Heuresis

xkcd on Legos and organ donors. This is brilliant. Thank you to...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:41:44 -0500

xkcd on Legos and organ donors. This is brilliant. Thank you to Craig M. for posting.

Joey’s Famous Philly Cheesesteaks and more! Joey’s...

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:54:08 -0500

Joey’s Famous Philly Cheesesteaks and more! Joey’s II

I love this place. As the menu says, “Any hoagie can be ruined with mayo upon request.” Their cheesesteaks are actually pretty serious.

Baron de Meyer’s “Dance Study,” ca. 1912....

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:17:00 -0500

Baron de Meyer’s “Dance Study,” ca. 1912. Taken from the Met’s website. Here is what they say about it:

[Dance Study], ca. 1912
Adolph de Meyer (American, born France, 1868–1949)
Platinum print

12 7/8 x 17 1/8 in. (32.7 x 43.5 cm)
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949 (49.55.327)

De Meyer photographed the dancer Nijinsky and other members of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes when L’après-midi d’un faun was presented in Paris in 1912. This photograph, the only nude by de Meyer, most likely portrays one member of the troupe in a costume whose source remains mysterious.

Citation: “Adolph de Meyer: [Dance Study] (49.55.327)”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pict/ho_49.55.327.htm (October 2006)”

riotclitshave: By Sarah and Stacy

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:55:51 -0400

riotclitshave: By Sarah and Stacy

Can we live together?

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:57:29 -0400

Can we live together?

R.A. Montgomery, Space and Beyond: Choose Your Own Adventure #3...

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:15:07 -0400

R.A. Montgomery, Space and Beyond: Choose Your Own Adventure #3 (Waitsfield, VT: Chooseco, 2006; orig. pub. NY: Bantam, 1980)

“You were born on a spaceship traveling between galaxies and raised by parents from two different planets. You are now old enough to decide your citizenship and set out exploring by yourself. Will you choose planet Kenda or planet Croyd to be your home? This ticket to independence is something you’ve been dreaming about, but steering your ship around black holes and meteorites alone is not something you were ready for! But there’s no time for nostalgia, you must choose a galactic future and begin your citizenship or else you could be left orbiting dark realms with some frightening beasts. Good luck!” The reissued version can be yours for only seven smackers. As a nerdy eleven-year-old, I spent many a happy dorky hour with this book.

currently being driven insane by this Martin Gardner puzzle, i refuse to cheat http://j.mp/4lEf1x

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:20:37 -0400

via DesktopTweet

Posted via web from NBR | Comment »

Theater program cover illustration for performance of Israel...

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:59:45 -0400

Theater program cover illustration for performance of Israel Zangwill’s play, The Melting Pot: The Great American Drama (1916, first performance 1908). Via Wikipedia.

"All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful..."

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:17:00 -0400

““All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.” But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”

- 1 Cor. 6.12-20. Another one of those Biblical passages that are so familiar that we assume we know the meaning. But when you think hard about it, the concepts — such as member and glorify and destroy and own — become enigmatic.

Marshall McLuhan on YouTube (via kenrg)

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:16:22 -0400

Marshall McLuhan on YouTube (via kenrg)

nevver: Dream Anatomy, Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) The...

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:48:45 -0400

nevver:

Dream Anatomy, Govard Bidloo (1649-1713)

The exhibition that this is taken from is extraordinary.

Tell me again how the "free market" is the best way to manage health-care delivery, part II: health insurance and rape victims

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:23:48 -0400

Tell me again how the "free market" is the best way to manage health-care delivery, part II: health insurance and rape victims:

Of course, the truth that very few people want to say out loud is that for-profit insurance companies are actually doing the smart thing by denying coverage to sexual-assault victims. If you've been raped, you're probably going to require expensive one-on-one therapy and who knows what other sorts of treatment. You're a bad risk. Why not deny coverage? At least, that's how it looks to me. Someone can explain to me if I'm getting it wrong somehow.

Weaver’s Needle, a rock spire east of Phoenix....

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:36:00 -0400

Weaver’s Needle, a rock spire east of Phoenix. Description: “Weaver’s Needle from Fremont Saddle at the top of Peralta Trail… Weaver’s Needle is a thousand foot high column of rock that forms a distinctive peak visible for many miles around. Located in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix, Arizona, Weaver’s Needle was created when a thick layer of tuff (fused volcanic ash) was heavily eroded, creating the spire as an erosional remnant with a summit elevation of 4553 ft.” From Wikipedia. I used to hike here regularly.

The text reads: The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects...

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 05:17:44 -0400

The text reads:

The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve.

And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity.

Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav’d the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects; thus began Priesthood.

Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And a length they pronounc’d that the Gods had order’d such things.
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, ca. 1790-1793. Full text here.

"Margaret greeted her lord with peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature as he was, she might yet be..."

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:17:44 -0400

“Margaret greeted her lord with peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall find easy-going.”

- E.M. Forster, Howards End (NY: Penguin Books, 2000), pp. 158f. (Project Gutenberg link).

"These people were proud of their work. They were convinced of being engaged in an act of..."

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 01:17:45 -0400

“These people were proud of their work. They were convinced of being engaged in an act of purification. They called Auschwitz the anus of Europe. Europe had to be cleansed. They were responsible for the purification of Europe. If you cannot get your head round that you will understand nothing at all.”

- A Red Cross worker, 1944, speaking to a journalist about Auschwitz, quoted in Nigel Bellin (producer), Crossing the Lives. The History of the International Red Cross Committee (London: BBC2 [Timewatch], 1999). Seen in Roger Griffin, “‘The Rainbow Bridge’: Reflections on Interdisciplinarity in the Cybernetic Age,” Compass Interdisciplinary Virtual Conference, October 2009.

"Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely..."

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:11:39 -0400

“Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears it ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of the mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison.”

- Albert Einstein, quoted in Morris Kline, Mathematics and the Search for Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 219, seen in Roger Griffin, “‘The Rainbow Bridge’: Reflections on Interdisciplinarity in the Cybernetic Age,” Compass Interdisciplinary Virtual Conference, October 2009.

Existing Visual » The Most Controversial Magazine Covers of...

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:50:42 -0400

Existing Visual » The Most Controversial Magazine Covers of All Time

"They’re opening [the oil fields] up to other companies all over the world… We’re..."

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:07:44 -0400

“They’re opening [the oil fields] up to other companies all over the world… We’re entitled to it… Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars… We leave there with the Chinese getting the oil.”

- Oilman T. Boone Pickens speaking to the Congressional Natural Gas Caucus on Oct. 21, 2009. Quoted in Tom Doggett, “Pickens says U.S. firms ‘entitled’ to Iraqi oil,” Reuters.com (Oct. 22, 2009). Seen on CommonDreams.org.

Longest Walk poster (1978), from Takeo Koshikawa’s...

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:07:45 -0400

Longest Walk poster (1978), from Takeo Koshikawa’s collection, published at the Longest Walk commemorative site.