Burma: Twittering the cyclone disaster.




Syria: Three-year sentence for blogger Tariq Baiasi.

UK Tower Blocks and Architecture of the 1960s and 1970s.




Soviet Tourist Labels.

'Some of the best Intourist labels and brochures produced during the 1930's were designed by A. Selensky. Some of the labels in this set are signed by him, including a rare constructivist style travel brochure I have included as well.'




Field Guide to New York City Subway Maps.

1924 to now.




Coolville Supermarket.

Vintage supermarket product packaging. 'Hopefully while strolling through the Coolville Supermarket you'll fill your shopping cart full of fun memories!'




Bridget Riley's Optical Art.

Riley creates art which exploits the fallibility of the human eye - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_Riley




Cleaning the Great Buddha of Nara, Japan.

'The ceremony of cleaning the image of the Great Buddha of the Tôdai-ji Temple, in Japan, is performed on 7th of August every year. About 230 people, including priests, work in the dusting of this 16-metre giant statue. The cleaners have to climb all over Buddha to be able to polish the hands and feet and ride in baskets hung from the ceiling in order to clean its head. '




Hindu Gods on Flickr.




Delaware Postcard Collection.

'The University of Delaware Library Postcard Collection comprises over two thousand postcards of Delaware and nearby areas. The postcards in the collection date mainly from the very end of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth, although there are also postcards from throughout the later part of the twentieth century. Most of the cards in the collection were commercially produced and represent well-known Delaware buildings, monuments, and views, such as the State Capitol in Dover, Wilmington’s downtown buildings and historic structures, and Rehoboth’s beaches and boardwalks.'




Jean Thomas, the Traipsin' Woman.

'Jean Thomas was born Jeanette Mary Francis de Assisi Aloysius Narcissus Garfield Bell in Ashland, Kentucky on November 14, 1881. She earned the nickname "Traipsin' Woman" when, as a teenager in the 1890s, she defied convention to attend business school, learn stenography, and become a court reporter, traveling by jolt wagon to courts in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. Her exposure to the musical traditions, dialect, folkways, and costumes of the mountain people she encountered, combined with her later work in "show business," led to her avocation as a popularizer of mountain music and as proprietress of the American Folk Song Festival, staged in and near Ashland, Kentucky from 1930 through 1972...'

The Jean Thomas Collection: http://digital.library.louisville.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fjthom




The Official R. Crumb Website.

The underground comix artist. 'I was one of those social rejects, but then, you know, a lot of people were — nothing unusual about being an outcast in high school.'

Crumb family art gallery : http://rcrumb.com/artgallery.html



Querying the Hive Mind.


How to concentrate.




History of the Mao Suit.

From Evolution and Revolution: Chinese Dress 1700s-1990s - http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/hsc/evrev/




The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936.

A US Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit.

'For two weeks in August 1936, Adolf Hitler's Nazi dictatorship camouflaged its racist, militaristic character while hosting the Summer Olympics. Minimizing its antisemitic agenda and plans for territorial expansion, the regime exploited the Games to impress many foreign spectators and journalists with an image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany. Having rejected a proposed boycott of the 1936 Olympics, the United States and other western democracies missed the opportunity to take a stand that contemporary observers claimed might have restrained Hitler and bolstered international resistance to Nazi tyranny. After the Olympics, Germany's expansionism and the persecution of Jews and other "enemies of the state" accelerated, culminating in World War II and the Holocaust...'




Introduction to Psychology.




A Mission Record of the California Indians.

'This is an 'interrogatorio,' a survey taken in 1811 by the Spanish government of Mexico regarding the status of the Native Californians at each mission in Alta California, translated and heavily annotated by A.L. Kroeber. Along with Boscana's account, this one of the few glimpses we have of the Native Californians, when pre-contact individuals were still alive. The accounts vary from friar to friar, but some are very detailed and mention completely unknown placenames and languages. There are reasonably value-free descriptions of religious beliefs, mythology, language, dance, music and ethnobotany.'

Tips on Burma relief organisations: http://www.metafilter.com/71400/Burma-Cant-Wait#2104879

Discarded Photographs Found in an Alleyway.

'this collection comes from a heap of discarded photographs, found in a venice alleyway by my friend, mike lee. i was on vacation in cape cod when he called, asking if he should rescue them. he thought i'd be the only person he knows that'd be interested in them. other neighbors had looked through and passed, but mike's descriptions of the early 70s rock bands and buggy eyed entertainers unleashed an anxiousness in me,. i told him to save as many of the photos as he could. '




Latin American Graffiti and Street Art.




Peach Box Labels from the State of Georgia.




QANTAS Airline Nostalgia.




Dorothea Lange's 'Migrant Mother'.

'Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” was photographed in February 1936 in a pea pickers’ camp in Nipomo, California, while on assignment as a photographer for the Resettlement Administration (RA), which soon would become the better-known Farm Security Administration (FSA)...'




Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's Official Site.

Burma's pro-democracy leader.

Also : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi




Northvegr.




A website devoted to the religion and culture of Norse heathenism - the 'practice, promotion and development of the Northern spiritual faith, which we call Hindrvitni or the Northern Way', i.e. the ancestral Norse religion. There's also an interesting collection of language resources : http://www.northvegr.org/resources_main.php




Japanese Pop Artist Yoshitomo Nara.

From the Wikipedia article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshitomo_Nara ) - 'The manga and anime of his 1960s childhood are both clear influences on Nara's stylized, large-eyed figures. Nara subverts these typically cute images, however, by infusing his works with horror-like imagery.'



Querying the Hive Mind.


'What are some of your absolute favourite online essays, articles and other pieces of non-fiction writing?'


'I find it hard to maintain friendships with women. What's up with me?'


'What other words out there lack elegant opposites?'




The price of food, the cost of despair.

'The crisis of skyrocketing food prices is affecting all economic groups in every corner of the world. Every day, it seems, high-priced food sends another country lurching through some crisis: demonstrations, riots, rumors of hoarding, falling governments, even deaths.'

'Global Voices is well positioned to follow the nuances of this complex issue with authors tracking citizen media in nearly every country of the planet. This article is an attempt to place an overall narrative on the global food crisis with observations from our authors from around the world. Clicking on the links will take you to all the posts that have been referenced.'




Snake Earrings of India.

'Traditional earrings in the villages and tribal areas of India are manifestations of symbolism, religious meaning and social significance. A woman wears a particular type of earring as a sign of identity, of membership in the defined social group into which she was born. Wearing the specific earrings of her community, she continues the tradition of her ancestors...'




Audio Tape Cassette Nostalgia.




Brazilian Album Covers.




Analysis of Sidewalk Fractures.




Gulag Prisoners at Work 1936-37.

Photographs.



Astro Pics.


Mercury Chases the Sunset.


Crescent Mercury in Colour.


An Avalanche on Mars.

Egypt: Facebooking the struggle.

'After little less than a month following the April 6 strike in support of the textile workers in Mahalla City, during which a number of prominent Egyptian bloggers and internet activists were arrested, preparations for the next round of a planned general strike to mark the 80th birthday of President Hosni Mubarak, on May 4, 2008, are currently spreading all over the blogosphere and the Internet...'

Thamesmead, Riverside School, 1976-78.

Photographs. 'In my early days I was employed, at my second school, as a science teacher at Riverside School, Thamesmead. Situtated on the Bexley/London border, it was a relatively new school in a "London" housing estate. Riverside School is now Bexley Business Academy...'




19th Century Swedish Copybook.




Minik: The Lost Eskimo.

'In October 1897, the renowned Arctic explorer Robert Peary returned to New York from his latest Greenland expedition. At the request of anthropologist Franz Boas, he brought with him five polar Eskimos for study at the American Museum of Natural History. '

'The embryonic science of anthropology regarded the Eskimos as a rare species, and their arrival in New York caused a sensation. Within months, however, four of the Eskimos had fallen sick and died, leaving a seven-year-old boy named Minik to fend for himself in a foreign land. Eventually adopted by a member of the Museum's staff, it was sixteen years before he was able to return to his native Greenland. '

'This American Experience production retraces Minik's life journey to provide a thought-provoking look at the intersection of race, culture and the nascent science of anthropology in America at the turn of the twentieth century. '




Photos of an Abandoned Library in Russia.




The Virtual Museum of Vintage VCRs.




Field Guide to Traffic Cones.

'Until the late 20th century, traffic cones were not thought worthy of scientific study. It is the Society's mission to counteract these centuries of neglect.'




Beatle Money: An Economic History of the Beatles.




Daisuke Inoue.

The creator of the karaoke machine. 'Inoue Daisuke taught the world to sing with the karaoke machine but never bothered to patent it, losing his chance to become one of Japan’s richest men. Is he bitter?'




ASCII Artwork.

'Not content to be limited by the text of ASCII, people since the beginning of computer communication have used the given character set of a system to express themselves artistically. Ranging from the ubiquitous smiley :) to extreme photo-realistic digitizations of portraits, this art continues to this day and shows no sign of slowing down.'




Punk Rock Photo Pool.



Querying the Hive Mind.


'What is the most beautiful place on Earth? I'd like to make plans to go there.'


'May, 1968 - Paris. I would like to learn about it.'


'I seem to have a very particular social skills deficit. Can you suggest software that might serve as a kind of brain prosthetic for me?'


'Is it the fog from getting older, or is it something else? As I've gone through the years (late 30s), I can clearly feel myself getting less brainy...'


'What are some interesting, uncommon "vocabulary" words that you use regularly or semi-regularly?'




The Corolla: University of Alabama Yearbook 1893-.




Mormon Architecture.




The International Year of the Potato.

Access Denied Map.

A map of global censorship of the Internet.


Vietnam: Blogger Dieu Cay arrested.


Wife of Chinese blogger speaks out on sentencing.