Europeana

Europeana is a project that showcases European history, literature, arts and science. Three million cultural items – images, texts, sounds and videos went online in an ambitious launch. A little too ambitious it seems as the site crashed after receiving 10 million hits per hour. I'm looking forward to exploring it when it returns in mid-December.

The fallen heroes would be so proud!

The Triumph of Bullshit

Thanks for pointing this idiocy out to me, John.

The end of an era

Closing Time documents the last month of the oldest store in the little Italy section of New York City. It is a portrait of the Rossi family, of the neighborhood that used to be and of the way the city changes in a blink of an eye.

Via

Mama Wants A New Pair Of Boobs

My Beautiful Mommy is a picture book about plastic surgery that aims to explain why mom is getting a flatter tummy and a 'prettier' nose.
Am I the only one who is made uncomfortable by this?

Hours of hypnotic fun

Red Raven Animated Records

These were cardboard children's records with the animation printed right onto the disc itself (later versions like the one above had the animation on the label of regular colored vinyl). The Red Raven included a little mirrored device that you pop onto the turntable's spindle that reflected the animation in such a way that while the record plays you get to see a little cartoon. The effect is rather hypnotic (the mirrored device is an ersatz praxinoscope for all of you optics junkies), and a neat addition to the typical children's fare on the record itself.

Via Daily Jive

Why am I not surprised that this is in Alberta?

Welcome to the Big Valley Creation Science Museum . Grand Opening celebrations July 7, 2007. Just remember 7/7/7. It shure looks impressive; I wonder if Steve Harper will be at the opening...

There are some, shall we say, dogma-challenging exhibits:

The "Dinosaurs and Humans" display shows considerable evidence that not only did dinosaurs exist recently, but that humans existed with them. This evidence is fatal to the evolutionary dogma which has dinosaurs extinct at least 60 million years before humans evolved.

Crumbland

An interesting article on Robert and Aline Crumb's life in a French village.