Querying the Hive Mind.
'I am a Sarajevan who lived during the siege with no heat, electricity, water, phone (etc) for the most of a three-year period. What's on the list above is what I was almost always missing. We got "dry" food packages from various sources. These tended to be Truman eggs (good for a little protein, but thats about it), macaroni, rice, powder potatoes, Vietnam-era "biscuits" - supposedly with vitamins, but these were from the late 1960s and of dubious nutritional value.'

Child Slaves in Ghana.

'Over one thousand children are living as slaves on the banks of Ghana's Volta Lake, being used as free labour by local fishermen. '

'The victims, mostly boys aged between 5 and 14, are forced to work from dawn to dusk casting and drawing nets. They live separately in cramped thatched roofed huts, are poorly fed, suffer physical abuse and never get paid. Their diet consists mainly of cassava (manioc) with watery soup. They are never given fish. Because of their poor diet, harsh living and working conditions, many suffer from water-borne illnesses and experience stunted growth...'

Child fishing slave - http://www.flickr.com/photos/freetheslaves/28782358/




British Piers.

'There are currently 55 pleasure piers in existence around the UK coastline. Following are images of these piers.'




Lakehurst Mall of Waukegan, Illinois 1971-2004.

'Opened in 1971, Lakehurst was a sprawling, mixed-use complex which housed a 1.1 million square-foot enclosed shopping mall and numerous freestanding commercial, office, recreational, and residential structures. Lakehurst remained in operation for 30 years, until competition from nearby mega-mall Gurnee Mills and the departure of many of its anchor retailers led to the mall’s demise and eventual closure in 2001. The shuttered Lakehurst Mall spent three years in decaying limbo and was completely demolished in 2004.'




Walk Sydney Streets.

'Alan, 93, walks every street in 261 of the suburbs of Sydney, Australia - 910 unusual photos'.




Catron County Walk.

Chronicling walking the 400 miles of paved road in Catron County, New Mexico.




Geiko of Kyoto.

'A glimpse into the "Flower and Willow World" ：The Geisha (and maiko) of Kyoto.'



Astro Pics.

The Magnificent Tail of Comet McNaught.

A Tale of Comet Holmes.

Alborz Mountains in Moonlight.

Eclipsing the Rings.




Summer of Love Photo Gallery.

'Historically the Sixties was one of the most colorful periods in American history. Photographers had a field day. This initial version of the Summer of Love Photographer's Gallery presents the work of several photographers who were either at the original Summer of Love Celebration in 1967 or who photographed the life and times of the amazing Sixties...'




PostMark Press: Vintage Magazine Images.




A Josephine Baker Photo Gallery.

Josephine Baker biography - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Baker 'Josephine Baker (or Joséphine Baker in francophone countries) (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French expatriate entertainer and singer. She became a French citizen in 1937. Baker was most noted as a singer, while in her early career she was a celebrated dancer. She was given the nicknames the "Black Venus" or the "Black Pearl", as well as the "Créole Goddess" in anglophone nations, while in France she has always been known in the old theatrical tradition as "La Baker"...'




The Trotsky Archive.

'Lev Davidovich Bronstein. Leader, with V.I. Lenin, of the Russian Revolution. Architect of the Red Army. Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs 1917-1918 and Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs 1918-1924. In 1929, expelled from the Communist Party by the Stalinist faction of the Party and then deported from the USSR. In 1938 he helped found the Fourth International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution. In 1940, murdered by a Stalinist assassin at his home in exile, in Mexico...'

Photo album - http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/photo/index.htm




Weekly Puzzle.

A young woman in Manhattan has two boyfriends - one in the Bronx and one in Brooklyn - both of whom she likes equally well.
To visit the boyfriend in the Bronx she takes the subway from the uptown side of the platform; to visit the boyfriend in Brooklyn she takes the subway from the downtown side of the same platform.
As she likes them both equally well, she simply takes the first train that comes along. Brooklyn and Bronx trains run equally often from this platform - every ten minutes - and are equally reliable. Yet for some reason she finds herself visiting the boyfriend in Brooklyn nine times out of ten. Why?




Quackwatch.

'Your Guide to Quackery, Health Fraud, and Intelligent Decisions'




Essex Church Photographs.




Paradise: The Gardens of Tokyo.





The Abundant Land: Inuit Sculpture.




Vintage Kitchen.

Photo-set.

Netsilik Eskimo Series.

Photographs depicting Eskimo life in the 1960s. 'These films reveal the live reality of traditional Eskimo life before the European acculturation. The Netsilik Eskimos of the Pelly Bay region in the Canadian Arctic had long lived apart from other people and had depended entirely on the land and their own ingenuity to sustain life through the rigors of the Arctic year...'




Small-Town America 1850-1920.

'12,000 photographs of the Mid-Atlantic states New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut from the 1850s to the 1910s, from the Robert N. Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views at the New York Public Library. The views show buildings and street scenes in cities, towns, and villages as well as natural landscapes. They also depict agriculture, industry, transportation, homes, businesses, local celebrations, natural disasters, people, and costumes.'




Ethnic Minorities of Vietnam.




Cuban Self-Taught Art.

'The collection gives particular emphasis to the work of artists from the southern Cuban city of Cienfuegos, including Fito (Adolfo Flores Gonzalez), Arnaldo Garcia Rodriguez, José Garcia Montebravo, Jorge Sanfiel and Wayacon (Julian Espinosa). We went to Cienfuegos in search of painter José Garcia Montebravo, whose haunting, spiritual work we exhibited at Indigo Arts the last two years. His work is permeated with images of infantas, orishas and the mysteries of santeria. We were fortunate to meet not only Montebravo but a group of other self-taught artists. Painter Fito was showing his comical paintings on the theme of “erotismo”at a cooperative gallery...'




Dutch Advertising Graphics.

150 years of advertising in the Netherlands.




The Dream: Photographs of Bulgarian Gypsies.

'Beyond Predel Street in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, the road turns from Communist-laid pavement to a magma of mud, animal waste and run-off sludge. Children half-clothed, run with lame dogs, chickens, and over-worked horses through the streets, amidst tangled piles of rusting iron collected from the city's refuse. Very few Bulgarians, including the police, venture behond this unmarked boundry ... Far from the image of wandering, mystical fortune-tellers of the West's collective stereotype, Gypsies are becoming the scapegoats for escalating social and economic problems such as unemployment and climbing crime rates. In this region, beseiged for centuries by ethnic hatred and conflicts, minorities are an easy targets for attacks.'




The Kalender of the Shepherdes.

'The 'Kalender of the Shepherdes' is a late medieval almanac first published in the 1490s in Paris by Guy Marchant and Antoine Vérard. It incorporates writing and illustrations that traverse a number of themes including astrological, feasting and Saints day calendars, farming advice, folk medicine and (most significantly) religious instruction...'




Vintage Air Stewardess Uniforms.




The Goat's Dance: Photographs by Graciela Iturbide.

'This exhibition loosely surveys more than 30 years of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide's international career by highlighting major series produced in Mexico and the United States. '




Andre Kertesz.

'In a 70-year career, which spanned much of the 20th century, André Kertész (1894–1985) made some of the most deceptively simple yet compelling and poetic photographs that have ever been created. This retrospective of approximately 113 photographs, including some of the most celebrated works in 20th-century photography—such as Chez Mondrian and The Satiric Dancer, both from 1926—will feature images from all periods of Kertész's exceptionally diverse oeuvre, from his early photographs of his native Budapest made in the 1910s and early 1920s, to his studies of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, and the final series of photographs he took of New York in the 1970s and 1980s, shortly before his death.'



Astro Pics.

Saturn's Ancient Rings.

Earthrise from Moon-Orbiting Kaguya.

Star Trails at Dawn.



Weekly Puzzle.

1/ Make 24 out of 1, 5, 5, and 5.

2/ Make 24 out of 3, 3, 8 and 8.




1000 Places to See Before You Die.

Photographs.




Happy Faces.

Photographs.




Basic Instructions: Your All-Inclusive Guide to a Life Well-Lived.

Nice comic strip on 'How to Give Someone a Gift', 'How to Accept Gratitude', 'How to Destroy Society', 'How to Share a Profound Insight', 'How to Talk to a Sick Person', and other useful topics.




Medical History of British India.




Polar Bears.

Astro Pics.

Spiral Galaxy IC342.

Arp 87: 'A Stunning Pair of Interacting Galaxies'.

Io and Europa Meet.

Vela Supernova Remnant.




Burma Uprising.



Northern Ireland Political Murals.



Roadside Alaska.



Vintage Cookbooks.



Cuba's History through Postal Stamps.




The Cubist Paintings of Diego Rivera.
'Diego María Rivera (1886-1957) is one of the most prominent Mexican artists of the twentieth century. He gained international acclaim as a leader of the Mexican mural movement that sought to bring art to the masses through large-scale works on public walls. In his murals of the 1920s and 1930s Rivera developed a new, modern imagery to express Mexican national identity, which featured stylized representations of the working classes and indigenous cultures and espoused revolutionary ideals...'



'How I Walked Every Block in Manhattan in 10 Weeks.'

'Realizing that I was overweight, and needed to get in shape after a year on the road travelling in foreign countries eating wonderful food and not exercising at all, I decided that this year in my annual November-December getting in shape period, that I would walk every block of every street in Manhattan again as quickly as possible...'



Bob Dylan Ticket Stubs and Concert Posters.

Massive.



The Voice of Hibakusha.

Atom bomb survivors.

'These "Voice of Hibakusha" eyewitness accounts of the bombing of Hiroshima are from the program HIROSHIMA WITNESS produced by the Hiroshima Peace Cultural Center and NHK, the public broadcasting company of Japan. '



Honkawa Elementary School Peace Museum.

'The Honkawa Elementary School Peace Museum (Honkawa Shogakkou Heiwa Shiryokan) is a museum of the Peace in Honkawacho, Naka-ku, Hiroshima, Japan. The school was the closest school to ground zero. They lost about 400 students and more than 10 teachers, and the building took great amounts of damage from the atomic bomb dropped on August 6, 1945...'



Miss America.

'Tracking the country's oldest beauty contest -- from its inception in 1921 as a local seaside pageant to its heyday as one of the country's most popular events -- Miss America paints a vivid picture of an institution that has come to reveal much about a changing nation. The pageant is about commercialism and sexual politics, about big business and small towns. But beyond the symbolism lies a human story -- at once moving, inspiring, infuriating, funny and poignant. Using intimate interviews with former contestants, behind-the-scenes footage, and photographs, the film reveals how the pageant became a battleground and a barometer for the changing position of women in society.'



List of Unusual Deaths.



Celestial Atlas by Alexander Jamieson.

(1822) 'A celestial atlas : comprising a systematic display of the heavens in a series of thirty maps : illustrated by scientific description of their contents and accompanied by catalogues of the stars and astronomical exercises / by Alexander Jamieson. '



Laxton Open Field Survey Map.

'A plat and description of the whole mannor & Lordship of Laxton with Laxton Moorehouse in ye county of Nottingham and also of the mannor & Lordship of Kneesall lying adiacent to ye aforesaid mannor of Laxton', by Mark Pierce, 1635.'



Christmas Texts.



Weekly Puzzle.

'You have three boxes of fruit. One contains just apples, one contains just oranges, and one contains a mixture of both. Each box is labeled -- one says "apples," one says "oranges," and one says "apples and oranges." However, it is known that none of the boxes are labeled correctly. How can you label the boxes correctly if you are only allowed to take and look at just one piece of fruit from just one of the boxes?'

Today I walked the length of Manhattan - about 13-14 miles!
Read about it at www.sgnywalk.blogspot.com

Chertez Sadiqov is sheep farmer in Azerbaijan.


Farugot Holmuradova sells clothes in a bazaar in Tajikistan.


Dominic Lushinde runs a beef butchery in Tanzania.


Mabinty Koroma is married to a subsistence farmer in Sierra Leone.

Entrepreneurs in the developing world often lack a credit record or the collateral required for a loan.
Kiva: Loans That Change Lives - http://www.kiva.org/ is a website which connects people willing to lend small sums of money to entrepreneurs in developing countries who would otherwise find it difficult to raise the funds.




The Human Marvels: Vindicating Those Once Labelled as Freaks.

A gallery of eccentrics through history.




Picturing Women.

'From an exhibition held last year at Bryn Mawr College, the Picturing Women website was established to display sketches, cartoons, photographs and rare book illustrations of women through history. '




Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

'In the late 19th century, the Impressionists defied academic tradition in French art with their emphasis on modern subjects, sketchlike technique, and practice of painting in the open air with pure, high-keyed color...'




Illuminated Manuscripts of the Himalayas.




Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio.

'Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, a short novel collection of ancient Chinese including 431 short ones, depicted series of stories of spirit figures such as beautiful and kind-hearted ghosts who change into human shape and marry the poor young scholor to repay his former favor and greedy toists who do every evil things they can to gain their purpose or other spirits based on forklores and legendary stories...'




Weird Tales: The Unique Magazine.

'In 1923, J.C. Henneberger began Weird Tales--The Unique Magazine. Throughout its 30-year history, the obscure pulp published some of the most outré fiction ever issued. The stories were odd, macabre, and completely unique. Weird Tales existed in a void, and the stories published therein reached pinnacles of strangeness never equalled. '




Graffiti.

With a nice little gallery of graffiti from around the world.




In Pictures: Maasai Initiation Ceremony.

'Tanzania's Maasai males become men through the elaborate ritual of the Eunoto ceremony, held just once every 15 years...'



Astro Pics.


Gibbous Europa (Moon of Jupiter).


Mars in View.


Aristarchus Plateau (on the Moon).




Weekly Puzzle.

1/ Make 4 out of 2,5,6 and 8.

2/ Make 40 out of 4,6,8 and 8.




The Lost Border: Photographs of the Iron Curtain.




Night Work.

'This set is simply a collection of all my night shots, gathered together here for those who might only want to see my nocturnal photographic efforts.'




The Adivasis.

'The Adivasis (literally meaning original dwellers) are the indigenous people of India who maintained the early lifestyles of mankind till the 19th century. They are also referred to as "Vanavasis" (meaning forest dwellers), "Girijans" (meaning people of the mountain), and "Mulavasis"...'




India and the African Connection.




American Experience: The Presidents.




Streamliners: America's Lost Trains.

'On the morning of May 26, 1934, a shimmering silver locomotive pulled out of Denver's Union Station bound for Chicago. The Zephyr was unlike any train seen before. Known as a streamliner for its long, sleek look and powered by a revolutionary compact diesel engine, it would cover 1,015 miles in a record 15 hours. By the 1940s, fleets of streamliners crisscrossed the country, making the U.S. passenger rail system the envy of the world...'




Non-Geographic Mapping.

Maps based on the travel time between cities, rather than distance between cities. Nice little Flash animation that lets you choose one of several cities as a hub.




Glaswegian Photo Archive.

'This is the online edition of the Glaswegians Photo Archive. You will find a selection of images from 30,000 photographs taken between 1989 and 1992.'

Definition of 'Glaswegian' in Scots - http://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaswegian 'Glaswegian is a term for sambodie or samthin that hails frae Glesgae...'



Eye Candy.


Varroa Destructor - Parasite on Bumblebee.


Trithemus Kirbyi (Dragonfly).


Kali on the Battlefield.


A Jersey City Family, 1895.