Skyline: 1901
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
New York circa 1901
“Manhattan sky-line from North River” i.e. the Hudson River
8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
When did “bureaucracy” become a dirty word? Once it stood for the end of privilege and the rise of merit and rights. What went wrong?... more
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How to Sharpen Pencils and more odd book titles
via Pages & Proofs by Richard Davies
The Bookseller magazine has announced its short-list for the annual oddest book title of the year, the Diagram Prize. As always, there are some wonderful contenders.
Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop by Reginald Bakeley
God’s Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis by Tom Hickman
How Tea Cosies Changed the World by Loani Prior
How to Sharpen Pencils by David Rees
Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts by Jerry Gagne
Was Hitler Ill? by Hans-Joachim Neumann and Henrik Eberle
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A brief history of space monkeys and spies
via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
In the late 1950s, American scientists very publicly readied a crew of monkeys for a series of trips into Earth orbit and back. As far as the researchers knew, Project Discoverer was an actual, honest-to-Ike peaceful scientific program. Naturally, they were wrong about that. In reality, their work was part of an elaborate cover-up masking a spy satellite program. At The Primate Diaries, Eric Michael Johnson reports on some fascinating space history.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Hair-bobbing, heart-breaking Edna St. Vincent Millay conquered Greenwich Village with her looks and lyrics. The greatest female poet since Sappho?... more
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The (true) legend of Stagolee
via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
The story of a deadly bar fight between a guy named Billy and a guy named Stagolee (or Stack Lee, or Stagger Lee) has worked its way into a broad swath of 20th-century music – from the blues of 1930s Southern prisoners, to Duke Ellington, to James Brown, to the Grateful Dead. At Davey D’s Hip Hop History 101, Cecil Brown traces the true story behind the legend back to the red light district of St. Louis in 1895.
And real hot political stuff it is too!
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400 Years: a game where you strategically wait in order to overcome obstacles
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
400 years is an adorable and clever browser-game where you play a kind of ambulatory stone pellet on a quest, wherein you overcome obstacles by holding down the space bar to make the seasons fly past and the years go by, while a tree grows tall enough to climb, or winter arrives and freezes a pond so you can cross it.
But don’t hold the space bar too much – you've only got 400 years to get through the game!
Play 400 years, a FREE online game on Jay is Games (via Waxy)
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Gunther von Hagens, the man behind “Body Worlds”, now finds that his own body is failing him. Dr. Death contemplates his own mortality... more
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Late 1950s : The Bee Gees
via Retronaut by Chris Wild
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Is This the Missing Half of the Most Controversial Painting Ever?
via Big Think by Bob Duggan
If any painting could be labelled “not safe for work”, it’s Gustave Courbet’s 1866 L’Origine du monde (in English, The Origin of the World; and, once again, NSFW). Banned even from Facebook, proving that prudery’s alive and well in the 21st century, Courbet’s graphically realistic painting of a woman’s nude torso went unseen by the public until 1988 and didn’t enter a museum collection until the Musée d'Orsay accepted it 7 years later.
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