Boston Public Library posted a photo:

File name: 10_03_001576a
Binder label: Sewing Machines
Title: Wheeler and Wilson triumphant. (front)
Created/Published: N. Y. : Donaldson Brothers
Date issued: 1870-1900 (approximate)
Physical description: 1 print : chromolithograph ; 12 x 8 cm.
Subject: Angels; Women; Lions; Carts & wagons; Sewing machines
Notes: Title from item.
Statement of responsibility: Wheeler & Wilson M'f'g Co.
Collection: 19th Century American Trade Cards
Location: Boston Public Library, Print Department
Rights: No known restrictions.

From OccupyGeziPics: an uncredited photo of a woman in at the Turkish anti-government/pro-democracy protests kicking away a tear-gas cannister. It's an amazing shot -- like something out of a Banksy stencil come to life. Do you know who took it?

A young woman kicks back the tear gas.

It's kind of a cliche at this point to lament the loss of once venerable institutions of televised knowledge such as The History Channel and The Learning Channel to the scourge of "reality" TV.

Did you know that Bravo started as a channel devoted to airing highbrow culture and works of art?

But cliche or not, the state of TV is sad and getting sadder with every bachelor (17 and counting!).

Hoping to use this to their advantage, New York metropolitan area PBS affiliate Thirteen recently teamed up with CHI&Partners to launch an ad campaign mocking real reality shows by promoting fake reality shows that look real.

"The fact that you thought this was a real show says a lot about the state of TV," says a tagline pointing to mock promos for such upsettingly possible shows as Bad Bad Bagboys, Married to a Mime, Knitting Wars, and Bayou Eskimos.

"It’s pretty scary when you look out there and see what’s on television these days," CHI Executive Creative Director Jeff Anderson told Entertainment Weekly. "If New Yorkers want an inspiring and educational option, they need to get behind a network that we sometimes take for granted."

The five posters will begin appearing in NYC subways this week.

[images via Entertainment Weekly]

So, at a party with respectable older people in tweed jackets I will immediately agree that we are terrible. I will do that as though I can somehow trick them into thinking I am 45 by agreeing, and then maybe they will hire me. Then, later, at home, I remember that I am 26 and pretty much everyone I know in my age bracket is … really very nice.

Hipsters

Wikipedia, the collection of 37 million articles that anyone can edit, is defined by conflict. The ability for anyone to shape this global repository of knowledge inevitable means that we are presented with fascinating, shocking, and often hilarious discussions on the talk pages of articles. See the talk pages of articles about Barack Obama, the Persian Gulf, Freddie Mercury or the best of all “lamest edit wars”.

Some of my colleagues and I wanted to know whether we can model and map the controversiality of Wikipedia articles. We wanted to know whether controversy had distinct geographies? Turns out that it does. (You can find the preprint version of our paper here).

To quantify the controversiality of an article based on its editorial history, we focused on reverts, which are changes that an editor makes to undo another editor’s edits completely. We counted all of the reverts in the history of every article and gave a higher weight to editors that revert each other repeatedly.

This allowed us to get a sense of what the most controversial articles in each Wikipedia language editions are. In English, the most controversial article is George W Bush, followed by Anarchism and then Muhammed. In French, the most controversial articles are Ségolène Royal, UFOs and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Here is the full list and an interactive visualisation of Wikipedia conflicts.

The short version is that at the top of the lists in multiple languages we see articles related to religion, politics and football, something you would expect people to be arguing about. But what about the geography of these controversial articles in different languages? Where do we see the most controversial articles in different languages? At the bottom of the article is the full list of maps that we created, covering 13 language Wikipedias.

What do these maps tell us? First, we see an interesting amount of difference between the various language editions of Wikipedia. Some of the smaller Wikipedias have a high degree of self-focus in articles that are characterised by the greatest degree of conflict. For instance, we see articles with the highest amount of conflict in the Czech and Hebrew Wikipedias being about the Czech Republic and Israel respectively. Even when looking at large languages that are primarily spoken in more than one country, we are able to see that a significant amount of self-focus occurs, in for example the Arabic or Spanish maps.

The interesting exception to this rule is the Middle East. All languages in our sample apart from Hungarian, Romanian, Japanese, and Chinese actually include articles on Israel as some of those characterised by a large amount of conflict.

Also worth pointing out is that we see significant differences in the geographic topics that generate the most conflict. The articles in Japanese that generate the most conflict are not only all located in Japan and, interestingly, are all educational institutions. The Portuguese articles that generate the most conflict are similarly all located in Brazil (the world’s largest Portuguese-speaking nation), with four out of the top five conflict scores being about football teams.

Within our sample, we actually only see the English, German and French Wikipedias with a significant amount of diversity in the topics and patterns of conflict in geographic articles. This probably indicates the less significant role that specific editors and arguments play in these larger encyclopaedias.

Ultimately by visualising the geography of conflict in Wikipedia, we are able to see both topics that appear to have cross-linguistic resonance (for example the Arab-Israeli conflict), and those of more narrow interest such as the Islas Malvinas/Falkland islands article in the Spanish Wikipedia.

These maps offer a window into not just the topics that different language communities are interested in, but also the topics that seem worth fighting about.

---

This article first appeared on Mark Graham’s blog.

Mark Graham receives funding from the IDRC and the ESRC.

Bruce Hood

Bruce Hood

Andy Brill

Stephane & Eva

Stephane & Eva

Homebush Bay in Sydney, Australia is home to the remnants of a ship-breaking yard that operated during the mid 20th-century. Large watercraft that outlived their usefulness were towed to Homebush Bay and dismantled to salvage any components that could be reused or sold for scrap.

One such ship was the SS Ayrfield, a 1,140-tonne behemoth built in 1911 as a steam collier that was later used during WWII as a transport ship. In 1972 it was brought to Homebush Bay to be dismantled, but fate would decide differently. Operations at the ship-breaking yard subsequently ceased and parts of several large vessels including the Ayrfield were left behind, the largest objects in an area now infamous for decades of chemical dumping and pollution. But only this century-old transport ship would be transformed by time into a floating forest, a peculiar home for trees and other vegetation that have since sprouted over the last few decades.

From 2008-2010 a concerted effort was made to remove many of the lingering chemicals in Homebush left from the industrial era. Not far away is the Brickpit Ring Walk, a former industrial site where nearly three billion bricks were made from 1911 through the 1980s that is now a carefully protected natural habitat. As the forest has grown inside the SS Ayrfield, the bay is now a popular place for photographers who wish to capture the uncanny sight of this strangely beautiful relic of the bay’s industrial past, not to mention nature’s resiliency.

A huge thanks to Bruce Hood, Andy Brill and Stephane & Eva for providing photos for this post. If you liked reading about the SS Ayrfield you might also like the Glass Beach in California. (via my modern met)

f-l-e-u-r-d-e-l-y-s:

 Bruges‑Dog‑in‑Window

His name is Fidel, he’s a golden Labrador, and he lives at the Côté Canal bed and breakfast overlooking the main canal. But he’s better known as “that dog who’s in every person who goes to Bruges’ photo album”.

We know Bruges well, but not so well as to know the name of the B&B. Thanks to the OP. :)

“Some companies are beginning to allow women to take their management-training courses. A woman sitting in on an executive conference is less of a shock to the male than she was only a few years ago. A few big companies–R.C.A., the Home Life Insurance Co., and the New York Central, for example–have even ushered women into the board room.”

[Full Story]

A trip to a pepper-eating contest in remote India.

[Full Story]

Read Drew's blog: The Worst Things For Sale.

This is a lovely specimen, displaying vertical and horizontal Aquamarine crystals - both of which are gemmy blue and perfectly terminated. The top portion of the vertical Aqua is like clear blue glass it is so gemmy. Several smaller crystals are also present and all sit atop a matrix of Abite... From the Erongo Mountain, Erongo Region, Namibia.  3.2 cm by 7 cm by 3.3 cm. 

This is an amazing and quite thick wire of Native Silver curling atop white Quartz matrix. Silver Islet is a prized locale for collectors and one that is now under water and inaccessible. The mine itself was actually located on an islet in Lake Superior and as one would expect, eventually the water rose higher and flooded the shaft. Authetic Silvers from the Silver Islet Mine date back to as early as 1868 when ore was first discovered by Thomas MacFarlane to as late as 1884 when the mine was finally closed after yielding over $3 million in Silver. The above specimen displays a beautiful antique patina, which is indicative of its age, over strong luster. From the Silver Islet Mine, Silver Islet, Sibley Township, Thunder Bay District, Ontario, Canada.  4 cm by 3 cm by 2.5 cm.

This is definately not a common thing to fnd. I can't recall seeing another specimen that featured three stalactites of nearly the same size rising up from a single matrix. The middle Amethyst finger rises 7 cm and the others are close to the same. The surfaces of the specimen are very glassy and reflective with a great deal of light play and sparkle. There is no damage or contacts to speak of and the stalactites are all in excellent condition. Very well trimmed also. From the Santino Quarry, Artigas, Uruguay.  10.4 cm by 16.3 cm by 11.5 cm. 

Three more jaw-dropping specimens from The Tucson 2013 Showrooms.  Many more at the link.

Almost no one remembers Bill O'Reilly's searing attack on Rush Limbaugh-style talk radio hosts. But it happened. "These idiots," the most popular conservative tv personality in America said. "I mean, they're misleading you. They're lying to you." As he explained it, "most talk radio is conservative-dominated ideologues; Kool-Aid drinking idiots." They're rich guys with "big cigars," he continued, causing many to believe he was singling out Limbaugh. "Walk away from these liars, these right-wing liars," he warned. "Walk away from them! They're not looking out for you."

The response was swift.

Talk radio's Mark Levin, a volatile man as prone to sudden, unexpected outbursts of anger as O'Reilly, hit back. "These blowhards," he said. "You get arrogant, stupid people who get paid a lot of money to be on radio and TV to be arrogant and stupid. And one of them... is on the Fox News Channel, my favorite cable channel. And he has a fledgling radio show that has no ratings, and he'll be off radio soon because he's a failure. It's the non-factor: Bill O'Reilly." He went on to call O'Reilly a "moron, phony journalist" who is "utterly unencumbered with information."

Amazing, right? Even titans of right-wing media believe that other titans right-wing media are disingenuous hucksters! As someone whose been making that same critique since around 2008, when that exchange took place, I can't help but chuckle at all the times I've been denounced by conservative bloggers for pointing out the very truths spoken by O'Reilly and Levin: that high profile conservative entertainers regularly violate the trust of their conservative fans. Limbaugh does, in fact, mislead on a weekly basis; O'Reilly is, in fact, curiously unencumbered by facts on occasions when they get in the way of something that he "knows" to be true.

It's just that conservatives don't usually admit that about their entertainers. It would benefit the rank-and-file to hear about it when someone "on their side" is cynically or carelessly feeding them bad information. But conservatives who know better often stay silent. The truth is willfully suppressed. 

That last bit is the most difficult to prove. Plenty of conservatives admit, off the record, that the right is hurt by the surfeit of false or misleading information broadcast everyday in right-leaning media. Almost all are reluctant to speak up. Some conservative reformers know that their vital ideas won't get a hearing among an already skeptical rank-and-file if they criticize certain right-wing icons, or else doubt that criticizing them is a worthwhile project quite apart from its consequences.

Why waste time on blowhards?

Others would like to speak up, but don't want their careers to suffer, or to wade through a week's worth of vicious emails, attacks from bloggers that border on libel, and other unpleasantness.

Who can blame any of them?

In aggregate, however, their individual decisions ensure that hucksterism goes mostly unchallenged, that the most popular conservative entertainers aren't pressured or shamed into dispensing better information, and that the rank-and-file operates at an ongoing information disadvantage. (For an example of that information disadvantage and its consequences see November 2012.)

What Bill O'Reilly said about conservative talk radio in 2008 was brave, insofar as he was offering a critique he believed to be important and true, even though multiple incentives aligned against him doing so. It would've been big news, and might've had a huge impact if, hours after uttering that critique on his radio show, he would've said the same thing on his Fox News show, a vastly bigger platform. I'd never given much thought to why the conservative entertainer backed down and aborted his critique, and had long since forgotten about the whole intra-conservative spat. But Joe Muto, a former Fox News staffer who has just published a tell-all book, claims he knows the rest of the story. Here's the relevant excerpt, as it's posted over at Salon:

The cigar and private jet stuff was a thinly veiled swipe at Rush Limbaugh, someone O'Reilly has never liked, but also a figure who had a lot of fans at 1211 Sixth Avenue, including Roger Ailes and Sean Hannity. When word filtered to the Second Floor that O'Reilly planned on repeating some of his radio rant on the TV show that night, the order came back quickly: Absolutely not. But O'Reilly put his foot down. Neither Stan Manskoff nor Bill Shine could dissuade him, and it took a phone call from Roger himself to put the matter to rest.

Bill took the call in his office, politely but insistently pleading his case to Ailes, but Roger held firm. Bill reluctantly agreed to toe the party line, excused himself from the call, gently hung up the receiver, then loudly yelled a string of expletives that could be heard all over the seventeenth floor. But after he got it out of his system, he spiked the Limbaugh reference from the TV show.

So there you have it.

If his account is accurate, it's the quintessential illustration of rot at the core of conservative media. O'Reilly, a broadcaster with more clout than any other on-air personality at Fox News, and one of the most prominent conservative pundits in America -- a guy who wrote a book titled, "Who's Looking out For You?" -- thinks, or at least thought, that America's most popular conservative entertainer, Limbaugh, lied to and misled his conservative audience, and that he was doing harm to his listeners and America itself at a moment of crisis. O'Reilly basically said so on the radio. He reportedly wanted to say so on television, too. But Roger Ailes wouldn't let him.

Rather than risk the consequences of disobeying, O'Reilly reportedly censored himself. Perhaps he thought Ailes had the right to determine what airs on his network. Or that the disagreement wasn't worth losing his hefty salary, or his ability to daily broadcast a television show he believes to be valuable. If the anecdote is accurate, it nevertheless stops short of revealing O'Reilly's motive, and that's okay, because I'm not here to insist that this is a demonstration of farsighted prudence, servile cowardice, or something in between. All I'm saying is that conservatives who regard Limbaugh as a destructive force, right up to the most powerful figures in the movement, can always find lots of reasons to back away from criticizing him. And that helps explain why, over the years, Limbaugh has become a less responsible broadcaster, and a bigger liability to conservatives: he's never been reined in by peers, who seldom criticize him in a way ties his intra-conservative prestige to broadcasting defensible content.

Having known several journalists on the left and right who've criticized powerful people "on their own side" without untold millions to fall back on, I'd personally have more respect for O'Reilly if he followed up on his 2008 critique. Lord knows talk radio hasn't changed, and his words, though prompted by a disagreement over the financial crisis, were general. But I fear that no one who shares my instincts on these matters would've made it to a prime time show on Fox. Ailes is a smart man, and presumably a good judge of who won't cross lines in the sand that he draws. So the status quo persists, where the only people willing to tell rank-and-file conservatives the truth about their favorite entertainers are people rank-and-file conservatives don't trust.

Today, O'Reilly is eager to convey this message: there's no feud with Limbaugh. Does he protest too much? Or is he no longer upset by the way talk radio daily abuses the trust of its audience?

..

Feminism is a problem women have been struggling with for centuries in literature and in the real world. But on the other hand men, they don’t have to deal with these attitudes against them and what society thinks they should be.

dlanadhz:

jessicamdawn:

What’s funny about this is that in Star Trek he’s quoting Sherlock Holmes, but in Sherlock he’s quoting Spock.

Although the original quote was from Sherlock Holmes. It was used in TOS and then in Star Trek (2009) as a reference to SH. Then in Sherlock 2x02, Sherlock says it and John calls him ‘Spock’ as though it’s a reference to Star Trek and Wibbly Wobbly Inception of the quote, yo.

…Because 1701(A) and 221B are brothers under the skin.

The Starship and the Upstairs Flat

David Lynch recently created “Another mystery,” a curious Vine video (his first) that shows an animation of a man being struck by lightning. A quick visit to his YouTube page offered a similar though longer video titled “TBD716.” We hope this mystery unfolds to be a new big project by the director.

via Bonnie Burton

Read and comment. From bbc.co.uk.

As expected, bookmakers have begun the process of offering odds on who will take on the role of the Doctor after Matt Smith hangs up his bow-tie at Christmas.

Early Sunday morning forecasts from William Hill placed the former Midshipman Frame Russell Tovey and Harry Potter star Rupert Grint as initial favourites at 10-1, with Hobbit and Sherlock star Martin Freeman next at 12-1. As one might expect the usual suspects were also present, with stars such as David Morrissey at 16-1, Paterson Joseph at 20-1, plus Alan Davies and James Nesbitt at 25-1. The favourite female contender was Billie Piper at 16-1, followed by Tilda Swinton at 20-1, and both 2013 BAFTA multi-award winner Olivia Colman and Jonathan Creek co-star (and audio 8th Doctor companion) Sheridan Smith at 25-1. More eccentric choices included footballer David Beckham, reality talent producer Simon Cowell and actor Tom Cruise at 250-1, plus footballer John Terry at 500-1.

Meanwhile Sky-Bet offered up a similar selection. Their top names included Damien Molony at 8-1, David Harewood, James Frain and Russell Tovey at 10-1, and others such as Rupert Grint, Olivia Coleman and Merlin star Colin Morgan at 20-1, Miranda Hart at 40-1, Patterson Joseph at 50-1, plus the return of David Tennant at 33-1! Also to be found on their list was Sherlock aka Benedict Cumberbatch at 40-1.

By Sunday evening, however, there was a clear leader in the form of Law & Order UK star Ben Daniels, appearing as favourite for Sky-Bet, Paddy Power, and Coral at 6-1, and with Betfair at 37-19. Other popular names included Chiwetel Ejiofor (Sky-Bet/Coral/Paddy-Power at 8-1), Russell Tovey (Coral at 8-1, Paddy-Power at 9-1, Sky-Bet/Betfair/William Hill's favourite at 10-1), and Skyfall's Rory Kinnear (Betfair at 41/9, Sky-Bet at 9-1, Paddy-Power at 11-1, Coral/William Hill at 12-1).

For a female acquisition of the TARDIS, William Hill offered 8-1 on this likelihood, with individual favourites being Billie Piper (William Hill, 16-1), Olivia Colman (Coral, 14-1, Paddy-Power, 20-1), Helen Mirren (Betfair, 27-1), and Miranda Hart (Sky-Bet, 50-1).

Whether additional contenders will challenge the current favourites remains to be seen as the week progresses.

Free black video gamming chair. Sits low on floor and rocks. On the curb at 60 Union St. Natick.

For men that like a classic, slightly retro shirt with a more modern cut, this shirt pattern is just the thing. The instructions will guide you gently through every step of creating a well-crafted casual shirt: felled seams, a lined back yoke, and sleeve plackets on the long sleeve version. Subtle details include a convertible collar (also known as a "camp collar") and midcentury style collar loop detail.

I’ve come around on leggings.

For years, I was one of the most adamant legging haters in the country. When I saw a girl/woman walk by wearing leggings “as pants” my stalwart go-to reaction was: eye-roll + “echh” + one or more of the following: “Leggings aren’t pants” / “That’s not even flattering” / “Does she think that looks cute?” / “Put some pants on.”

I was so proud of my patronizing disdain for this superfluous, sure-to-be short-lived, trying-too-hard-to-bring-back-the-‘80s trend. Except it turned out to be not so short-lived. It’s been a good seven years since my leggings-hatred hatched, because it’s been a good seven years since leggings “came back.”

I didn’t always hate leggings. In fact, I distinctly remember loving one particular pair that I had as a kid: white ones with neon purple, pink, and orange geometric patterns on them. (It was the early ‘90s. They were awesome.)

But something happened in my psyche sometime between 1994 and 2006 that totally altered my opinion of long spandex-cotton bottom-wear and made me believe they were unacceptable to function as anything other than thick tights. By the time I was a college freshman in 2006, my opinion of leggings was set in stone: Thou shall not wear leggings with anything but a skirt or a dress. Thou shall not even wear them with oversized sweaters or long button-downs. Thou shall especially not wear them with normal-length shirts, “as pants.”

And it wasn’t just that I personally rejected these fashions in my wardrobe. Nay, I judged every woman who wore leggings in any way I deemed sinful. I judged them hard. The wrath of my leggings-judgment poured down frequently via disapproving glares and silent head-shaking.

But then my slightly-younger, slightly-more-stylish cousin started wearing leggings as pants. She embraced the look and rocked it. My cousin made me realize that leggings created the option of simultaneous style and comfort.

On paper, it seems like such a simple revelation, but it was not. At the time, I was about to start writing my Master’s thesis on 1920s flapper fashions and Simon de Beauvoir’s theories of the “eternal feminine.” I was thinking a lot about the uncomfortable, often medically dangerous things women do to contort their bodies to fit some unrealistic feminine ideal. In the past: Chinese foot-binding, African neck rings, Euro-American corsets and crinolines. In the present: high heels, spanx, false eyelashes, tight (like, circulation-cutting-off tight) jeans, corsets (…still).

In contrast, I began to develop a soft spot for soft, body-hugging (not body-squeezing or -contorting) leggings. As Amanda Hess wrote for Slate’s XX Factor earlier this month, leggings aren’t pants, and they aren’t tights, either. She’s says they’re better than both because they’re more comfortable.

“Pants are great if you’re a woman with the perfectly-calibrated corporate-sanctioned ratio of waist to ass to leg. What are you, a ringer for the jeans industry? It’s time to stop squeezing our lower bodies into constrictive denim prisons and instead envelope them in a forgiving cotton-spandex jersey. Never again will we be forced to choose between visible ass-crack and bulging muffin top.”

As for tights,

“Tights have exerted their control-tops over our torso-crotch areas for too long. They snag on everything. They warp in the wash. They create itches that cannot be scratched. The discomfort of the toe seam is, frankly, egregious. But it doesn’t have to be this way: Sturdy. Footless. Washable. Leggings.”

Hess concludes that leggings have subversive power (my word, her meaning) because they’re not really meant to look good, but rather to feel good. When the fashion police and legging-haters of the world (AKA me pre-2012) look down their noses and scoff “Those aren’t pants. Put some real pants on,” what they’re really saying is “You’re not conforming. Women wear pants, skirts, or dresses. Leggings aren’t any of those. You need to conform.”

And, it’s taken me a long time — about seven years’ worth of judging women for wearing comfortable, trendy not-pants — but it’s finally, fully dawned on me: I was judging women for not conforming, too. All this time, I thought I was the system-bucker because I avoided this trend like the plague. But it turns out I actually missed out on years’ worth of system-bucking via comfy, trendy bottoms. OH GOD. Excuse me while I crawl off to a corner now and die of self-disappointment.

But no! No actual dying today, because I’ve discovered my conformity-based-judgment and I’ve reformed. Practically a 180-degree reformation! I’d say about 175; I sometimes wear leggings, and I definitely never judge other people for wearing them.

Sure, maybe it has something to do with the fact that skinny jeans and yoga pants have become norms, so after a while leggings seem to be just another part of the leg-hugging gang. Because I’m not the only one to come around on leggings recently.

But it’s definitely more than that. Because my leggings-conversion was the start of something bigger, something really significant for me: my journey to stop internally judging women for wearing things society considers(ed) to be “slutty.”

No, I never thought leggings were slutty. But realizing that I was wrong to judge women for wearing leggings made me realize that I was wrong to judge women for wearing other things. I’m ashamed (and frustrated) to say still haven’t quite conquered that mean girl (or is it a man?) in my brain, with her supposed high-standards and apparent Colonial fashion-sense, who whispers “slut” from the depths of my Repressed-Stuff Brain Cave when some a girl wearing stilettos, high heels, and a low-cut top walks by.

It’s an on-going process, beating internalized slut-shaming, but awareness is definitely the most crucial step. And I defy anyone to tell me that conquering internalized slut-shaming isn’t hard work, given that our entire culture judges women on what they wear, draws the line between “attractive” and “slutty” with invisible ink, and rarely questions slut-shaming, even in the case of a 16-year-old rape victim — it’s hard work, even when we’re feminists and uber aware.

But my leggings epiphany has shown me that I need to tell my Creepy Subconscious Slut-Shaming Cave Dweller to shut up. Judging a person based on what they wear is weird and wrong. And in the case of women, it furthers sexual objectification and the idea that appearance is a woman’s most important characteristic.

Leggings have shown me that judging women for “not wearing pants” is almost as bad as judging them for wearing pants instead of skirts, like they were doing 70 years ago. (Yeah, it hasn’t been that long. Weird, right?)

Leggings may very well represent a new level of comfort for the 21^st-century young woman, who doesn’t let thick, tough denim hold her back, or uncomfortable, footed, seam-filled tights slow her down.

And leggings may also mark a new, subversive frontier in women’s fashion: where there used to be only skirts and dresses, there appeared pants; now, where there used to be only skirts, dresses, and pants, there appeared leggings.

Written by Jess Eagle
Reposted with permission from House of Flout.

You’ve likely heard the tale before: Millions of unsold copies of the disastrous ET: The Extraterrestrial game for the Atari 2600 lie buried in a New Mexico landfill. Despite a slew of believers and evidence supporting the story, doubters remain. But in the next few months, we'll have the answer once and for all.

Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, called White House press secretary Jay Carney a "paid liar" in an interview today.

Issa, who is involved in the investigation of the IRS's decision to target tea-party groups, was blunt about his belief that most likely the employees in the Cincinnati IRS offices were acting on orders from Washington, D.C.

"The administration is still -- their paid liar, their spokesperson, picture behind," Issa said on CNN's State of the Union this morning, where the set has a picture of Carney behind host Candy Crowley, "he’s still making up things about what happen[ed] and calling this local rogue."

"The reason that Lois Lerner tried to take the Fifth is not because there’s a rogue in Cincinnati," he added. "It's because this is a problem that was coordinated. in all likelihood, right out of Washington headquarters."

Mandatory listing of about 1,600 activities is posted by department on performance.gov.

Delightful! (Via Reddit)

Anybody fancy donating me a round trip ticket from London to Tokyo? Because I really just can't handle it anymore, I have to go!!! Seriously, there is nothing really more that I can say to describe the phenomenal work that Japanese shoemakers do. The detailing on this spectator above is beyond earthly description. I mean even if you did not like spectators or two toned shoes, one could simply not say that they don't appreciate its beauty. Even the rest of the shoes. You may not love them nor even really like them, but you must appreciate the thought, passion and craft that goes into them. And that is what I love about Japanese shoemakers: their desire to go above and beyond, to create things that no one else has, or to do something that has been done style wise, but put a twist on it that is unique to them. The double monk below is example of that. Something similar has been done, but not exactly the same. That little twist however makes it stand miles apart.....anyway, I could go on and on, but I need to get to other things...should you wish to dive head deep into it, you can find the source of these photos, plus many,many more, here at Style Forum

Have a lovely weekend,

Justin, "The Shoe Snob"

theolduvaigorge:

Who invented clothes? A Palaeolithic archaeologist answers

Hadley Freeman’s answer to the question was chiffon-flimsy, so here’s the lab-coat response

• by Rebecca Wragg-Sykes

““Who invented clothes?” It’s one of those brilliant questions that children ask, before they learn that the big things we wonder about rarely have simple answers. It’s the kind of thing that archaeologists like me get put on the spot about when chatting to kids, and we love to have a crack at answering.

Saturday’s “Ask a grown up” section featured just that question, from eight-year old Harriet, with an answer by Hadley Freeman, fashionexpert and fantastic writer. Hadley’s response was, as usual, entertainingly breezy, with some refreshing encouragement to Harriet to experiment in developing her own style; but, like a fine chiffon, it was a little flimsy in substance.

I’m proud to be involved with ScienceGrrl, which aims to show girls that science is for everyone by providing diverse role models, andTrowelBlazers, a new project that is all about bringing to the fore the achievements of pioneering women archaeologists, geologists and palaeontologists. So I was kind of disappointed that a girl asking a genuine question about archaeology ended up with the barest of facts, as well as being told, even if it was meant lightheartedly, that the grown-up answering her question would rather she pay attention to what she looks like.

Hadley knows today’s fashion world inside out and might not care much about pre-silk times, but I’ll bet that Harriet wanted to find out more than what the Flintstones wear.

It’s this kind of response that can, in aggregate, have a negative impact on children: being mentally curious ends up as something deeply uncool and not relevant to modern life. I’m not advocating force-feeding facts Vulcan-style when talking to young people – far from it. They like to be challenged and humour is a great way to do this. But I do think we should take every chance we get to pass on the incredible stuff that we’ve found out about our world thanks to science – including archaeology – and keep on showing girls that using their brains by asking big questions is, actually, absolutely fabulous.

So for Harriet, if you’re reading: there’s a whole lot we know about the invention of clothing. Many TV reconstructions and book illustrations of stone age (Palaeolithic) people really don’t do them justice. People were already making finely worked bone needles 20,000 years ago, probably for embroidery as much as sewing animal skins, like the thousands of ivory beads and fox teeth that covered the bodies of a girl and a boy buried at Sunghir, Russia, around 28,000 years ago. This was some serious bling, representing years of accumulated work.

And – caveman stereotypes aside – stone age clothes weren’t just animal skins. We’ve known since the 1990s that people were weaving fabric back then, revealed by impressions in baked clay from the sites of Pavlov and Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic. We don’t actually know for sure that these were used for clothes, but the materials weren’t heavy duty, and the variety in weaving styles suggests a long tradition. And at Dzudzuana Cave in Georgia, 30,000 year old spun plant fibres were found which had been dyed: pink, black and turquoise blue!

But what about the really old stuff (because 30,000 years ago isn’t really old in human evolution)? As Harriet asks, who were the first fashionistas? People are still debating what, if anything, our close relatives the Neanderthals were wearing” (read more).

• Becky Wragg Sykes (@LeMoustier) is a postdoctoral researcher working on Neanderthal archaeology. She blogs atwww.therocksremain.org and is part of the TrowelBlazers team (@trowelblazers)

(Source: Guardian; bottom image: Antropark)

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