Posters for Acrobatics shows, 1892-1903
via Retronaut by Chris
Source: Performing Arts Posters Collection, Library of Congress
See the rest of Chri’s choice here.
WARNING: Some pictures contain clowns (at least one of my friends freaks out at these).
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
The killing graph. A 46-year old statistician’s ability to quantify mass atrocities has launched a data revolution in the human-rights world... more
================================================ See the beauties and the beasts that live under the sea
via 3quarksdaily by Azra Raza
From MSNBC:
Even a humble sea slug can be stylish, if you find the right slug in the right place. That’s what photographer Ximena Olds did when she snapped a picture of an orange headshield sea slug amid the green seagrass in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Her contrasting-color picture took the top prize in this year’s Underwater Photography Contest, hosted by the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. More than 700 images were submitted for the 2012 contest, showing scenes from 20 countries.
More here
================================================ Cityscapes made from schoolbooks via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
Liu Wei, an artist from Beijing, is currently [as at 3 May 2012] exhibiting a show called “Foreign” at the Almine Rech gallery in Paris. Wei’s art plays with cityscapes, and "Foreign" features cityscapes made from schoolbooks affixed with steel rods and clamps.
Above is Library No.6. and below is Library No.4.
Almine Rech Gallery - Current [was linked but appears to be no longer working] (via Neatorama)
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Philosopher on the throne. Catherine the Great, friend of Voltaire, transformed Russia by dint of her implacable will and insatiable sexual appetite... more
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Original Prince of Persia source-code discovered, posted as free software
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
Jordan Mechner, creator of the classic bestselling video-game Prince of Persia recently discovered the floppies with the game's original sourcecode in a closet, where they'd sat for more than 20 years. He'd long believed the discs to be lost.
Prince of Persia Source Code — Found!, jordanmechner.com
Jubilant at their rediscovery, he's released the game as free/open code, with the source available on GitHub.
The source awaits your download and remixing!
Prince of Persia Source Code Released On Github
Original Prince of Persia game (screenshot), Softpedia
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Scientists claim the way a person answers simple math problem is a good predictor of their belief in a religion via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
Image: Baseball, a Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivative-Works (2.0) image from swaimsketching's photostream
Q: If a baseball and bat cost $110, and the bat costs $100 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?
If you answered $10 you are inclined to believe in religion.
If you answered $5 you are inclined to disbelieve.
Why?
Because, according to new research reported in tomorrow’s [that would have been 27th April] issue of the journal Science, the $10 answer indicates that you are an intuitive thinker, and the $5 answer indicates that you solve problems analytically, rather than following your gut instinct.
Psychologists William Gervais and Ara Norenzayan, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, predicted that people who were more analytic in thinking would tend not to believe in religion, whereas people who approach problems more intuitively would tend to be believers.
Their study confirmed the hypothesis and the findings illuminate the mysterious cognitive process by which we reach decisions about our beliefs.
Religion and Reason: Analytic thinking decreases religious belief
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
“I will hate you till the day I die,” the thin-skinned Alain de Botton once told a reviewer. Now things are looking up. His self-help philosophy is catnip for the well-heeled in search of meaning... more
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High Roller: 1912
via Dave at Shorpy
Washington, D.C., in 1912. "Borah, William E., Mrs., wife of Senator from Idaho." In a spiffy electric phaeton, sitting. Harris & Ewing glass negative.
View full size. this link works but the image does not seem to have survived, sorry. And now it's back. What is going on here?
Now that’s what I call a motor car!
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Bodleian and Vatican libraries to digitise ancient texts
The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana are announcing a new collaborative digitization project with the aim of opening up repositories of ancient texts and 1.5 million pages from their remarkable collections freely available online to researchers and the general public worldwide.
The initiative has been made possible by a £2 million award from the Polonsky Foundation. Dr Leonard Polonsky whose passion, interest and commitment is to democratize access to information, sees increasing digital access to these two library collections, among the greatest in the world, as a significant step in sharing the wealth of resources on a global scale.
Dr Polonsky, said: “21st-century technology provides the opportunity for collaborations between cultural institutions in the way they manage, disseminate and make available for research the information, knowledge and expertise they hold. I am pleased to support this exciting new project where the Bodleian Libraries and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana will make important collections accessible to scholars and the general public worldwide.”
Driven by the same vision of opening up their collections, the two institutions have recently established a partnership brokered by the Bodleian’s Centre for the Study of the Book. The digitization project builds on the existing relationship between the two institutions.
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