One-hour look at pitcher Ferguson Jenkins during the 1972-1973 seasons.
From an article about Ferguson Jenkins in the February 19, 2011 Vancouver Sun: “Jenkins, who was born and raised in Chatham, Ont., was in Winnipeg on Friday for the local unveiling of the new 59-cent peel-and-stick stamp issued in his honour during Black History Month.
The stamp includes a present-day image of Jenkins, the only Canadian inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, with a photograph in the background from a Sports Illustrated cover showing him in his pitching heyday.
‘This is humbling,’ Jenkins, who won 284 major league games, said.”
"The best part is when you hold them, they will start going crazy to run away when they need to crap." (Image by Jan Tik.)
Bearded Dragons – $1 (Williamsburg)
I have three bearded Dragons, all of which I am selling due to time constraints. One is a female adult German Giant, the other two are juveniles, one being a silk back bearded dragon, and lastly a hypo. I will have pictures in a day, extensive ones. They include cages, decorations, bowls, food, lights, etc. The large female has never been bred but is ready for breeding. I was planning on taking her to a reptile show to pair her up but I don’t have the time anymore. All of these are tame, easily handled, well-tempered, and eat well. The best part is when you hold them, they will start going crazy to run away when they need to crap, giving you fair warning to put them (I use sink or bathtub) somewhere to do their business. This is because anytime I am home doing random chores I have them out and usually on me. When I am on the PC or watching TV as well. Most people don’t give this kind of handling time to their dragons (not that you really need to generally) but it is a bonus.
A faithful telling of Kobo Abe’s novel about a Tokyo teacher and bug collector who is kidnapped by an entire village while vacationing in the desert, this Sisyphean drama by Hiroshi Teshigahara is the best kind of parable, one marked by nuance, ambivalence and immense strangeness.
An entomologist who is about to be squashed, Niki Jumpei (Eiji Okada) sojourns to the desert to try to locate a rare type of tiger beetle, hoping his accomplishment will get his name listed in a field guide. A world-weary soul who is worn by city life, the educator is only too happy to accept a stranger’s offer to lodge him with a local. As several villagers lower him into a sand pit with a rope ladder, Jumpei has no idea that he is descending into an arranged marriage with the woman (Kyôko Kishida) who inhabits the hut.
The woman must spend hours every day digging her house out from under sand drifts or it will collapse and a chain reaction will claim every home in the very interdependent village. She needs help with the chore since her husband recently died, so the neighbors decided to “trap” her a new husband. Soon realizing that the rope ladder will not be making a return appearance but unwilling to accept his fate, Jumpei hatches a succession of plots aimed at escaping from the pit. As each hope dries up, he increasingly unleashes his frustrations on the woman. But as the months progress, he begins to wonder whether the hopelessness of his new life is better than the frustration of his old one.
Of course, Jumpei doesn’t really have much of a choice in the matter. He will be made to sacrifice self for the greater good, to conform to the collective will to help ensure the survival of the community, to become one more fungible grain on the desert floor. He will all but disappear into the swarm. “If it wanted to,” the displaced man says with alarm, “the sand could swallow up cities…even entire countries.” It does all the time.•
Dancing: In a general way, dancing may be defined as the expression of inward feelings by means of rhythmical movement of the body, especially of the lower limbs, usually accompanied by music. It may be said to be almost as old as humanity, prevailing among savages as well as among the most highly civilized nations. It was originally a constituent of religious rites. Among the Romans, dancing at a private entertainment was restricted to professional dancers, and this is still the custom in the East. With us it is a favorite form of entertainment, especially among young people. It is doubtless liable to abuse but not more so than other forms of social intercourse.
Drowning: Life often exists after apparent death, and no efforts toward resuscitation should be neglected. Turn the body on the face, life the stomach and gently shake water from the mouth; or roll on a barrel. Lay on the back, gently draw the tongue forward. Imitate breathing by lifting the lower ribs every few seconds, while raising and lowering the arms. Repeat this for hours. Rub hands. Apply hot water bags or bricks to stomach and feet and between thighs. If symptoms of life appear lay in a warm bed with plenty of air. Give teaspoons of brandy, and allow repose.
Drunkenness: In law drunkenness cannot be pleaded to avoid a contract. Coke held that the drunkard had invited the devil which possessed him, and was responsible for its consequences. In criminal law it is no justification for battery, trespass or defamation; if burglary is charged it may be shown that the premises were entered without intent to steal.
Ducking-Stool: The name of an old English instrument of punishment, consisting of a chair suspended by a pole over a sheet of water. It was used for “common-scolds,” the virago being tied in the chair and dipped in the water.
Dwarfs: These deformed creatures were mentioned in Libya by Herodotus and were discovered by Du Chailu (1858), and Stanley (1888). They are small, wild, shy, cunning, hunted by stronger races into the deepest forests, living almost like animals, as the wreckage of a prehistoric race in arrested development, The Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert are also stunted. The dwarf races are found in the Andaman Islands, Malacca, and the Philippines, where the United States government is trying to develop them. Abnormal dwarfs among well formed nations exhibit a defect in the development of the bones, such as is found in rickets. Giants are slow and stupid, dwarfs sensitive, suspicious, jealous, shrewd and observant. A dwarf 21 inches high, 25 years of age, was presented to Henrietta of France in a pie, and this was the height of Francis Flynn at 16; the woman, Hilamy Agyba of Sinai is 15 inches high.
•Taken from the 1912 Standard Illustrated Book of Facts.
"He was as calm under questioning as he was during the twenty minutes that he was shooting men, women and children."
A furious ten hours of researching and writing about a 1949 mass murder in New Jersey won legendary New York Times reporter Meyer Berger the Pulitzer. An excerpt:
“CAMDEN, N.J., Sept.6–Howard B. Unruh, 28 years old, a mild, soft-spoken veteran of many armored artillery battles in Italy, France, Austria, Belgium and Germany, killed twelve persons with a war souvenir Luger pistol in his home block in East Camden this morning. He wounded four others.
Unruh, a slender, hollow-cheeked six-footer paradoxically devoted to scripture reading and to constant practice with firearms, had no previous history of mental illness but specialists indicated tonight that there was no doubt that he was a psychiatric case, and that he had secretly nursed a persecution complex for two years or more.
The veteran was shot in the left thigh by a local tavern keeper but he kept that fact secret, too, while policemen and Mitchell Cohen, Camden County prosecutor, questioned him at police headquarters for more than two hours immediately after tear gas bombs had forced him out of his bedroom to surrender.
Blood Betrays His Wound
The blood stain he left on the seat he occupied during the questioning betrayed his wound. When it was discovered he was taken to Cooper Hospital in Camden, a prisoner charged with murder.
He was as calm under questioning as he was during the twenty minutes that he was shooting men, women and children. Only occasionally excessive brightness of his dark eyes indicated that he was anything other than normal.
He told the prosecutor that he had been building up resentment against neighbors and neighborhood shopkeepers for a long time. ‘They have been making derogatory remarks about my character,’ he said. His resentment seemed most strongly concentrated against Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Cohen who lived next door to him. They are among the dead.”
From Inhabitat: “Samsung just unveiled an amazing new solar-powered LCD television that can operate completely free from the power grid! The 46″ prototype TV, shown at CeBit in Germany, includes solar panels that produce energy from the ambient light in a room – because it was engineered to use very little energy, no additional power sources are needed. Another major breakthrough behind the concept is that the thin screen can display images and information while allowing objects behind it to be visible – this means that it has applications ranging from car windshield HUDs to storefront displays and digital window blinds.”
San Francisco probably had the most famous Chinatown in America when the above classic photograph was taken in the 1890s, but NYC’s Chinatown was no slouch when it came to colorful street life. The following are a quartet of brief stories about the famous neighborhood from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of that era.
••••••••••
“She Missed Him in Bed” (June 1, 1890): “Julia Lee is the most famous woman in Chinatown, in New York. She is athletic and some time ago was married to a distinguished Oriental, part of whose name she bears. Lee Get is but a pygmy alongside his big German-American wife. Get has a weakness for fan tan and the money which he realizes from a small store in the basement of 11 Mott street is freely expended at his favorite game. At a late hour Friday night Lee stole from the side of his wife in bed and crossed over to 12 Mott street. There he joined one Lung and Sing Chung in a game of fan tan. When Julia missed him she started in dishabille to find her spouse. Lee was ingominiously led from the gaming table and dragged into the street. Julia hit Lee in the face and disturbed the symmetry of his nasal organ. His yells were loud enough to bring a policeman, who was a block distant, to the scene. The policeman knowing Mrs. Lee’s reputation took her into custody.”
••••••••••
“Dangerous Localities” (March 9, 1879): “Some of the localities of Chinatown are positively dangerous, even with an officer. Among these is High Binder’s lane, where murders are often committed. It is the abode of the desperate and daring, and their numbers are countless. They have trap doors for the unwary and refuges in which they hide from the officers of the law. They come upon their victims in droves, rob him, maltreat him, and sometimes scar him with knives.”
••••••••••
“Smells, Scenes and Noise” (March 9, 1879): “A Chinatown eating house consists usually of three stories. The first floor is for cooking, and the apparatus is very extensive. The second story has tables for the common folks. The third story is for grandees and distinguished people. But a Chinese cook is not restricted to the kitchen: tell him you are hungry, and he will immediately fetch his fire, his cooking utensils, his provisions, and cook under your very nose. He squats down anywhere, makes a fire in or on anything; a basin, dish, pan or pot; there is no limit to his invention. He will cook in the middle of the street, or in the centre of his guests in a restaurant.”
••••••••••
“Exciting Day in Chinatown” (July 15, 1895): “It was Brooklyn vs. New York in Chinatown yesterday afternoon, and the arrival of the police broke up a small sized riot before the question of supremacy was definitely settled. The trouble had its origin two weeks ago, when Ah Hung, 30 years old, of 20 Pell street, hired Ah Kin, 50, of 20 Pell street, but recently of Brooklyn, to work in his laundry at $10 per week. On Saturday night Ah Kin, instead of receiving $20, was only given $7 by Ah Hung for his two weeks work and an argument ensued. Ah Hung refused to give up the other $13 and inquired in choice Chinese, “What are you going to do about it?”
"Almost the size of a cat!" (Image by Donarreiskoffer.)
very rare colored squirrel taxidermy – $260 (old bridge)
this listing is for a very unique fox squirrel taxidermy mount. she was found as ROADKILL so she was not killed for fur, and instead of letting her go to waste someone preserved her beauty. she is in mint condition.
unlike gray squirrels, this is a fox squirrel and she is HUGE. almost the size of a cat!
Capital Punishment: The legal infliction of death for crime. In early ages, for want of public organization, it was conducted as a bloodfeud by the family wronged, and could be compounded, under the Saxons, by regulated payments. In later Europe, with organized states, but with lack of prisons and police and dread of violence, it was very common, being the penalty for petty thefts. It is now practically inflicted only for murder, and the sentimentality of American juries with an exaggerated exactness in rules of evidence, has made it much rarer than in England. There is a tendency in Southern Europe to change all capital punishment into life imprisonment, but much stricter and more hopeless than in the United States. Death is inflicted by hanging, electrocution, the guillotine or garrote, and no longer in public.
Chewing gum: A tough flavored gum, used for taste and nervous relief in the United States.
Child Sanitation: The larger cities of the United States are now following the German system of regular free medical and dental inspection and treatment of school children, followed, where necessary, by visits at home. Careful attention to imperfect eyes, prescription of glasses, and removal of adenoids, have great influence in the development of future citizens. Free parks and playgrounds are introduced wherever possible; the school and school-grounds employed out of hours and in vacation time, for voluntary classes; amusements and calisthenics, singing, dancing, and games are taught, and a system of school teams and friendly competition fostered. Roof-gardens, amusement piers, free-baths, and excursions are beneficial in crowded neighborhoods.
Clitoris: A small muscular organ, the most sensitive part of the genitals of the female mammal, very much subject to a diseased condition caused by malpractices.
Colic: A spasmodic and painful affection of the bowels, more especially of the colon, known to exist in several forms–the nervous, hysteric, bilious, hepatic, etc. A considerable accumulation of wind, neglected constipation and also the contrary, the action of powerful purgatives, also exposure to cold, are some of the causes of colic. The paroxysmal pain is often relieved by pressure or massage over the pained part, usually in the region of the navel. When flatulence is accountable for colic, it is often relieved by warm water injections. Narcotics and anodynes should never be used without the order of a physician as they often do more harm than good.
•Taken from the 1912 Standard Illustrated Book of Facts.
Governor Chris Christie: Outpolling Rick Santorum. (Image by Walter Burns.)
Inexplicable Republican boy wonder Chris Christie is far from the first politician to lie freely, but his Giuliani-like arrogance is fairly stunning. The governor gets a richly deserved, detailed takedown in “Christie’s Talk Is Blunt, But Not Alwats Straight,” Richard Perez-Pena’s piece in the New York Times. The article’s opening:
“New Jersey’s public-sector unions routinely pressure the State Legislature to give them what they fail to win in contract talks. Most government workers pay nothing for health insurance. Concessions by school employees would have prevented any cuts in school programs last year.
Statements like those are at the core of Gov. Chris Christie’s campaign to cut state spending by getting tougher on unions. They are not, however, accurate.
In fact, on the occasions when the Legislature granted the unions new benefits, it was for pensions, which were not subject to collective bargaining — and it has not happened in eight years. In reality, state employees have paid 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health insurance since 2007, in addition to co-payments and deductibles, and since last spring, many local government workers, including teachers, do as well. The few dozen school districts where employees agreed to concessions last year still saw layoffs and cuts in academic programs.”
"He sold trash bags door to door at age 12, and later earned $25 an hour teaching disco moves at a sorority house." (Image by James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media, Inc.)
“He grew up in a middle-class Pittsburgh suburb, where he sold trash bags door to door at age 12, and later earned $25 an hour teaching disco moves at a sorority house. During college at Indiana University, he opened a bar, and upon graduating he followed his school buddies in pursuit of ‘fun, sun, money, and women’ to Dallas, where he taught himself to write code. In 1990, Cuban sold his first real business play, a computer consulting firm, for $6 million. He also launched and sold a hedge fund and relocated to Los Angeles, where, with less success, he tried his hand at acting. (Some recent cameos on HBO’s Entourage compelled the Wall Street Journal to jeer that Mark Cuban wasn’t even believable as Mark Cuban.)
In 1995, Cuban and his friend Todd Wagner launched Broadcast.com, which put audio and video of sports online. Four years later, at the height of dot-com mania, they sold it to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock—Cuban pocketed more than $1 billion. ‘I am the luckiest motherfucker in the world,’ he says. ‘It’s like I tell people, ‘When I die, I want to come back as me.'”
From Singularity Hub: “One of the most important concerns in integrating robots into human environments is keeping people safe. Yun demonstrates (towards the end of the clip) that Mahru has great compliance control. You can shake its hand, or push on its body, and the robot will give way. This keeps the robot from hurting you even if the guy operating Mahru turns out to be a psychopath.”
"There was no evidence of any coffin." (Image by Sklmsta.)
You apparently couldn’t walk down the street back in the day without finding a human skeleton. Reports of a few such occasions from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle follow.
••••••••••
“Unearthed a Skeleton” (January 16, 1897): “A skeleton was unearthed by John Fentuny at Bowery Bay beach late yesterday afternoon. Fentuny was at work in a bank near the mill pond when his pick struck a hard substance. He thought it was stone and kept at work until the different parts of what proved to be a skeleton were revealed. The pick scattered the bones, but the head remained intact. Thomas Blackwell who lives on the beach gathered the bones into a box and brought them to the station house. Coroner Haslam had the skeleton transferred to the Newtown morgue and he says that the body must have been in the ground for many years. There was no evidence of any coffin. An old resident says that a farmhand who had the reputation of being a miser mysteriously disappeared from the neighborhood twenty years ago, and he thinks the skeleton might possibly be that of the miser.”
••••••••••
“Boys Find a Man’s Skeleton” (November 29, 1896): “The skeleton of a man was found yesterday by Jersey City police on the meadows west of Hackensack river, and north of the Newark branch of the Erie railroad, near Snake Hill. It is supposed that the man had been murdered. The skull lay about five feet from the body.
Three boys who were hunting on the meadows discovered the skeleton on Friday afternoon. They said afterward that they were frightened and did not examine it closely at the time. They continued their hunting expedition and made no report until they returned to Jersey City.”
••••••••••
"Following the rope was a perfect skeleton of a horse found, the noose of the rope still encircling the neck bones."
“Died of Thirst in the Desert” (May 1, 1890): “San Diego, Cal.–George Millard, arrived at Campo from Indian Wells and reports finding three skeletons on the desert. In one place he saw skeletons of two men lying a few yards apart. They evidently had been companions. Lying on the sand nearby was a third skeleton, betraying in its unnatural position terrible agony of death from heat and thirst. A few steps away was a picket pin driven into the ground with a lariat attached to it. Following the rope was a perfect skeleton of a horse found, the noose of the rope still encircling the neck bones.”
••••••••••
“Skeleton of Child Found in Tenement Wood Shed” (August 13, 1900): “The discovery of a skeleton in the wood shed of the cellar of the tenement house at 333 Furman street, on Saturday evening at 6:30 o’clock, by three boys caused a report in that section that a baby farm had been unearthed. The neighbors shook their heads over the uncanny find and stories began to circulate freely to the effect that the skeleton might be only one of a number of similar cases.”
••••••••••
“Newbury’s Ghastly Find” (November 24, 1902): “Rockaway Park, L.I.–Louis Newbury, an attaché of St. Malachi’s Home, while passing through a clump of woods near Eighteenth street, yesterday afternoon found the skeleton of a man. The bones were those of a man judged to have been 5 feet 10 inches tall. A fedora hat, a gold watch, a revolver and 25 cent piece were found near the bones, but there was nothing else by which indentification can be established. The revovler was fully loaded with the exception of one empty chamber and a smooth hole in the skull indicated that the mising bullet had been used to end the life of the stranger.”
"I'm always amazed at how people come up with things. Like Jean-Michel." (Image by Michael Halsband.)
From Rene Ricard’s 1981 Artforum article, “The Radiant Child,” which was the first major piece to look at the work of emerging NYC artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring:
“Graffiti refutes the idea of anonymous art where we know everything about a work except who made it: who made it is the whole Tag. Blade, Lady Pink, Pray, Sex, Taki, Cliff 159, Futura 2000, Dondi, Zephyr, Izzy, Haze, Daze, Fred, Kool, Stan 153, SAMO, Crash. (Crash is still bombing.) But trains get buffed (the damnatio memoriae of the Transit Authority), and with the need for identity comes the artist’s need for identification with the work, and to support oneself by the work is the absolute distinction between the amateur and the pro. Therefore, the obvious was to raise oneself by the supreme effort of will from the block, from the subway, to the Mudd, to the relative safety and hygiene of the gallery. Because an artist is somebody. Say what you will about group shows and collaborative enterprise: Das Kapital was written by one man. This is no graffito, this is no train, this is a Jean-Michel Basquiat. This is a Keith Haring.
Both these artists are a success in the street where the most critical evaluation of a graffito takes place. Jean-Michel is proud of his largeSAMO Tagin a schoolyard, surrounded by other Tags on top of Tags, yet not marked over. This demonstrates respect for the artist as not just a graffitist but as an individual, the worth of whose Tag is recognized. There’s prestige in not being bombed over. There are also fake SAMOS and Harings as well as a counter-Haring graffitist who goes around erasing him. The ubiquity of Jean-Michel’s SAMO and Haring’s baby Tags has the same effect as advertising; so famous now is that baby button that Haring was mugged by four 13-year-olds for the buttons he was carrying (as well as for his Sony Walkman.) The Radiant Child on the button is Haring’s Tag. It is a slick Madison Avenue colophon. It looks as if it’s always been there. The greatest thing is to come up with something so good it seems as if it’s always been there, like a proverb. Opposite the factory-fresh Keith Haring is Jean-Michel’s abandoned cityscape. His prototype, the spontaneous collage of peeling posters, has been there for everyone’s ripping off. His earlier paintings were the logical extension of what you could do with a city wall. (For the moment he’s stopped the collage.) His is a literal case of bringing something in off the street but with the element of chance removed. I’m always amazed at how people come up with things. Like Jean-Michel. How did he come up with the words he puts all over everything, his way of making a point without overstating the case, using one or two words he reveals a political acuity, gets the viewer going in the direction he wants, the illusion of the bombed-over wall. One or two words containing a full body. One or two words on a Jean-Michel contain the entire history of graffiti. What he incorporates into his pictures, whether found or made, is specific and selective. He has a perfect idea of what he’s getting across, using everything that collates to his vision.”
"Google is staking its claim in a near-future world where nearly every computing device will have its own eyes and ears." (Image by Coolcaesar.)
By focusing research and development on speech recognition, machine translation and computer vision, Google is looking to be the brand leader in the next epoch of search engines, in which there will be a supercomputer in your pocket capable of conducting searches that are light years smarter than the current ones. An excerpt from “Inside Google’s Age of Augmented Reality,” Wade Roush’s article in Xconomy:
“Here’s how [Eric] Schmidt put it in his speech: ‘When I walk down the streets of Berlin, I love history, [and] what I want is, I want the computer, my smartphone, to be doing searches constantly. ‘Did you know this occurred here, this occurred there?’ Because it knows who I am, it knows what I care about, and it knows roughly where I am.’ And, as Schmidt might have added, the smartphone will know what he’s seeing. ‘So this notion of autonomous search, the ability to tell me things that I didn’t know but I probably am very interested in, is the next great stage, in my view, of search.’
This type of always-on, always-there search is, by definition, mobile. Indeed, Schmidt says Google search traffic from mobile devices grew by 50 percent in the first half of 2010, faster than every other kind of search. And by sometime between 2013 and 2015, analysts agree, the number of people accessing the Web from their phones and tablet devices will surpass the number using desktop and laptop PCs.
By pursuing a data-driven, cloud-based, ‘mobile first’ strategy, therefore, Google is staking its claim in a near-future world where nearly every computing device will have its own eyes and ears, and where the boundaries of the searchable will be much broader. ‘Google works on the visual information in the world, the spoken and textual and document information in the world,’ says Michael Cohen, Google’s speech technology leader. So in the long run, he says, technologies like speech recognition, machine translation, and computer vision ‘help flesh out the whole long-term vision of organizing literally all the world’s information and making it accessible. We never want you to be in a situation where you wish you could get at some of this information, but you can’t.'” (Thanks Longform.)
"I can get rid of zits, dark circles, fat, fat arms, weird hair, etc."
I will retouch your photos for… (NYC)
I am a skilled photographer and photo-retoucher with years of experience in the field. I can do any kind of retouching, including headshots/ fashion pics, wedding, dating site photos, (i can get rid of zits, dark circles, fat, fat arms, weird hair, etc..), restoring old photos, as well as crazy photoshoping like putting heads on bodies and putting you indifferent locations, ever wonder what you would look like with a celeb body or if you had wings. I prefer not to do dirty stuff but will if the price is right and as long as its for fun and not malicious use.
Trade for tall kinds of things, What do you have to offer? Serious replies only. Will also take $.
An extreme psychological study of the way confinement and mental torture degrades both the jailed and the jailer, the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment was a disturbing look at the outer edges of human nature. (Thanks Reddit.)
A description from theBelieverof the experiment, which was conducted by a Stanford psychologist: “Dr. Zimbardo wanted to study the effects of a prison environment on human behavior. He gathered a group of college students, randomly divided them into ‘prisoners’ and ‘guards,’ and placed them in a simulated prison at Stanford University. What followed is discussed at some length below; for now, it’s enough to say that the behavior was so unexpectedly brutal and dehumanizing that the experiment—designed to last two weeks—had to be cut short after only six days.”
