Inland parts of Oregon and Washington, as well as Idaho, have experienced a strange, murky rain today that contains what seems to be volcanic ash, though ash from which volcano isn't completely clear. Experts said they are checking out several possible explanations including a recent volcanic eruption in Mexico and one in Russia. The weather service said the rainstorm may have passed through some dust or volcanic ash as it moved west. Walla Walla County's emergency management staff posted a statement on its Facebook page that the ash is likely from Volcano Shiveluch in Kamchatka Krai, Russia, some 3,000 miles away. Volcano Shiveluch spewed an ash plume about 22,000 feet high in late January, the statement said.... CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam, meanwhile, pointed to an eruption Wednesday of a volcano in southwestern Colima, Mexico, as another potential source of the dirty rain. That volcano is more than 2,000 miles away from the region. Time points out that other theories include leftover ash from last year’s wildfires in Oregon in Idaho.
sharing so it's there when I wake up in the morning because this is a SU&SD perfect storm
It's here! XCOM: The Board Game is now in shops the world over, with its computerised component, its little plastic snipers and its starched lil' navy blue box. Oooh. You want it.
OR DO YOU? Let Quinns and Paul cut a path for you through the jungle of hype around this game, all the way to the UFO crash site of truth. "Welcome to Earth," indeed.
An anonymous reader writes Unfortunately for Raspberry Pi 2 owners who are trying to photograph their devices, ... the Raspberry Pi 2 has been found to be Xenon flash sensitive. Any camera with a Xenon flash aimed at the device is causing the device to freeze for a few seconds before rebooting. The forum thread about the bug is an interesting play-by-play of how the problem was narrowed down.
Regardless of your gender, if you live in the world, you may have noticed that men everywhere have been wearing clothes. Increasingly, these clothes are not mere jeans and flannels; these clothes are fashion. It’s menswear that says, I do not fear a hanky square or man bag; I own more than two pairs of shoes; I picked out these pants myself.
Menswear—which just won its very own New York Fashion Week—has launched an all-out campaign to be considered as seriously as womenswear. Here is a handful of the many ways the category is demanding to be acknowledged.
Menswear is “booming”
You may have read that menswear is doing something called “booming,” as in, expanding rapidly.
It is indeed growing, like many other sectors of the global economy, and apparently—amazingly!—has grown even faster than womenswear over the past decade. But marginally so. According to Euromonitor’s estimated global apparel sales, menswear’s average annual growth has out-boomed womenswear by a whopping 0.2%.
However. The women’s apparel market worldwide is worth approximately $700 billion, compared with $460 billion for menswear:
So if menswear and womenswear continue to grow as fast as they have over the past decade, it will take until the year 2228 for menswear to catch up with womenswear in absolute sales.
But by then, menswear may not be such a separate category at all—which is not such a bad strategy.
If menswear can’t beat womenswear, it will just join it
Maybe the way to make the men’s apparel market as lucrative as the women’s is to just emulate it—or merge with it. Designers are blurring gender lines on the runway in ways that go far beyond the same old Ziggy Stardust references. (Because really, how many striped body-stockings can they sell?)
As Quartz has reported, white-hot labels such as Hood by Air, Public School, Baja East, and Eckhaus Latta have all demonstrated what a brave new world for gender in fashion might look like.
And it’s not relegated to fashion’s ultra-cool margins. In January, Gucci’s new creative director, Alessandro Michele, sent out a menswear show celebrating what the brand characterized as “a dreamy ambiguity throughout.”
Gucci menswear, fall 2015.(AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
That included female models, lace tops, and pussy-bow blouses. Miuccia Prada’s suiting took a harder line, but her approach to the gender discussion was similar:
“These shows are the perfect moment to analyze this subject more deeply to measure what the genders share, what they take from each other,” said Prada. My market share is your market share.
So who’s buying this stuff? So glad you asked.
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Menswear has a rich, childless fan base with a funny name
Twenty years after the birth of the metrosexual, researchers at HSBC came up with another term for vain men wont to spend their paychecks on luxury goods: yummies, which is just an embarrassing name for young urban males.
According to Bloomberg’s interpretation, insecure men in their 20s are well-poised to shop on their smartphones, and they don’t care about saving for cars or their kids’ college funds—because they don’t have any. But they still like driving moccasins.
Today Brian Trunzo, the co-owner of the New York City men’s store Carson Street Clothiers, uses the hashtag as shorthand for a style all its own. Essentially, he says, #menswear is post-lumbersexual tailoring.
“From 2007 to 2010 [we saw] the whole work-wear movement,” Trunzo tells Quartz. “You were able to tell a guy who otherwise didn’t care about fashion that he could wear a plaid work-shirt with raw denim and work-boots and look fashionable, and that was easy. … And then after that [came] the proper—as we endearingly call it—‘hashtag-menswear’ movement—of classic silhouettes, and classic tailoring,”
“And now, I think, those guys as they start to transition, they’re thinking: ‘Ok. I have my workwear denim from years ago. Tailoring is fantastic—I can always wear tailoring. What’s the next thing?'” says Trunzo. “And they’re easing into the more—I don’t want to call it experimental—but the more interesting sportswear. Things that they otherwise definitely would not have thought about years ago.”
If all else fails, menswear will flash you
Rick Owens—a talented, respected designer with a devoted following—tried a different tack this season: some strategically placed holes (NSFW) in the asymmetrical tunics and robes he sent down the runway.
'1. Originally: †a person who may go anywhere (obs.). Subsequently: a thing giving a person the right or opportunity to go anywhere; spec. a key that opens any or many doors, a master key; (occas.) a passport. Freq. in extended use and fig.'
I know this better as a logging saw, but that doesn't show up in OED. Must be a cajun thing since the best Louisiana hit I can find for it is a cajun band name.
Neighbors along a quiet, suburban street outside Atlanta were left horrified after police say a man shot six people — killing four of them, including his ex-wife and several children — before ending the rampage by fatally turning the gun on himself.
Pennsylvania native and ex-NFL quarterback Terrelle Pryor tweeted that he was at the mall, a short drive east of Pittsburgh.
"Damn was just in monroeville mall and just saw 2 ppl get shot," he tweeted. "They are letting guns go in there."
Shortly after a Staten Island grand jury voted not to indict the officer who killed Eric Garner in a chokehold, Mayor Bill de Blasio told ABC News, “What parents have done for decades who have children of color, especially young men of color, is train them to be very careful when they have … an encounter with a police officer.”
Black parents and young people alike are doing just that in a new video that offers 10 rules of survival. The 2-minute PSA-style video from the SALT Project walks
through some basic, but potentially life-saving tips for handling any
police stop.
Here’s my life. My husband and I get up each morning at 7 o’clock and he showers while I make coffee. By the time he’s dressed I’m already sitting at my desk writing. He kisses me goodbye then leaves for the job where he makes good money, draws excellent benefits and gets many perks, such as travel, catered lunches and full reimbursement for the gym where I attend yoga midday. His career has allowed me to work only sporadically, as a consultant, in a field I enjoy.
All that disclosure is crass, I know. I’m sorry. Because in this world where women will sit around discussing the various topiary shapes of their bikini waxes, the conversation about money (or privilege) is the one we never have. Why? I think it’s the Marie Antoinette syndrome: Those with privilege and luck don’t want the riffraff knowing the details. After all, if “those people” understood the differences in our lives, they might revolt. Or, God forbid, not see us as somehow more special, talented and/or deserving than them.
There’s a special version of this masquerade that we writers put on. Two examples:
I attended a packed reading (I’m talking 300+ people) about a year and a half ago. The author was very well-known, a magnificent nonfictionist who has, deservedly, won several big awards. He also happens to be the heir to a mammoth fortune. Mega-millions. In other words he’s a man who has never had to work one job, much less two. He has several children; I know, because they were at the reading with him, all lined up. I heard someone say they were all traveling with him, plus two nannies, on his worldwide tour.
None of this takes away from his brilliance. Yet, when an audience member — young, wide-eyed, clearly not clued in — rose to ask him how he’d managed to spend 10 years writing his current masterpiece — What had he done to sustain himself and his family during that time? — he told her in a serious tone that it had been tough but he’d written a number of magazine articles to get by. I heard a titter pass through the half of the audience that knew the truth. But the author, impassive, moved on and left this woman thinking he’d supported his Manhattan life for a decade with a handful of pieces in the Nation and Salon.
Example two. A reading in a different city, featuring a 30-ish woman whose debut novel had just appeared on the front page of the New York Times Book Review. I didn’t love the book (a coming-of-age story set among wealthy teenagers) but many people I respect thought it was great, so I defer. The author had herself attended one of the big, East Coast prep schools, while her parents were busy growing their careers on the New York literary scene. These were people — her parents — who traded Christmas cards with William Maxwell and had the Styrons over for dinner. She, the author, was their only beloved child.
After prep school, she’d earned two creative writing degrees (Iowa plus an Ivy). Her first book was being heralded by editors and reviewers all over the country, many of whom had watched her grow up. It was a phenomenon even before it hit bookshelves. She was an immediate star.
When (again) an audience member, clearly an undergrad, rose to ask this glamorous writer to what she attributed her success, the woman paused, then said that she had worked very, very hard and she’d had some good training, but she thought in looking back it was her decision never to have children that had allowed her to become a true artist. If you have kids, she explained to the group of desperate nubile writers, you have to choose between them and your writing. Keep it pure. Don’t let yourself be distracted by a baby’s cry.
I was dumbfounded. I wanted to leap to my feet and shout. “Hello? Alice Munro! Doris Lessing! Joan Didion!” Of course, there are thousands of other extraordinary writers who managed to produce art despite motherhood. But the essential point was that, the quality of her book notwithstanding, this author’s chief advantage had nothing to do with her reproductive decisions. It was about connections. Straight up. She’d had them since birth.
In my opinion, we do an enormous “let them eat cake” disservice to our community when we obfuscate the circumstances that help us write, publish and in some way succeed. I can’t claim the wealth of the first author (not even close); nor do I have the connections of the second. I don’t have their fame either. But I do have a huge advantage over the writer who is living paycheck to paycheck, or lonely and isolated, or dealing with a medical condition, or working a full-time job.
How can I be so sure? Because I used to be poor, overworked and overwhelmed. And I produced zero books during that time. Throughout my 20s, I was married to an addict who tried valiantly (but failed, over and over) to stay straight. We had three children, one with autism, and lived in poverty for a long, wretched time. In my 30s I divorced the man because it was the only way out of constant crisis. For the next 10 years, I worked two jobs and raised my three kids alone, without child support or the involvement of their dad.
I published my first novel at 39, but only after a teaching stint where I met some influential writers and three months living with my parents while I completed the first draft. After turning in that manuscript, I landed a pretty cushy magazine editor’s job. A year later, I met my second husband. For the first time I had a true partner, someone I could rely on who was there in every way for me and our kids. Life got easier. I produced a nonfiction book, a second novel and about 30 essays within a relatively short time.
Today, I am essentially “sponsored” by this very loving man who shows up at the end of the day, asks me how the writing went, pours me a glass of wine, then takes me out to eat. He accompanies me when I travel 500 miles to do a 75-minute reading, manages my finances, and never complains that my dark, heady little books have resulted in low advances and rather modest sales.
I completed my third novel in eight months flat. I started the book while on a lovely vacation. Then I wrote happily and relatively quickly because I had the time and the funding, as well as help from my husband, my agent and a very talented editor friend. Without all those advantages, I might be on page 52. OK, there’s mine. Now show me yours.
OTHER WATCHMEN GAMES EVEN LESS APPROPRIATE THAN HEROCLIX
We can only assume that the decision to do a “Watchmen” HeroClix set was motivated by the fact that action figures just aren’t ironic enough, but hey: It could be worse! Even with the question of just what the Comedian’s “attack” stat represents hanging over every ‘Clix match, there actually are games that would be even less appropriate for the themes of the graphic novel, and ComicsAlliance’s Chris Sims and Caleb Goellner are here show just what they’d be.
Czech: A free word order language. Yoda speaks consistently in SOV. Interestingly enough, putting an object before a verb does sound unusual to most speakers of Czech.
Estonian: A free word order language. Yoda retains the English OSV order. This is grammatical in Estonian, but does make it seem as though Yoda is constantly stressing the object phrase as the main point of his statements. This gives his speech an unusual quality.
French: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV.
German: An SVO or SOV language. Yoda brings the Object to the front (OSV), like in English.
Hungarian: A free word order language. There is nothing unusual about Yoda’s speech.
Italian: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV. Note: OSV is also the syntax used in the Italian of the less-proficient speakers of Italian from the region of Sardinia.
Japanese: An SOV language. Yoda seems to use a more or less correct syntax, with a more archaic vocabulary.
Korean: An SOV language. Nothing is unusual about Yoda’s grammar.
Norwegian: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV.
Romanian: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV. He also places adjectives before the noun instead of after the noun, and uses an archaic form of the future tense.
Spanish: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV.
Turkish: An SOV language. Yoda speaks in OSV. Note: This order is also used in classical Ottoman poetry, so the syntax may have been chosen in order to emphasize Yoda’s wisdom or age.
'Fun fact: Regions 1 to 5 are represented by icons that look like Chinese writing, and these icons have one to five strokes respectively. In Chinese, the numbers 1 to 5 are written this way: 一, 二, 三, 四, 五. The icons used in this game are not valid Chinese characters, but the icons for three and four put together would look like "Little Mouth" or "Small Opening" in Chinese - 小口。 '
Plays: 4Px1.
The Game
Zhanguo means the Warring States Period in ancient China. However the game is more about nation-building after the warring period, when all seven kingdoms have been united under the Qin banner, rather than the warring itself. You serve the First Emperor, and you are tasked to perform construction and introduce reforms in the five regions of China. This is a point-scoring Eurogame. Quite a few actions provide victory points. At game end, the highest scorer wins.
You play five rounds, and you receive six cards at the start of every round, each card allowing you to perform one action. There are seven types of actions. Six of these are shown on the board at the top left corner. If you choose to do one of these, you play a card onto the discard pile on the board. Under certain circumstances you gain some bonuses depending on whether the number of your card is higher or lower than the previous card played. The seventh action type is sticking a card under your player board, which grants you the ability to gain the bonuses mentioned above. Improving your player board is important because it can greatly enhance your future actions.
The six normal actions you can do are: recruiting officials, recruiting labourers, transferring officials, deploying governors, building palaces and building the Great Wall of China. You need officials to recruit labourers and to deploy governors. You need governors to quell unrest. You need labourers to build palaces and the Great Wall. Having the most governors in a province at game end gives you points. Building palaces and sections of the Great Wall also give points.
Every round you always draw two each of beige, orange and brown cards, and their number ranges are 1-40, 41-80, 81-120 respectively. The number is relevant if you take a normal action and want to trigger your action bonuses. The two icons in the top half are relevant if you stick this card under your player board to enable a bonus ability. What these mean is in future when you perform the action type as indicated by the icon on the left, you may gain a bonus as indicated by the icon on the right. E.g. the card on the right means if you build a palace, you may gain a military officer (red cube) in a particular province.
This is the player board. At this point I have stuck six cards under it. Each column here accommodates up to three cards, and also correspond to one of the five regions on the main board. Some bonuses must be applied to the specific province where the card is located. Some don't matter, e.g. gaining influence or gaining points. The hammer tiles are the labourers. I have two in the second province. The red, white and grey cubes are officials.
To recruit labourers in a province, up to two officials can be put on recruitment drive duty, i.e. you have to move them to the lower row. I have officials manning recruitment booths in the first two provinces. The black cubes indicate unrest, which is caused by recruitment drives (which I suspect is a fancy name for forced labour) and card plays. In the second province unrest is at the max, so I can't recruit more labourers or play more cards here, at least for now. I will need a governor to come tell the populace to keep calm and carry on. At this level of unrest, I can't even build a palace or trigger the bonus ability of the card here.
The meditating Buddha-like pieces are governors. The first three governors sent to a province may claim a bonus benefit. At game end, the player(s) with the most governors in a province scores points.
The table at the bottom left shows the round-end bonuses available to players who have the most beige, orange or brown influence. Normally you gain influence by playing cards to your player board. This is another avenue for competition among players.
The Great Wall has many sections where you can contribute. Those large tiles indicate how you will score, and they differ from game to game. That tile on the right means you score (at game end) depending on how many of your provinces have white officials. How much you score also depends on which subsection of the wall you build. If you spend just one labourer to build the one-stroke section, you earn 2VP per province with white officials. If you send three labourers to build the three-stroke section, you earn 4VP per province. If all five of your provinces have white officials, that's 20VP - not a small amount.
Building palaces, building the Great Wall and deploying governors are all more or less disparate ways of scoring. However there are two mission sets on the right side of the board which link them together. Let's look at this green mission set, which consists of three missions. The mission details vary from game to game. In the first box (i.e. first mission), the icons mean that if you are first to build wall sections in a purple zone, a green zone and two yellow zones, you will score 3VP. If you are second to do so, you score 2VP, and so on. The second mission requires you to build palaces in the 2nd and 3rd provinces. The third mission requires you to deploy governors in the 4th and 5th provinces. Now if you complete two missions within the same set, your total score from these missions will be doubled. If you complete all three missions in the set, your total score is tripled. These multipliers are what makes mission sets attractive. The mission sets link together all the other main scoring methods, and give you a blueprint to work towards. At least that was how I played. I picked the green mission set at the start of the game (without telling my opponents of course), and focused my effort on completing the full package.
The Play
We did a full four-player game. One thing I am quite impressed by is the functionality design of the game board and the components. All the icons and reminders are there, and after Ivan went through the rules once, everything was clear, or could be checked by simply looking at the main board or the player boards.
Building wall sections, building palaces and installing governors all require quite a few steps and some forward planning. I set my sights on the easier mission set, so I had a checklist in my mind to tick off. Most of my actions were just filling in the blanks, and I needed to plan to be able to fill in all these blanks. It was a logistical exercise to get everything in place.
In the early game I tried to play cards to my player board too, to give me bonuses for my future actions. These bonuses are quite nifty and can save many actions. In fact some of the bonuses cannot even be achieved via the basic actions, e.g. transferring labourers.
Eventually I was able to complete a mission set. However I was slightly surprised that it actually didn't score more than other ways of scoring. But then perhaps I should see it as a bonus on top of what I had already scored from other avenues.
This was the late game. Many sections of the Great Wall had been built. In our game, three of us aimed for the top mission set (top right, green), which was easier, and only one went for the bottom set (bottom right, brown). I (blue) was always just one step behind Ivan (yellow) in the missions.
Game end. One critical move for me was to make use of one of the round-end rewards to place one more governor in the fourth region (square icon consisting of four strokes). Prior to that Ivan (yellow) and I (blue) were tied for most governors, and we would both score 7VP. That additional governor allowed me to monopolise the scoring. 18VP for me, none for Ivan.
The Thoughts
Zhanguo didn't leave much of an impression. It is decent but not remarkable. There are some interesting mechanisms, like how you collect bonus abilities and try to trigger them as often as possible. The competition among players is mostly around how quickly you get to a location, because doing something first normally gives a better reward. You also want to do more, in order to score more, but doing more is mainly dependent on how you manage your own player board, and is not affected by your opponents. You are racing against time to complete what you want, and you try to maximise your efficiency.
Without the mission sets concept to link together the various ways of scoring, the various aspects of the game may feel a little disjointed. The mission sets help to tie the various elements together and give players an overarching objective. However it can also feel like giving the players a colouring book to fill in, as opposed to giving them a blank canvas to freely express themselves.
Fun fact: Regions 1 to 5 are represented by icons that look like Chinese writing, and these icons have one to five strokes respectively. In Chinese, the numbers 1 to 5 are written this way: 一, 二, 三, 四, 五. The icons used in this game are not valid Chinese characters, but the icons for three and four put together would look like "Little Mouth" or "Small Opening" in Chinese - 小口。
ThOR hates sports beat Reggie Bush ruins everything
The NCAA has a reputation for making up punishments as it goes along, but the unsealing of USC documents and emails could reveal a more malicious side of the organization.
A California appellate court ruled on Friday that the NCAA cannot seal hundreds of documents and emails in the defamation lawsuit filed by former USC running backs coach Todd McNair. The released emails will likely further the NCAA's reputation of being a power-hungry entity with little concern for justice or consistency.
McNair sued the NCAA in 2011 for "ruining his career" after sanctions were filed against the coach for his alleged involvement in the Reggie Bush scandal that resulted in severe punishments for the USC Trojans football program. McNair was given a one-year "show cause" penalty that restricted his access to recruits -- whether with USC or another school -- which severely hurt his ability to get another job after his contract with USC expired in 2010.
In a 16-page opinion, the California 2nd District Court of Appeal said that it was not sold on the NCAA's argument that unsealing the documents would jeopardize future investigations done by the organization.
"We are not convinced by the NCAA's contention that public disclosure of its documents will make future investigations more difficult for the NCAA to conduct," the court said. The NCAA previously argued that unsealing the documents would make promises of confidentiality less credible in future investigations.
Background
The coach claims the sanctions resulted in him essentially being blackballed, and he hasn't coached since. Prior to joining USC in 2004, McNair was the Cleveland Browns' running backs coach for three seasons.
During McNair's time as running backs coach for the Trojans, the school found plenty of success running the ball with players such as Bush, LenDale White, Joe McKnight and Chauncey Washington. McNair made his name with his recruiting, earning the distinction from CBS in 2007 as one of the top five recruiters in the nation.
With the ruling, the NCAA is now primed to have egg on its face with the release of the documents, especially after a Los Angeles Superior Court judge said in 2012 that the emails "tend to show ill will or hatred" toward McNair and the investigation was "over the top" and "malicious."
This also hurts the NCAA's chances in the lawsuit itself, as Conquest Chronicles notes: "This would allow witnesses to be specific as opposed to relying on gossip while addressing critical points in the examination process."
The damage of the sanctions have already been done, meaning the unsealed documents will have little impact on anything other than the reputations of McNair and the NCAA. The organization's reputation is already shaky after the handling of sanctions given to Penn State following an investigation of the school's handling of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, among other issues.
If the unsealed emails and documents about McNair are truly as malicious as they were described by a judge in 2012, it will only validate that reputation.
McNair is seeking damages for libel, slander, breach of contract and negligence, among other charges filed against the NCAA.
just do what y'all did last time, give it to Ikuhara
Sailor Moon Crystal is back for a new story arc, and after a pretty disastrous ending to a sloppy first half-season , I was less than optimistic going into the new 'Black Moon' arc - but so far at least, a shake up of the story might have been a good thing for our Sailor Senshi. Spoilers ahead...
Google is giving its online store the human touch. The Google Play store for devices like Nexus phones and tablets now has a new option to begin a video chat with a salesperson who can answer any questions you might have about Chromebooks, Android Wear, or other devices that Google sells directly through the site. For now, the assistants are not available for tech support. The service — which is built off of Google's video lesson platform Helpouts — is called Google Device Experts.
Employees involved with the service tell TechCrunch that it's been in testing since November, though it hasn't been spotted until now. A Google spokesperson said in a statement that "We’re in a limited trial of an experimental support feature and gathering feedback." They added, "we aren’t ready to share full plans yet."
Service may be coming to retail soon
However, according to TechCrunch's sources, Google may have grand plans for the service. One person familiar with the project said that the company is "also planning to go into retail stores with a virtual help desk to enhance the shopping experience." It's not clear what such a service would look like, though it's possible that screens with direct access to the video chat assistants could be set up in the Google-branded sections of stores like Best Buy, where Chromebooks and Nexus tablets are often displayed. Ultimately, this could be Google's answer to Apple's hugely popular "Genius Bar," which offers free support at all of the company's retail locations.
As of now, the only way to access Google Device Experts is through the devices section of Google Play. From there, click the help icon in the top right corner, and then "Video call" under "Contact Us." Assistants are said to be available from 9AM to 9PM Eastern time.
An anonymous reader writes I buy massive collections of trading card games, Magic:The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon, Weiss Schwarts, Cardfight Vanguard, etc, etc. And I've gotten the process fairly streamlined as far as price checking, grading, sorting, etc. Part of my process involves using higher-quality web cams positioned over the top of the cards which are in a stack. I keep a cam window on the screen to show a larger, brighter version of the card. What I'm wondering: Is there is an OCR solution out there that will look at the same spot on the screen, capture, ocr, dump to clipboard, etc.? I've tried several open source solutions but none of them quite fit my needs. What I'd really like is to be able to hit a hotkey, and have my clipboard populated with the textual data of the graphics in a pre-set x,y window range. All this should be done via a hotkey. I may be asking for a lot, but then again, I'm sure someone out there has had need of this type of set-up before. Anyone have any recommendations?
The many jewels and amour once belonging to the one of the most powerful empires in the world, the Ottoman Empire on display at the Topkapi Palace. [x]
"One time, I heard a father in a meeting with married couples say ‘I sometimes have to smack my children a bit, but never in the face so as to not humiliate them,’" Francis said.
"How beautiful!" Francis remarked. "He knows the sense of dignity! He has to punish them but does it justly and moves on."
