Believe in your thesis
Build your essay in three parts

What can you say? What can you ever say to Polonius? A student, if he is on scholarship or has an ambitious mother, may actually try to earn all these merit badges. But if he has any spirit, he’ll murmur a well-chosen four-letter word and go out and get stoned. Or if he is exceptionally thoughtful, he may explore the contradictions embedded in these commandments:

What is “too seriously”? Why three parts? How can I believe in a thesis obviously hoked up for English 1? Write from a suitable design? You might as well say “Be intelligent.” In fact that’s what all The Books’ mottoes come down to, isn’t it? Why not just pass out wall plaques reading “Don’t Screw It Up Again!”

Students of style are bombarded with self-canceling clichés. Here’s a quintessence taken from The Books published in the last hundred years:

Be plain; Avoid “fine writing”
Avoid bluntness; Articulate your sentences gracefully
Make your writing spontaneous
Revise!
Be yourself
Imitate the masters
Write from your own experience
Read widely (“A man will turn over half a library to make one book,” Samuel Johnson is repeatedly quoted as saying)
Make an outline
Don’t over-outline
Be serious without being stuffy
Study spoken speech
Writing and Speaking are different things
What the prose writer needs is a temperament nicely balanced between the sprightly and the phlegmatic, a lively mind and a deliberate judgment. His ideas will flow easily, but not too impetuously.

And, on a larger scale, Dickens and Buffon advise that writing talent is an infinite capacity for taking pains. Edward S. Martin disagrees: “I don’t think writing can be taught much beyond the rudiments. The rest of it seems to come from the teacher who runs the singing classes for the birds.” All this advice, totaled up, yields “Nothing succeeds like success.” “Success,” of course, is never specifically defined. Sir Herbert Read, in English Prose Style, writes:

But is there an abstract entity, an absolute or “pure” style, to which all styles approximate, or against which all styles are judged? I think there probably is, but it follows from my definition of prose that such a style can never be defined. (p. xii)

This difficulty doesn’t bother Sir Herbert as much as it ought to. For it exposes what we might call the Fallacy of Normative Prose. All prose style cherishes a single goal, and that goal is to disappear. The aim is the same for all: clarity, denotation, conceptual fidelity. The imperative of imperatives in The Books is “Be clear.” The best style is the never-noticed. Ideally, prose style should, like the state under Marxism, wither away, leaving the plain facts shining unto themselves.

One of the difficulties Freshman Composition has faced, then, though The Books take no notice of it, is trying to teach the invisible, to discuss something that, ideally, isn’t there at all. In a real and literal sense, The Books have argued their subject out of existence. They do not teach style, they abolish it. And it is around this fascinating vacuum that the American fetish for correctness, the agony over those droll Victorian antimacassars “usage” and “abusage,” so resolutely assembles.

Anyone who dips into The Books soon sees that their advice runs to a dreary sameness. Yet successful prose styles vary as widely as the earth. A hundred different styles cannot be accurately described by a single set of apothegms, eulogistic or dyslogistic. That the transparent prose norm, that reified nonentity Expository Prose, leaves out all prose fiction and nine-tenths of nonfiction prose ought at least to have troubled someone. People seldom write simply to be clear. They have designs on their fellow men. Pure prose is as rare as pure virtue, and for the same reasons. The classical discussions of style concern themselves less with clarity than with more common human purposes, with advantage and pleasure. But The Books, written for a world as yet unfallen, depict a ludicrous process like this: “I have an idea. I want to present this as a gift to my fellow human beings. I fix this thought clearly in mind. I follow the rules. Out comes a prose that gift-wraps thought in transparent paper.” If this sounds like a travesty, it’s because it is one. Yet it dominates prose instruction in America. Prose composition masquerades as a one-step operation that aims to communicate concepts. [...]

What we have now is a tedious, repetitive, unoriginal body of dogma—clarity, sincerity, plainness, duty—tarted up every week in a new, disposable paperback dress. The dogma of clarity, as we shall see, is based on a false theory of knowledge; its scorn of ornament, on a misleading taxonomy of style; the frequent exhortations to sincerity, on a naïve theory of the self; and the unctuous moralizing, on a Boy Scout didacticism. Instruction in style ought to concentrate on what can be taught. Goethe, in his conversations with Eckermann, is reputed to have said that “if any man would write in a noble style let him first possess a noble soul.” Wonderful, but not much help. It may be, though some wise men have denied it, that virtue can be taught, but it seems unlikely that it can be taught in Freshman Composition. Nor sincerity. Nor spontaneity. Nor true grit. What can be taught is words. And they must be taught in the full matrix of human utterance, written and spoken, accompanied by a theory of style equally broad. A student bright enough to be taught style needs a context for it beyond didactic precept, an intelligible and sound context. Style cannot be taught only by lists of self-contradicting proverbs, strings of dos and don’ts. Students so instructed are not being taught; they are being housebroken.

I'm not sure what Lanham means by "the full matrix of human utterance", but we can hope that it includes some concern for the order and arrangement of words as well as their selection.

Anyhow, I like the idea of those wall plaques reading "Don't screw it up again!"– maybe in the lolcat version, for added modernity. And I'll have more to say later about the sinfulness of modifiers.

These interior photos by Kai Fagerström depict wild forest inhabitants who have made derelict human-owned dwellings their own – domestic portraits-at-home with a undomesticated twist.

An abandoned series of small shacks and quaint cottages in Finland, slowly reclaimed by nature, show hints of slowly-invading of plant life,  but the even faster introduction of woodland animals including squirrels, foxes, owls and more.

This surprising variety of crafty creatures have adopted and reshaped the existing spaces to suit their own needs, tunneling through vents and fireplaces, nesting and resting between walls and below floors.

Though this photography project started with a few quick shots in a set of cabins in the woods near the photographer’s summer home, the deserted spaces have turned out to be so rich in potential wildlife portraits that the results now populate an entire book of images (The House in the Woods).

Great patience is required to wait and take just the right desired shots, which are so well-composed you could almost imagine the animals posed to have their picture taken. “Deserted buildings are so full of contradictions [and] I am fascinated by the way nature reclaims spaces that were, essentially, only ever on loan to humans.”

Each image has a story, often elaborate, about how it was taken. About the last one above, for instance, from National Geographic: “On a summer night a family of badgers file into the kitchen from a tunnel they dug under the fireplace. It took four years before Fagerström finally caught the skittish, nocturnal weasels. For this shot he set his camera on a windowsill, then stood outside on a ladder for hours before pressing the shutter via remote control.”

“Me and my brothers made this for our parents 25th anniversary present. I think we were more amused than they, but it still hangs in their house today.”

(submitted by Kevin)

“I am about eleven in this picture. I had just finished washing my mother’s car and was walking back to the house to go inside to pour out the water. On my way inside, I tripped and the soapy water sloshed up and into my face. For some reason, this was a catastrophe. I was also, for some reason, convinced that if I opened my eyes, the soap would get into them and blind me. I distinctly recall arguing with my father (who always had his camera at hand and saw this as a golden moment to capture) that I would, indeed, lose my eyesight, even though he kept saying I wouldn’t. At this point, I was crushed that nobody would believe me, nobody had the heart to comfort me, and nobody had the care to hand me a towel (I think I ended up using the sleeve of my sweater).

I’d like to say that’s just soapy water dripping off my chin, but with the amount of blubbering going on, it’s quite likely it’s a mixture of both soapy water and drool. And yes, if you’re wondering, this moment still comes up in conversations with my father. (My mother says there are too many similar ones for her to recall.)”

(submitted by Heather)

I have to give Kim’s daughter credit here for saying what most TLC/Lifetime viewers are shouting at their television screens while watching the antics of the “Momagers” behind all those would-be dancers/ice skaters/gymnasts/pageant queens. I’m with you, kid!

related: Never put nature aside for television

(via CargoCollective)

Today I found out about the one-legged woman who was “the most dangerous of allied spies.”

Her name was Virginia Hall, an American spy born in Baltimore in 1906. She attended both Barnard College and Radcliffe College—two prestigious all-women’s higher education facilities—and continued her studies at schools in France, Germany, and Austria. She had dreams of a career in foreign service. At just twenty-five years old, she was appointed to the position of Consular Service clerk at the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland and seemed to be well on her way to accomplishing her goals.

Unfortunately, shortly after her appointment, she sustained an injury in a hunting accident—she accidentally shot herself in her left leg. Repairing the leg was beyond the medical technology of the time, and in 1933 it was amputated from the knee down. Hall was given a prosthetic wooden “peg leg” to use instead, and seemed to take it all in stride. She later nicknamed the prosthetic leg, which she would wear the rest of her life, “Cuthbert.”

Unfortunately, the disability made her ineligible to pursue her career further. For the next several years, she worked as a clerical assistant for the State Department in Turkey, Italy, and Estonia, before “hitting the glass ceiling” in her field of work despite a few stunning bullet points on her resume, such as that she was fluent in Italian, German, and French. She resigned in 1939 just as war started to inch across Europe. Being the powerful, ambitious young woman that she was, Hall didn’t flee the continent for the safer shores of her homeland. Rather, she volunteered as an ambulance driver in France until the French surrendered in 1940. From there, she evacuated to England where she took up another clerical position at the American Embassy in London.

Hall soon caught the attention of the British Special Operations Executive which was looking for agents to work with the French resistance. Thus, in 1941, Hall posed as a correspondent for the New York Post when she arrived in Lyon, France. Her code name was Marie Monin, and she was the SOE’s very first female agent in France. She spent the next fourteen months providing courier services, helping downed fliers and runaway POWs escape, and obtaining materials for clandestine presses. The sale of press materials, such as paper and ink, was prohibited, making it difficult for resistance newspapers to create and spread their ideas. Thanks to help from Hall and others like her, by 1942 resistance papers had reached over two million readers in France. All the while, Hall continued to send documents to the New York Post to maintain her cover.

It was during this time that the Germans first became aware of Virginia Hall. French double agents had informed them of the “limping lady” who located drop zones for money and weapons and had established and strengthened resistance networks across France. Needless to say, her laundry list of successful missions, helping to  boost the French resistance, were starting to make the Germans rather upset. A “wanted” poster appeared bearing her likeness, and the Gestapo had clear orders: “She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her.”

Germany seized France in 1942. The SOE said it was too dangerous for Hall to remain in the country, especially since the United States had since joined the war effort, and in her current disguise she could be tortured or killed as the enemy, whether they discovered she was “the limping lady” or not. She escaped to Spain by walking across the snowy Pyrenees Mountains on her one good leg that November. In a communique to headquarters on her journey, Hall said simply, “Cuthbert is giving me trouble, but I can cope.” She needed to use a codename for her wooden leg because the Germans were so intent on finding her that she worried saying “wooden leg” would give away her position if the message was intercepted. Headquarters misunderstood her meaning and replied, “If Cuthbert is giving you trouble, have him eliminated.”

When she arrived in Spain after a grueling journey, she was thrown into prison because she didn’t have any entry papers. Six weeks later, she finally managed to smuggle out a letter to the embassy in Barcelona alerting them to her predicament. Hall continued with her work for the SOE in Spain after she was released, but after four months, she requested to be transferred elsewhere. She wrote:

“I thought I could help in Spain, but I’m not doing a job. I am living pleasantly and wasting time. It isn’t worthwhile and after all, my neck is my own. If I’m willing to get a crick in it, I think that’s my prerogative.”

Hall made a convincing argument, and after another brief stint in London—becoming proficient in Morse code—she was sent again to France via a British torpedo boat. This time, she was working for the United States Office of Strategic Services. The mission was incredibly dangerous; the Germans were still looking for her and if she was found she would likely lose her life. Taking precautions, she disguised herself as an elderly French milkmaid by dying her hair grey, wearing full skirts to hide her small frame, and walking with a slow, shuffling gait to disguise her limp. She made goat cheese and went into town to sell it—all the while listening to the oblivious German soldiers chatter about their work.

Forced to stay on the move by German forces attempting to track her radio signals, Hall proved a slippery spy and eluded capture. When she wasn’t listening in on German soldier’s banter, she trained three battalions of French resistance fighters to wage guerrilla warfare against the Germans. Before Allied forces overtook her team, Hall reported that they had destroyed rail lines, phone lines, bridges, and freight trains, sabotaging infrastructure necessary to German occupation. The team was credited with killing over 150 German soldiers and capturing 500 more.

For all her efforts during WWII, she was made an honorary member of the Order of the British Empire. She was also awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, one of the United States’ highest military honours—the only civilian woman to be awarded the medal during World War II. President Truman wanted a public party to celebrate the award, but Hall opted for a private ceremony with just her mother and General William Joseph Donovan in attendance. She said she was “still operational and most anxious to get busy.” She didn’t want a public ceremony to make her face known.

In 1951, Hall joined the CIA, working as a French parliamentary intelligence analyst. It was quite a feat for a woman who thought she had reached the glass ceiling a decade before. By the time she retired in 1966, Hall had shattered the glass ceiling and expectations for women in her line of work—and all on just one leg.

If you’re interested in reading in much more detail about this remarkable women, check out: The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America’s Greatest Female Spy, by Judith L Pearson

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

• When the CIA Attempted to Use Cats as Spies and the Hilarious Results
• The Female Prostitute That Rose to Become One of the Most Powerful Pirates in History and Whose Armada Took on the Chinese, British, and Portuguese Navies… and Won
• WWII Files: Audrey Hepburn and the Dutch Resistance
• Former Major Leaguer Moe Berg was Once a Secret Agent for the U.S.
• Julia Child was a Top Secret Research Assistant to the Predecessor to the CIA

Expand for References

It’s nice to say that working or not working is simply a matter of personal choice, but in reality it’s a highly gendered one — and one that puts women at a disadvantage when it comes to stability, equality and independence.

All of those factors push women in certain directions and men in others, and inevitably lead to inequality and resentment. Warner’s piece details it well: the wife opts out, only to find that her marriage starts to become a traditional one, with her husband expecting her to keep a perfect June Cleaver house in addition to taking care of the children. She’s resentful of that expectation, feeling like her contributions are under-valued and like he doesn’t find her descriptions of her days particularly stimulating. She knows that without her taking care of everything on the home front, he simply wouldn’t be able to succeed as highly and dedicate as much time to his career, but that goes largely unrecognized.

On the husband’s end, he doesn’t understand why he’s working 50-plus hours a week to financially support a grown woman as well as their children only to come home to the expectation that he do 50% of the housework and support his wife’s unpaid volunteer efforts. He’s resentful of the fact that his wife appears to have all the “choices” while he foots all the bills. Neither of them are unreasonable. Both of them are unhappy. Neither is a selfish monster.

When those relationships end in divorce, though, it’s largely the opting-out wife who’s left high and dry. A small segment of very wealthy women who volunteer on coveted boards in large cities can leverage their connections into full-time work. Most, though, find themselves with outdated resumes and a tough job market. And that’s not an entirely unfair situation. Fields change, jobs evolve and skill sets atrophy, and if you take a decade off of work it’s not reasonable to expect to come back in at the exact same position and with the same salary as you left.

In the meantime, though, the husbands with the privilege of wives who stay home have been able to dedicate even more time and energy to their jobs than husbands who by necessity have to pitch in more around the home. The men with at-home wives are the ones who are better situated to show up at the 7am meeting, attend the late client dinner or go to a networking event well into the evening. By the time they get divorced, they’ve already earned reputations as hard workers. What they’ve missed out on, though, is a life outside of the office and a chance to cultivate deep and life-changing relationships with their partner and children. It’s a tired cliche at this point, but few people on their death beds wish they’d spent more time at work.

In other words: the current model, where women are much more likely to drop out of the workforce, is bad for everyone. But it’s particularly financially perilous for women. Unfortunately, that advice doesn’t tend to resonate, because few people believe they’ll end up divorced. Even outside of divorce, though, opting out of paid work entirely and making oneself financially dependent on a male partner inherently puts women in a traditional role. For better or worse we live in a capitalist society, and money is power.

For large swaths of the American population, this entire conversation is non-issue: most people, female or male, have to work to support themselves, and “opting out” isn’t an option. But for those who do have a “choice,” it’s worth evaluating what’s sacrificed when one decides to assume complete financial dependency on a partner. And it’s worth evaluating the circumstances that lead one to decide such dependency is a desirable thing. Is it an inflexible job? The assumption that childcare is your primary duty? A partner who simply isn’t pulling his weight?

Similar Posts:

• Divorcing ourselves from traditional marriage by Jill February 4, 2013
• Purity Culture and Sexual Assault by Jill May 10, 2013
• The rise of female breadwinners, and the betrayals of U.S. policy by Jill June 7, 2013
• Selfish singles are good for society. by Jill December 11, 2012
• Is an all-female Supreme Court in the near future? by Jill December 3, 2012

Why All Humans Deserve to Be Eaten By Sharks

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*Edited at 6:45pm to correct a few miscalculations.

I'm not volunteering to be eaten or anything (and sharks aren't really all that into eating people anyway), but I am being volunteering to be EATEN BY GUILT FOR WHAT MY SPECIES IS DOING.

Woah, maybe guilt is made of tiny sharks and they are getting their revenge.

This Day In History: August 6, 1855

Monday, August 6, 1855 was an election day in Louisville, Kentucky. The political field looked a bit different then, with the two main parties being the Democrats and the Know-Nothings (an offshoot of the Whig Party), but they faced a lot of the same issues that the Democrats and Republicans do today- they just didn’t get along. An election is enough to get anyone’s blood boiling, and back in 1855 a number of issues came to a head, resulting in some of the worst riots in Louisville history.

The Know-Nothings were also called “American Nativists.” It was largely comprised of white protestants whose families had already laid down their roots in the United States. They considered themselves to have old American blood, however old American blood could be at the time. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, attracted a lot of the recent Irish and German immigrants who were mostly Catholic. Thousands of immigrants had settled in Louisville and the Know-Nothings weren’t very happy about it. They thought that the immigrants would “undermine the American way of life.”

Over a decade before Bloody Monday, the German editor of a Louisville newspaper urged his fellow immigrants to assert their right to vote by arming themselves as they headed to the polls to vote in the 1844 presidential election. The editor was later forced to flee after native-born U.S. citizens gathered in front of his office, but the “damage” was done. James K. Polk, a Democrat, won the election instead of Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, a member of the Whig party. The result of the election was blamed on the votes of German and Irish immigrants.

By 1849, a group called the National Central Union of Free Germans (NCUFG) was headquartered in Louisville, urging immigrants to retain their native language and customs. The NCUFG also promoted “wild” notions like women’s suffrage, the abolition of slavery, and equality for black men. The party that would soon be known as the Know-Nothings were infuriated because the immigrants weren’t conforming to their idea of how Americans should behave or think.

By 1852, the Whig party dissolved, divided over the issue of slavery. The Know-Nothing Party was officially formed, named because when asked about what their organization did, members were told to say “I don’t know” in order to keep business secret. In truth, one of their main goals was to keep Catholics out of office, as they feared the power of the Pope an didn’t want the Catholic Church to butt in on American business. They were successful. On April 7, 1855, Know-Nothing John Barbee was elected Mayor of Louisville and by early May the party had infiltrated the county’s city hall.

About a month before Bloody Monday, a mob searched a local Catholic church for weapons they believed were stored there, but they didn’t find anything. A few days later, almost all of the Catholic teachers were fired by the Louisville Public School Board. In a local newspaper, George Prentice called his fellow United States citizens to arms in an advertisement that might intimidate the staunchest of immigrants: “Let the foreigners keep their elbows to themselves to-day at the polls.  Americans are you all ready?  We think we hear you shout ‘ready,’ ‘well fire!’ and may heaven have mercy on the foe.” On the day of the election, the Know-Nothing party took control of the polls by setting up thugs at the doors and demanding to see yellow tickets—a sign that the person was with the Know-Nothing Party. All of these actions were backed up by the Louisville city police.

Needless to say, the immigrants weren’t exactly happy about being prevented from voting. One man, George Berg, was beaten to death by a group of angry Irishmen, while a German man fired shots at a passing carriage on the corner of Shelby and Green Streets. After the first shots were fired, the Know-Nothings came out in uncontrollable mobs. They burned a whole row of houses in the Irish district, burning several people to death and hanging a few more before tossing the bodies into the flames. An old Irishman was pulled from his bed and killed for “being an Irishman and a Catholic.”

To his credit, Mayor John Barbee, despite being a Know-Nothing himself, saved two Catholic churches from destruction and called for an end to the bloodshed. As the riots wound down, many Irish and German immigrants were taken to jail, though no one was ever convicted of any crimes. All in all, about 22 people were killed, many more injured, and dozens of buildings had burned down. Most of the dead were Irish and German, making it likely that the Know-Nothings did more damage than those they took to jail. It was one of the deadliest social riots in Louisville history. Though he wasn’t officially charged, George Prentice faced a lot of backlash after the riots because people believed that the articles in his newspaper urged people to fight, so many, seeking someone to point the finger at, blamed him for starting the riots.

Obviously, the Know-Nothings won the election since they wouldn’t let anyone supporting the other party in to vote. The riots and the election outcome caused over 10,000 immigrants to pack up their bags and high-tail it out of Louisville.

The Know-Nothings disbanded just a few years later in 1857, torn over the issue of slavery.  As for the people of Louisville, a decade after Bloody Monday, they elected a German mayor.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

• Why We Have a 7 Day Week and the Origin of the Names of the Days of the Week
• One of the Great Practical Jokes of the 19th Century, the Berners Street Hoax
• Abraham Lincoln Established the Secret Service the Day He was Assassinated
• The Origin of the American Democratic Party
• John Wilkes Booth’s Brother Saved Abraham Lincoln’s Son’s Life

Expand for References

Are you looking for a nanny? Are you not particularly concerned about your child’s welfare? If so, our terrible nanny may be the perfect fit for you and your family. Trained in tango, bartending, and a host of other skills entirely unrelated to the care of a human being, she’s a great nanny if you just want to get away from your baby, and it’s either her or the street.

In six months of working for us, she was never on time. She was always on the phone, our child hated her, and she stole from us. She claimed to have years of experience, but probably didn’t. She enjoyed reality television, leaving our baby unsupervised, and starting small fires. It’s a wonder she hasn’t been locked up. And she’s available immediately.

Look, everyone else says their nanny is the best—but by the laws of statistics, they can’t all be. If you’re tired of the comparisons, and don’t feel like you need to justify your decision to outsource the care of your child to a stranger with no marketable skills that allow her to make more than the pittance you’re aiming to pay, I don’t think our nanny could be more perfect for your situation.

And, no, she doesn’t know CPR, or how to lock a baby gate, or speak any languages at all, including her native one, but she means well—at least when she’s not intoxicated—and isn’t that what’s important? She may invite her boyfriend over—but that’s just one more pair of eyes on your child. And she may park your kid in front of the TV all day—but you’d do it too. That’s why you’re hiring her—so you can pretend your baby is being taken care of. And he is, sort of. Isn’t that enough?

She’s really good at texting. She fixed our stroller once after it was hit by a bus. She makes amazing mojitos. And she’s willing to be paid in cash. So what are you waiting for? Hope it’s not her indictment, because we’re not sure about her availability after that point. She has a driver’s license, although we would discourage giving her access to your car since she may try to leave the state. She wears really nice shoes.

She’s like a member of the family. The side we don’t talk to. She never gets sick, or at least she doesn’t tell us when she does. She knows all the other nannies in the neighborhood and tries to get them to cover for her when she’s too hung over to work. She taught our baby that crying never gets you anywhere, and how to read the number off his parents’ credit card.

So if you really can’t wait to go back to work, and honestly didn’t realize this baby thing was going to be so time-consuming, give her a call and let her know you’d like her to come in for an interview. She probably won’t show up, but then tell her you’ve got drugs and she’ll be right over. Other parents may try to awkwardly tell you she’s a bad influence, but at least it’s all out in the open. There’s no hiding. Yes, that’s a face tattoo. But it’s tasteful.

We’d like to find her a new good job. Okay, she’s threatening us if we don’t. So, please, reach out. On the plus side, she breastfeeds.

Hermit crabs carry crystal-clear cityscapes on their backs, thanks to a series of 3D-printed shells by Aki Inomata. The artist scans the insides of hermit crab shells to ensure a perfect fit, and then prints skylines of cities like New York, Thailand and Greece in plastic using a high-accuracy 3D printer.

“I overheard that the land of the former French Embassy in Japan had been French until October 2009; that it was to become Japanese for the following fifty years, and then be returned to France,” says the artist. “This concept made me think of hermit crabs, which change their shells.”

“The same piece of land is peacefully transferred from one country to the other. These kinds of things take place without our being aware of it. On the other hand, similar events are not unrelated to us as individuals. For example acquiring nationality, moving, and migration.”

“The hermit crabs wearing the shelters I built for them, which imitate the architecture of various countries, appeared to be crossing various international borders. Though the body of the hermit crab is the same, according to the shell it is wearing, its appearance changes completely. It’s as if they were asking, ‘Who are you?’”

3D-printed shells for domestic hermit crabs could help preserve the ocean’s shell supply. MakerBot created ‘Project Shellter,’ a quest to create these shells, which resulted in some highly unusual options including neon colors and origami shapes.

Watch Manhattan multiply and San Francisco soar into the sky in a series of growth animation videos that show the expansion of cities over more than a century. Created by Calgary-based real estate company Cube Cities, the videos utilize developer-reported data of building construction dates to show buildings pop upon top of city maps.

3D mapping technology from Google Earth provides the base of the videos, and animations show construction as it occurs through each decade. The videos highlight the busiest decades for growth, which is most visible in New York City during the 1920s, San Francisco during the ’60s and Toronto during the ’70s.

Next Page:
City Evolution Watch Urban Growth In 3d Visualizations

Lorna in Adelaide, Australia found this classified ad in the city newspaper a while back. “It still makes absolutely no sense to me,” she says, “but I enjoy the passive-aggressive undertones. (‘You insulted me after I did you a favour!’)”

related: What kind of MULE is it that goes to a Gypsy fortune teller?

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Fact 536: “Seuss” in “Dr. Seuss” is actually pronounced “Zoice” (think “voice”). Theodor Geisel used the name in honor of his mother, whose maiden name was “Seuss”. As most Americans mispronounced the Bavarian name, Geisel eventually gave up correcting people on the correct pronunciation.

Fact 537: Adolf Hitler’s surname is thought by many etymologists to derive from “Huettler” or “one who lives in a hut”.

Fact 538: Twilight was rejected by fourteen publishers before finally getting published.

Fact 539: Tug of war was an Olympic event until after the 1920 Olympics. Multiple teams from countries were allowed, which is how the U.S. won bronze, silver, and gold in 1904. Britain did the same thing in 1908.

Fact 540: If you live in the U.S., you are nearly four times as likely to be killed by a vending machine as a shark, with an average annual death rate of 2.18 for vending machines and .6 deaths from shark attacks.

Fact 541: The name “Barbara” derives from the Latin “barbarus”, meaning “strange” or “foreign”.

Fact 542: You are about 40% more likely to survive a commercial plane crash if you sit in the back row of the plane compared to the front row, according to a study done by Popular Mechanics covering every accident aboard commercial planes from 1971 to 2007.

Fact 543: The name for “Baskin-Robbins” was decided by a coin-flip, with Burt Baskin winning the toss, making his name go first.

Fact 544: The only word in the English language to end with “mt” is “dreamt”, unless of course you consider “undreamt” to be a separate word.

Fact 545: Mao Sugiyama from Japan had his testicles and penis removed when he was 22 and served them to dinner guests at $250 per plate (a total of 6 plates).

Fact 546: According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the current longest sentence in English literature is 13,955 words, in Jonathan Coe’s The Rotters Club.

Fact 547: In the 4th and 5th century BC in Athens, one potential punishment for committing adultery was rhaphanidosis- shoving a large radish up the adulterer’s butt. Another potential punishment was having a mulletfish inserted into the same orifice.

Fact 548: While not a Super Ball or anything, ripe cranberries bounce amazingly well.

Fact 549: “Cockshut” isn’t anything dirty. It’s simply another word for “twilight” which first popped up in the late 16th century in English.

Fact 550: Oscar Wilde once dated Bram Stokers wife, Florence Balcombe… before they were married of course.

Fact 551: “Nazi” isn’t just the name of a one-time prominent political party, but also the Swahili word for “coconut”.

Fact 552: “Desperation” is an anagram for “A Rope Ends It”.

Fact 553: Oprah Winfrey’s real name is “Orpah”, named after the sister of the biblical character of Ruth. She changed it simply because most people mispronounced it as “Oprah”.

Fact 554: The Red Sox and White Sox MLB teams have the “Sox” spelled that way as at the time the teams were named such, there was a movement to simplify the spelling of English words; thus, “socks” became “sox” for a time, even in such publications as the Chicago Tribune.

Fact 555: Prison and jail are technically not the same thing. In the U.S., jail is run by county sheriff’s offices, while prison is run by the Prisons and Corrections office of each state. In Canada, jail is run by the provincial government, while prison is run by the federal government.

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