Sunday, December 24, 2006

Visual Art & Social Commentary

Crichlow
Strong stuff.
Here is the story of fascism goosestepping through the quiet halls of your children’s schools and colleges—an ugly, threatening story. Here is also a story of soldiers fighting for the great traditions of learning, soldiers without uniforms, the winter soldiers of education. Link…

Friday, December 22, 2006

The Vinland map

Vinland map
The controversial Vinland Map is a medieval-style map of the Old World that includes a large island in the western Atlantic identified as "Vinilanda Insula", the Vinland of the Icelandic sagas. It came to light in the 1950s, bound together with a slender and then otherwise unknown tract dating to about 1440, entitled the Tartar Relation. If genuine, the map would demonstrate that mainstream Western Europeans were aware of at least a portion of North America some 50 years before Columbus, and that this information was not restricted to Iceland or even Scandinavia. Link…

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild

Walter Rothschild As well as establishing a private zoological museum at Tring,

Glis glis Rothschild also established the edible dormouse or Glis glis.

Cassowary He was a big fan of the cassowary

Himantopus knudseni and author of Birds of Laysan.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

All things tonsorial

Von Camp cutthroat
Toilette postcard
Burling mug
Mann's multi-blade
Everything from shaving plates and moustache cups to lady razors, postcards, shaving sticks, mugs and strops. Link…

Monday, December 18, 2006

The Guitar, the Lute and the Early Keyboard

Bega
Wallscourt
Hunt
Kenneth Sparr's site contains among other material, pictures of people with stringed instruments. Link…

Friday, December 15, 2006

AEIOU

Trick-Track-Spieler
The Annotatable Elektronic Interactive Oesterreich Universal Information. All things Austrian. Link…

Thursday, December 14, 2006

CMarZ

Pteropod
Oxygyrus
Fabulous creatures at The Census of Marine Zooplankton. Link…

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Are you ready to rumble

Earthquake
There has been an awful lot of activity in the region recently. Link…

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Hanuman statue

Hanuman
There is a 85-ft high statue of Hanuman in Trinidad. Link…

Monday, December 11, 2006

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Poliphili
Umberto Eco's 'The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana' features an amnesiac protagonist, a bibliophile and dealer in rare books nicknamed Yambo, whose doctoral thesis was written on the Hypnerotomachia.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Irish Postage Stamps - Cinderellas

Sir Edward Carson
The portrait type of Carson also appears in a 1914 etching by John George Day (National Portrait Gallery, London; NPG 2916); whether the Day etching was in fact the specific model for the poster stamps is not certain.

White Cross
The Irish White Cross Society was founded on 1 February 1921, to (in its own words) "cope with the distress and destitution resulting in Ireland from the war caused by the determination of the Irish people to assert their right to nationhood."

The Cinderella Stamp Society, founded in London in 1959 - refers to the so-called stepchildren of philately: an often bewildering variety of items formatted like postage stamps but not primarily definable as such. Link…

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Electron Microscopy Unit Snow Page

Crystal-93x
Crystal-908x
Most samples of snow crystals are observed by researchers at relatively moderate magnifications (30x-500x), however the capabilities of the electron microscope allow observation of fine structures at over 100,000x. Link…

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

NYC apartments


First floor plan
Third floor plan
Fourth to eleventh floor plan
The World's loose leaf album of apartment houses provides an interesting snapshot with pictures and floor plans of apartment buildings in New York City (1910) . Link…

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Army ants


Great photography on the Ants of Cachoeira Nature Reserve site. Link… Jochen also has a flickr page on which he explains how the photographs are made - "I took 100 shots of the ant head in different focal planes." Link…

Friday, December 01, 2006

Didymosphenia geminata

Rock Snot
Delightfully known as Rock Snot or Didymo, it is a problem both in the US and New Zealand.