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five, four, three, two, one
The urban redevelopment council of the large Berkshire city adjacent to Heathrow will help sponsor the creation of a Thunderbirds-themed hotel near the eponymous Slough Trading Estate (industrial park) where the Supermarionation series (Thunderbirds are not Slough—it does not rhyme with go) was filmed and produced. The hotel, which will also be part of a permanent residential hub each of whose five storeys are named after a Thunderbird Machine, is slated to open in 2021. More to explore at the links above, including a dedicated Gerry Anderson (*1929 – †2012), the shows' co-creator, website.
catagories: Britain, television, travel
Via the inestimable Nag on the Lake, we learn that an exemplar of the iconic protest poster that captured a symbolic act of defiance of Bill Greenshields (previously) burning his draft card—though it was suspected that Greenshields at the time was an undercover agent trying to incriminate others, designed and distributed by activist Kiyoshi Kuomiya (*1943, in a Japanese-American internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming – †2000) is being sold at auction. Using the pseudonym Dirty Linen Corporation, Kuromiya got out copies of through mail order, encouraging people to share with mothers and the White House, but was eventually caught by the FBI and charged with for using the postal service for trafficking in lewd materials. Read more about Kuromiya's life and career dedicated to social justice at the links above.
catagories: 1968, America, graphic design, revolution
common ära
Doing some research with some historic church texts in German, I kept running across the abbreviation v. u. Z.—unfamiliar but I quickly surmised its meaning from context clues as "before our era," a way of BC/AD without a specifically Christian reference point. Ironically—while this term is used in contemporary, secular papers as something synonymous with CE/BCE, it was being used here in a hagiographical and historic milieu to avoid the paradox that Jesus' birth year did not coincide with the beginning of the era, but rather from three to six vor der Zeitrechnung.
catagories: religion, time-keeping
We enjoyed this interview with the heiress of an immense entertainment conglomerate who has been campaigning that the ultra-wealthy be made to pay their fair burden in taxes so that workers can earn a living wage and that the public institutions and infrastructure that we all rely on and benefit from can be fully-funded.
No progress ever happened by people advocating for their own self-interest alone—as is the natural inclination of lobbies that fight to retain every last cent they've made off the efforts and sacrifice of the individuals in their employ, but rather, "Things really change when people are traitors to their class, and my class needs some really good traitors these days." Read or listen to the whole interview with All Things Considered at the link up top.
catagories: labour
Recommended by Digg, we really enjoyed reading this nuanced, thoughtful essay that explores the project to restore North America's blighted chestnut forests (see also) by creating a genetic hybrid whose DNA contains material from wheat that makes it resistant to the fungus that wiped out the trees.
Given how some of our exuberance to adopt GMOs was misplaced—and conversely fears over it, it is especially vital to get the science right before releasing something synthetic into the wild as trees not thrive outside of our laboratories, fields and plantations, they are also a vital part of the landscape and ecosystem, host to their own particular constellations of Nature. What do you think? Testing is extensive and circumspect and well worth considering all the trials conducted and considered but one in particular stands out: tadpoles fed with either natural or transgenic chestnut leaf litter thrived equally well, but grew at nearly twice the rate of their siblings that had to make due with a diet of maple and beech leaves—their only option since the chestnuts disappeared a century ago, suggesting that the ecosystem is missing these magnificent and useful trees far more than we can appreciate.
catagories: environment, genetics, plants
Though exploration of the Cronian satellite cannot begin before 2034 (distant-seeming but only fifteen years hence), NASA has committed, choosing among twelve contending proposals, to send a fleet of aerial drones to survey Titan, more planet than moon-like with a dense atmosphere, complex terrain, weather and methane driven precipitation similar to the water cycle on Earth, only sustainable at much lower temperatures, to seek out alien life.
Extra special care and precautions are being factored into the Dragonfly mission so as to not disturb the primordial conditions of the surface as the craft take samples of the moon's chemistry. Under this frozen substrate (see also), which while having the necessary building blocks for life as we conceive it, scientists believe there is a water-ammonia lies a panthalassic ocean where abiogenesis is suspected to have occurred.
catagories: education, space science
During the early hours of this morning fifty years ago, members of the LGBT community in Greenwich Village staged a spontaneous uprising to protest a police raid of the Stonewall Inn.
This stand along Christopher Street, between West 4th Street and Waverly Place, marked the beginning of a long and ongoing struggle for gay rights and equal treatment under the law in the US. Pride parades world wide have occurred around this anniversary. Though the relationship is not causal and to suggest otherwise would dampen rising tensions and dangers faced daily by lesbian and gay people, the night before was the funeral for the iconic Judy Garland who had passed away earlier in the week in London from "an incautious self-overdosage"—held at a chapel on Madison Avenue which remained open through the night so twenty-thousand members of the public could pay their respects. Though no one recalled it being acknowledged during the riots, that sort of turn-out surely helped mobilise at least a few mourners and fans.
catagories: 1969, holidays and observances, lifestyle
Nag on the Lake directs our attention to an exhibit that features a moving collection of Mexican religious icons known as retablos (previously)—from the Latin retro-tabula for "behind the altar" or votive offerings of gratitude meant for display and inspection by the congregation, that document in painting and some captioning turning-points in the lives of those who've been on the recipients of divine intercession, which was for many in this show miraculously safe passage crossing the border into the US. Peruse a whole gallery and find much more to explore at the links above.
catagories: art, México, religion
Much like Emperor Claudius believed he vastly improved Latin orthography with his contribution of three new letters (namely Ⅎ for the w-sound, Ↄ for the ps and bs plosives and a Ⱶ, a half of an haitch that is of disputed meaning), seventh century Chinese Empress Wu Zetian imposed somewhere between a dozen and thirty new characters as a demonstration of her power and influence.
In both cases, use of the new characters was mandated but quickly were abandoned and reverted to their old style of writing (see also) after their reigns ended, though unlike with the Romans, a few of the so called Zeitan characters have been incorporated into modern usage. For example, the Empress wanted the term xīng, star to be rendered as 〇 instead of 星, with the former ideogram now representing the number zero, and Wu thought the perfectly cromulent way of expessing a person (rén, 人) should be articulated 𤯔, that is the ideogram for life capped with numeral one to convey the aphorism that everyone only lives once, adopted for contemporary parlance
catagories: China, fonts and typefaces, Italy, language, Wikipedia
Absent any comprehensive and systematic stenographical short-cuts except for what could be improvised and some legal jargon that were purposefully opaque to stave off the non-credentialed, the catalogue of glyphs, growing to some five thousand symbols, created by Marcus Tullius Tiro (*94 – †4BC) was a highly useful innovation.
An enslaved clerk who was later freed to continue working as the Roman orator and statesman Cicero's, his former master, personal secretary, Tiro was able—through his notes—to facilitate the dictation and capture the thoughts of the philosopher and statesman, and the method was quickly disseminated. Taught in medieval monasteries, the extended character set grew to some thirteen thousand shorthand symbols that made for an abbreviated syllabary, which could be further modified and combined to compress whole sentences and still retain the words verbatim. Falling out of favour with the proliferation of the printing press, a few Tironian notes are still in use today—notably the ⁊ (the glyph for et, and) is used extensively on signage in Scotland and Ireland where the sign is called the agusan and agus respectively.
catagories: fonts and typefaces, Ireland, language, philosophy, Scotland, Wikipedia
Via the always outstanding Nag on the Lake, we are treated to a course in contemporary archaelogy with a fascinating, forensic exploration of the venue of Woodstock five decades on. Though well documented and still very much in the domain of living memory, Nature is taking its course on the dairy farm near Bethel Woods, New York and consequently obscuring some of the history of the festival and the conservationist hope to unobtrusively mark trails for visitors to imagine or re-live the experience. Much more to explore at the links above.
catagories: 1969, archæology, music
re-logisting
Apparently realising announced intentions to re-occupy the naval station and air base made in 2017 returned to the Icelandic Defence Forces in September of 2006, US military budget allocations indicate that America will begin work on bringing Keflavík (previously here and here) back under its control. The extension of the civilian airport currently operated as a NATO base and host to American trans-Atlantic traffic, the US wants to rebuild and expand neglected infrastructure and establish a modern toehold in the between continents. The revelation is subject to controversy and contention in the Alþingi.
catagories: America, Iceland
martini & rossi asti spumanti
Along with many other candidates including the mines of the Erzgebirge / Krušnohoří and the Roman Limes, Italy (previously) hopes that after a decade's long campaign for inclusion to add the Prosecco Hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene outside of Venice to the UNESCO register of World Heritage Sites. The grape variety, the glera, is a Slovenian import and until 2009 (when effervescent prosecco was granted its denominazione di origine controllata label, the title beverage has its own protected designation and is made from Moscato grapes) was called Prosek. Proposals will be submitted to the commission in Paris at the end of the month.
catagories: Czech Republic, food and drink, Germany, Italy, Slovenia
Debuting with the Mother of All Demos as did most things that inform the way we interact and communicate today, we enjoyed watching this well-researched look into development of the mouse cursor, via the Awesomer, presented by sound engineer and recording artist Michiel de Boer.
Displayed generally as a jagged angle since that made for better visibility on lower-resolution screens, we've become pretty blind to the ubiquitous pointer and how it transforms when dragged across one's desktop from arrow, to hand to I-beam to hour-glass (more on skeuomorphs here) so it was nice to indulge this bit of computing history and to imagine what might come next.
catagories: 1968, design, technology and innovation
obergefell v hodges
Having decided two years prior to the day that the Defence of Marriage Act was unconstitutional and a violation of the principle of equal administration of justice enshrined in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, the US Supreme Court, by dint of the same argument, ruled on this day in 2015 that the right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples as it would be to heterosexual couples, with all the rights and responsibilities pertaining thereto. Prior to this decision, thirty-six states recognised marriage within their jurisdictions but there was no national consensus. To celebrate the civil rights triumph, the White House was illuminated in rainbow colours on the evening of the ruling.
catagories: America, law, lifestyle
blood meridian: two animated maps (see also) chart Manifest Destiny from contrasting perspectives
lobby cards: the iconic film posters and title sequences of Saul Bass (previously here and here)
strong to the finich: because of the leafy green's steroidal qualities, some are calling for it to be banded like other doping agents
scientific method: brilliant vintage middle school text books via Present /&/ Correct
nineteen eighty-four was not meant to be an instruction manual: workers trialled with beacons and bracelets to monitor performance and productivity
best in show: a curated selection of the winners of the National Geographic travel photography competition
lj: going into production in 2021, the Lightyear One represents the industry's first long-range and untethered electric vehicle, via Design Boom
pomological catalogue: the 1886 US contract for watercolour depictions of all the world's fruit
catagories: America, food and drink, graphic design, labour, photography, privacy, sport and games, the Netherlands, transportation
ik denk dus ik fiets
We enjoyed pursuing this curated gallery of posters and placards documenting a decades' long campaign to transform and retain Amsterdam as a world capital for pedestrians and cyclists.
This 1976 call for a demonstration of solidarity against automobile traffic and for more public transit options, in the name of safety and to ease congestion, features one of the first appearances of the Fietst (Dutch for riding a bike and an eponymous lobby and association) mascot, a character comprised of two wheels and a big head (sort of evoking the international symbol for a vision impaired person so that others realise that they're sharing their space with them) with the triple cross crest of the city as a body. Fietst soon after became a more fully-formed and articulate mascot as a cycling girl called Liesje. Much more to explore at the links above.
catagories: graphic design, the Netherlands, transportation
On this day in 1978, the Rainbow Flag, created by artist and seamster Gilbert Baker (*1951 – †2017) was unfurled for the first time at San Francisco's Gay Freedom Day Parade, an event that originated around 1972 as an informal "gay-in" and is now a celebration of pride echoed around the world.
Gilbert met Harvey Milk in 1974, who asked him to create a new symbol for the community—wanting to jettison the shorthand of the day, the Pink Triangle, reclaiming a badge of shame that the Nazis used for imprisoned men identified as homosexuals as a means of self-identification but dark and derivative nonetheless—prompting Gilbert to design his flag (previously). The colourful motif was possibly inspired by the PACE flags that first appeared during an Italian peace march in 1961 or the Judy Garland ballad, Over the Rainbow. While the banner certainly represents the diversity of the community and the struggle for recognition and civil rights, the original eight stripes had specific meanings: hot pink stood for sex, red for life, orange was healing, yellow was sunshine, green was Nature, turquoise stood for magic and art, indigo for serenity and violet represented spirit. Hot pink was subsequently dropped due to the lack of fabric and dye, and the six banded version was adopted in 1979, blending indigo and turquoise as royal blue—though often throughout the 1990s, a black stripe was added to represent those whom had died due to complications from AIDS.
catagories: America, design, heraldry, lifestyle
Via the Everlasting Blört, we are invited to show our stripes (previously) to illustrate how globally and regionally the average annual temperature has been rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution, with a most disturbing uptick in the last thirty years. Reliable data for most countries span from 1901 to 2018, but a few places covered by the UK Met Office, der Deutscher Wetterdienst and a few other select meteorological monitors reach back to the mid- to late-nineteenth century.
catagories: environment, graphic design
ô canada
Officially made the national anthem by royal assent a century later on Dominion Day, the melody, composed by Calixte Paquet dit Lavallée commissioned by the lieutenant governor of Quebec, of the song was performed in public for the first time on this day in 1880 as accompaniment to a Saint-Jean-Baptiste (the Nativity of John the Baptist, his feast day often associated or conflated with the summer solstice) fête held in the provincial capital.
The original lyrics by barrister and poet Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier were in French and have remained unchanged. An English version, modified three times subsequently to make the language more inclusive, came in 1908—often performed bilingually with code-switching alternating verses to demonstrate the country's diversity—and First Nations' versions (ᐆ ᑲᓇᑕ) introduced beginning in the 1990s.
catagories: Canada, holidays and observances, language, music, Wikipedia
endeløs sommer
Having just passed the solstice in the northern hemisphere with the hours of sunlight each day gradually decreasing until we come to the December solstice and the slow retreat of the night, we found this proposal by the residents of the fishing village north of the Arctic circle, Sommarøy, west of Tromsø, straddling the Norwegian island of Store Sommarøy and Hillesøya—the become the world's first time-free zone rather intriguing.
Though balanced out with the corollary of the long polar night spanning from November to January, the three hundred permanent residents and numerous visitors enjoy sixty nine days from mid-May to late July when the sun never sets, during which the conventions of normal time-keeping are discarded and people accord themselves according to their own schedules. Local government is in serious talks with the Stortling to discuss the legal and practical raminification of carrying through such a plan. Though the announcements have led to a boost in tourism and the fences of the pedestrian bridge that connects the islands with the mainland are decorated with wrist watches rather than love-locks, proponents insist that the move is far more than a gimmick
catagories: Norway, time-keeping
Courtesy of Fancy Notions, we are treated to the Soviet animated-puppet short Mitja and the Microbes (1973) by director Mikhail Kamenetsky, a prominent maker of children's entertainment and educational works in the 70s and 80s in the tradition of Rankin & Bass.
This particular piece depicts a rather epic battle as a result of poor hand and food hygiene practises and though not explicitly referenced in the portrayal, we believe that the germs that poor Mitja invited in are ultimately re-buffed with a contingent of bacteriophages, in keeping with Russian medical science, favoured over the Western recourse to antibiotics. Find more vintage matinee cartoons plus other interesting delectables to enjoy at the link up top.
catagories: health and medicine, Russia
watershed moment
On this day in 1969, the Cuyahoga River, downstream from the industrial cities of Akron, Kent and Cleveland Ohio, caught on fire—the latest in a series of at least a dozen major conflagrations of the polluted tributary of Lake Erie—captured the attention of reporters at TIME magazine and the issue made the cover of the June edition. The public outrage that followed helped endorse a tranche of pollution-control measures and eventually led to the creation of a federal and state Environmental Protection Agency by early December of the following year.
catagories: 1969, 1970, America, environment, journalism
zsebnaptár
Our friendly stationer Present /&/ Correct shares its discovery of a trove of vintage Hungarian pocket calendars, joyfully illustrated. MėH (Miniszterelnöki Hivatal) is the country's energy authority. Much more to explore at the link above.
catagories: antiques, graphic design, time-keeping
små grodorna
the local's Swedish edition has a fine run-down of the rituals associated with the June solstice, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere with the kingdom enjoying from eighteen to twenty four hours of sunshine—otherwise known as Midsommar, officially observed on the Saturday nearest in the week but the eve is the de facto public holiday.
We're acquainted with the tradition of att maja (maying—but probably not a German import)—that is, decorating with flowers and greenery and the standard Little Frogs, whose melody is taken from a French marching song from the Napoleonic Wars and a British (compare God Save the Queen and My Country 'Tis of Thee, though the French original was not meant to be a serious one) mocking version that orders "Au pas, grenouilles." In step, small frogs. There's a performative dance that illustrates the lyrics, which you can watch at the link above. No one is sure how the custom got started.
catagories: holidays and observances, Sweden
munker-white illusion
Though these spheres seem to come in three colourful varieties, David Novick created this optical illusion by exploiting a neurobiological factor known as lateral or antagonistic inhibition—the ability of a stimulated neuron to calm its neighbours so as not to overload the sensory system. Objectively, all the spheres are shaded identically and are a uniform brassy colour. The whole trick, impossible to unsee otherwise and probably not advisable to try, is broken down layer-by-layer with some philosophical musings and more examples at Bad Astronomy at the link above.
catagories: graphic design, psychology
i've got two chickens to paralyse
Although the typographical inconsistencies would have personally driven me to distraction before I could manage to encode anything, we admit that were impressed with the counter-measures that a song lyrics repository employed to catch cheats who might copy their stenography work and publish it as their own. Subtly (or not so subtly to those sensitive to such things) naturally scattered through the verses, the transcript alternated between a typographic, curly style (') and a typewriter style (') according to a protocol that resulted in, converted to the dots and dashes of Morse Code, the message "Red Handed." This method of copywriter protection is in keeping with the cleverest trap streets and mountweazels but no party is can really claim legal rights as librettists and brings into question what service that they were providing in the first place.
catagories: fonts and typefaces, music
abkürzungsfimmel
The German speakers have penchant to create vocalised acronyms rather than the tendency in English to use initialism (apronym) and turn those into something pronounceable—like scuba, radar, NATO or the USA PATRIOT Act —as in GroKo (Große Koalition, Grand Coalition) or Abi for Abitur, school graduation or more familiarly Flak for Fliegerabwehrkannone, anti-aircraft guns and Gestapo for die Geheime Staatspolizei.
Once the practise becomes too pervasive and trivialising and needs to be dialled back a bit, one might call another out for carrying on with the title term, the strange mania, habit of shortening words, itself abbreviated Aküfi. One mostly encounters Abkürzungsfimmel in technical or industry jargon—as in AküFiBw (Abkürzungsfimmel Bundeswehr, soldier talk).
catagories: Germany, language
logophilia
Via the always excellent Kottke, we are delighted to be introduced to the Allusionist podcast with their milestone one hundredth podcast and the hosts taking a moment to reflect on a hundred fun facts about the (mostly) English language they've acquired whilst doing the show.
We've run into mountweazels, mondegreens, polari and nominative determinism beforehand and we were equally gobsmacked to learn that the CARE in care package was an acronym like scuba or radar but there are plenty of gems to discover, like the analgesic properties of swears, the French society of constrained writers or the origin of bankruptcy, from the Italian banca rotta, "broken bench." Check out all hundred of them—the short hundred, that is—five score as opposed to the long or Norse hundred of six score, which was called twelfty, at the links up top and consider subscribing.
catagories: language, networking and blogging
t-minus: the Apollo 11 mission in real time using historical mission footage, via Coudal Partners' Fresh Signals
scrip: garbage cryptocurrency from a garbage social media company isn't crypto at all
that yorkshire sound: hand-drawn animated short illustrates an every day, vibrant soundscape
carissimi auditores: after a thirty year run, Finnish broadcasters are ceasing their news in Latin segment, but no fear as the report gives other resources
deaccessioned: a large auction house will no longer be publicly traded as it goes into private hands
ṝ:"For Want of a Hyphen Venus Rocket is Lost" – programming is unforgiving
catagories: Britain, libraries and museums, mathematics, Moon, networking and blogging, privacy
As much of a focus-steeling, attention-grabbing sideshow Brexit and Theresa May's leadership were her desired legacy and commitment—bringing the UK's carbon contribution down to net-zero by 2050—is pretty admirable and make up for what she made everyone endure, notwithstanding a predecessor even more repugnant who'll try to change course, though enshrined in law, it will be tougher to rescind.
Before leaving office nearly thirty years ago, Margaret Thatcher made a similar pledge, urging a global treaty on climate change and enacted policies to protect the ozone layer and curb acid rain. Would that all rubbish politicians had such redeeming potential. Although there's quite some rough terrain yet to cover to attain that goal and admittedly we all ought to be in a better place by now, courtesy Maps Mania, we should pause and consider this interactive essay, chart and timeline from Carbon Brief illustrating the progress that the UK has already made in overhauling how it gets and uses its energy, an achievement encapsulated in the record-setting span of time that the country has gone without having to resort to coal. Records are made to be broken. Much more to explore at the links above.
catagories: Britain, environment
absolut nymodig
Unlike some monopolies or state-run agencies that aren't given much incentive to improve or adapt to keep their mission relevant (see also), Sweden's Systembolaget—after a trail period in a few test markets—will offer home delivery of alcohol across the country.
From the onset of World War I until 1955, wine, beer and spirits were strictly rationed, households issued a book called a "motbok," with allowances determined by gender and social status, but these limitations were abolished once the chain of outlets were opened, charged with ensuring that the age restrictions be enforced and that no item is privileged above another—meaning no product placement, no promotional sales, no beers in coolers and no multi-packs, which otherwise might be an inducement to drink more. Home deliveries will be available starting 1 July.
catagories: food and drink, lifestyle, Sweden
corso forzoso
Though the idea of bringing back the lira has been in circulation by members of both factions of the governing coalition since at least 2005 and at earlier times of economic crisis and scarcity of specie, a sort of Notgeld, called miniasegni, were used to make change—anything from postage stamps to bus passes, Italy is now responding in a unique and novel way to European Union demands that it pass budget reforms and bring its deficit in line with members' tolerances in suggesting that a parallel currency be introduced.
Provisionally naming the government backed bonds, IOUs to be traded as legal tender mini-BOTs, miniature bills of treasury, the government wants to issue internal financial vehicles that can be used to pay tax bills and distribute pension payments—with businesses having the option whether or not to accept payments in these terms. While in the short term, the introduction of mini-BOTs may rally public confidence in a partnership government that in part was elected on a platform of universal basic income (disappointingly winnowed down to a job-seekers' allowance) and avoids austerity measures, such a move would result in inflation and more odious debt.
catagories: economic policy, Italy
alþing considered
A possession of the Kingdom of Norway since the dissolution of the Kalmar Union in the early sixteenth century and then of the Kingdom of Denmark owing to the Napoleonic Wars (1803 – 1815, see also), the Republic of Iceland came into existence on this day (Þjóðhátíðardagurinn) in 1944.
A near unanimous referendum held that May came into effect 17 June, independence day marked on the birthday of Jón Sigurðsson (*1811 – †1879), a prominent leader in the movement for Iceland's autonomy, voting to end the island's personal union with the monarchy. Effectively devolved and with home rule—except in defence and diplomatic matters, since the end of World War I, the Act of Union negotiated had a quarter of a century expiry date unless renewed, a trial period to allow Icelanders the chance to demonstrate that they could govern themselves. Due to Nazi occupation, however, Denmark was not able to honour the 1943 deadline and Iceland, hosting Allied forces, held the plebiscite and voted to sever ties. Though many Danes were upset with Iceland declaring independence with their country under invasion, King Christian X nonetheless congratulated (with some urging on the part of his cousin, the King of Sweden) the people for forming a republic.
catagories: holidays and observances, Iceland
While perhaps best known for his influential Münchener Olympic pictograms and creating the modern corporate identity for Lufthansa, Ulmer resistance fighter of the White Rose movement, graphic designer and typographer Otto "Otl" Aicher (*1922 – †1991), was also a prolific poster designer, glad recipient of all sorts of commissions—though we think some of these are works of his students. After the war, Aicher married the resistance movement's leaders' elder sister, Inge Scholl, and together with Swiss architect Max Bill founded the Ulm School of Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm, HFG) as a philosophical spin-off of Bauhaus in 1953. Much more to explore at the links above.
catagories: design, education, Germany, graphic design
a good year for the poppies
I know that superblooms are a highly specific coming together of exceptional growing conditions that lets Nature revel in all her immodesty pertaining to wildflowers growing in arid places but after the droughts of last summer and the dry spring, it was very nice to see the pastures and the verges along the road and between fields bursting with colour.
catagories: plants, Rhön
Never mind the fact that you might be ingesting multiple tiny spiders per night—or conversely that if the spiders of the world teamed up, they could consume all the humans on the face of the Earth (or cocaine prawns or antidepressants in the groundwater), the World Wildlife Foundation launches a new campaign to illustrate the awful non-food pyramid that we've created. Via the Drum, we learn that on average a person consumes one hundred thousand micro-plastic particles annually, meaning about five grams (a lot of different factors come into play and you can get a more personalised estimate of your dietary intake here), a credit card's worth of the stuff each week.
catagories: environment, food and drink, health and medicine
arterial road
Fusing anatomical studies with paper-sculpting, Berlin-based artist Katrin Rodegast has created several organs fashioned out of maps with roadways and watercourses meant to highlight the similarities of civil engineering (Ein – und Ausfallstraße) with the network of capillaries and arteries in our bodies as a series of commissions for Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich. The Swiss polytechnic's 2017 chief research thrust was a big collaboration among twenty institutions to make a viable artificial heart—for which Rodegast's cartographic anatomy was an important part of the outreach programme and partnership cohesion.
catagories: cartography, education, graphic design, health and medicine, Switzerland
Among the items and lots going under the hammer this summer, auction-watcher Messy Nessy Chic reports is this pristine 1964 Peel Trident, a British microcar and a product of Manx engineering, the estimated forty-five to fifty-five models made mostly going to the mainland.
Originally priced at £190 and with fuel efficiencies of just under three litres per one hundred kilometres and touted as nearly cheaper than walking, the smallest car in the world was perhaps a little ahead of its time and interest waned among the driving and dashing public (the car had a detachable shopping basket and was primarily meant for quick city errands). Manufacturing operations resumed in 2011 in Nottingham, creating custom electric and petrol models for individual clients. Learn more and inspect other lots and properties up for auction at the link above.
catagories: Britain, design, transportation
cloud farming or ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
Via the New Shelton Wet/Dry, we learn of a fledging company that hopes to stave off the incidental but increasingly significant problem of cloud storage and energy-intensive data-management by enabling clients to keep their past and prognostications waiting in the wings in the form of crops whose DNA has been encoded (at density with integrity reaching two hundred petapixels per gram) within the plants themselves, and instead of consuming resources to maintain the information at one's fingertips—we ought to mediate on the meaning of archives, curation and libraries before we decided to make everything at all times ready to summon forward whilst on the go—though the details seem rather sparse, to generate clean air and useful biomass as a by-product of perpetuating these hitchhiker genes.
Perhaps this passive form of storage could also be a substitute for the energy-hungry prospect of prospecting for crypto-currencies as well. Compare to how restrictions on memory and storage of software was supplemented on the Apollo missions by weaving the programming into a mesh by hand. Knowledge should be freely accessible but the omnipresence of it might seem to have diminishing value, considering the caprices of capacity and arbitrary limits. I wonder what it means for abstract, errant data to become part of Nature and whether that same information isn't also party to the rules of evolution and inheritance and what we perceive as degradation, decoding errors that outside our dataset we would call mutations which in fact be taking that triangulation of statistics to the next level.
catagories: genetics, plants
Via Kottke's Quick Links, we are treated to a rather endearing review of how educational literature, abecedaries broached the subject of that little-used as a leading letter X before the discovery of x-rays or the introduction of xylophones, mostly ingratiating readers in the personages of the Persian King Xerxes the Great (𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠, Ξέρξης) or Xanthippe (Ξανθίππη, meaning Yellow Horse)—Socrates' supposed scold of a wife—or Xanthus (Ξάνθος, a blond stallion), one of Achilles pair of immortal horses whom Hera temporarily granted the power of speech in order to defend himself when Achilles accused him causing Patroclus' death on the battlefield, retorting that it was a god that had killed Patroclus and that Achilles would soon follow. There's numerous examples—some lazier than others—and nonetheless an interesting look at the antepenultimate letter and nineteenth century print.
catagories: antiques, graphic design, language
'cause for twenty-four years i've been living next door to alice
Via Miss Cellania's links, we're reacquainted with the elusive American middle class re-classified as "asset limited, income constrained, employed," an acronym that applies to nearly half of US residents, those who cannot afford life's basics without falling further and further in debt and arrears.
This precarious class, with very little prospect of upward mobility and a viable escape plan, has earned the US the depressing, dystopian honour of being the world's first poor rich country, chasing after ungainful work for sake of being occupied. Signs of this impoverishment are not brand new but until recently the more pernicious manifestations of a population were kept in abeyance through civics and civility, expressions of panic and insecurity that props up ideologues and theocracy.
catagories: America, economic policy, lifestyle
now that's a horse of a different colour
Though the title idiom is much older than what Dorothy exclaimed upon entering the Emerald City and pertains to horse-trading and how the coat can change colour as the animal matures and what's listed in a registry may not match what's before one's eyes and is first cited as "a horse of that colour" by the duplicity maid Maria in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (1601), we nonetheless enjoyed reading about the 1926 caper that a horseman of Scottish extraction nearly got away with at a race-track in Chicago.
Referred to as ringing in gamblers' circles, the horseman, possessed of a special and nonpareil talent (sadly squandered on grift and crime) for a quick and convincing dye and rise, bleached and painted the thoroughbreds so that the track stewards and jockeys failed to notice when their horses were switched, handicapping the odds and virtually guaranteeing a big win. Targeting small, remote racing operations at first, the horse painter was able to skip town and evade repercussions once the truth was realised but luck eventually ran out with Pinkertons in hot pursuit. Discover more hidden histories at Narratively at the link above.
catagories: language, sport and games
fresh from battle creek
We enjoyed indulging this vintage advertising campaign from the Leo Burnett Agency for Kellogg's Variety Pack of cereals—promising to "settle all differences" with "…the choose-it-yourself breakfast"—with a cast of characters defined by their opposition. The six print ads, executed in a style evocative of other fabulist artists, include a little rhyming parable, though there's no proper attribution to be found from the ad agency that created the Pillsbury Doughboy, Charlie the Tuna, the lonely Maytag repairman, the Jolly Green Giant—and recently the subject of controversy for product placement on Wikipedia, using the forum as a vehicle to sell outdoor apparel. Much more to explore at Box Vox at the link up top.
catagories: food and drink, graphic design, Wikipedia
Attempting to reform and reclaim its reputation after the misleading missteps that influenced the purchasing decisions of many drivers, going for diesel-fuelled models believing that they were far cleaner and more efficient than they were in reality, Volkswagen is acknowledging its past transgressions and lack of candour with an advertising campaign that references its older reputation—making lemonade out of lemons.
The new series of commercials debut the long-awaited production of the microbus (see also), reborn as a fully electric vehicle. I hope that the company has learned a valuable lesson in transparency and can again lead the industry towards better transparency and accountability and that they are earnest in their new direction. What do you think? Just the other day, however, I caught the tail end of a comment from company executives reportedly pressing governments to reverse the mothballing of nuclear plants (a fraught decision in itself but also a pledge) so they'll be sufficient energy to power its electric fleet, which was a bit discouraging to hear and might be yet another wedge that big business can hold up as an excuse not to reform or take responsibility.
catagories: environment, Germany, nuclear policy, transportation
bill c-195
Whilst American engineers were busy shutting off their part of the Niagara Falls by means of a cofferdam apron to staunch the flow of water and allow for repairs of the eroded riverbed and cliffs, the Canadian senate was legislating and passed on this day in 1969 amendments to the law to decriminalise abortion and homosexual relations.
Introduced originally by then Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau, the passage allowed for the sale of contraceptive medicines and devices, consensual gay relations for persons of majority in private dwellings, as well as tightening laws regarding gun sales and ownership, drink driving, telephonic harassment and cruelty to animals. Trudeau famously defended his stance to the press by declaiming an often repeated phrase, «l' État n'a rien à faire dans les chambres à coucher de la nation.» "There's no place for the State in the bedrooms of Canada."
catagories: 1969, Canada, law, lifestyle
The turn of phrase above which means outside of one's legal jurisdiction, sphere of influence or more figuratively out of bounds of accepted, civilised behaviour is etymologically sourced to the Pale of Calais (le Calaisis, voir également).
The idiomatic use probably comes from the former rather than the more famous case of County Dublin that came later, this territory around the port city was under English control between the Battle of Crécy (1346, competing French and Burgundians rather had the valuable real estate go to a third party instead of each other's rival) until its siege and re-conquest in 1558. Pale is an archaic English term for a stake, used to denote a boundary or limit (limes) and derived from the Latin term pālus, which is also the source for pole and retained in the word impale—describing one's state if dropped on said pole. Represented in Parliament for those two centuries, the exclave adopted the curious motto Vertias Temporis filia—Truth, the Daughter of Time.
catagories: Britain, France, language, Wikipedia
burr and bramble: hitchhiking African seed pods put under a photographer's lens
shibuya crossing: Greg Girard's Tokyo of the late 1970s
bene gesserit sisterhood: ahead of Denis Villeneuve's remake, there will be a screaming-television prequel
the mouse-earred one that flees from the light: Washington DC adopts the Little Brown Bat as its official state mammal
we will control the horizontal: an omnibus post on vintage tv test patterns—see also
itunes: an 1876 suggestion to use Alexander Graham Bell's recently patented telephone machine to listen to music remotely
elephant & castle: a finely curated collection of maps and posters for the London Underground
catagories: America, cartography, Dune, environment, Japan, photography, plants, technology and innovation, television
luftbrücke
Though I am not sure why the commemoration didn't take place last June when the Western powers tried to shore up Germany currency and head off inflation and continued economic recession precipitating a blockade on West Berlin, well behind Soviet lines of control, or when the blockade ended on after midnight 12 May 1949 or when deliveries officially stopped at the end of the fiscal year, the Wiesbaden Army Airfield, named in honour of General Lucius Clay, who thought up and commanded the operation, is celebrating the Berlin Airlift's seventieth anniversary and remembering the lives of one hundred and one individuals who lost their lives in the breakneck execution of such a logistical feat.
Calculating out the ration of food and fuel (nearly two-thirds of the total cargo of some two million tonnes was coal) that each citizen and soldier required, thousands of missions—at their highest tempo, some fifteen hundred sorties per day, brought food, materiel and rotations of soldiers in and out of Tempelhof from a dozen sending aerodromes. It is estimated that the US heavy bombers repurposed as the largest capacity carriers travelled one Astronomical Unit in all during the course of the year—that is, the distance from the Earth to Sun, one hundred fifty million kilometres.
The event included an air-show with formation flights of vintage aircraft and other military vehicles and equipment, reenactors, numerous exhibits on the history and context of post-war geopolitics and aid to rebuild Europe, including the Marshall Plan and the CARE programme.
There was also a USO revue that in part recreated the 1948 troop show that Bob Hope hosted held in the same hangars for the pilots and crew in Wiesbaden, a Big Band performance plus special guests, including witnesses to history along with Colonel Gail "Hal" Halvorsen (*1920)—known as the Berlin Candy Bomber (der Rosinenbomber) for his Operation Little Vittles that parachuted chocolate parcels to the children of the divided city.
catagories: America, economic policy, foreign policy, Germany, Hessen
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Europe's forgotten prisoners
Although the Northern Irish Troubles are internationally recognised as a settled conflict, there are currently more than one hundred Republican prisoners held in prisons on the Irish isle. A complete black-out by international media outlets makes them Europe's forgotten prisoners.
A Malaysian born Irish Republican prisoners who has served his minimum five-year term has lost his legal challenge to being kept in prison. William Wong, 27, from Armagh City in the North of Ireland is held on the Republican landing Roe 3 in HMP Maghaberry, Co. Antrim. According to the Belfast Newsletter, he was seeking to judicially review a decision that he should remain behind bars after failing to convince parole commissioners he is completely reformed and fully regrets his actions.
Observers have called the decision to remain Wong imprisoned "injustice." Indeed, Wong's case is just one of many similar cases in recent years. Republican prisoners are neglected adequate medical treatment, and they are subject to regular strip-searches. The Belfast Telegraph recently quoted one Stormont MLA, Meave McLaughlin, calling Northern Ireland's only high-security prison HMP Maghaberry "not fit for purpose." However, all these developments, such as the lengthy dirty-protest of prisoners in 2011/12, remained unrecognised outside Ireland despite its huge political prisoners' population.
It is internationally widely understood that the conflict in the North of Ireland has been settled with the signing of the 1998-Good Friday Agreement. Therefore, the very fact that there are still political prisoners, these are in the Irish case prisoners belonging to Republican or Loyalist organisations, in a "post-conflict society" is in itself astonishing. Indeed, as events such as the Flag Protests, militant Republican attacks, or the recent Stormont crisis have shown, the North of Ireland is far from the settlement, it has merely entered a new stage of an ongoing conflict.
To be sure, when discussing Ireland and the North of Ireland, we are talking about two EU member states, the Republic of Ireland in the South and the Northern Irish state in the North-eastern corner. Andrew Silke, in a recently published volume on Prisons, Terrorism and Extremism (Routledge 2014) acknowledge that more than half of the states in the European Union have currently no political prisoners at all "and most of the rest have only a handful." At the present time, the number of political prisoners on the Irish isle is far from "only a handful." While I have no accurate numbers for Loyalist prisoners, there are currently approximately 30 prisoners held in the two Republican landings Roe 3 and 4 of HMP Maghaberry, about 50 to 60 Republican prisoners held in Portlaoise Prison in the Republic of Ireland, plus a small number of prisoners scattered around other prisons both in the Republic of Ireland and the North.
In the same volume as Silke, Colin Murray writes that on 31 December 2010 there were "only 123 individuals were imprisoned in Great Britain on the basis of terrorism/extremism offences." These prisoners are made up of mainly Islamist prisoners as well as a smaller number of radical Animal Liberation activists and militant socialists.
If we take into consideration the overall number of prisoners related to Republican charges in Ireland there are between 100 and 120 Republican prisoners held in both Irish states plus an additional number of Loyalist prisoners in the North. This number is, indeed, constantly rising over the last couple of years. It has, for instance, recently been reported by the Belfast-based Irish News that "anti-terror arrests [are] at a 10-year high."
As a matter of fact, the total numbers of Republican prisoners in Ireland and the North of Ireland on the one hand and the political prisoners in England, Scotland, and Wales, on the other hand, are very similar. However, miscarriage of justice, as Willie Wong's case has recently underlined, are widely ignored by international media outlets and pundits. The current settlement in the North of Ireland is, of course, too fragile to confront the predominant narrative of a post-conflict society with these realities from HMP Maghaberry. For this reason, the political inmates of Irish prisons remain Europe's forgotten prisoners.
This article appeared on my old blog on 8 October 2015.
dieterreinisch - 18:21 @ Ireland, Irish Republicanism, Prisons | Add a comment
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Poverty and exclusion are the scars on humanity's conscience.
We all have duty to care.
And there is ONE person who can make a difference.
we need just faith, love and live to make different in this life, i believe we have the ability to do that..
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Vincent Lancisi, artistic director at Everyman Theatre, talks about an upcoming production, "Los Otros."
At a time of heightened ethnic tensions, Everyman Theatre to stage "Los Otros," a musical about otherness.
With all the talk about a certain border wall and a certain country paying for it, the arrival of Everyman Theatre's production of "Los Otros" ("The Others") this week looks extra timely.
The 2012 musical, in an extensively revised version commissioned by Everyman, looks at the lives of two Southern Californians — an Anglo woman of very modest means and a Mexican-born man who comes into the country as a boy to find a better life. The show explores how each character deals with the surrounding world of the "other."
"There is an element of surprise that we happen to be doing this now, with what's been going on socially and politically," says Ellen Fitzhugh, who wrote the book and lyrics for the musical. "But it's exactly the right time to be doing it."
Not that relations between ethnic groups (or countries) were much rosier five years ago, when "Los Otros," with a score by Michael John LaChiusa, had its first outing in Los Angeles.
Judy McLane, left, Philip Hernandez and director Noah Himmelstein at "Los Otros" rehearsal.
The current climate, though, is bound to provide fresh spice to a show that references illegal immigration and the complexities of cultural assimilation, not to mention sexual orientation and other issues.
"It's relevant to our broader world because it's so real," says Noah Himmelstein, Everyman's associate artistic director.
Himmelstein, who's directing "Los Otros," had the idea that the company should approach Fitzhugh and LaChiusa about revisiting their musical. The result is a much different piece, honed during a workshop in New York last fall and given additional tweaking during rehearsals at Everyman.
The roots of "Los Otros" go back to 2008, when Fitzhugh and LaChiusa collaborated on a one-woman musical, "Tres Ninas." The piece included an episode from the woman's childhood, when she encountered a Mexican family leaping from a train near San Diego, and the time when, older if not necessarily wiser, she seduced a teenage Latino laborer.
"We had this one-act show based on Ellen's life story," LaChiusa says — "Sort of," the California-born Fitzhugh quickly adds — "and we tried to expand it to a larger piece because it seemed to deserve it."
In her mid-50s and in a post-divorce rut, Sharon takes the risky step of advertising for someone with whom to share her Iowa City home.
This led to the first version of "Los Otros," which retained the essence of "Tres Ninas" and added the character of a Mexican-American man. He reminiscences about working in California plum fields the summer World War II ended, exploring his sexuality with a fellow worker and eventually settling down with a partner.
Each character had half the show in the first "Los Otros," coming together for a scene only at the end.
"At Noah's encouragement," LaChiusa says, "instead of telling one story, then telling a second story, we combined the two. And the ending is radically different from the first version."
Now, through a series of flashbacks that take them from childhood to mature years, the characters of Lillian and Carlos alternate in relating their lives and their cross-cultural or culture-clashing experiences. The parallel scenarios give "Los Otros" a distinctive structure.
"It's hard to describe to an audience expecting your usual musical format — song, book, song, book," LaChiusa says. "This is very much a lyric play."
"I like that — 'a lyric play.' The music and dialogue are just woven together," Fitzhugh says. "I give credit to Michael John for that."
Fitzhugh, now 74 and living in upstate New York, and the 20-year-younger LaChiusa, who was born in upstate New York and now lives in New York City, are longtime friends. They met at a workshop when he was starting out and she was mentoring new talent.
"I heard him play some of his songs, and it was my Salieri moment," Fitzhugh says, referencing the scene in the play/movie "Amadeus" when composer Antonio Salieri first recognizes Mozart's talent. "I could tell how unusual he was."
Although both have worked on separate projects — the composer's credits include "Giant" and "The Wild Party"; the lyricist's credits include "Grind," which had a pre-Broadway tryout in Baltimore — they developed a lasting bond.
"It's kind of scary to work together on a piece with someone you have such a friendship with, such love," LaChiusa says. "Show business has a way of killing all of that. There's a lot of roadkill on the way to creating a musical."
Adds Fitzhugh: "I didn't want to work with anyone who didn't love me."
That affectionate connection between the musical's creators impresses the actors in "Los Otros."
"It's as if one person wrote it," says Philip Hernandez, who plays Carlos. "The music and text are so integrated with each other. There's an amalgam of styles in the score — '40s, '50s, '60s, a lot of Mexican music. The styles are part of the storytelling, the journey through time."
Judy McLane, who plays Lillian, considers "the music another character in the piece." As for Fitzhugh's dialogue and lyrics, they are "so specific," the actress adds. "She says so much in a few words."
McLane has been rehearsing those words in front of the woman who was at least partly a model for Lillian.
"It was a little intimidating," says McLane, a Broadway veteran who performed the lead role in "Mamma Mia!" for the show's last three years. "But Ellen has been so receptive."
Seeing aspects of her life portrayed by someone else can be "difficult," Fitzhugh says. "Yes, there are autobiographical incidents in the piece. People do things in their lives, take chances, maybe get a tiny bit lawless. This is all part of the [picture] that goes with all the blessings they've had," the writer says.
The musical's male character is likewise not entirely fictional.
"There has been in my life for a long time a very dear person who is the model for Carlos," Fitzhugh says.
McLane and Hernandez, the only man to play both Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert in "Les Miserables" on Broadway, have not just been rehearsing "Los Otros" for the past month. They've helped shape the new version of the musical.
"The actors have brought so much to the table," LaChiusa says. "There was a lot of rewriting. It's been a remarkably journey."
That word "journey" comes up a lot in conversation with the team getting "Los Otros" ready for Baltimore audiences.
"Through the piece, you get an idea of the process Carlos goes through coming to terms with how he's different from society at large," Hernandez says. "It's a beautiful journey, and it's something everyone can relate to. Every one of us feels at some point that they're different in some way."
As for possible socio-political implications in all of this, Hernandez sees something broader.
"The piece definitely has a point of view," the actor says. "But it's not 'Waiting for Lefty.' It's a piece about humanity, how you nurture humanity, how you practice that humanity."
"Los Otros" has preview performances Wednesday and Thursday, opens Friday and runs through April 23 at Everyman Theatre, 315 W. Fayette St. Tickets are $10 to $64. Call 410-752-2208, or go to everymantheatre.org.


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Sarah Silverman Credits 'Jewish Mother Fantasy Situation' for Drake's Instagram Love Declaration (VIDEO)
by Shiryn Ghermezian
Sarah Silverman. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman said she was thrilled to learn that coreligionist rapper Drake has his eyes on her, and noted that it was most likely a result of their shared heritage.
Silverman made the lighthearted remarks during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Thursday night when the host asked about Drake's public declaration of love for Silverman. The popular singer posted on Instagram a picture of Silverman taken from the hallway backstage at Saturday Night Live, which Drake hosted last week and where Silverman was once a cast member.
Drake, 29, captioned the photo "I do," alongside an engagement ring emoji and the letters "WCE," which stand for Woman Crush Everyday.
"I was excited of course," Silverman told Meyers, adding, "listen; he's half Jewish, I'm sure he has a Jewish mother fantasy situation…"
The comedian, who is dating actor Michael Sheen, added that right after the picture was posted, "I looked at my phone and I had 16 texts from all my young comedian friends that call me mum and it was very cool, they were very excited."
Watch Sarah Silverman talk about Drake's crush on her in the video below:


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text:
Q: import csv matrix to create a weighted and directed network in networkx python I am new to python and networkx.
How can I create a directed and weighted network by importing a weights adjacency matrix in csv format (see below for a 2*2 example)?
 3.4, 1.2,
 0.8, 1.3,

Thanks in advance.

A: There are at least two options: You can read such a file directly into a numpy array using numpy.loadtxt. Maybe that is all you need since you might want to use the matrix to perform linear algebra operations on it.
If you need a directed network you can then simply initialize a graph from it with networkx.from_numpy_matrix:
adj_mat = numpy.loadtxt(filename)
net = networkx.from_numpy_matrix(adj_mat, create_using=networkx.DiGraph())

net.edges(data=True)

[(0, 0, {'weight': 3.4}),
 (0, 1, {'weight': 1.2}),
 (1, 0, {'weight': 0.8}),
 (1, 1, {'weight': 1.3})]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

namespace FlitBit.WebApi
{
	[Serializable]
	[DataContract]
	public sealed class EnvelopeResult
	{
	  public static readonly string DefaultSuccessMessage = "Ok";
	  public static readonly string DefaultErrorMessage = "Unexpected";

    [DataMember(EmitDefaultValue = true, Name = "success")]
    [JsonProperty("success", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string Success { get; private set; }

    [DataMember(EmitDefaultValue = false, Name = "result")]
    [JsonProperty("result", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public object Result { get; private set; }

    [DataMember(EmitDefaultValue = true, Name = "error")]
    [JsonProperty("error", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
    public string Error { get; private set; }

	  [DataMember(EmitDefaultValue = false, Name = "reason"),
	   JsonProperty("reason", NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore)]
	  public object Reason { get; private set; }

	  public static EnvelopeResult SuccessFrom(object result)
    {
      return new EnvelopeResult(true, DefaultSuccessMessage, result);
    }

    public static EnvelopeResult SuccessFrom(string message, object result)
    {
      return new EnvelopeResult(true, message, result);
    }
    public static EnvelopeResult SuccessFrom(HttpStatusCode code, object result)
    {
      return new EnvelopeResult(true, Enum.GetName(typeof(HttpStatusCode), code), result);
    }

    public static EnvelopeResult ErrorFrom(object reason)
    {
      return new EnvelopeResult(false, DefaultErrorMessage, reason);
    }
    public static EnvelopeResult ErrorFrom(string message, object reason)
    {
      return new EnvelopeResult(false, message, reason);
    }

	  public static EnvelopeResult FromStatusCode(HttpStatusCode httpStatusCode)
	  {
	    return FromStatusCode((int)httpStatusCode, null);
	  }

    public static EnvelopeResult FromStatusCode(HttpStatusCode httpStatusCode, object reason)
    {
      return FromStatusCode((int)httpStatusCode, reason);
    }

	  public static EnvelopeResult FromStatusCode(int httpStatusCode)
	  {
      return FromStatusCode(httpStatusCode, null);
	  }

    public static EnvelopeResult FromStatusCode(int httpStatusCode, object reason)
    {
      switch (httpStatusCode)
      {
        case 300:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "MultipleChoices", reason ??
            "More than one option is available; please disambiguate."
          );
        case 301:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "Moved Permanently", reason ??
            "The resource has been permanently moved."
          );
        case 400:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "BadRequest", reason ??
            "The request could not be understood due to malformed syntax."
          );
        case 401:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "Unauthorized", reason ??
            "The request requires user authentication."
          );
        case 402:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "PaymentRequired", reason ?? null
          );
        case 403:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "Forbidden", reason ?? null
          );
        case 404:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "NotFound", reason ??
            "Unable to find a resource matching the requested URI."
          );
        case 405:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "MethodNotAllowed", reason ??
            "The resource does not allow that method."
          );
        case 406:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "NotAcceptable", reason ??
            "The resource can only generate responses that are not acceptable according to the accept header provided."
          );
        case 408:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "RequestTimeout", reason ??
            "Client endpoint taking too long to produce a request."
          );
        case 409:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "Conflict", reason ??
            "The request conflicts with the current state of the resource."
          );
        case 410:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "Gone", reason ??
            "The requested resource is no longer available on the server and no forwarding address is known."
          );
        case 411:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "LengthRequired", reason ??
            "The request cannot be accepted without a content-length."
          );
        case 412:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "PreconditionFailed", reason ??
            "A given precondition evaluated to false."
          );
        case 413:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "EntityTooLarge", reason ??
            "The requested entity is too large."
          );
        case 415:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "UnsupportedMediaType", reason ??
            "The resource does not support the media type provided."
          );
        case 417:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "ExpectationFailed", reason ??
            "A given expectation cannot be met by the server."
          );
        case 422:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "UnprocessableEntity", reason ??
            "The given entity does not conform to the server's requirements for the resource."
          );
        case 428:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "PreconditionRequired", reason ??
            "The server requires that the request be conditional."
          );
        case 429:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "TooManyRequests", reason ??
            "The client has sent too many requests in rapid succession and is being rate-limited."
          );
        case 500:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "InternalServerError", reason ??
            "The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request."
          );
        case 501:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "NotImplemented", reason ??
            "The server does not support the functionality required to fulfill the request."
          );
        case 502:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "BadGateway", reason ??
            "The server recieved an invalid response from the upstream server while attempting to fulfill the request."
          );
        case 503:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "ServiceUnavailable", reason ??
            "The server is currently unable to handle the request."
          );
        case 504:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "GatewayTimeout", reason ??
            "The server failed to receive a timely response from the upstream server."
          );
        case 505:
          return new EnvelopeResult(false,
            "HttpVersionNotSupported", reason ??
            "The server does not support the version of HTTP specifie."
          );
      }
      return new EnvelopeResult(false, Convert.ToString(httpStatusCode), reason);
    }

	  private EnvelopeResult(bool success, string msg, object data)
	  {
	    if (success)
	    {
	      Success = msg;
	      Result = data;
	    }
	    else
	    {
	      Error = msg;
	      Reason = data;
	    }
	  }
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Request US/Canada
40-30 Day Tour US
23-18 Day Tour European
Tour Hawaii
Suite Letters Reunion
Photos Teen
Application Employment
Meet Eugene, Ronee, Adam and Ilana Weissman
Owner/Directors of Weissman Teen Tours
About Weissman Teen Tours
Together, Eugene, Ronee , Adam and Ilana Weissman have given the Weissman Teen Tours its unique "family oriented" style and unusual togetherness that all its members share. They personally supervise and travel with their groups throughout the summer. Their staff of young, dedicated, college graduates, all trained in CPR and first aid, provide the "Weissman Family" with the highest quality of excellence, leadership and warmth.
Having the owners personally lead the tours, fosters spontaneity and affords the group special opportunities that they would never have otherwise experienced. If a meaningful adventure should suddenly present itself, the Weissmans will "jump" at the chance to participate. Groups have, for example, joined the North American Indian Council meetings in Montana, witnessing the tribal dances as well as making new friends. In addition, the European group has dined at a magnificent villa overlooking the Tuscan countryside as guests of friends of the Weissmans; joined a "Sweet 16" party at an Italian dance club by invitation of the owner of an exquisite European hotel; challenged some Swiss friends to a game of tennis in Zermatt; and participated in a special presentation at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, planned exclusively for the Weissman group.
Eugene Weissman
Eugene Weissman has a Masters degree in Mathematics and has completed post graduate work in Administration, Group Dynamics and Child Guidance. He has extensive experience as a high school educator, College Bound Coordinator and Administrator, teacher/consultant for the College Board Math SAT, camp director, youth director in Westchester and owner/director of Weissman Teen Tours. He has been elected to the International Who's Who of Professionals, served as Vice President of the Men's Club at the Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale and speaker for The American Camping Association. He is also a PADI certified scuba diver and an avid racquetball player. Eugene has traveled extensively throughout the world, and as a result of his many contacts, his teen tours have received personal invitations to college campuses and movie studios. Eugene's varied and extensive background, coupled with his personal involvement in every phase of this program, have made Weissman Teen Tours the highest quality and most personalized tour in the student travel field.
Ronee Weissman
Ronee Weissman graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude and holds a Masters Degree in Speech Pathology. She has been elected to Who's Who of American Women, Who's Who in the World, The World Who's Who of Women, The International Who's Who of Intellectuals, Who's Who of Emerging Leaders in America, International Youth in Achievement, The Directory of Distinguished Americans, as well as other Biographical Publications for her outstanding achievements as a teen tour director and N.Y. State licensed, ASHA certified Speech Pathologist. She recently served on the Board of Directors of the Scarsdale Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, and continues to serve on the Boards of the Scarsdale/Hartsdale Women's Interfaith Council, as well as the Women of Reform Judaism at Westchester Reform Temple; for which she served as Vice President for four years. As a high school Speech and English teacher, she directed all major theatrical productions, coached oratorical contests and coordinated student and faculty Theatre Parties. As continually demonstrated through her experience leading teen tours, she is a person who responds to teenagers with warmth and affection.
Adam Weissman
Adam S. Weissman Ph.D., is a clinical child/adolescent psychologist and the Founding Director of Child, Family, & Adult Services of Westchester (www.childfamilytreatment.com) and the Child/Adolescent Treatment Center at the Institute for Behavior Therapy in Manhattan. Adam completed his B.A. in Psychology and French at the University of Pennsylvania, his M.S. and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University, his pre-doctoral residency at the NYU Child Study Center, and a 2-year post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School. Adam is an Adjunct Professor/Supervisor at Yeshiva University/Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Columbia University, where he teaches and supervises advanced doctoral students in cognitive-behavioral therapy for children and adults; he is also a clinical consultant at Judge Baker Children's Center, Harvard Medical School. Adam has published over a dozen journal articles, book chapters, and edited books on the assessment and treatment of emotional and behavior problems in youth. In addition to his research, practice, and advocacy on behalf of youth mental health, Adam's hobbies include service, sports, music, and travel. He co-founded a community service a cappella group at Penn in which he remains actively involved, and played college basketball as an exchange student in the South of France where he made his way to the National Championship game in Strasbourg. A natural born leader, Adam serves as a role model to the teens he personally escorts on all of our tours.
Ilana Weissman
Ilana Weissman, a gifted artist, is the Writing Arts Coordinator for The Ella Baker School, a progressive alternative school in NYC, as well as the founder of her own film production company. She has created and implemented a multi-media arts and writing program and has produced Benefit Concerts combining the emerging talents of her students with that of professional artists, including a celebration commemorating 10 years freedom from apartheid in South Africa. Ilana, a guest speaker at the annual Prospect Center's Educational Conference, graduated with her B.A. and M.S. from Sarah Lawrence College. As a writer, photographer, filmmaker, musician and collage artist, she serves on the Board of Directors of W.E.R.I.S.E., a woman's arts organization, curates art shows, and facilitated collage workshops at Barnard College and the A.I.R Gallery in Soho. During her "spare" time, she taught Confirmation/Jewish History Classes at The Community Synagogue in Rye. Ilana studied at Julliard, in the pre-college program, where she played the French Horn and performed in concerts at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Ilana brings creativity, warmth and compassion to her work with children of all ages.
A letter from Eugene, Ronee, Adam and Ilana Weissman
Welcome to our �Weissman Family�! We invite you to join us and share our love of travel! For the past thirty-seven years, we have been the ONLY tour with every program personally escorted by the owners - Eugene, Ronee, Adam and Ilana Weissman, staying in all first class and deluxe hotels, resorts and National Park lodges. Thus, we offer the most well-supervised, secure, worry-free program in the student travel industry.
Our team of young, dedicated, professional, college grads, all trained in CPR + First Aid, work with us, beginning with the intensive training sessions, personally led by the Weissman Family, focusing on the safety, as well as the physical and emotional well-being of our teens. On tour, the excitement continues as our staff enthusiastically commits to giving each teen a once in a lifetime experience!
It is a comfort to both parents and travelers to know that Eugene, Ronee, Ilana, or Adam will actually travel on the tours. Parents are always welcome to contact us directly while on tour, or to call our Long Island office where Sharon and Stu are ready to answer any and all questions that you may have. We are in touch with them on a daily basis and we can always be reached 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Our program will continue to focus on three unique destinations, enabling us to maintain the highest standards and to devote our attention to each and every teen that travels with us. Whether we are surfing, snorkeling or scuba diving in beautiful Hawaii; horseback riding into Bryce Canyon, visiting the Hearst Castle, cruising to the California Baja, or as an audience member on "American Idol" on the US/Western Canadian Tour; or even taking a romantic moonlight Gondola ride on the Grand Canal of Venice, dancing at International Dance Clubs, or experiencing London Theatre at its best in Europe; "The Weissman Experience" is what dreams are made of.
Since we are always available to speak with you personally, please give us a call with any questions that you may have regarding our program. Until then, enjoy our brochure and DVD, and please join us for an experience of a lifetime!
With our warmest regards,
Eugene, Ronee, Adam & Ilana
The Weissman Family
WEISSMAN TEEN TOURS, INC.
517 Almena Ave.
Ardsley,N.Y.10502
E-mail: wtt@cloud9.net
US/Canada Highlights US/Canada Itinerary US/Canada Photos European Highlights European Itinerary European Photos Hawaiian Highlights Hawaiian Itinerary Hawaiian Photos
Video Suite Brochure Request Teen Application Letters Meet the owners Reunion Photos Employment


text:
'Epstien didn't kill himself' graffiti found at Miami art gallery where duct-taped banana was displayed
By David Matthews
Dec 08, 2019 | 11:38 PM
This March 28, 2017, file photo, provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry, shows Jeffrey Epstein. (AP)
An installation at Miami Beach Art Basel has gone from literally fruity to downright nutty.
The international modern art fair made headlines this week when a piece, a banana duct-taped to a wall, sold for $120,000. The piece, called "The Comedian," made a second round of news after a performance artist swooped in and ate it.
Now the physical area of the art gallery the piece was installed is the focus of attention after someone scribbled a popular conspiracy theory in red lipstick in the space the banana previously occupied.
The duct-taped banana at Art Basel is gone and has been replaced with "Epstein Didn't Kill Himself," which security quickly covered up. 😂 pic.twitter.com/nPtnuCm6sc
— Giancarlo Sopo (@GiancarloSopo) December 9, 2019
According to Twitter user Giancarlo Sopo, graffiti bearing the slogan "Epstien didnt kill himself" was painted onto the wall and covered up by the event's security with white cardboard.
This misspelled graffiti references the conspiracy theory that American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself Aug. 10 in federal jail cell awaiting trial in Manhattan, but rather was assassinated. The New York City medical examiner declared the death a suicide in August but a pathologist hired by Epstein's brother has challenged that finding.
This guy decided to write on the banana wall LOL 😅🤦🏻♀ #ArtBasel @OfficialJoelF pic.twitter.com/jjWDyugNuv
— sacha-stephanie (@sachasteph_) December 8, 2019
The vandal was caught on film. Sporting a goatee, wearing a black beret and recording his actions with a camera, the man calmly writes his message while speaking to a security guard. Miami Beach Police later identified him as 46-year-old Roderick Webber of Massachusetts. He was arrested on charges of criminal mischief.
"If someone can eat the $120,000 banana and not get arrested, why can't I write on the wall?" Webber shouted as police took him away.
"This is the gallery where anyone can do art, right?" a man can be heard saying in video posted by the Miami Herald.
[More U.S. News] SEE IT: Aaron Hernandez's fiancée says she 'would have understood' if the late NFL star were gay or bi, as suggested by new Netflix doc »
Sacha Medici witnessed the scene.
"When we got to the wall, it was white and empty," Medici told the Miami Herald. "We saw this guy live-streaming... and he starts writing on the wall and I was like, 'No way, there's no way this guy is writing.'"
A spokesman for the Emmanuel Perrotin art gallery, where the incident took place, said it was not affiliated with Webber.
SEE IT: Aaron Hernandez's fiancée says she 'would have understood' if the late NFL star were gay or bi,...