July 1, 2014
Alone, in an aqueous atmosphere where distant bells linger
Diseased Gardens offers a selection of 20th C. weird fiction from Belgium and France as well as a checklist of strange fiction in translation. [more inside]
Routine Pelvic Exams are Unnecessary
The American College of Physicians admitted Monday that pelvic exams are not a useful screening tool for healthy women, and can even be harmful. Although these exams are often still required for hormonal contraception, there is no medical reason to do so, and pelvics are often a significant barrier to birth control access. They are not an effective way to diagnose ovarian cancer either, and urinalysis is a better way to detect STIs.
The American College of Obstetricans and Gynecologists disagreed, but acknowledged that the case for pelvic exams "lacks data."
Pelvic exams are so anxiety-inducing, uncomfortable, or painful that they can even cause some people to avoid medical care altogether, yet both clinicians and patients are so resistant to change that it's likely millions of women will continue to be screened despite the lack of evidence of benefit.
Sometimes you just have to pick up a pen.
Calligraphy-skills.com is a wonderful throwback to the early days of the Web, when someone would just helpfully organize and present a wealth of information on a given topic for free, simply because they were that into it. [more inside]
When it's not March but you still want the Madness
The NCAA On Demand You Tube Channel features the NCAA Vault, which houses the complete game broadcasts of dozens of NCAA tournament games from as far back as 1976 up through 2011.
Jimmy V's NC State team defeats Phi Slamma Jamma, some freshman named Michael Jordan sinks the game winner, Bird vs. Magic, Christian Laettner steps all over Kentucky, etc., etc. Lots of shining moments in there.
Practice makes perfect
No one who's ever seen film footage of Adolf Hitler giving his rousing speeches could have failed to notice the importance of Der Führer’s wildly exaggerated gestures and body language. Well, it turns out Hitler worked very carefully on that aspect of his public persona, very carefully indeed. During his rise to power, Adolf Hitler had his private photographer, Heinrich Hoffman, shoot him while he practiced those gestures, so that his speeches might have the dramatic impact upon his audiences that he sought. Here are the photos.
Hey, dummy!
Retail Therapy: What Mannequins Say About Us
Like the larger fashion industry, mannequin design echoes seasonal styles that come and go, both in regard to technological improvements and the way we view our bodies. “It’s often the body attitudes and facial expressions that reflect what’s going on socially,” says Hale. Accordingly, the stiff, unnatural bodies of early mannequins were well-matched for the Victorian Era‘s restrictive ideas about women’s rights and fashions, which dictated they wear many layers of heavy fabric over tight-fitting corsets.[more inside]
Making a life on the margins of society
After Koovagam, India's Largest Transgender Festival: "Some of the transgender women you see on the street were training to be lawyers or engineers," says Rangeela, who is one of a handful in her circle who did not drop out of school. "I hope in that in 10 years those people can go on with their careers and not be stuck into a life of prostitution." [more inside]
They Might Be Giants
Murder, She Wrote. And Played.
"But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let me tell you a story: a story about a board game. The Murder, She Wrote board game. You didn't know such a thing existed? Neither did I, before my friend Sarah brought it one summer to camp. (For the sake of clarity: I mean camp in the upstate New York sense, i.e., a small un-insulated cottage on a freshwater lake that has a preponderance of mismatched glasses and forks with wonky tines and maybe exposed studs but is the greatest place to family-vacation on earth.) Sarah and I met in day care, and had been friends for years—but this year, when she came to visit, she unknowingly brought the one thing that would enflame my jealousy." [more inside]
" . . . but women hold the power of story."
Women make up roughly half of the 42 million Pashtun people in the borderland. The kind of hardship they know is rare. Some are bought and sold, others killed for perceived slights against family honor. But this doesn’t render them passive. Most of the Pashtun women I know possess a rebellious and caustic humor beneath their cerulean burkas, which have become symbols of submission. This finds expression in an ancient form of folk poetry called landay. Two lines and 22 syllables long, they can be rather startling to the uninitiated. War, drones, sex, a husband’s manhood—these poems are short and dangerous, like the poisonous snake for which they’re named.
Lionel Messi is impossible.
Lionel Messi is impossible. Benjamin Morris of 538 uses statistics to prove that Lionel Messi is the best footballer on Earth.
“...like Michael Moore, only not mean.”
Rick Sebak, Pittsburgh’s resident documentarian and the inventor of the scrapbook documentary, has a brand new documentary out: A History of Pittsburgh in 17 Objects. Don’t know about the quirky joys of Rick Sebak, or of Pittsburgh? This is your lucky day. [more inside]
The wistful specter of what might've been if only he'd been listened to
From his time in Cairo, Lawrence was aware of the extravagant promises the British government had made to Hussein in order to raise the Arab Revolt: full independence for virtually the entire Arab world..............His first act of sedition — and by most any standards, a treasonous one — was to inform Faisal of the existence of Sykes-Picot.....The True Story of Lawrence of Arabia
. Previously and Previously
my brain my brain my brain
"Rooms We Die In," by Migueltzinta C. Solís
"Now that aunt #6 was dead, we could be a hand. If we are a hand, my grandmother is the cupped palm at the center of her five remaining children. If we are a hand, my mother is the thumb, and the other fingers are her brothers and sisters.... Mamá is the thumb, and I am her fingernail."
an overconfident autodidact’s imitation of a Lewis Lapham essay
“Moldbug.” The name sounds like it belongs to a troll who belches from the depths of an Internet rabbit hole. And so it does. (SLTheBaffler) [more inside]
Let Freedom Ring...and Be Mapped
Esri Enables Federal Agencies To Open GIS Mapping Data To The Public ESRI is the world's leading maker of GIS software. Their initiative is incredibly important in making mapped/mappable data available to the world. They are basically giving government agencies an Easy Button for opening this up to the public. [more inside]
20,000 voices, singing as one
The Latvian Song and Dance Festival has existed in some form or another since 1873, held roughly every five years. Along with similar festivals in Estonia and Lithuania, it has been recognized by UNESCO as one of the world's Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The approximately 35,000 amateur singers and dancers who travel from all around Latvia to perform the weeklong festival comprise 1.5% of the country's entire population. The centerpiece of the festival is always the final night, when the full complement of roughly 20,000 singers perform the most iconic Latvian folk songs a cappella. In 2013, a song performed on the final night was "Līgo" (a word meaning both "sway" and "summer solstice festival"). But for sheer spine-tingling pleasure, 2008's "Gaismas pils" ("Castle of Light") can't be beat.
RIP Trampas
Trampas, aka StudBook 424, passed away this week, leaving behind over 770 descendants, at the ripe old age of 13, the longest life known for a loggerhead shrike. [more inside]
To read Spark is always to read about reading.
Describing Dame Muriel Spark's oeuvre as "a body of work singular in its violence, formal inventiveness, and scorching opening lines," Parul Sehgal's What Muriel Spark Saw examines the enduring appeal and the mystery of Spark's fiction, particularly the "monstruous" women: "What hash Spark's characters make of those eternal debates over unlikable characters or unlikable women." [more inside]
English explodes in India
English words are becoming more popular in various Indian languages (Hindi is the language that's predominantly discussed in the article). Vise versa: words that English owes to India (again, predominately discussing Hindi).
Penny in Your Pants
Cycling in a skirt? Avoid flashing onlookers by putting a Penny in Your Pants.
Alternately you could buy or DIY a bike garter - or simply perfect your mounting technique with this super sick trick.
"I can keep it on my bookshelf without worry of remote recall."
"E-book backup is a physical, tangible, human readable copy of an electronically stored novel. The purchased contents of an e-book reader were easily photocopied and clip-bound to create a shelf-stable backup for the benefit of me, the book consumer." [more inside]
We sit together, the mountain and I, until only the mountain remains.
30 Years of PG-13
When the 1984 blockbuster “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” which features a man holding a still-beating heart in his bare hands and other visual delights, was too gory for its original PG rating, Steven Spielberg contacted Jack Valenti and proposed the PG-13 rating.
"Any drug use will initially require at least a PG-13 rating. More than brief nudity will require at least a PG-13 rating, but such nudity in a PG-13 rated motion picture generally will not be sexually oriented. There may be depictions of violence in a PG-13 movie, but generally not both realistic and extreme or persistent violence. A motion picture’s single use of one of the harsher sexually-derived words, though only as an expletive, initially requires at least a PG-13 rating. More than one such expletive requires an R rating, as must even one of those words used in a sexual context."
Is 100 the right number?
Astronaut Sally Ride and the Burden of Being The First. 'Tampons were packed with their strings connecting them, like a strip of sausages, so they wouldn’t float away. Engineers asked Ride, “Is 100 the right number?” She would be in space for a week. “That would not be the right number,” she told them. At every turn, her difference was made clear to her. When it was announced Ride had been named to a space flight mission, her shuttle commander, Bob Crippen, who became a lifelong friend and colleague, introduced her as “undoubtedly the prettiest member of the crew.” At another press event, a reporter asked Ride how she would react to a problem on the shuttle: “Do you weep?”'
"This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure."
Manfeels Park
Manfeels Park is an exercise in flogging a pun for all it’s worth. The male dialogue in this webcomic is all taken word for word or adapted only slightly from web commentary by hurt and confused men with Very Important Things To Explain, usually to women. Artistic license is exercised in editing commentary for brevity, spelling and grammar, but the spirit of the original comment is always faithfully observed. Witty rejoinders are also ‘found dialogue’ where possible.[more inside]
The Patron Saint of Defense Attorneys
Ted Kaczynski. Jared Lee Loughner. Eric Rudolph. Susan Smith. And now, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. They all stood (or stand) accused of committing heinous crimes. They all faced (or face) the death penalty. And they all have something- or rather, someone- else in common. [more inside]
Good Thread Post
For 37 years, Bothwell, a small town in Tasmania, has hosted an international competition to determine who can hand spin the longest 2-ply thread using 10 grams of wool. [more inside]
The Sun Shines Bright On My Old Kentucky Home!
Drew Nowhere
Drew Chessie Nowhere is a bike punk who regularly takes leave from his job as a chef in NOLA to go on epic bicycle tours, full of camping with his dog in the woods, dumpster diving, and campstove cooking. He is covered with tattoos from artist Pauly Lingerfelt. He is also a fantastic photographer.
bike touring tumblr
bike touring F.A.Q.
flickr
The Fox, The Madien, The River, And The Witch
Leigh Bardugo writes haunting, Eastern-European inspired fairy tales (Previously) often highlighting the experience of women in a unfair world. Tor.com presents two new stories, the somber "The Too-Clever Fox" and the subversive "Little Knife."
Insuring the Dead
The Other Net
The Energy Sciences Network is a private Department of Energy network operated by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, that links research institutions in the United States and the world. In 2011 researchers acheived 91+ Gbps disk-to-disk on their 100 gbps network. The Shadow Internet.
Justice and identity
Yesterday, President Obama announced that in addition to the already announced executive order regarding protecting federally contracted workers from discrimination, the White House is preparing an executive order banning job discrimination among federal employees on the basis of gender identity. Department of Labor Secretary Tom Perez wrote in a blog post yesterday that DOL will be "updating enforcement protocols and anti-discrimination guidance to clarify that we provide the full protection of the federal non-discrimination laws that we enforce to transgender individuals" to comply with the EEOC decision in Macy v. Holder. [more inside]
Canadianisms
55 Canadianisms You May Not Know or Are Using DifferentlyA (non-scientific) survey providing a thorough & fascinating look at words in Canadian English [more inside]
Tax dollars hard at work around Saturn
Ten years ago, the Cassini–Huygens spacecraft became the first to orbit the planet Saturn. After dropping off Huygens on the moon Titan, Cassini proceeded to spend its time exploring the Saturn system, watching the birth of a new moon, photographing water vents on Enceladus, discovering methane lakes on Titan, spotting hurricanes on Saturn, confirming aspects of general relativity and all sorts of other stuff. Enjoy these stunning photographs, explore the timeline of its exploration and marvel at the complex orbital mechanics that keep Cassini flying in Saturn's system with a tiny fuel supply.
Marianne North: The Flower Huntress
Where most other naturalists took samples, she used her paints to make a "unique snapshot of the world’s natural habitat more than 100 years ago." Although she didn't take up oil painting until she was nearly 40, North became a prolific painter of flora (and sometimes fauna) from around the world, often capturing not just the plant but the landscape around it. [more inside]
and thus began my morbid fascination
The Morbid Anatomy Museum, a treasure trove of pathological and funereal curiosities, antique medical models, and anatomical art pledged to "exploring the intersections of death, beauty, and that which falls between the cracks," has opened its doors to the public in Gowanus, Brooklyn. [more inside]
The Sahrawis never had a country
Photojournalist Micah Albert and I made the 1,000-mile journey from the Algerian capital, Algiers, to Rabouni to see if we could find evidence of this purported hotbed of extremism in the Polisario-controlled camps. After months of investigation, including two weeks spent in the camps last September, we didn’t uncover a wellspring of terrorists in the desert. Instead, we found a SADR government desperate to maintain its claim over the shores of the Western Sahara and whatever resources might lie there — like the rich fisheries and the mines that provide most of the world’s phosphate. We found a population, inclusive of the Polisario army, that the U.S. government is indirectly, and perhaps unknowingly, spending millions of dollars each year to feed through a multimillion-dollar aid package provided by the United States Agency for International Development’s Office of Food for Peace.For Foreign Policy David Conrad reports about the forty year struggle for independence in the Western Sahara and the impact the War on Terror, not to mention the threatened discovery of oil have had on the Sahrawi and their struggle.
that’s fine. i’m going to figure out a way to do this on my own
Run Like a Girl Means I Can Also Win the Race
Previously, Hello Flo, created this hilarious video about spunky young girls at summer camp and then First Moon Party, a celebration of a young woman's first period, which she fakes with glittery red nail polish on a pad, so desperate is she to begin menstruation.
And now, another feminine hygiene product gets in on the image of powerful young women who menstruate by asking what it means to say someone does something "like a girl."
Yes, I kick like a girl, and that's a good thing. [more inside]
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