Map of Online Communities.




Map of the Internet.




Interesting Puzzle.




Cordyceps.

Fungi which are parasitic upon insects.

'Some Cordyceps species are able to affect the behavior of their insect host; Cordyceps unilateralis causes ants to climb a plant and attach there before they die. This ensures the parasite's enviroment is of the optimal temperature and humidity, and maximal distribution of the spores from the fruiting body that sprouts out of the dead insect is achieved.'




Chinese Cultural Revolution Posters.

'These decades encompass an era of great internal change, during which China was almost closed to the outside world. In the 1960s, Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution questioned and rejected much of China’s own cultural past as well as influences from abroad. The posters depict not only the impact and ideals of the Cultural Revolution, but also a society’s developing confidence in the role technology could play in modernisation.'




The Pookie Story.

Some cute furry primates.




Ladybird Eats Aphid.




The Summer of '41.

People enjoying summer, long ago. 'A colorized version of Russell Lee's "Summer of '41," posted here in 2007. '




Suffragette Banners.

'I think we've all had enough stripper memoirs and ironic domestic goddess stuff now, thanks, so please can everyone go and have a look at the Women's Library's splendid collection of rousing suffragette banners, for a reminder that our grandmothers were made of sterner stuff. '




Old Dinosaur Books.

'I know it doesn't seem to bear the slightest relationship to the rest of this page. But I love old dinosaur books. It's just a hobby of mine. Whenever I see any old, scientifically out of date books about dinosaurs, I grab 'em. The more inaccurate the better! I know dinosaurs were actually real animals but I love it when dinosaurs are depicted as outlandish, horrible monsters. I've developed quite a little collection. Since there is absolutely nothing on the web as far as I've been able to see about this, it is my duty to supply it! '




Family Life to be Altered Greatly by 21st Century (1968).

From 1968. 'By the year 2000 Americans may travel by ballistic missile, swallow a pill for a meal and wear tights and helmets like people in science fiction comic strips. Or they may not. There's no way of telling, and perhaps it doesn't make much difference.'




Detroit's Abandoned Belle Isle Zoo.




Abandoned Properties in Detroit.

'These scenes are from the city’s north end, in a neighborhood known as State Fair, so called because one end of it borders the Michigan State Fairgrounds. It’s one of the neighborhoods that’s been hardest hit by crime, population loss, and decay in a city known for all three. Some blocks have been cleared entirely of housing over the years, one house at a time, until nature runs rampant, untrammeled by human endeavor, leaving nothing but telephone poles that still carry electricity past open fields with no machines to power, no homes to light.'



Astro Pics.


The Big Corona.


Spiral Galaxy with a Central Eye.


Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300.




Catacombs of Newark, NJ.




Chicago Roadside Art.




West Norwood Cemetery Catacombs, in London.




The Simpsons Opening Sequence.



Sir Humphry Davy

Was not fond of gravy.

He lived in the odium

Of having discovered sodium.

The clerihew : http://www.metafilter.com/83549/Clerihews



Querying the Hive Mind.


'Recommend me some sci-fi with female lead characters!'


'What are the qualities of the most charismatic or magnetic person you know?'


'What are some underrated but mind altering books?'


'How can I alleviate my depression?'




Caricatures of Famous Communists.



Querying the Hive Mind.


'What are some underrated but mind altering books?'


'What adult life skills have you learned that were well worth the time spent learning?'




Nuclear Slide Rules.




Tales from Chaucer (1833).

'This is a modern retelling of the highlights of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.'




Ancient Mexican Designs.




Buddha Eyes, Nepal.

Alchemy.

'Alchemy is a complex subject with many different interconnected aspects. Many people still only think of the quest of the philosophers' stone to change base metals into gold. On this web site you will be able to explore the riches of alchemical texts, some of which are wonderful works of allegorical literature, delve into its amazing, beautiful and enigmatic symbolism, and ponder its underlying hermetic philosophy, which holds a picture of the interconnection of the Macrocosm and Microcosm.'

Virtual museum of alchemical imagery: http://www.alchemywebsite.com/virtual_museum/floorplan.html

Practical alchemy: http://www.alchemywebsite.com/physical.html




Meteor Strike on Jupiter.




'1000 Frames of Hitchcock.

"1000 Frames of Hitchcock" is an attempt to reduce each of the 52 available major Hitchcock films down to just 1000 frames. The aim of the project is to create a library of images which can be used to illustrate blog posts, web articles and reviews, etc. '




Aircraft Nose Art Gallery.

'nose art is a decorative painting or design on the fuselage of a military aircraft, usually located near the nose, and is a form of aircraft graffiti'



Astro Pics.


Prometheus Creating Saturn Ring Streamers.


Flowing Barchan Sand Dunes on Mars.


Jupiter's Three Red Spots.


Planets, Great Wall, and Solar Eclipse.


The Chameleon's Dark Nebulae.




PlayPumps.

Children pump clean water by playing on a merry-go-round.




Cultural Entomology.

Insects in human culture - as food, in art, as pets, around the world.




Asian Odyssey.

Bhutan: http://www.pbase.com/asianodyssey/bhutan




Classic Illustrated Zoologies 1550-1900.

'Illustrated books from the 16th century to the early 20th depicting the fish, birds, and animals of the world.'




The Lithuanian Press Ban 1864-1904.

'From 1864 to 1904, the Russian Empire tried to quelch the nationalism of Lithuanians by ordering all Lithuanian texts to be printed with Cyrillic characters instead of in the Latin-derived Lithuanian or Polish alphabets. But they didn't count on the Knygnešiai - the Booksmugglers...'




Old School Etiquette.




Rhotic and Non-Rhotic Accents.




It's Me Snitches.




The Present Sound of London.




Red Primer for Children and Diplomats.

'Published in 1967 in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution'.

Satire by a Hungarian dissident cartoonist.




Names of the Planets in Different Cultures.

Planets (and days of the week) in European languages are named after (Greek, Roman, or Germanic) gods and goddesses. In East Asian languages, after the traditional elements of Chinese alchemy.




The Buddhist Flag.




Someone's Photos of Nepal.




Ghost Signs.

Art Scene China: Contemporary Chinese Art.




The Birth of Ginger.




All (Known) Bodies in the Solar System Larger than 200 Miles in Diameter.




Germinal Tenas: French Pop Music.

'Badly translated from the sleevenotes to "Wizzz! Volume 2":
Germinal Floreal Tenas, initiator of the 'Reverendus Chorus' project, is in retrospect one of the major record producers of the French 60's counter-culture. A disciple of mockery and the DIY sound, his productions during the Sixties thumbed their nose to the masquerade of yéyé.'




Monkey!




Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

'This is a fascimile reproduction, along with transcribed text, of William Blake's masterpiece of bookmaking, Songs of Innocence and of Experience. These poems are one of the treasures of world literature, simple enough to resonate with children, but with enough exoteric and esoteric meaning to keep a gnostic sage pondering for several lifetimes. Blake's vision of a universe alive on all scales of being is luminously represented in the hand-colored illustrations, which contain clues to the overtones of the text. The poems are also firmly rooted in the misery of 18th century London, and many of them are embued with a politically radical (but still bardic) outlook on the squalid everyday life which surrounded Blake. This is a text which needs to be experienced with both sides of the brain.'




Museum of Calculators: Rockwell (USA).




1983: The Brink of Apocalypse.

'1983: The Brink of Apocalypse -- In 1983 the NATO war exercise Able Archer almost started a nuclear war. Unknown to NATO, just a few months earlier a false alarm had already put the Soviet leadership on edge, and the exercise triggered preparations for a counter attack in the Soviet military. Only a few double agents on each side may have saved the world from nuclear armageddon. '




Bon, Tibet's Oldest Religion.

'Often described as the shamanistic and animistic tradition of the Himalayas prior to Buddhism's rise to prominence in the 7th century, more recent research and disclosures have demonstrated that both the religion and the Bönpo are significantly more rich and textured culturally than was initially thought by pioneering Western scholars.'




The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs 1860-1960.




Classic Las Vegas Signs.




'The Wind in the Willows' Illustrations.

''The Wind in the Willows' by Kenneth Grahame was first published in 1908 but the masterful, scratchy drawings by EH Shepard, - illustrator of 'Winnie the Pooh' - that are most closely associated with the text, were not produced until 1931.'




We Met the Space People.

'This is a UFO contactee account by two sisters from the Midwest US in the late 1950s. The Mitchell sisters, Helen and Betty, are approached by space aliens, who can pass for human beings, in (of all places) a coffee shop in St. Louis, Missouri. On a second encounter (again in the coffee shop) they are given a schematic for a communicator, which they build, and through it they receive messages from the Space People from Mars and Venus. Unlike the more aggressive aliens of later decades, they wait until the third date to take Helen on a ride to the mothership. There she learns that the aliens have one-piece uniforms that 'feel like satin,' speak a Universal Language, and play a game like shuffleboard when off-duty. '




French Flying Machines.

[Collecting cards with pictures of events in ballooning history from 1795 to 1846]




Norman Rockwell's Illustrations to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.




Sex Quotes.

"Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand."



Astro Pics.


Dark River to Antares.


Auroral Corona over Norway.


Sarychev Peak Volcano in Stereo.

Why Chicks Cry.




In the Land of Invented Languages.




The Size of the Universe.




Griots.

About griots, a musician (or bard or minstrel, or praise singer) caste of West Africa.

The Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour is partly of griot ancestry and the recent film 'Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love' - which is about what makes him tick deal with this :
http://www.ibringwhatilove.com/

Griots on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQMFN-whbEU




The Graphing Calculator Story.

'Pacific Tech's Graphing Calculator has a long history. I began the work in 1985 while in school. That became Milo, and later became part of FrameMaker. Over the last twenty years, many people have contributed to it. Graphing Calculator 1.0, which Apple bundled with the original PowerPC computers, originated under unique circumstances.'

'I used to be a contractor for Apple, working on a secret project. Unfortunately, the computer we were building never saw the light of day. The project was so plagued by politics and ego that when the engineers requested technical oversight, our manager hired a psychologist instead. In August 1993, the project was canceled. A year of my work evaporated, my contract ended, and I was unemployed.'

'I was frustrated by all the wasted effort, so I decided to uncancel my small part of the project. I had been paid to do a job, and I wanted to finish it. My electronic badge still opened Apple's doors, so I just kept showing up.'




The Hands Resist Him, or The Haunted Ebay Painting.




Codex Fejervary Mayer.

'The Codex Fejérváry-Mayer depicts specific aspects of the tonalpohualli the 260-day Mesoamerican augural cycle. The painted manuscript divides the world into five parts. T-shaped trees delineate compass points: east at the top, west on the bottom, north on the left, and south on the right. The four directions are distributed around a sacred center, shown here as Xiuhtecuhlti, the god of fire.'




Museum of Firecracker Label Art.




My Life as a Drunk.

'On 200 mg a day of baclofen, in an important meeting with several associate deans of my college and three new department chairs (I was made chair of my philosophy department just a few weeks before I tried to commit suicide), I fell asleep with my head on the conference room table and, for 40 minutes, everyone was too embarrassed to wake me. Somnolence is the most obvious and inconvenient side effect of baclofen. I reduced my dosage to 100 mg a day, and started taking it only at bedtime. A few days later, a colleague asked if I had changed my medicine. ‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘Why do you ask?’ She is German, an analytic philosopher, and therefore very direct: ‘You are drooling less than you were.'




Medea.

'Euripides likes to give a twist to an old myth. Jason was a real man, a great hero, who had led the Greeks' greatest overseas adventure (this was long before the Trojan War). He'd married a beautiful and clever princess. But they dont "live happily ever after". Euripides imagines the couple years later, when Jason is beginning to show symptoms of the male menopause. '

The Classics Pages : http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/whoisloxias.htm




Monsterama: Cute Creeps from Pop Culture.




Evian Roller Babies.




Unmistaken Child.




The Bank That Time Forgot.

'The SkyBank building in downtown Youngstown, one of the oldest buildings in the city, was constructed in 1909 and has barely been touched since. I recently had the opportunity to work at this bank, and explore the vast secrets its labyrinthine layout holds. After many adventures, I escaped with my life, and hereby present my findings.'




North Korea's Beer Ad.




Flags of Forgotten Countries.




Herland (1909).

'Gilamn's feminist novel, Herland was one of a flood of utopian books at the turn of the 20th century where sex roles are inverted. Gilman imagined a society where women not only rule, but are the only gender. Reproducing by parthenogenesis, they worship a female deity. This particular book later became a must-read for the second-wave feminists, particularly the 'separatist' wing. '




Phallic Worship (1875).




Manga-style Illustrations by Shohei Otomo.

'Ballpoint pen artist Shohei Otomo mashes up old and new in bold illustrations spiked with heavy doses of manga-style gore and perversion.'




Buddhist Holidays.



Astro Pics.


NGC 4676: When Mice Collide.


Inside the Eagle Nebula.


The North America Nebula.


The Trifid Nebula in Stars and Dust.



Querying the Hive Mind.


'What have you learned through your career, major, or specialization that you wish the general public knew?'

E.g. - 'As a world business traveller, I wish Americans and Brits would learn the concepts of "indoor voices" and "shouting doesn't get your point across, it just makes people hate you".'


'Ridiculous and rad combinations of 2 or 3 flavors. The weirder the better.'


'I crave a great novel that's as addictive as a popcorn movie. Please recommend me some literary page-turners.'


On being sober.


How cheque-cashing scams on Craigslist work.




Someone's Photos of China.




Washington Heights, NYC.