January 8
The Seljuk Han in Anatolia has tons of information about and pictures of the caravanserai, inns for caravans, built by the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm in what is now Turkey. The Seljuk caravanserai, called hans, were a vital resource for trade from the middle ages to recent times. The website, by
Katherine Branning, explains
what a han is,
their origins,
their function in trade,
what life there was like and much more. The site also features 39 individual hans, such as the
Kadin Han, now a furniture store,
Dibi Delik Han, which is undergoing restoration,
Zazadin Han, which has been restored already, and the spectacular
Sultan Han Kayseri. For an academic survey of Seljuk hans, here's Ayşıl Tükel Yavuz'
The concepts that shape Anatolian Seljuq caravanserais [pdf, automatic download].
posted by Kattullus at 4:04 AM - 1 comment
January 7
"The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the
How,
Why and
Where phases."
[more inside]
posted by Hardcore Poser at 11:44 PM - 7 comments The Nine Eyes of Google Street View "It was tempting to see the images as a neutral and privileged representation of reality—as though the Street Views, wrenched from any social context other than geospatial contiguity, were able to perform true docu-photography, capturing fragments of reality stripped of all cultural intentions."
posted by dhruva at 5:15 PM - 27 comments
Nil by Mouth is Roger Ebert's article about what life is like now that he doesn't eat or drink anymore, but is nourished by tube. And interesting reflection on what life can be like after thyroid cancer, and not as sad as you might think.
posted by kaszeta at 4:04 PM - 39 comments
The Violet Hour, a speakeasy styled lounge in Chicago with no sign, has been pushing the envelope in creative drink mixing since it opened in 2005. Toby Maloney, the Violet Hour's "Head Intoxocologist", had no problem posting on a Chicago food forum and
sharing some of the drink recipes that have made his bar one of the most exciting in the country.
[more inside]
posted by AceRock at 12:00 PM - 33 comments Blow the whistle on the rich and powerful, go to jail, while they avoid jail. Tax Notes, the weekly publication on federal taxation, announced its "2009 Tax Person of the Year" - a whistleblower from Swiss banking giant UBS whom it called "the Benedict Arnold of the private banking industry." Bradley Birkenfeld came forward and exposed the tax fraud dealings of UBS which led thousands of millionaire tax cheats to come forward and pay billions in back taxes. His reward? Tomorrow he
goes to jail.
The Government Accountability Project (GAP), a Washington watchdog organization that has extensive whistle-blower experience, says a chilling effect is already apparent: a senior executive at a European bank that offers similar U.S. tax shelters is having second thoughts about going public because of the Birkenfeld case.
posted by caddis at 10:28 AM - 42 comments
January 6
Acclaimed writer Bruce Sterling is back for his annual
State of the World interview in The WELL's inkwell conference. It's a must-read. The first question comes from Cory Doctorow who asks him to help him plan for the future now that Cory has a kid, etc. Sterling's answer is hilarious, biting, and brilliant all at the same time. And that's only the beginning...
posted by brianstorms at 6:16 PM - 125 comments The man behind the classic sound of Al Green, Memphis producer and soulmeister supreme
Willie Mitchell has
passed on. Many of the Al Green sides are legendary, of course, and very well known (as is the fantastic "I Can't Stand the Rain, by Ann Peebles), but be sure and head over to the excellent
Funky 16 Corners where you can hear three of his lesser-known but
deeply grooving productions. Fat stuff. So long, Willie Mitchell, and thanks for the wonderful music.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:14 PM - 24 comments Loran C will cease operation in 2010.
Loran C is "a terrestrial radio navigation system using low frequency radio transmitters that uses multiple transmitters (multilateration) to determine the location and speed of the receiver." It is currently used as a backup to GPS for navigational and timing purposes.
posted by vansly at 1:53 PM - 53 comments
Ursula Nordstrom—the "
Maxwell Perkins of the Tot Department"—was, from 1940 to 1973, head of the Department of Books for Boys and Girls at the New York publisher Harper & Row, and until 1979 had her own imprint there, Ursula Nordstrom Books. A
legendary editor known to her authors as UN, she published the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Margaret Wise Brown, Shel Silverstein, Maurice Sendak (whom she is credited with discovering) and,
to not a little controversy, E. B. White (
previously). One of "the last generation of devoted letter writers," she wrote
nearly 100,000 during her five decade career at Harper, of which 300 of the most amusing, acerbic, and illuminating are collected in
Dear Genius by Leonard S. Marcus, the first hundred pages of which
can be read at the Harper website.
[more inside]
posted by ocherdraco at 12:35 PM - 8 comments Calvin & Hobbes
will be put on a
U.S. postage stamp, honoring "Sunday Funnies," along with Garfield, Beetle Bailey, Dennis the Menace, and Archie. Although there has been no end to the
homages and
unlicensed materials regarding his beloved characters, creator Bill Watterson, "the only cartoonist who resented the popularity of his own strip," has expressed his
disapproval of third-party appropriation in detail:
A wordy, multiple-panel strip with extended conversation and developed personalities does not condense to a coffee mug illustration without great violation to the strip's spirit. The subtleties of a multi-dimensional strip are sacrificed for the one-dimensional needs of the product.
Even if Watterson hasn't approved, nothing in the
USPS committee's selection criteria requires artist approval.
[more inside]
posted by jabberjaw at 11:59 AM - 98 comments Hot nude bronze gay hockey action. Do you associate the Winter Olympics with middle-aged curlers in warm-up jackets, Lycra-clad former linebackers sardined into a bobsled, and sparkly figure skaters’ outfits (and whatever the girls are wearing)? Oh, you’re
so last century! For Vancouver 2010, the Olympics’ first-ever Pride House for gay athletes will feature a bronze sculpture (by Edmund Haakonson) of a hockey player. It’s a dude, and he’s naked save for skates, helmet, and gloves. Of course he’s carrying a big stick.
posted by joeclark at 11:35 AM - 44 comments
From late January through late May 1974, a wave of "streaking"—roughly defined as running naked in public—occurred in the United States, primarily on college and university campuses; the brief phenomenon eventually spread around the world. Although the exact number of streaks during this time is unknown, one group of researchers gathered data on over 1000 incidents on U.S. college campuses alone (Aguirre et al. 569). Streaking generated significant press coverage and spawned a plethora of streaker-related consumer items including coffee mugs, t-shirts, necklace pendants, "Keep On Streaking" patches, "Streak Freak" buttons, a "Nixon Streaking" wristwatch, pink underwear embroidered with "Too shy to streak," and two dozen novelty singles (one of which, Ray Stevens’
The Streak, became a major hit). ... The important point is that the campus politics that were being contained in the spring of 1974 were precisely the ones that most threatened to consolidate and advance the gains of the previous decade in terms of opportunities for women and people of color. While many Americans were longing for the Age of Innocence of the (white, patriarchal) 1950s, the university continued to lead the way in altering the gendered and racialized relations of power on campus and in American society at large. And it was at precisely this socio-historical juncture that young white men began stripping off their clothes and running in public. << Perhaps the best academic paper you'll ever read about streaking.
posted by billysumday at 9:48 AM - 64 comments
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