Puppies and Flowers

Link to YouTube

Interesting comments from current employees of the bridge including:

"People in Corvettes are very snotty," she said. "I hate to say that, but it's true. They don't give you the time of day."

Forest "Woody" Becker said working on the bridge is "about the greatest job an ironworker can have. It's a great icon, and it's real security." He is proud to have designed camera mounts for the bridge and recently created a mold to make zinc castings used on suspender ropes. Becker first saw the Golden Gate in August 1964. "I was in the Navy, heading to Vietnam aboard the USS Ranger. Then I saw it 10 months later. It welcomed me home. I'll never forget it. "

Link to pictures

Link to article on Slate.com

Note: According to this wikipedia entry on Iver Johnson, President William McKinley and Senator Robert F. Kennedy were killed by Iver Johnson revolvers.

This vintage ad ran in Harper’s Weekly (1904). Found at LiveJournal.

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt -- more than a century ago.

Link to CNN article

Not only was Rome not built in a day, but a digital model took 10 years to construct. A team of archaeologists, architects and computer specialists from Italy, the United States, Britain and Germany has just unveiled a sprawling 3D digital simulation of the ancient city as it appeared at the height of its development as the capital of the Roman Empire.

Link to c|net article

Link to more pictures

A professional puzzle inventor has solved what he considers the oldest riddle of them all - Stonehenge.

Bruce Bedlam, 56, has built a scale model of the ancient stone circle as he believes it was originally constructed - as a round building.

He believes that the Wiltshire monument was created with a large, domed roof made from wood and covered in wooden tiles.

Bruce believes the siting was significant and the sun would enter the interior at every solstace through one of the ten doors.

Link to article

This is sad…

This letter originally belonged to my grandmother. After she passed away we discovered it and were surprised at how well it was preserved for being nearly 70 years old. She eventually became an animator during WWII for the war effort.

Link to Flickr entry

Thanks to Helen P

Spanish researchers on Friday said they had unearthed a human tooth more than one million years old, which they estimated to be the oldest human fossil remain ever discovered in western Europe.

Link to article

Shown here:

Cover of "Berkeley Barb", an underground newspaper, featuring a photographic collage of politically charged images, mostly relating to the Civil Rights movement. Central image is of an African American male, smoking and saying in a speech bubble, "I have a nightmare...", inverting the line from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech.

Link to Wisconsin Historical Society

Brooklyn Bridge (Image Credit: dustin3000 [Flickr])

Background: Not long after the Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883, a shifty 20-year-old named George C. Parker decided on a whim to see if he could "sell" it to an unsuspecting tourist. He did. In fact, it was so easy that he tried it on someone else a few days later and pulled it off again. He dropped his other cons and went into Brooklyn Bridge sales full-time.

Continue reading at Neatorama

A 10-year-old Nepali girl worshipped as a living goddess, or Kumari, has lost her "divine" status for defying tradition and visiting the United States.

Not to be confused with the Munger article

(image credit: Flickr)

Flamboyant jazz veteran George Melly, who died on 5 July 2007 aged 80, was one of the most colourful characters in British showbusiness of the last 50 years.

A true Renaissance man, he wrote 13 books, gave lectures on fine art and performed on stage for nearly sixty years while also finding time to indulge his passions for film, fishing, drink and sex.

His style was heavily influenced by his jazz idols Fats Waller and Bessie Smith and he became famous for his performances in which he delighted audiences with saucy jokes and witty asides.

With his loud suits, hats and cigars, he epitomized the gangster style of the 1930s.

Alan George Heywood Melly was born in Liverpool on 17 August 1926. His interest in jazz, blues and art began at the liberal Stowe public school.

Link to tribute

Collection [1] [2]

(Keenesburg, Co.) - Flora Zimbelman says it all started 54 years ago when she put an uncooked hot dog in her sister’s suitcase.

 "I don’t know what made me do it. The devil I guess," she said.

Flora’s sister, Rose, found the hot dog when she opened the suitcase back up in Idaho, where she lived at the time.

"She mailed it back to me telling me to keep my garbage at home," said Flora. The game was on.

In the years that followed, Flora would find a way to sneak the hot dog back into Rose's life. And Rose would find another way to sneak it back to Flora.

"I found it under my pillow once, I found it in between the drapes and once I found it in the kitchen drawer," said Flora. Flora still has that hot dog.

It looks just about as disgusting as you might expect.

Link to article via Spulch

Cylindrical Colonies (Interior view)

Bernal Spheres (Colony construction crew at work)

A couple of space colony summer studies were conducted at NASA Ames in the 1970s. Colonies housing about 10,000 people were designed. A number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made. These have been converted to jpegs and are available as thumbnails, quarter page, full screen and publication quality images.

Link to NASA

The headline says it all...

Watch the video, thanks Miss Cellania 

1. Blurbing yourself

2. Burying the lede

3. Challenging Alexander Pushkin to a one-handed duel

4. Coaxing Salinger to come out and play

5. Coming up with a gripping plot twist

6. Conjugating the verb

7. Cooking up a big oily batch of Victory Gin

8. Dangling your participles

9. Deconstructing The Fountainhead

10. Dipping your madeleine into Proust's tea

11. Finishing the first draft by hand

12. Freelancing for the glossies

13. Getting just a little too into pictures of Dorian Gray

14. Giving it a first pass

15. Giving the protagonist some internal conflict

16. Giving your narrative a Faustian theme

17. Having a strong opinion in your writing workshop about the power of symbolism

18. A Heartbreaking Wank of Staggering Spunkage

19. Hiding Rushdie from the Muslim assassins

20. Hunting for treasure in Injun Joe's cave

21. Interrogating JT LeRoy and his five accomplices

22. Jack Kerou-whacking

23. Joining the Beat Generation

24. Launching a ship to the holy city of Byzantium

25. Listening to Portnoy complain

26. Looking for clues with Tintin and Snowy



27. Mangling the English translation

28. Mixing your metaphors

29. Much A-Goo About Nothing

30. Oliver's Twist

31. Palahniukin'

32. Paying extra for the hardcover

33. Paying the bills with a hack novelization

34. Paying yourself in contributor copies

35. Picking the pull-quotes

36. Pinning Garp with a Half Nelson

37. Polishing Nick Hornby's head

38. Pottering your Chamber of Secrets

39. Print-on-demand

40. Proofreading the galleys

41. Putting out Polyphemus' one good eye

42. Putting the "wad" back into "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow"

43. Querying the editor

44. Rattling your stick inside a swill bucket

45. Reading poetry aloud

46. Recouping losses incurred by the Publishers Group West bankruptcy

47. Saying yes, yes, oh god yeeeeees to Ulysses

48. Shooting at Joan Burroughs with your flesh musket

49. Shooting your own author's photo

50. Signing the first edition

51. Skimming the Cliff Notes

52. Slapstick (or: “Lonesome No More”)

53. Spanking the Monkey (sometimes known as "Spanking Arthur Waley's translation of Journey to the West ")

54. Splitting infinitives

55. Stocking the remainder table

56. Tap-tap-tapping at your chamber door (only this and nothing more)

57. The other lonely impulse of delight



58. Touring Rosings with Mr. Collins

59. Transforming Gregor Samsa into a monstrous vermin

60. Using the passive voice

61. Varnishing your Booker Prize

Need some puppies and flowers?

Found at 'vonneguts asshole' 

From Yahoo news:

Link to Yahoo article

7 wonders website

Link to SF Chronicle images

Pac-Man? Space Invaders? Frogger? The video games of the 1980s were played in arcades, pizza parlors and bars--and all you needed was a quarter to join in the fun.

From the time Space Invaders appeared in 1978, until game consoles took over in the mid-1990s, arcades were the center of the video gaming world. The classics that were produced in the "golden age of arcade games" are still very much alive today. You can play versions of them for free on many Internet sites or find a version that was produced for a new game console such as Microsoft's Xbox 360 or Nintendo's Wii.

Link to more images   Thanks Jeff J

From BBC:

A car made famous by the cartoon series The Pink Panther is expected to fetch up to £100,000 at auction.

The sleek pink car appeared in the titles and credits of the television series featuring the legendary pink cat and Inspector Clouseau.

The 23ft (7m) car is a lengthened 1969 Oldsmobile Toronado, complete with pink plush interior.

It will be auctioned at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, on Saturday and is expected to fetch £75,000 to £90,000.

But Christian Penwill, from auctioneers Coys, said the famous vehicle may fetch a lot more.

Fully working

"At the auction of the Batmobile in February, the price rocketed. It sold for £119,000 in the end," he said.

Although the Pink Panther car has been stored in a museum for years, it is in full working order and has recently been used for charity and promotional work.

It was the only Pink Panther car ever produced. It was built in 1969 by Californian car customiser Jay Ohrberg, who also created the open-top Batmobile for the 1992 film Batman Returns.

The car will go under the hammer at the Fine Motor Cars and the Jaguar Legend Auction on 14 July.  Link to BBC 

Link to Coys auction via Arbroath

photo: National Archives)

From NPR:

A bit of national history occurred Wednesday morning when 11 1/2 hours of previously unreleased tapes from Richard Nixon's presidential years were released to the public.

The release was part of a change in oversight for the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Previously run by the Nixon Foundation, which was made up of Nixon family and friends, the library now falls under the domain of the National Archives. Continue reading

From Yahoo:

"This is a great day for history. The hallmark of this new institution will be true acceptance and love for history — the good, the bad and the ugly," said Timothy Naftali, the museum's new federal director.

"The challenge is to present a controversial, traumatic and important story in a fair and historically accurate way," he said.

For nearly 20 years, library visitors were told the Watergate scandal was really a "coup" by Nixon's rivals and the investigative reporting team of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein offered bribes for their nation-shaking scoops. Continue reading

If you need a presidential sized laugh after reading these click here 

photo: Genocide Intervention

From Radar Online:

Cheadle, co-author of Not On Our Watch, about the genocide in Darfur, was recently called in to talk to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the issue. And he wasn't impressed.

"She wanted to tell me what the U.S. was doing," Cheadle said. "First she said, 'We're doing all we can, but it's not us, it's the United Nations. They're bogged down with red tape, and trying to push anything through just takes forever. The bureaucracy is almost insurmountable, and it's the United Nations, not the U.S.' And then she said, 'It's like when we had this crisis in Lebanon, I had to send someone down specifically to push through all of our legislation and make sure that everything moved through efficiently.' I'm thinking, I thought you had no control over the United Nations. But I didn't say that, 'cause I wanted to leave!" more

More information about the Sudan divestment movement.

From Yahoo:

AUSTIN, Texas - Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady who championed conservation and worked tenaciously for the political career of her husband, Lyndon B. Johnson, died Wednesday, a family spokeswoman said. She was 94.

Johnson, who suffered a stroke in 2002 that affected her ability to speak, returned home late last month after a week at Seton Medical Center, where she'd been admitted for a low-grade fever.

She died at her Austin home of natural causes about 5:18 p.m. EDT. Elizabeth Christian, the spokeswoman, said she was surrounded by family and friends.

Even after the stroke, Johnson still managed to make occasional public appearances and get outdoors to enjoy her beloved wildflowers. But she was unable to speak more than a few short phrases, and more recently did not speak at all, Anne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the LBJ Library and Museum, said in 2006. She communicated her thoughts and needs by writing, Wheeler said.  more

photo: mjross 

from article:

In 2001, male Hypolimnas bolina butterflies on the Samoan islands of Savaii and Upolu were extremely rare. Just 1 percent of these butterflies -- known commonly as Blue Moon or Great Eggfly -- were male. They were under attack by the Wolbachia bacteria, a parasite passed down through the female that kills off male butterflies before they can hatch.

Last year, the numbers of males had either reached or were approaching those of females. They were helped by the development of a genetic mutation that suppresses the bacteria, sparing the males and allowing them to quickly repopulate.

"This is one of the most clear and fastest cases of evolution under natural selection," said Sylvain Charlat of University College London, whose study appears in the journal Science.  more

via Fark

previously on P&F disputing the creationist argument

photo/art: Buddy Stone

Snow attacked proposals to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, claiming:

To walk out of Iraq right now would plant a seed that ultimately would lead to destabilization there, hundreds of thousands of deaths, loss of our influence in the region, would create instability throughout the Middle East throughout East Asia, throughout Europe. And sooner or later it would come to our shores, to a shopping mall near you.  more

source: Think Progress

previously about fearmongering on P&F 

photo: in2jazz 

From article:

Why the San Francisco Chronicle is a candidate to exit print

Play with me on this one: Which major American newspaper should be the first to throw up its hands and stop publishing a print product?

It's a question worth asking. This could be the worst year for newspapers since the Great Depression. The double-digit revenue declines long forecast by doomsters have arrived. While nearly all the major papers still post profits, albeit smaller than before, a few prominent ones are losing boatloads. At Hearst Newspapers' San Francisco Chronicle, according to a deposition given by James M. Asher, the company's chief legal and business development officer, losses of $330 million piled up between mid-2000 and September, 2006, better—or should I say worse?—than $1 million a week. During negotiations with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's unions, the owning Block family disclosed that the paper lost $20 million in 2006. Late last year, The Boston Globe was headed for unprofitability as well, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Read more at BusinessWeek 

photo: AliThinks 

From article:

With only a few days left until the July 15 deadline, the battle for Internet radio is running out of time. According to multiple reports, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has denied a "motion to stay" by webcasters for the impending royalty rate hike. An appeal was filed in May, along with the motion to place a hold on the Copyright Royalty Board's decision. However, the court made a brief announcement yesterday, stating the parties did not meet the standards required for a stay to be granted.

“We are pleased by this decision, which vividly demonstrates that the Copyright Royalty Judges got it right when they set royalty rates and terms for the use of music on Internet radio,” said John Simson, Executive Director of SoundExchange, in a statement. “This is a major victory for recording artists and record labels whose hard work and creativity provides the music around which the Internet radio business is built. Notwithstanding this victory, we continue to reach out to the webcasting community to reach business solutions.”  more

Related links:

Interesting SF Chronicle piece with comments from Warren Hinckle:

Notorious S.F. pioneer of porn films

Jim Mitchell, who helped bring eroticism into the political and social consciousness of San Francisco and later was imprisoned for the sensational killing of his brother, died apparently of a heart attack at his home in western Sonoma County, investigators said Friday.

...

But then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein did not see much humor in the peddling of porn. Her attempts to shut the brothers down came to a head when her unlisted phone number was placed on the theater marquee with the words "For a Good Time, Call ..."

Link

Shown here: 8 vintage Art Deco styled microphones circa 1920's-1950's

Link to more collections 

This guy is a hero: 

"This is my country. Look, it's beautiful and I fear somebody will disturb it," he says, waving his arm across a view of rocky land surrounded by Kakadu National Park, where the French energy giant Areva wants to extract 14,000 tonnes of uranium worth more than $5 billion.

Mr Lee, the shy 36-year-old sole member of the Djok clan and the senior custodian of the Koongarra uranium deposit, has decided never to allow the ecologically sensitive land to be mined.

"There are sacred sites, there are burial sites and there are other special places out there which are my responsibility to look after," Mr Lee told the Herald.

"I'm not interested in white people offering me this or that … it doesn't mean a thing.

"I'm not interested in money. I've got a job; I can buy tucker; I can go fishing and hunting. That's all that matters to me."

 Link

From the Sun:

PAGANS have pledged to perform “rain magic” to wash away cartoon character Homer Simpson who was painted next to their famous fertility symbol - the Cerne Abbas giant.

The 17th century chalk outline of the naked, sexually aroused, club-wielding giant is believed by many to be a symbol of ancient spirituality.

Many couples also believe the 180ft giant, which is carved in the hillside above Cerne Abbas, Dorset, is an aid to fertility.

A giant 180ft Homer Simpson brandishing a doughnut was painted next to the well-endowed figure today in a publicity stunt to promote The Simpsons Movie released later this month.

It has been painted with water-based biodegradable paint which will wash away as soon as it rains.

Ann Bryn-Evans, joint Wessex district manager for The Pagan Federation, said: “It’s very disrespectful and not at all aesthetically pleasing.

“We were hoping for some dry weather but I think I have changed my mind. We’ll be doing some rain magic to bring the rain and wash it away.”

She added: “I’m amazed they got permission to do something so ridiculous. It’s an area of scientific interest.”

She also expressed fears that the painting of Homer, from the animated television series The Simpsons, would cause a mess as it washed away.

During the Second World War, he was disguised to prevent the Germans from using him as an aerial landmark.

Since then he has always been visible, receiving regular grass trimming and a full re-chalking every 25 years.

Link

Photo: L.A.Woman

Some samples:

David Bowie - David Robert Hayward Stenton Jones
Elvis Costello - Declan Patrick McManus
John Denver - John Henry Deutschendorf
Snoop Dogg - Cordazer Calvin Broadus

From Spiegel article: 

The stripper was Tom Luszeit, a 34-year-old who -- for his day job -- dresses up in various period military outfits to pose with souvenir-seeking tourists. The widow was Alexandra Hildebrandt, 48, who has run the Wall Museum at Checkpoint Charlie since her husband passed away in 2004. She has taken issue with Luszeit's antics in the past, in particular with his penchant for dressing in the uniform of East Germany's secret police, the Stasi. And the court case is one that has gone a long way toward eroding the dignity of one of the Cold War's central sites -- and has yet to reach its conclusion.

It is unclear who Tom Luszeit will call to the stand to back up his view of what happened in the spring of 2004. But there is at least one man who might be helpful. Three years ago, Gerhard Lindner, owner of a souvenir shop at Checkpoint Charlie, came to Luszeit's defense, saying he found nothing wrong with his posing as an East German policeman.

But then, his testimony might not be worth all that much. It didn't take long for Berlin journalists to discover that Lindner himself had worked as a Stasi spy in the 1980s.

Link to Spiegel online 

 From Daily Mail article:

For when a budding author sent typed chapters of Jane Austen's novels to 18 of them, changing just the titles and characters' names, only one recognised her words.

Another managed to recognise they were 'a really original read'. But the rest simply rejected them or never responded, according to the man who posted the manuscripts, David Lassman.

"It was unbelievable," he said. "If the major publishers can't recognise great literature, who knows what might be slipping through the net?

Continue reading 

Via the folks at Neatorama 

From The Daily Telegraph: 

A FEUD between two Chinese towns over access to valuable wild fungus has erupted into a gun battle that left eight people dead and 44 wounded, Xinhua news agency has said.

The violence occurred in the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of mountainous Sichuan province on Friday.

"A county government official said around 200 residents from Danba and Sumdo townships clashed in a dispute over access to wild fungus and firewood," Xinhua news agency said.

Some of those involved drew rifles and the gun battle lasted around 10 minutes, the official said.

China is grappling with growing social unrest, fuelled by disputes over land rights, corruption and a growing gap between rich and poor.

The official said that in April, residents from Sumdo were expelled by Danba township when they were caught collecting fungi in Danba.

In May, two people from Danba were assaulted near Sumdo.

"County officials had tried dozens of times since then to mediate, but their suggestions were rejected by residents of both townships," the official said.

The fungus is what Tibetans call "summer-grass winter-worm".

It forms when a parasitic fungus hijacks and devours the bodies of ghost moth larvae that have burrowed into the alpine soil for up to five years.

It then steers their bodies to the surface so it can spread its spores.

The mummified moths are a traditional Tibetan cure-all that promoters say helps fight AIDS, cancer and ageing.

As Tibetan medical ingredients have won adherents in China and abroad, the fungus and other alpine fungi and plants have become lucrative commodities, luring almost entire villages on harvests from May to July.

Link to article

Previously on P&F this is a mushroom

Update to previous post:

A 10-year-old girl who is worshipped as a living goddess in Nepal has had her title reinstated after defying tradition and visiting the US.

Temple authorities at her home town say that she will not be stripped of her title because she is willing shortly to undergo a "cleansing" ceremony.

Sajani Shakya was one of the three most-revered Kumaris, who are honoured by Hindus and Buddhists alike.

She was chosen after undergoing tests at the age of two.

Since then she has been expected to bless devotees and attend festivals until she reaches puberty.

But she provoked the ire of temple elders by travelling to the US.

Sajani returned from her visit to America on Wednesday. Correspondents say that she was "seemingly unaware" of the controversy.

Link BBC article with more pictures