The “Ebony Venus” and the “Bronze Apollo” - Josephine Baker and the Russian-born French ballet legend, Serge Lifar, on the Lido beach in Venice, 1930s. Ms. Baker talked about this day in “Josephine,” the biography she wrote with her former husband, Jo Bouillon, which was published in 1976, one year after her death.
“We had had a wonderful time together on the beach in Venice during my Italian tour. I loved to hear Serge speak. He was more entertaining than all the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square. I’d like to have been Picasso in order to sketch him… Actually, he knew Picasso, as well as those who had made me the “ebony Venus” and named him the “bronze Apollo.” Paris had welcomed him from the East two years before I arrived from the West. There on the sun-drenched sand, intoxicated with the sheer joy of motion, we danced. What a curious pas de deux – the star dancer of the Paris Opera and a colored entertainer swaying together in bathing suits on the Lido beach.” Photo: Hotel des Ventes, Geneve.
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The “Ebony Venus” and the “Bronze Apollo” - Josephine...
Tom Baker on Swap Shop 1976
Tom Baker on Swap Shop 1976
And They Wonder Why Everyone Isn't with Them
Russian SledgesI am very much with them, for what it's worth
Here's just two of the super-classy, super-clever signs abortion rights activists are carrying around in Texas.
More here.
This is a fundamental disadvantage that pro-choice activists have in the public debate. Most of the pro-lifers I know have the moral imagination to at least understand where pro-choice women are coming from (I still wrestle with the issue of very early abortions myself). Every pro-lifer I've ever talked to has understood that unwanted or unexpected pregnancies can pose a real crisis for women (and men). That's one reason pro-lifers invest so much in counseling efforts. I haven't been to too many pro-life protests, so maybe I've missed the signs belittling pregnant women who want to have an abortion. But something tells me that if such signs existed, MSNBC & Co. would hype them relentlessly.
Regardless, when you see these people cheerfully making terrible puns and rhymes about fetuses and embryos, like it's all a big joke, it's hard not to conclude that they lack a moral imagination of any kind. Even most pro-choice women understand that there's some moral significance to a fetus, which is why they tend to support some restrictions on late-term abortions. It is also why, when they decide to have a baby, they treat their in-utero child as something truly precious. Meanwhile, these activists trivialize what to most Americans is not trivial. I'm sure they have their giggles and someone writes them a check. But it's no way to persuade the unpersuaded.
General Mills Celebrates Gay-Pride Month with New Lucky Charms
Russian Sledgessometimes the Corner supplies me with important news
General Mills is celebrating gay-pride month with one of its most famous breakfast cereals. The Huffington Post reports that the Minnesota food conglomerate is bringing Lucky Charms out of the closet.
The new campaign centers around the leprechaun-loving toasted-oat-and-marshmallow cereal and uses the handle #LuckyToBe. General Mills announced the campaign in the video above and in a press release sent to homosexual lobbying group GLAAD, in which the company declared, "We're celebrating Pride month with whimsical delight, magical charms, and two new rainbow marshmallows.#...#If you're lucky enough to be different, we're celebrating you."
Of course, General Mills has long been a nemesis of activists concerned about childhood obesity; no word yet on whether the #LuckyToBe campaign will prove sufficient to charm Michelle Obama. But who knows? Given President Obama's own "evolution" on homosexual marriage, perhaps the magically delicious cereal will soon be standard fare at the White House breakfast table.
lavour: i named my town “my butt" and it’s probably the best...
Russian Sledgesvia firehose
Courtney shared this story from time to feel good about every limb: | |
EEEEEEheheheheheheeeeeeheeehehehehe. a-heh. |
i named my town “my butt" and it’s probably the best decision i’ve ever made
Park Street Church minister resigns after arrest on peeping-Tom charge
A minister at the Park Street Church resigned last week, two days after Brookline Police arrested him for allegedly "peering" into a neighbor's bedroom window after the neighbor's girlfriend had gotten out of the shower.
In a letter to church members, Senior Minister Gordon Hugenberger wrote:
On Tuesday, June 25, Park Street Church received a letter of resignation from John Chung, former Minister of Missions, based on serious personal problems he is facing. His resignation was accepted immediately. Park Street Church believes in a God of love who sent Jesus Christ into the world to provide a way of salvation. This gives us the courage to acknowledge, without excuses, the gravity of our failures and sins. It assures us of God's readiness to forgive those offenses, if we will humbly confess them, and it gives us the desire and strength to turn from them and seek to make things right. John's resignation was a welcome first step in this direction. We pray for God's comfort and healing, not only for John and his family, but also for all who have been disappointed and deeply hurt by this tragic circumstance.
Wicked Local Brookline reports Chung faces charges of disorderly conduct and trespassing for the incident, in which the neighbor spotted Chung at the window, yelled at him that he was "sick" and called police.
Innocent, etc.
Weddings Used To Be Sacred And Other Lessons About Internet Journalism
Russian Sledgesvia overbey: "It’s totally not real Elvish, sadly. Just wingdinged. But still a great conceit."
Cloud.typography: Web Fonts by H&FJ
Russian Sledgesvia overbey
Big news from H&FJ:
Now all your communications can speak in the same clear voice. Introducing Cloud.typography from H&FJ, the webfont solution for design professionals.
There are two separate technically impressive aspects to this. The first is the fonts themselves, which they’ve painstakingly tweaked to render beautifully, even at small sizes, across all modern operating systems and display types. The second is the web app you use to control — and I do mean control — your font styles.
Just one of many nice touches: any fonts you’ve previously purchased from H&FJ — as regular old fashioned desktop fonts — are already available to you as web fonts.
It’s time for the government to say who’s a real reporter, says Sen. Dick Durbin
Russian Sledgesfucking christ almighty
via multitask suicide
A tough Boston etiquette question
Nancy wonders:
What is the proper etiquette when encountering someone on the train with an Aaron Hernandez jersey? Ignore? Eye roll? Smdh?
Meteoroid, Not Comet, Explains the 1908 Tunguska Fireball
Russian Sledgesvia multitask suicide
tunguska autoshare
Cortex: A Conceptual 3D-Printed Exoskeletal Cast by Jake Evill
Russian Sledgeslike a medical version of these: http://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/shop/product_tags.php?tag=bracelet
One of the worst aspects of fracturing a bone, other than the excruciating pain and subsequent hospital bill, is the itchy, smelly, plaster cast. Sure, all your friends get to write hilarious things on it, but you end up being the kid in the shallow end of the pool with their arm stuck inside a giant trash bag. Definitely not cool. What if a cast could be functional as well as aesthetically pleasing? Jake Evill, a graduate from the Architecture and Design school at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, has been exploring such a concept and he calls it Cortex.
Evill says that the “Cortex exoskeletal cast provides a highly technical and trauma zone localized support system that is fully ventilated, super light, shower friendly, hygienic, recyclable and stylish.” Patients would first receive an x-ray to pinpoint the nature of the break and would next have their arm scanned to determine the outer shape of their limb. Lastly the Cortex cast would be 3D-printed, with optimized levels of support around the break area to provide a snug fit.
It’s safe to say that with present technology the 3D-printed method would take considerably longer to fabricate than a typical plaster cast, but the idea is intriguing. It reminds me of the present movement to make prosthetic limbs more beatiful and personalized. Read more about Cortex here. (via dezeen)
Les Écarts de la nature ou recueil des principales...
Les Écarts de la nature ou recueil des principales monstruosités
(The Deviations of Nature or a Collection of the Main Monstrosities)
by Nicolas-François and Geneviève Regnault, 1775
“No monster exists that cannot be made pleasing through art.”
-Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
1. Double enfant
2. Squelette du double enfant
3. Chat à deux [têtes]
4. Mouton à deux corps
Also
I was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl
Photo
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"Yes, the Bechdel Test. It’s named for Alison Bechdel, who is a comic book creator. The test is, are..."
- Comic book writer Kelly Sue DeConnick (Captain Marvel, Avengers Assemble)
petermorwood: comartlover: Heroes of Dre’jeanstin by...
Russian Sledgesvia feuerspritze
"Princess Metternich and Countess Kielmannsegg fought a topless duel in 1892 (an all-female affair, BTW - seconds and surgeon were also women) so as to avoid infection from shreds of clothing driven into wounds. The cause of the duel involved the floral arrangements at the upcoming Vienna Musical and Theatrical Exhibition - not as daft as it sounds, since it involved aspersions cast on artistic sense and taste, thus reputation at the Austro-Hungarian court, social rank and status… It was as good a reason for duelling as most, and better than many."
queued for after-work research
Heroes of Dre’jeanstin by ~JenZee
Interesting conjunction of well-drawn plate armour and voluminous skirts. I’m not sure how often they’d have been seen together in real life, but certainly skirts and swords have historical precedent. Google images of “female duels", filter out the usual pin-up material and you’ll see what I mean, bearing in mind that even the (semi)-nudity really happened at least once.
Princess Metternich and Countess Kielmannsegg fought a topless duel in 1892 (an all-female affair, BTW - seconds and surgeon were also women) so as to avoid infection from shreds of clothing driven into wounds. The cause of the duel involved the floral arrangements at the upcoming Vienna Musical and Theatrical Exhibition - not as daft as it sounds, since it involved aspersions cast on artistic sense and taste, thus reputation at the Austro-Hungarian court, social rank and status… It was as good a reason for duelling as most, and better than many.
Not to leave men out of this, Mr Humphrey Howard, MP for Evesham, went one better when he stripped starkers before a duel at Brighton against Lord Barrymore in 1806. Howard had been a military surgeon before going into politics and also knew the risks of infection. There are two versions of what happened next - that random shots were fired and honour declared satisfied, or that Barrymore decided if Howard wasn’t going to treat the duel seriously he wasn’t going to play, and went home without further discussion. I like that one best. :-)
For philanthropist Ted Cutler, ambitious new Boston arts festival could come at a cost - Arts - The Boston Globe
Google Books lawsuit goes back to square one as court throws out class action designation
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Like many other Google services, Google Books has been contentious from the start. In 2005, less than a year after launch, the Authors Guild, Association of American Publishers, and a number of other writers filed two copyright suits against it for scanning books and displaying short excerpts ("snippets") online. Authors called it copyright infringement on a "massive" scale, while Google pled fair use, saying it was showing little text and transforming the books into an online database. And while one lawsuit was finally settled last year, another has taken a step backwards.
In a ruling delivered earlier today, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit threw out a lower court's decision to grant the authors class action status. That means they can't move forward with the lawsuit they were approved to bring in mid-2012; instead, the issue will go back to the district court, which will have to decide again whether to certify the authors as a class. The issue at stake is Google's central fair use claim, which the appeals court decided hadn't been given fair consideration in the original move. "We believe that the resolution of Google's fair use defense in the first instance will necessarily inform and perhaps moot our analysis of many class certification issues," wrote the judges.
The last certification took months to achieve, and there's no telling when a new decision will be handed down. Of course, the suit has already had many false starts and conclusions — a sweeping settlement promised to end the matter back in 2008, but it was ultimately thrown out. Google's fair use claims have held up in other arenas, but so far, it's tended to reach agreements or settlements with book publishers, and there's no reason to believe it won't do the same this time. That doesn't mean, however, that it won't work to shift the legal balance in its favor by pushing for individual suits rather than a class action one.
- Via Reuters
- Source Court Filing (PDF)
- Related Items google books lawsuit class action court author copyright infringement intellectual property authors guild Google
NSA spies on Germany as much as it does China and Saudi Arabia: Der Spiegel
Russian Sledgesvia firehose
Since details of the NSA’s massive phone and internet spying programs first came to light, America’s allies in the EU have been demanding for Washington to explain what it’s doing with Europeans’ data. Now, a new report from German news weekly Der Spiegel provides some more insight into the size of Washington’s telecommunications dragnet, claiming that US intelligence compiles metadata on half a billion German data connections (including phone calls, emails, and text messages) every day. The report points out that the NSA’s interest in Germany is much higher than that of other EU countries like France, whose communications the NSA only logs a tenth as often.
Germany is considered a "third party foreign partner"
Citing a map published by the Guardian, the report states that the NSA’s spying efforts in Germany are comparable to the attention it spends on China, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. And pointing to one top secret document, Der Spiegel writes that Germany is considered a "third party foreign partner" by the NSA, unentitled to the freedom from spying exclusively granted to the most prestigious group of US partner nations: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK.
Last month, EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding demanded more information from Attorney General Eric Holder on the scope of, and legal justification for, PRISM and similar data collection programs in use by the NSA. The two met in Dublin to discuss the spying, which Reding characterized as "a good first step." But many questions remain unanswered and tensions are running high following news that the NSA routinely spied on EU offices in the US and abroad. And it’s likely that more details are just around the corner: Der Spiegel isn’t releasing its full report on the NSA’s spying until Monday.
- Source Der Spiegel
- Related Items der spiegel nsa spying germany metadata
Small plates trend: It makes sense.
Russian Sledgeswhy do small plates even need to be defended?
Directors Who Fell Out of Love With Film – Flavorwire
Russian Sledgesit's funny that mulholland drive was a film because it was rejected as a tv pilot, and now:
Three men deny Oompa Loompas attack
Russian Sledgesshared for headline
Trio deny assault during alleged incident in Norwich involving people dressed as brightly coloured fictional characters
Three men have denied an attack involving people dressed as Oompa Loompas.
Matthew Wright, 20, of Potter Heigham, Norfolk, Matthew Watling, 19, of Happisburgh, Norfolk, and Louis Gelinas, 20, of Sutton, south-west London, deny assault causing actual bodily harm during an incident in Norwich on 27 December.
A 28-year-old man suffered cuts and bruises after the alleged attack in the Prince of Wales Road nightclub district.
They appeared at Norwich crown court on Monday and a trial date was set for September.
After the incident, police issued an appeal for information, saying that some of those involved were dressed as the fictional characters from Roald Dahl's novel Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.
The Banality of Butter: What Hannah Arendt Can Tell Us About Paula Deen
It's been my good fortune to read Hannah Arendt right as all the Paula Deen mishigas has gone down. Not that The Banality of Evil forecasts Ms. Deen’s allure — her standing has always bent toward the nostalgic, the airbrushed, the blandly retrograde. Nor in any real way can we fit Deen’s comparably mild offenses with those of a world-historic villain. Of course not. But the response of her many champions is germane. In fact, this response has gone out on a frequency Ms. Arendt’s readers have the perfect antennae to pick up on.
The Paula Deen scandal, of course, follows her testimony in a discrimination lawsuit, where she copped both to using racist language and abiding offensive humor in the workplace. (Among other transgressions.) Next, she skipped out on a planned Today apology, and instead threw together some YouTube videos in her own defense.
Even before Deen spoke out for herself, though, she had a very public defender in a newsman at Savannah’s WTOC. I happen to watch WTOC often (I'm twice a year in the low country to visit family), and I don't think I've ever seen any anchorperson -- on that channel; or anywhere else, come to think on it -- as incensed, about anything, as Sonny Dixon acted during the nearly five minutes he spent (in a 30-minute broadcast) defending her.
The “accusations of racism” were “way off base,” Dixon said. (Or yelled.) Yes, Paula Deen used the “n-word.” But, as another of Deen’s supporters told Dixon on camera: “Who hasn’t?... That doesn’t make her a racist.”
WTOC-TV: Savannah, Beaufort, SC, News, Weather
This was just the beginning, of course. Even after Deen apologized —belatedly — a new hashtag sprouted on Twitter: #StandWithPaula. And the “We Support Paula Deen” Facebook page now has more than half a million likes; her fans have, according to The New York Times, “started a campaign to flood the Food Network offices with empty butter wrappers.” (Don’t people—all people—have better things to do?)
Here’s a relevant fact. We know that Deen said “n-----r,” owned permissive restaurants, about the lady’s crude humor. But we know something else, too. Deen wanted to emulate a party where African Americans — and only African Americans — were made, in a manner reminiscent of the antebellum South, to serve white guests. What’s relevant, what’s Arendtian, is: none of the Stand-With-Paula people dispute any of these facts.
Which is where Eichmann comes in. In Arendt’s most famous book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, she argued that sometimes what we call evil — and what can bring about the most horrible outcomes — can often more accurately and simply be thoughtlessness of a sort. That is to say, people, and communities, are often no good at the kind of abstract thought that helps us understand the experience of others. (Which is a shame, because abstract thought is what separates us from iPhones and hamsters.)
Eichmann, she learned, was not a monster but a “clown”—a fact that was hard to swallow “in view of the sufferings he and his like had caused to millions of people.” But he was just an idiot. And his idiocy, his “clowneries,” meant no real communication was possible with him, “not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such.”
Now think about Deen’s defenders. Arendt wouldn’t accuse them of bad faith, of denying her offenses; Arendt would argue, however, that these defenders cannot see the offenses for what they are.
I think, to explain this, we have to step back a bit.
As Jamie Malanowski, a contributor to Times’s Disunion series, wrote in a recent Op-Ed: “The complex and not entirely complete process of reconciliation after the Civil War… served to whitewash [the history of the South].” E.g., we still have U.S. Army bases named after the Confederate generals — men who in their treason against the U.S. government killed American soldiers. And it is still common in the South to frame the Civil war as a matter of States’ rights —though the Confederacy’s own Vice-President admitted “without doubt” that slavery was the reason for secession and “cornerstone” of the Confederacy — and to dismiss it as “the War of Northern Aggression.”
As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo puts it: “The two sides [have become] increasingly seen on equal terms… Two armies with equal valor, honor and history.”
I understand that my having brought up the Confederacy may seem far afield. Paula Deen’s a woman with a few cooking shows, who said some regrettable things — and who then apologized. Fair enough. But Arendt would say it’s pertinent that our country, in order to speed the post-war reconciliation, never had to acknowledge what the Confederacy really was. And many continue not to acknowledge this flat fact: any society founded on the bondage of one's fellow man is rotten at its core.
(Ask yourself if a presidential candidate could say: “the Confederacy was fully wrong and deserved to lose” and then expect to win the South. This, despite that every hour the Confederacy endured was an hour that people were tortured and separated from their families and made to suffer countless other daily horrors—large and small—that happen when one sells other people as chattel. And ask yourself if there’s not something in there that explains why lots of people aren’t only defending Deen, but seem confused that they even have to. )
Again, Arendt was perhaps the first to write coherently about the trouble communities have in seeing the world as being something other than what they have been conditioned to see — without any kind of cultural empathy. Such empathy is pretty absent in the Savannah of Paula Deen and WTOC. How many who grew up in former Confederate states need only ask their friends, and remember their childhoods, to feel comforted that it's fine for somebody to have said "n-----r" in anger — or that somebody should want to host a slave-themed party? Paula Deen’s world, for many years, told her that such behavior was okay. (She admitted that one of the times she used the n-word was when a black person robbed her.)
Let’s go back to WTOC and it’s long Paula defense. To prove Deen’s non-bigotry, one of Dixon’s black interview subjects told the TV audience, “I’ve sat on [Paula Deen’s] furniture… she can’t be a racist.”
Neither interviewer or subject entertains the idea that, in this world where blacks and whites have forever found themselves on intimate terms, such close proximity might not be enough still to prevent fraught relationships. And nobody — not the livid-fingered Twitter supporters writing about “race-baiters”; not Mr. Dixon, or anyone he interviewed — bothers to question whether the very idea of throwing a party in which all the servers are black, by fiat, is in itself an offense. Or whether it’s not time to transform a society in which nobody can answer “who hasn’t” used racial insults? But hey—Paula let a black person sit on her furniture, so.
Really, those important questions aren’t asked, and Ms. Deen’s champions seem shocked that her actions would even lead to their being asked. And Hannah Arendt would argue, persuasively, that this is because what Deen's supporters find shocking — what leads both to their encouragement of her behavior and their outrage that others might find that behavior upsetting — is that, for a large number of them, the guard against self-deception and insensitivity has been lifted, and they don't like to see the truth behind it. But the truth is there, regardless.
Darin Strauss is a professor at New York University and the winner of the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for his memoir Half a Life.
Budget cuts force military bases to scrap traditional July 4th fireworks celebrations
Scripting News: Feedly supports OPML, but not really.
Russian Sledgesvia firehose