The Tree of Life.

'Each page contains information about a particular group of organisms (e.g., echinoderms, tyrannosaurs, phlox flowers, cephalopods, club fungi, or the salamanderfish of Western Australia). ToL pages are linked one to another hierarchically, in the form of the evolutionary tree of life. Starting with the root of all Life on Earth and moving out along diverging branches to individual species, the structure of the ToL project thus illustrates the genetic connections between all living things. '




The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is among the few masterpieces that has been translated into most languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, and Urdu.'




Abandoned London - Christmas Morning.




Medieval Manuscripts in the Dutch National Library.




Japanese Matchbox Labels.




The Bubble Blower Museum.

'Bubble blowers are among the oldest and most popular of children's toys. Even when families had no money for toys, they could find a wire to twist into a circle and some soap for blowing bubbles.'




Artists' Books Online.

Books which take the form of works of art and are both text and art.

Some good ones :

'How to Humiliate Your Peeping Tom' : http://www.artistsbooksonline.org/works/hhpt/imageindex/1.1.1.0.xml

'Life in a Book' : http://www.artistsbooksonline.org/works/inbk/imageindex/1.1.1.0.xml

'Black Dog White Bark' : http://www.artistsbooksonline.org/works/bdwb/imageindex/1.1.1.0.xml





The Metcalf Collection of Images of Stained Glass.

'With the advent of World War II, these fearless individuals traveled throughout Europe to photograph stained glass before it was either secured for safe keeping or else destroyed in the war. Kodak developed a special color slide film for them and they devised their own unique classification system to document these works. The glass in these images covers Austria, England, France, Germany, Switzerland. The coverage of these areas is not comprehensive. By far the largest area to be photographed was France and only one building for example was documented in Austria and indeed only one image as well. Within each building they photographed what was there often against tremendous odds with enemy forces arriving as they were still documenting. Every effort was made to satisfactorily cover all of the glass from the twelfth century to the twentieth century, but it is clear that there are omissions. The collection lay for many years in the Dayton Art Institute from where it was transferred to Princeton’s Index of Christian Art in 2004.'




Zooborns.

'ZooBorns brings you the newest and cutest exotic animal babies from zoos and aquariums around the world.'

Baby aardvark : http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/2008/12/naked-into-the-world-amani-the-baby-aardvark.html

Panda : http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/2008/10/giant-panda-cub.html

Otters : http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/2008/12/otter-you-glad-for-the-holidays.html




Vintage Oceania.




Vintage Hawaiiana.




Lighthouses of the Great Lakes.

A virtual gazetteer.




What On Earth Are We Doing?

What on Earth are we doing?, D.H.Keen and G.E.Simmons, illustrated by Pat Oakley, Ladybird Books, Loughborough 1976.




Covered Bridges of Madison County, Iowa.



Astro Pics.


Earthrise.


Jets on the Sun.


Galaxies in the River.

Easy Puzzle.

Alice, Michiko, and Chelsea went bird watching. Each of them saw one bird that none of the others did. Each pair saw one bird that the third did not. And one bird was seen by all three. Of the birds Alice saw, two were yellow. Of the birds Michiko saw, three were yellow. Of the birds Chelsea saw, four were yellow. How many yellow birds were seen in all?




Famous People and Their Cats.




Someone's Bicycle Commute in Pictures.




Academic Houseguest.

'In December, John Hawthorne, a philosopher from England, visited us in NYC for a little while...'




Mr. T and Nancy Reagan.




Vintage Corgi Toys/Dinky Toys.

'Welcome to the collection of old Corgi Toys and Dinky Toys catalogues. They are presented here for your enjoyment; please let me add, I do not deal with the toys themselves nor do I know anything about today's value of those beauties.'




Spidercamp: Stories.

She's a very good writer. Check out this ghost story : http://www.spidercamp.com/2003/01/how_did_i_get_h.html

Also makes nice handmade stuff you can buy : http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=11492




Geisha with Photo Albums.

'Japanese Geisha Girls looking at various photograph albums, 1890 to 1915. From original photos in the Okinawa Soba Collection.'




Tango with Cows: Book Art of the Russian Avant-Garde 1910-1917.




Portraits of Artists.

'Stored alongside original letters, diaries, and sketchbooks in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art are thousands of photographs of artists and art world figures. This set includes nineteenth and early twentieth-century images that provide a glimpse into the private lives of the artists–their studios, their homes, their families. '




Josephine Baker Photoset.




The Inca (Quechua/Aymara) Flag.




The Flag of Equal Marriage.

'This is a protest flag for equal marriage rights in the United States. The flag only has two stars, for Connecticut and Massachusetts (the 5th and 6th states in the union), the only states with legalized same-sex marriage.'




Typos in the US Constitution.




nBot, a 2 Wheel Balancing Robot.




News in the 1910s.

'Welcome to the daily news scene from almost a hundred years ago, as photographed by the Bain News Service in about 1910-1912. We invite your tags and comments! Also, lots more identification information. (Most of these old photos came to the Library of Congress with very little description.'

'This selected set of 1,500+ photographs is from a large collection of almost 40,000 glass negatives. The entire collection spans 1900-1920 and richly documents sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, and political activities, with a special emphasis on life in New York City.'




Tucson Monsoon Lightning.




The Smoky God.

'This is another classic fictional hollow earth adventure. The narrator, Olaf Jansen, is a Norwegian who sails with his father deep into the northern ice. There they sail over the lip of the hollow earth, and into the inner world, lit by a dim central sun (the 'smoky god' of the title). The inhabitants are an advanced race of giants who have electricity, monorails, and extremely long lifespans. '



Astro Pics.


Mountain Top Meteors.


Smile in the Sky.


Happy Sky over Los Angeles.

Letters to Obama from Navajo Children.




The Presidents.



Easy Puzzle.

In the southern hemisphere, if you drop a steel ball weighing ten grams from a height of 2 metres, will it fall more rapidly through water at 20 degrees Fahrenheit or water at 20 degrees Celsius? Or will it make no difference?




Chandra X-Ray Observatory Photos.
'The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. '




1930s-1940s in Colour.

'These vivid color photos from the Great Depression and World War II capture an era generally seen only in black-and-white. Photographers working for the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later the Office of War Information (OWI) created the images between 1939 and 1944.'




Swimsuit Girls of Old Japan.

'A pretty girl in a bathing suit is something most people don't mind looking at. For those that like pictures of old Japan, but want a short break from looking at Geisha dressed in Kimono, these are for you ! '




Photos of Geisha and Maiko without Kimono.




British Seaside Novelties and Jokes.




West Virginia Hot Dog Map.




One Minute Languages.

'Welcome to One Minute Languages where you can learn the basics of a language in a matter of minutes. Perhaps you have friends who speak another language, or maybe you're going to be travelling to a country where the language is spoken. The most important thing to remember is that even a few phrases of a language can help you make friends and get much more out of your travel experience.'




19th Century Egyptian Lantern Slides.

'In 1849, the Philadelphia daguerreotypists William and Frederick Langenheim introduced the lantern slide: a transparent image on glass that could be projected, in magnified form, onto a surface using a "magic lantern," or sciopticon. This new technology expanded the uses of photography, allowing photographic images to be viewed by a large audience. With lantern slides, Museum curators and educators could illustrate their lectures, letting audience members see detailed studies of objects and sites from around the world. '




French Revolutionary Pamphlets.




The Illustrated Ages of the World.

'Francisco de Holanda (Hollanda) (1517-1585) was a painter, historian, architect and humanist philosopher from Portugal.'

'He apprenticed under his father as a manuscript miniaturist at the royal court in Lisbon and was sent to Rome by King João III in 1538. For the next nine years, Holanda studied among the notables of the Italian Renaissance, including Parmiagianino, Giambologna and, most significantly, Michelangelo.'




Dental History Collection.

'This is a collection of sets of images related to different aspects of dentistry and dental history.'




The World Carrot Museum.




Sheffield Flood, March 1864.




The 19th Century American Trade Card.

'Baker Library holds more than 8,000 trade cards representing the full range of products and businesses advertised through this medium from the 1870s through the 1890s. As one of the most popular forms of advertising in the nineteenth century, and an indicator of consumer habits, social values, and marketing techniques, trade cards are of interest to scholars across many disciplines, including business history, American studies, graphic design and printing history, and social and cultural history.'

Easy Puzzle.

What's the next number in the series?

2/3 7/12 1/2 5/12 1/3 1/4 1/6 ?




Dow 25,000!

Lest we forget, a warning from recent history against hubris.




Post Secret.

'PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people
mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.'




Pictures of Walls.

Walls with stuff written on them.




We Feel Fine.

'An exploration of human emotion, in six movements'.




Dopplr.

'Dopplr lets you share your future travel plans privately with friends and colleagues. The service then highlights coincidence, for example, telling you that three people you know will be in Paris when you will be there too. '



Querying the Hive Mind.


'What are some good looking world coins, the size of a US Nickel or smaller? It's for my pants.'


'Please lend a hand in helping me find a gracious way to tell my family members that I am donating to the local foodbank in their names in lieu of physical gifts this year. This will be a written note enclosed in a card, and I just can't seem to find the right words.'


'How can a somewhat solitary guy meet a need for hugs and human contact? '


'My close friend is converting to Islam. Do you think he's doing the right thing?'


'BellyFilter: Trying to find the name of a photography exhibit that featured women's bellies.'


'What might |000> + |111> mean, on a garden gate?'


'Addressing a girl as 'fair'. Flirting or just a figure of speech?'


'Gift ideas for a Mexican beauty queen'.




English Buildings.

'In this blog I share my encounters with many of my favourite English buildings, including some that are little known and that get short shrift in the architectural history books. Look here for accounts of breweries, prefabs, power stations, corrugated-iron barns and the occasional parish church as I share my meetings with England's remarkable buildings... '




Human Expressions.

'This selection of photographs is drawn from the books Mecanisme de la Physionomie Humaine, Duchenne de la Boulogne, Paris 1862; and The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin, London 1872 '.




Marvel Superheroes Card Game 1978.

'From the 1978 Marvel Superheroes Card Game, by Milton Bradley. '




Comic Japanese Prints of Raccoon Dogs.

'This series of comic prints alludes to the supposed ability of raccoon dogs to voluntarily enlarge their scrotums. It is listed as 209 in Kuniyoshi by Basil William Robinson (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1961). '




Sumo Wrestler Prints.




Black Africa in 3D.

'The old photos of Africa in this set have been sitting in a box for many years. There are actually MORE, but these were the most interesting to me. The last time I dug them out was in 1988 --- 20 years ago....for a roving 3-D Display of Old Africa held in Okinawa, Japan. It is estimated that over 10,000 Okinawan school kids saw these (and views of many other countries and continents) in large banks of "Roto Viewers" that allowed then to jump right into the photos in real 3-D. '




North American Indian Photography of Edward Curtis.

'Edward S. Curtis, a professional photographer in Seattle, devoted his life to documenting what he perceived to be a vanishing race. His monumental workThe North American Indian was published between 1907 and 1930 and contained over 2000 photogravures in its volumes and portfolios. It presented an extensive ethnographical study of numerous tribes, and the photographs of Curtis remain memorable icons of the American Indian. Although the Smithsonian Libraries owns a complete set of Curtis’ publication, only a small portion of the photogravures has been digitized.'




The Spirit Photographs of William Hope.

'These photographs of 'spirits' are taken from an album of photographs unearthed in a Lancashire second-hand and antiquarian bookshop by one of the Museum's curators. They were taken by a controversial medium called William Hope (1863-1933).'




Christmas in New South Wales.

'The photographic collections of the State Library of NSW contain many images of events, both joyful and solemn. Look back at Christmas in Australia in the first half of the twentieth century.'




Bondi Jitterbug.

Old photos of Bondi beach.




Syrian Lingerie.

'Just off the crowded central market in Old Damascus, a sales assistant called Mahmoud is giving me my first introduction into an unusual Syrian speciality - musical knickers. '




Art Deco California.




Old Photos of French Chateaux.




By Bicycle, France, 1895-1900.




Amsterdam Olympic Games, 1928.




Time Cube.

LIFE Photo Archive.

'Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.'




New species found using Google Earth.




Awesome Cassette Tapes from Africa.




The Ruins of Detroit Industry: Five Former Factories.

'With the President mulling the use of TARP funds to help Detroit automakers weather the Carpocalypse, we thought it appropriate to show you these five Detroit industrial relics that didn't quite make it.'




Portraits of Indian Royalty.




The Guqin.

'Pronounced "chin" ("stringed instrument") or "goo chin" ("old stringed instrument"), the qin / guqin throughout its long history has been the musical instrument most prized by China's literati. They categorized it as one of their "four arts", collected it as an art object, praised its beautiful music, and built around it a complex ideology (compare its image in popular culture). No other instrument was described and illustrated in such detail, so often depicted in paintings, or so regularly mentioned in poetry. And its tablature documents the world's oldest detailed written instrumental music tradition, allowing both historically informed performance (requiring silk strings) of the many early melodies, and practical exploration of the relationship between Chinese music theory and music practice. '




What Is a Spaniard?

On Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and the history of forced conversions in Iberia.

"The conversions came at the end of one of the most successful Jewish periods in human history... Their success led them to call their land Sepharad, a name from the book of Obadiah that implied that Spanish Jews were the successors to the Jews of Israel. This world ended in 1391."




Day of the Dead - Papercuts.

"In Mexico, papel picado (perforated paper), refers to the traditional art of decorative cut paper banners. Papel picado are usually cut with sharp fierritos (small chisels) from as many as fifty layers of colored tissue paper at a time. Designs may incorporate lattice-work, images of human and animal figures, flowers, and lettering. Many papel picado are made especially for the Mexican festival of the Days of the Dead and include skeletal figures engaged in the everyday activities of the living."




An Imperial Palimpsest on Poland's Electoral Map.

'Mr Hecht did some overlay work, and came up with this remarkable fit: “The divide between the (more free-market) PO and the (more populist) PiS almost exactly follows the old border between Imperial Germany and Imperial Russia, as it ran through Poland! How about that for a long-lasting cultural heritage?!?” How about: amazing, bordering on the unbelievable?'




Forgotten Boston.

'... a compendium of the unusual, mundane, and ancient things usually overlooked as you walk the streets of Boston. '




Automatic Washing Machine Collections.




Modern American Poetry: The Great Depression.

'... For eight years dust blew on the southern plains. It came in a yellowish-brown haze from the South and in rolling walls of black from the North. The simplest acts of life — breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk — were no longer simple. Children wore dust masks to and from school, women hung wet sheets over windows in a futile attempt to stop the dirt, farmers watched helplessly as their crops blew away. '



Historical Footage of Tibetan Lamas Teaching Buddhism.




Western Silent Film Lobby Cards Collection.

'The Western Silent Films Lobby Cards Collection consists of 106 printed items used to promote silent and western films; most of the materials in the collection date between 1910 and 1930. These lobby cards and publicity fliers include both photographic and artistic renderings of scenes and characters from the films being publicized, and often prominently display the names of actors and film studios. Lobby cards were introduced in the 1910s to complement movie posters and were designed for display in the lobbies or foyers of movie theaters. These eponymous artifacts were intended to lure pedestrians into the theater by advertising dramatic, key scenes from the movie or highlighting popular actors. '




Poisonous and Hallucinogenic Mushrooms.



Astro Pics.


La Superba.


A True Image from False Kiva.


Moon Rays over Byurakan Observatory.

Let the Right One In.

'Based on the novel of the same name, which in turn borrows its title from a breezy (for him) Morrissey song, Let the Right One In manages to weave a classically formal coming of age story into the iciest, yet most heartfelt, vampire film in some time.'




Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Cora and Herbert Farrier.




Vintage Christmas.




Snow Crystals.




RIP Betty Page.




Necessary Angels.

'They are not doctors. They are not nurses. They are illiterate women from India's Untouchable castes. Yet as trained village health workers, they are delivering babies, curing disease, and saving lives—including their own.'




Snow in New Orleans.

The Atlas of True Names.

The real place names of Britain. Hillfort (London), Bear Guard Home (Birmingham), Green Hollow (Glasgow), Blackpool (Dublin).




Sikkim and Sikkimese People.

More on the landlocked Indian state of Sikkim : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikkim




Found in Mom's Basement: Vintage Advertising.

Advertising from the 1960s and 1970s, and some old motel signs too.




Abandoned Long Island Rail Road Stations.




The Alleys of Canarsie.

'Canarsie, a neighborhood in southeast Brooklyn at the end of the BMT L line, for many decades of its history had been derided as a backwater, a place somehow left behind on the evolutionary scale that other New York City neighborhoods were measured by. Just take a look at how the neighborhood has been described in the WPA Guide to New York City, published in 1939...'




Japanese Science Fiction Landscapes.

'In the early 1970s, artist Kazuaki Saito’s fantastic alien landscape illustrations graced the covers of SF Magazine, Japan’s first successful and longest running science fiction periodical. '




The Legend of the Female Stranger.

'... All agreed, and each took the secret to the grave. To this day, we don’t know the identity of the man or the woman. The mystery is one of Alexandria’s most talked about, and the legend of the Female Stranger continues to this day.'




Comparative Breast Anatomy.

' 'On the Anatomy of the Breast' 1840, by Sir Astley Paston Cooper, is hosted by Jefferson Digital Commons from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. The 2-volume book can be downloaded either as two large pdf files or each section/illustration plate can be downloaded separately. All the plates (extracted from the pdfs) - which includes a few more than those seen above - have been uploaded to this flickr set.'




Les Carnets de Benjamin Lemoine.

'Benjamin Lemoine has posted his seasonal sketchbooks since 2001 online. The interface is fine, it's easy just to flick through. I do like his eye, although there is a fair bit of dross between the islands of delight (for me...today, anyway).'




Abandoned Mansion.

'The Redman-Hirahira House in Watsonville was built by local architect, William Weeks in 1897 for James Redman, a sugar-beets farmer. '

'In the 1930's, a Japanese-American family, the Hirahira's, bought the house and the farmland surrounding it. During WWII, the Hirahira family vacated the house and lands when they were forcibly re-located to Manzanar detention camp. '
'As many as 10 percent of the population of Watsonville were bused to various internement camps during WWII...'



Querying the Hive Mind.


'Share your clever ideas on how to make a stranger's day'.


'How do I eat out less frequently, when I'm already extremely pressed for time?'


'How do I become a good CEO?'


'What is the best dessert you have ever created? This applies to cakes, pies, cookies, et cetera.'


'When do you stop to help a homeless or disabled person on the street?'




Pearl Harbor in Retrospect - July 1948.




Blackboards.

'This exhibition marks the centenary of the Special Theory of Relativity by inviting a number of well-known people in Britain today to chalk on blackboards the same size as Einstein’s. All these guest blackboards have been prepared in the early months of 2005. The result is an exhibition about science, art, celebrity and nostalgia. The blackboard is fast disappearing from meetings, classes and lectures: ‘bye-bye blackboard’. '




Random Numbers Using Atmospheric Noise.



Astro Pics.


Lunar Diamond.


NGC 253 Close Up.


The Pleiades Star Cluster.

The Digital Snow Museum.




Ice: A Victorian Romance.

'In 1818, the British began an infatuation with the Arctic. It started innocently enough, with the Admiralty trying to find an outlet for naval officers and seamen who had been idled by the end of the Napoleonic wars...'




The Isle of Sodor, between England and the Isle of Man.




Decorated Trains in Japan.

'Of the countless trains running on Japan’s 20,000-kilometer (12,000-mile) rail network, a few are decorated with images of anime and manga characters, colorful ads, and designs by notable artists. Here is a small sample.'




The Real Horror is What Happens Inside.




Why Ninjas Would Beat Pirates.




The Alleys of Staten Island.

'It might be argued, mostly by people who've never been there, that Staten Island has mostly alleys and nothing else. In fact, most of Staten Island by now has been thoroughly suburbanized and landscaped, with regular, rigid street patterns imposed, especially in the southern sections of the island.'




Original 'Winnie the Pooh' Drawings.




How to Eat Stuff.

'How to eat spaghetti. Fufu. Pho. Injera. An artichoke. Chicken feet. A pomegranate. Indian food. Natto. If you're going to do it, do it right. '

Pho: http://factorytown.blogspot.com/2005/11/how-to-eat-pho.html




Apartment Therapy's House Tours.

From the mission statement :

'A calm, healthy, beautiful home is a necessary foundation for happiness and success in the world.'

'Simplicity and luxury are not mutually exclusive.'




Stalin's Siberian Zion.

'Since the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD and their subsequent banishment from Palestine, the Jews had been without a national home until the founding of Israel in 1948. Right? Wrong.'

'The Soviets beat the Zionists by a few decades, and organised a Jewish Autonomous Region, improbably located on the Russian-Chinese border beyond Mongolia. Even more improbably, that region’s ‘Jewish’ status has survived stalinism, wars, deprivation and the fall of communism. But few Jews still reside in what was once billed as a future judeo-socialist utopia. Birobidzhan’s history remains, as one of the more bizarre footnotes in the struggle for a Jewish homeland.'




Family Tree of Indo-European Languages.



Querying the Hive Mind.


'My dad died. He went to the other side for 11 minutes and then lingered in Hades' antechamber for three full days. Mark Roth, or a scientist like him, saved my father's life. '


'Can you suggest some replacements for standard, everyday household items that are far superior in terms of usefulness, luxuriousness and quality?'


'I know that we all die and that there’s absolutely no way around that. I know and accept that one day I will die as well, and I’m not afraid of dying, per se. What I am afraid of—terrified of really—is no longer existing, no longer being conscious of everything that’s happening in this great wide world, no longer being sentient, I guess. What can I do?'


'I'm having an "off day" for no particular reason. Feeling grouchy & peevish. This is dumb. Please help me fix it.'


'I need intelligent hiphop/rap with good beats. Any recommendations?'


'What are some good intellectual magazines?'




Sand Mandala Construction Gallery.

'The monks begin the Mandala sand painting with a ceremony of chants, music and mantra recitation for blessing the site to make it conducive for creating the mandala.'




Cool Robot for Polar Duty.

'Enter the Cool Robot. This big blue box is a solar-powered, self-propelled machine designed to act as observation posts on the polar landscape. '




Robert Shields, World's Longest Diary.

'For no less than four hours each day, Reverend Robert Shields of Dayton, Washington holes himself up in the small office off the back porch of his family's home, turns on his stereo, and types. He is surrounded by a half-dozen IBM Wheelwriters, in case one of them breaks down from over-use. '




Birdsongs.




Rainwater Harvesting in Quito.

'Of all the phenomenal spaces concocted by Paisajes Emergentes for their entry in the Parque del Lago ideas competition, our favorite one has to be the open-air theater that doubles as a rainwater storage tank.'




A Toxic Tour Through Maryland's Industial Poultry Landscape.

'Using a recent article in the New York Times on Maryland's poultry industry, an itinerary could be cobbled up together that might begin at a “farm with 150,000 chickens.” There, peripatetic toxic tourists will marvel and then scale “mountains of manure” before undertaking a typical British ramble through the drainage basin of the Chesapeake Bay, scoping the terrain for lesser contour lines, for swales, for ditches where rivulets and streams spiked with phosphorous and nitrogen might be flowing en route to the estuary and its oxygen-depleted algae gardens — reading the landscape with the hermeneutic attention of a Talmudic scholar, as it were.'




The Ypsilanti, Michigan Water Tower.

The world's most phallic building?

Tom Scarlett's Travel Photos.




Snowflake.




Oldest Ever LOLCat.

'This captioned cat picture postcard was found by Tracy Angulo in a Seattle antique store. Tracy tells us that the photograph is from 1905, which would make this officially the oldest cat picture with a caption, AKA lolcat, that we’ve seen.'




Sita Sings the Blues.

'Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920's jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as "The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told." '

Stills: http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/stills.html




Missing Identity.

'This website is trying to help more than 70 child survivors of Holocaust find information about their past. Please look at the photos and read the profiles of each child. Perhaps you have a missing piece of information for these child survivors. Perhaps you have a suggestion for additional research. Click on the pictures or names for the individual profile pages. '

The Search for Lena.

' "Over the years I would go into these engineering and research labs and see these images of this woman all over the place," Seideman recalls. "I would ask who she was and they would say, 'She's Lena.' And I would say, 'Who's Lena?' And they'd say, 'I don't know. Just Lena.'" '

' "Just Lena," Seideman soon found out, was Lena Sjööblom, Playboy's Miss November 1972. In the early Seventies, an unknown researcher at the University of Southern California working on compression technologies scanned in the image of Lena's centerfold. Since that time, images of the Playmate have been used as the industry standard for testing ways in which pictures can be manipulated and transmitted electronically. Over the past 25 years, no image has been more important in the history of imaging and electronic communications, and today the mysterious Lena is considered the First Lady of the Internet.'




Greenwood's Map of London 1827.

'If you need to know London better,
you may well find this fascinating.'




Macy's NYC Thanksgiving Parade Historical Photos.




Abandoned Mining Town in Japan.

'Situated a good 3 hour drive from western Tokyo, Saitama Prefecture’s Nitchitsu mining town housed around 3,000 people at its peak in 1965, but now, any life is long gone, and the mountain’s iron and zinc remains unmoved.'




Abandoned Church in South Carolina.

'Organized in 1868, two AME bishops have come from this congregation. Columbus White, an African-American contractor, built this Romanesque Revival church around 1910. The stain glass windows were imported.'




Abandoned Buildings in Toronto.




Abandoned Orphanage, Buffalo, NY.



Querying the Hive Mind.


'Objects keep disappearing in my apartment. Please help me figure out why, and what to do. '


'How do you know if you're doing the right thing?'


'What is the physical resource inside your brain that gets used up when you focus and concentrate for long hours? How do you beef up the ability to sustain concentrated thought, aside from diet/exercise/sleep?'




Yukio Mishima 1925-1970.

' "There's something very shabby about a noble grave... Political power and the power of wealth result in splendid graves. Really impressive graves, you know. Such creatures never had any imagination while they lived, and quite naturally their graves don't leave any room for imagination either. But noble people live only on the imaginations of themselves and others, and so they leave graves like this one which inevitably stir one's imagination. And this I find even more wretched. Such people, you see, are obliged even after they are dead to continue begging people to use their power of imagination." - Yukio Mishima via Kashiwagi in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.'




Old Sydney Town.

Idyllic images of early 19th century Sydney, just as European settlement was beginning.




Chaffinch Map of Scotland.

'Chaffinch Map of Scotland is a poem written in 1965 by Edwin Morgan (b. 1920), Poet Laureate of Glasgow (1999) and (since 2004) Scottish National Poet (1). The work looks deceptively simple, while in fact it is a cleverly multilayered combination of poetry, cartography, ornithology, linguistics, and maybe just a hint of Scottish nationalism (2).'




The Early Years of Dungeons and Dragons.




Dust Jackets from European and American Books 1926-47.