via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Washington, D.C., in 1926
“Robey Motor Co. – 1429 L Street”
As long as we’re downtown, let’s pick up a tractor
National Photo glass negative
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Secrets of sea otter fur
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
No copyright-free images!!
California sea otters (Enhydra lutris) — the frolicking mascots of the coast who draw visitors to aquariums in droves and who float among the kelp beds just beyond the surf line — have the densest fur of any mammal on Earth.
Continue reading from KQED Science [there’s even a video]
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via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Dear pedantic grammarians: Your rules are just stylistic conventions. We’ll split an infinitive or end a sentence with a preposition anytime we want to… more
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Rubens and body image
via A Don’s Life by Mary Beard
We had an intriguing discussion on Friday night about Rubens and body image. It was at the Royal Academy in conjunction with the "Rubens and his Legacy" show.The point was to confront the basic, common idea of the "Rubenesque"...or, to go down a notch or two, the idea that Rubens is all about fat women. I mean, there are plenty of fat men in the Rubens repertoire, and plenty of people who are not fat at all, and plenty of clothed bodies and religious bodies... so how do we approach them?
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The futility of attempts to find a substitute for God
via 3 Quarks Daily: Eugene McCarraher at Dissent
Yet despite His protracted dotage, God refuses to shuffle off into oblivion. If He lingers as a metaphysical butt in seminar rooms and research laboratories, He thrives in the sanctuaries of private belief, religious communities, and seminaries, and abides (sometimes on sufferance) in theology and religious studies departments. He flourishes in suburban evangelical churches everywhere in North America; offers dignity and hope to the planet of slums in Kinshasa, Jakarta, São Paulo, and Mumbai; inspires pacifists and prophets for the poor as well as bombers of markets and abortion clinics. David Brat claims Him for libertarian economics, while Pope Francis enlists Him to scourge the demons of neoliberal capitalism. He’s even been seen making cameo appearances in the books of left-wing intellectuals. “Religious belief,” Terry Eagleton quips, “has rarely been so fashionable among rank unbelievers.”
As Eagleton contends in Culture and the Death of God, the Almighty has proven more resilient than His celebrated detractors and would-be assassins. God “has proved remarkably difficult to dispose of”; indeed, atheism itself has proven to be “not as easy as it looks.” Ever since the Enlightenment, “surrogate forms of transcendence” have scrambled for the crown of the King of Kings – reason, science, literature, art, nationalism, but especially “culture” – yet none have been up to the job.
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via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
How did the man who invented the comedic monologue – who defined celebrity in the age of celebrity – disappear so effectively from American consciousness?… more
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As Testament of Youth hits cinema screens today [it was today], we take a look at the real Vera Brittain in our records!
via FindMyPast by Holly
Today, Testament of Youth, the epic true account of Vera Brittain’s coming of age experience during World War 1, hits the cinemas. A British writer, feminist and pacifist who studied at Oxford but delayed her degree in order to work as a V.A.D nurse, Vera’s memoir was a best-seller upon its release in 1933 thanks to its searing portrayal of a ‘lost generation’.
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The financial consequences of saying “Black”, vs. “African American”
via 3 Quarks Daily: Joe Pinsker in The Atlantic
One hundred years ago, “Colored” was the typical way of referring to Americans of African descent. Twenty years later, in the time of W.E.B. Du Bois, it was purposefully dropped to make way for “Negro”. By the late 1960s, that term was overtaken by “Black”. And then, at a press conference in a Hyatt hotel in Chicago in 1988, Jesse Jackson declared that “African American” was the term to embrace; that one was chosen because it echoed the labels of groups, such as “Italian Americans” and “Irish Americans,” that had already been freed of widespread discrimination.
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via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Saving fairy tale
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm expected to be remembered long after their deaths – for their masterful philological studies, not their fairy tales… more==========================================
Hand-illuminated edition of The Silmarillion
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
Benjamin Harff produced a hand-illuminated edition of Tolkien's The Silmarillion (a famously dense set of myths and background for Middle Earth) as a final project at art school; in this interview, he explains his motivation and his process.
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