What happens only once a year yet 24 times in a day? The New Year. No matter the language, the cultural background, or the geographic location, almost everyone rings in the New Year at midnight on December 31. So celebrate it time zone by time zone with some place-specific drinks and snacks.
Via
I love quirky movies and I love Sicily. The best food in Italy. Really. Salemi is near Trapani, one of 2 areas of Sicily I haven't visited (the other is the Aeolian Islands). I'm feeling a strong pull.
Like the Moondance Diner before it, another New York icon has been forsaken by New York and found love in another country. Kim's collection of videos is going to Sicily. The town of Salemi is planning to launch the Neverending Festival, a non-stop public projection of Kim's Video Collection DVDs in their new home.
Electrabel used 300,000 tealight candles and stop-motion photography to create this spectacular video to celebrate New Year’s Eve 2009. The video looks like fireworks produced from tiny flames on the floor.
Thousands of candle-filled banana leaf-boats (krathongs), decorated by Thai people, were tied together and set afloat on the waterways during the annual Sukhothai Loi Krathong and Candle Festival held in Thailand, which marked the beginning of their three day celebration of light.
White Tiger (Kenny), Selective Inbreeding
Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge and Foundation
Eureka Springs, Arkansas
| In the United States, all living white tigers are the result of selective inbreeding to artificially create the genetic conditions that lead to white fur, ice-blue eyes and a pink nose. Kenny was born to a breeder in Bentonville, Arkansas on February 3, 1999. As a result of inbreeding, Kenny is mentally retarded and has significant physical limitations. Due to his deep-set nose, he has difficulty breathing and closing his jaw, his teeth are severely malformed and he limps from abnormal bone structure in his forearms. The three other tigers in Kenny’s litter are not considered to be quality white tigers as they are yellow coated, cross-eyed, and knock-kneed. © Taryn Simon |
If you don't mind peeking through the embellishments, LA Confidential is a great way to see Los Angeles. By embellishments I mean the trappings imposed on the city by the filmmakers to create a Fifties crime drama. It's named after the city. It's steeped in it. And it was filmed almost entirely on location, with only a few actual sets created for the movie.
The practise of having domestic servants is widespread in Brazil. The majority of the servants arrive in the big southern cities like Rio from the impoverished north, with little to no prospects and often on the wrong side of the country’s 88.6 percent adult literacy levels*. Correspondingly, they are paid very little – and it is here that Balco’s project touches upon the delicate topic of modern slave labour.
"For a couple of years, in 1969 and 1970, Delaney & Bonnie, the gifted duo comprising the singer-songwriter and guitarist Delaney Bramlett and his vocalistwife Bonnie, were the names on the lips of the rock cognoscenti. Eric Claptonenthused about the Bramletts' blue-eyed soul after hearing The Original DelaneyAnd Bonnie – Accept No Substitute, their 1969 album, and asked them to open for Blind Faith, the supergroup he had formed in the United States with SteveWinwood of Traffic and the former Cream drummer Ginger Baker.
'For me going on after Delaney and Bonnie was really, really tough, because I thought they were miles better than us,' Clapton recalled in his autobiography last year. 'Their band was made up of all these great Southern musicians, who had such a strong sound and performed with absolute confidence ... Needless to say it wasn't long before I dropped all my responsibilities as being part of Blind Faith and started to hang out with them."
A couple of years ago I had the idea that it might be fun to take photos of London without humans - yes, I was motivated by that scene in Westminster from 28 Days Later. Unfortunately, not being a film director I was not really in the position to have half of London sealed off for photos - but realised that on Xmas morning there could be an opportunity. More at IanVisits
Space... the Final Frontier.
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
"It was just a week before Christmas when two starving horses were discovered in the rugged mountains of the B.C. Interior - hip bones protruding, backs blanketed in ice, weakened bodies teetering between life and death.
Logan Jeck, 21, came upon the pair while retrieving two tourists' snowmobiles in the snow-covered terrain. He went home and told his father, David.
David Jeck, a horse owner, sent his daughter back the next day with two things: a .44 Magnum rifle and a bale of hay.
'If they look like they're in distress, put them down,' Mr. Jeck instructed his daughter, Toni. 'If they look like they're able to survive, feed them.'" Read more
This blog is not written with malice or scorn, but with a sincere desire to witness the upward progression of the human race. And some people are ruining it for everybody.
People who wear sunglasses inside.
Savages who pee on the seat.
This kind of conduct only perpetuates the acceptance of degenerate behavior.
On this space log, you will find examples of socially responsible reasons to punch someone in the face. And remember, we do it for the kids.
The evidence strongly suggests both that the painting's theft is a Mafia crime - and that it is no more likely to come back to the Oratory in a recognisable condition than that Palermo's streets will fill with the resurrected victims of assassinations and murders, bullet holes vanishing, bombed bodies whole again, strangled throats unmarked.
It was a most auspicious start for 'a bear of very little brain.' On Christmas Eve, 1925, the London Evening News published a short story by writer A.A. Milne. Among its characters was a bear named Winnie-the-Pooh. But it wasn't until the 1980s that the story behind the inspiration for the bear came to light. Winnipegger Fred Colebourn explains Winnie's background to CBC's Midday.
The 'silly old bear' was not pure invention; he was inspired by a real-life bear in the London Zoo. The bear, named 'Winnie' (short for Winnipeg), was a donation from Fred Colebourn's father, Harry, a Canadian Army veterinarian in the First World War. Before becoming a star attraction at the zoo, Winnie was the mascot of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade.
The morning of the dream, Lina, my poodle puppy, weighed in at 19.2 lbs. What if Lina got as big as a pony? In the early days of a global financial crisis we cannot fathom, I have taken on a moon-colored puppy that eats and eats. And I have had the dream I know is dreamt the length and breadth of my family-oriented neighborhood, where visible disturbances of prosperity are so very few. I dream I am asleep, and Lina enters my bedroom prowling for food. She takes fluid strides on her hind legs, her eyes avid, sweeping the room. She’s taller than a man, and spectrally thin under bright scant fur, as thin as the zoo bear that survived the siege of Sarajevo for 200 days, too weak to eat the apple a soldier finally brought her. My baby -- rising up in her need, and enormous. And she cannot be sustained.
This is a protest flag for equal marriage rights in the United States. The flag only has two stars, for Connecticut and Massachusetts (the 5th and 6th states in the union), the only states with legalized same-sex marriage.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, -- The inaugural event of the 13th consecutive edition of the Christmas Tree of Bradesco Seguros e Previdencia, the biggest floating Christmas tree in the world according to the Guinness Book of Records, brought together thousands of people this Saturday (November 29, 2008). Considered the third greatest event in the city of Rio de Janeiro, after Carnaval and New Year's Eve, the Tree brings something new for 2008 in the form of 'A melody of peace for the Brazilian family.' The spectacle of lights and colors has taken on a musical touch. An electronic carillon, imported from Italy and similar to the one used in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, has been installed within its structure to reproduce Christmas carols with bells played manually by professional bell-ringers. There are also fireworks scheduled for every Saturday.
Photos of Lee "Scratch" Perry and his crib.
Photograph: Rolf Hicker/Barcroft Media
Today in Washington, D.C., at a meeting of the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee, a 40-by-40-foot map to plan out next month's presidential inauguration was revealed to the public.
One can't help but imagine that prior to this, members of the military swarmed around this map or looked on from above in the bleachers to play scenarios of what will happen and what might happen in a sort of cartographic war game, although they weren't scheming a military invasion of Iran but rather the invasion of the nation's capital by the populace. read more
"On May 21st, 1969, police found the body of 19-year-old Alex Rackley on a riverbank in Middlefield, CT. Rackley was a member of the Black Panther Party, a revolutionary Black Nationalist organization founded in 1966 in California. At the time of Rackleys murder, the organization had several thousand members operating in regional chapters in major American cities; the Panthers growth and their call for violent action against racist institutions made the Party a subject of investigations by local and federal law enforcement agencies. A victim of the resulting paranoia among some Party members, Alex Rackley was murdered by fellow Panthers who suspected him of being an informant.
The state charged Bobby Seale, founder and national chairman of the Black Panther Party, and Ericka Huggins, head of the Partys New Haven chapter, with conspiracy to kidnap and murder Rackley; the prosecutors sought the death penalty. Many speculate that the charges against Seale and Huggins, neither of whom was present during the commission of the murder, were issued in an effort to destroy the Party."
Am I alone in thinking the Thatcher nutcracker is kinda cool?
Working with laser cut museum board and materials typical to architectural model making, Joel Stoehr has created a sculpture inspired by New York City entitled Tower of Babel. In this work, Stoehr re-imagines the city as an all encompassing, infinitely expanding tower, unable to be parsed into particular neighborhoods or boroughs. Within the work, the notion of control over one’s physical and psychological proximity to the architecture, and the inhabitants of that architecture, is lost. The collective unconscious of the city is transformed into an anonymous crushing urban overload.
Hans Hildenbrand, one of nineteen photographers employed by the Kaiser to document the war, was the only German to take photos of the war in color. Hildenbrand, who first started experimenting with the "Autochrome" color technique in 1909, founded a society for color photography in 1911 his native Stuttgart.
His scenes are all posed, not for reasons of propaganda, but rather because the film he was working with wasn't sensitive enough to capture movement.
"I work as a film location scout in New York City. My day is basically spent combing the streets for interesting and unique locations for feature films. In my travels, I often stumble across some pretty incredible sights, most of which are ignored every day by thousands of New Yorkers in too much of a rush to pay attention."SCOUTING NY
Dear Pamela—
I realize you're angry at how Friday night's Monopoly game ended. I'm writing this note to explain why certain things occurred the way they did, and, hopefully, to chip away at the chilly silence that has characterized our relationship the past few days.
Since we haven't spoken, I'm not aware of your stance on the causes of our dispute. I believe our major issue was the housing crisis, which began with your properties on Ventnor Avenue and Marvin Gardens.... Read more at McSweeney's Internet Tendency
Jonas Peterson's winner was taken while he shot scenes on a farm in Queensland, Australia. "Molly Nolan, the girl in the photo, became bored," Peterson says, "so I told her to look for tigers. Knowing Australia has no tigers, she reacted angrily. I turned to take photos. When I looked back, I saw her. Looking for tigers."
"One particular place to find amazing colors in nature is the Butterfly and lucky for us there are 17,500 species of butterflies in the world.
They use their bright colors to ward of predators by tricking them into thinking they are poisonous (some actually are) or by camouflaging themselves into plants or bigger insects."
‘Most travel is best of all in the anticipation or the remembering; the reality has more to do with losing your luggage.' - Regina Nadelson
‘Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.' - Lawrence Block
‘Traveling is like flirting with life. It's like saying, "I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station."' - Lisa St. Aubin de Teran
‘I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.' - Susan Sontag
‘The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.' - Rudyard Kipling
Tokyo Metro's monthly Manner Manner Poster campaign utilizes bold, cartoon-like depictions of a certain antisocial behavior subway riders should avoid doing... on the subway, at least. Barfing after passing out drunk, loud cellphone yakking and practicing golf swings with wet umbrellas - normal activities on North American subways - are no-no's on Tokyo Metro's sprawling subway system, though perfectly all right if done in the privacy of your home.
"The girls I photograph in these miniature villages interact with them much like children interact with their real surroundings, living inside their own dreams and fantasies rather than living in a specific house on a specific street. In their minds they can be giants moving through our world whilst always remaining separate to it, cocooned in their own dream like existence."-Julia Fullerton-Batten
They are not doctors. They are not nurses. They are illiterate women from India's Untouchable castes. Yet as trained village health workers, they are delivering babies, curing disease, and saving lives—including their own. - National Geographic Magazine
