Persistence

The video shows three African hunters using the persistence method of hunting. It is thought to be one of the oldest forms of hunting. They locate a herd of Kudus, which are a type of antelopes, and then cut the one they think will be the slowest from the herd.

Once that's done a single hunter chases after the animal until he exhausts it. In the case of this hunt it took him 8 hours to run the animal down.

An interesting detail of the film is that all three are wearing manufactured shorts, socks and shoes, plus they seem to be carrying modern steel knives. I wonder what the economy of the area is that mixes stone-age hunting with trade modern enough to get industrially produced goods?

The web of human affairs is frequently baffling.  

The film is from a BBC YouTube channel where you can find a lot of other interesting clips. 
 

Flood waters

A nicely filmed video of people going about their business in a flooded city in Thailand. It is amazing how beautiful the world can be, even in the most unlikely of circumstances.
 

Cigarette cards

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Cigarette cards were once common inserts that came with packages of cigarettes. As explained at the introduction page of the CigaretteCards website:

In America during the 1880's cards known as 'stiffeners' were inserted into paper packets of cigarettes to reinforce the packaging and so to protect the contents, someone (believed to be an American journalist) had the idea of advertising by printing a picture and descriptive details on them. An early set of cards issued by Taddy & Co. titled Clowns and Circus Artistes is one of the most expensive sets, valued at £650.........per card!! Now you know why the Clown, which is one of the cards in this rare set of 20 is at the top of this page. Although cards packed for the British market were marketed by 1885, it took some 2 years later for a British manufacturer to issue a card.

W.D.& H.O.Wills were the pioneers in advertising and promoting their product and towards the end of the 1880's issued small tickets with wording on (which I hope to include soon), followed by illustrations of some packings and miniature copies of famous showcards. Their debut is believed to be around 1887.

The cigarette card samples illustrating this post are from an extraordinary collection maintained at cigardpix's photostream. It contains several thousand examples of the card sets, broken down by categories. One of my favorite categories was 'Boy Scouts and Girl Guides'. Can you imagine what a ruckus cards like that in cigarette packages would cause today?

Cigarettepix has kindly given me permission to post some of the cards. Faced with such a wealth of choices, I limited myself to cards from the 'Around the World' category. There are more after the jump, and literally thousands more at cigardpix's photostream.

I do hope to revisit the stream in the future with more posts. They're nice graphics, and the range of topics they cover is surprising. By the way, should you decide to take up cigarette card collecting, the hobby is called cartophily and the CigaretteCards website has more information about it.

The painted village

In the 1940s a village was built in Taichung, Taiwan to house soldiers and their dependents. Over the years it began to fall into decay until Mr. Huang Yung-fu, an older gentleman in his 80s, began to paint its walls and pavements. As you can see in the pictures, he got quite carried away with his painting, but in the process he revitalized the neighborhood by turning it into a popular tourist destination.

You can see more pictures at Amusing Planet, or at Steve Barringer's (the photographer who took these pictures) flicker stream.

Another cartoon controversy

Still from Sita Sings the Blues

Several months ago I linked to a video clip from the movie Sita Sings the Blues. It featured an animated heroine singing the Annette Hanshaw song Who's that Knocking at My Door while a battle raged around her. A Blue Hero leading an army of monkeys eventually rescued her.

The film was the work of Nina Paley.  The film is the mixture of events from the Indian epic the Ramayana and events from her breakup with her husband. The film featured Sita singing with her songs being old Annette Hanshaw recordings. 

Paley had copyright problems with the film. The songs themselves were in the Public domain, but apparently some of the recordings were still encumbered with a copyright. Paley has since negotiated a fee for the songs use and released the movie under a sketchy sounding Creative Commons license, claiming her release is for promotional purposes only.

The film has recently garnered more controversy when, at a showing at the San Jose Museum of Art, it was protested by Hindu religious groups (some other works at the show were also targets of the protest).  To them Ramayana is a sacred text which describes the ideal father, wife, king and so forth and they believe Paley's version was a denigration of the themes and lessons of the epic. You can read about the protest at the Sepia Mutiny post The Fierceness of Janaki.

In this day and age, what immediately jumps out from the story is how civilized the protest is. Unlike the Mohammed cartoon controversy, there are no rioting mobs, embassies getting attacked, blood curdling threats and the other foaming at the mouth common to the Arab Street and their imams.
 

Astronauts in every day settings

Astronaut Snacks

Hunter Freeman is a photographer who has done interesting work. One of the series he's done is astronauts posed in everyday settings. I've included 4 examples (2 more are after the jump), but you should really view the entire series at the Hunter Freeman website.

(via Toxel)

Hollywood hipsters, then & now

Above is film from a Malibu beach party in 1965. At the party were Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Paul Newman, Lee Remick and  Ben Gazzara among others. What jumps out is the number of kids and cigarettes. Also, were those hot dogs they were eating? 

Beautiful people, but a touch of Americana non-the-less. Contrast that with the pictures below from a modern Hollywood hipster party discussed in Wayne Elise's post How to survive a Hollywood hipster party.

Granted, the likes of Douglas, Bacall and Newman are hard act to follow, but the effort put forth by modern hipsters seems a little feeble. Aside from a doofus fashion sense, the contemporary hipsters are kind of scrawny looking. Hmmm... maybe they should eat some hotdogs? And, do my eyes deceive me, or is the guy in the bow tie wearing capri pants?

I would pretty much dread an invitation to the modern party. If you're a hipster aren't people supposed to think your cool instead of snickering at you behind your back? Ah well, maybe I'm just turning into a cranky old geezer.

$100 bill details

Click on any image to enlarge it

 The site I got these images from, НОВОСТИ В ФОТОГРАФИЯХ, is in a language I can't even identify much less read, so I have no idea what the post's commentary about them was. They are a series of closeup details of an American $100 bill and appear to be focusing on the engraving details that make them difficult to counterfeit. 

The details are striking. You can see more after the jump.

Vintage VD posters

Not that I'm trying to tell you guys and gals anything, but here are some vintage public health posters about the dangers of venereal disease. They fall into some broad categories: the dangers of VD, the shame of VD, and that loose women are nothing but disease bags. 

I imagine their warning messages were easily overpowered by a few beers and a come-hither look while on liberty, but the people who put these campaigns together tried their best and some of the designs are quite striking

There are more after the jump, and even more at The Doctor is Out blog post 50 Vintage STD Propaganda Posters where I found these samples.   

Paper clip weapons

Somebody called Brett made a number of little weapons made out of paper clips. A friend of his going by the screen name of Dan4th took pictures of them and posted them to his Flikr photostream. 

I couldn't find any more information about Brett, so I've come to imagine he is a lonely bureaucrat in a cubicle somewhere fiddling with paper clips to pass the time. I just hope my TPS report isn't gathering dust in his inbox as he perfects his craft.

There are more after the jump, including a couple of pictures of a paper clip rod & reel. 

Chinese time travel commercial

Ever since the Chinese authorities banned movies and TV shows about time travel I -- crack internet journalist that I am -- have been covering news about the Chinese time travel craze. First there was their scientists claiming they had proved time travel was impossible, and then the item about the young girl who hung around the Shanghai train station and rather unconvincingly claimed she had time traveled to the present from 500 years in the past. 

This latest installment in this series of  is a viral Chinese 7 Up ad about a young man who makes a wish to time travel. He gets it granted only to discover it is not as glamorous as he had imagined. His attempts to fix the mess he's found himself in are pretty funny.

By the way, the Ugly Wife appears in her own ad, which starts with the scene of her walking by the guys at the fountain after she had time traveled to the present. 
 

Style, race and riots

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The Zoot Suit race riots of the 1940s took their name from a style. Young Mexican Americans, who called themselves pachucos, favored the baggy suit coats and trousers, long key chains and thick soled shoes that identified them as Zoot Suiters.

In the early war years there was a lot of racial paranoia in California, as well as fears of a Mexican crime wave being stoked by local newspapers. The L.A. County Sheriff's Office convened a grand jury about the crime wave and their expert E. Duran Ayres reported: 

"Mexican Americans are essentially Indians and therefore Orientals or Asians. Throughout history, he declared, the Orientals have shown less regard for human life than have the Europeans. Further, Mexican Americans had inherited their 'naturally violent' tendencies from the 'bloodthirsty Aztecs' of Mexico who were said to have practiced human sacrifice centuries ago. At one point in his report Ayres even compared the Anglo to a domesticated house cat and the Mexican to a 'wild cat,' suggesting that the Mexican would forever retain his wild and violent tendencies no matter how much education or training he might receive. [source]"

Adding to the tensions was a high profile trial of a group of pachucos accused of beating another man to death. The fuse was lit on June 3, 1943 when a group of sailors on shore leave reported they had been assaulted by by a group of  pachucos.

This touched off a 'dungaree liberty', an old naval tradition in which sailors go ashore and bust up an offending liberty port while officers look the other way. Groups of sailors and marines went to East L.A. and beat up any Zoot Suiters they found and stripped them of their clothes. This went on for several days and flared up briefly in other cities. It only ended when Los Angeles was made off-limits for shore leave. 

Shopping with violence

While the Zoot Suit Riots were clearly race riots, the recent riots in England have been something else entirely. Instead, they've been described as 'shopping with violence' by some English pundits.

David Starkey, a British historian, created a bit of an uproar on the BBC when he said that at the rioters were actually a mixture of Jamaican youth and Chavs (the British equivalent of white trash) who had adopted the style of American Black Gangsta culture. 

Naturally, the left-leaning panel on the BBC went berserk over this suggestion, accusing him of racism. This accusation made in spite if the fact that the BBC has been going out of its way to find pictures and stories of white looters -- which I would think rather eloquently makes Starkey's point that it is a youth subculture and not a race that is rioting.

But I digress, back to Zoot Suits and style...

As the Guardian reports in UK riots: Love affair with gangster-chic turns sour for top fashion brands (HT: Gates if Vienna) the riots are causing problems for some in the fashion industry:

Branding experts are warning that the riots are a wake-up call for the fashion brands that JD Sports stocks. They have cultivated a "gangster chic" image and found themselves targeted by looters across the country. Mark Borkowski, a PR and branding expert, said that image was now coming back to haunt them.

"The riots are an absolute disaster for a number of brands. From the day the Daily Mail and the Guardian used that picture of the hoodie equipped completely in Adidas it has become a massive crisis.

"It has been a wake-up call for many brands which have spent millions developing 'gangster chic' and 'dangerwear' images." A rioter dressed head-to-toe in Adidas was pictured on the front pages of most of the country's national newspapers on Tuesday. One of the youngest offenders appeared at court this week in a full Adidas tracksuit. The brand, which is one of the major sponsors of the 2012 Olympics, took the step of condemning its customers for taking part in the riots. "Adidas condemns any antisocial or illegal activity," the company said. "Our brand has a proud sporting heritage and such behaviour goes against everything we stand for."

From what I've read the British, who were already disgusted by the youth culture, are absolutely furious in the aftermath of the riots. They've already began evicting those arrested and their families from public housing, and a bill is working its way through Parliament to also remove them from the welfare rolls.

Needless to say, the major clothing brands that opted to promote themselves with rappers and gansta-chic are terrified that they're going to be caught up in the backlash. Levi's already pulled one of their  'Go Forth' ads that featured a scene of a young man facing off against a group of riot police. Other brands are no doubt scrambling to minimize the damage their branding may cause them.

Screen grab of a youth facing police from the withdrawn Levi's "Go Forth"  ad.

EFLI - News and Logos

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A new American style football league, slated to start playing with 8 teams in 2012, is coming to India. It's called the Elite Football League of India (EFLI). The 8 teams are in the cities: Bhubaneswar, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Goa, Pune, Kolkata, Delhi, and Punjab.

The league has been assembled by a group of investors including Mike Ditka, former coach of the Chicago Bears (boo!), former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski, Hall of Fame wide receiver Michael Irvin, and Green Bay Packers linebacker Brandon Chillar (whoo-hoo!), who is Indian-American. They have backing of the Indian government and approval from  the Sports Authority of India

Ditka admits starting a successful league is a long-shot, but he says, “They need TV product over there. There are no sports on TV. And the government is behind it.” 

As reported in Tehelka's article Taking India to first base (hmmm... first base? Their sports writers appear to need a lesson or two in football terminology):

IF YOU HAVE been witness to the Indian cricket team’s laborious struggle towards athletic agility, here is a disquieting thought. We are now diversifying into football. Not football as we know Lionel Messi play it, but the American version — big muscled bodies retro - fitted in protective armour and helmet, clashing over an ovoid in a field marked at two ends by tall upright poles; rugby on steroids, kabaddi on crack.

The United Football League (UFL)—a professional American football league, second highest platform for the game after the famed National Football League (NFL) — is going where no one has gone before. To Bhubaneshwar, among seven other Indian cities, to kickstart the Elite Football League of India (EFLI) with players drawn from as far a field as kho-kho and kabaddi.

The development is surprising on several counts, not least of which is the fact that to most Indians the word ‘Super Bowl’ is more likely to invoke images of crockery as opposed to the most prestigious tournament in American football. A sporting phenomenon of such scale and import that the Super Bowl halftime, the period of rest between two halves of the game, occupies a hallowed space in American advertising.

UFL, however, is not the only one. Over the past two years, other American names, both equally out of place in India, are featuring on the national sports pages in the country: the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Major League Baseball (MLB). There is a new wind blowing across the Indian sports landscape and it smells of hot dog and apple pie.

They're currently training coaches and assembling rugby players to teach them American rules. There first season, which may be played entirely in a single stadium in Pune, will consist of 56 regular season games and 2 playoff games, played Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays, with many of the games televised. 

While only starting with 8 teams they have ambitious expansion plans. By 2022 they would like to have a team in each Indian city of a million people or more, which would mean a league of 52 teams

To start out coaches will be offered salaries of $2500 per month, while players will get $500 per month. Man, does that sound like old-school American football or what? Count me in as a fan of the new league. 

Of course, being a new fan I have to pick a team. I could carefully examine their rosters and coaching staff to make an informed decision, or I could just go with the team that has the coolest logo. Their names seem to change from article to article, so I'm not too sure how accurate the above logos are. However, if they are accurate I'm going with the Goa Swarm. 

Finally, if they need one, in the spirit of international cooperation I volunteer to be their Cheerleader consultant.

Sources: Wikipedia, Time Newsfeed, Tehelka, EFLI website (the links there are not currently functional), Global Post. 
 

Sepak Takraw -- Kick Volleyball

Above is a Takraw match. It is a sport that is popular in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and the Philippines that dates back to to at least the 15th century. It is a combination of volleyball and soccer. The spikes are amazing.

The US has an organization to promote the sport in the States. You can visit their site and read the rules at: Takraw USA. In 1989 the US team was invited to their first World Cup in Thailand. They got clobbered, but were well received because they were the first non-Asian team to compete in the championships.

(via: Daily Picks and Flicks) 
 

Chinese time traveler spotted

A young Chinese girl begs for money to buy a ticket back to the past

At the risk of turning Flares into the Chinese time travel blog -- although, come to think of it, that probably is a niche ready for the taking -- I offer yet another Chinese time travel post. This one involves a rural Chinese girl from 500 years ago who was flung through time only to land in a Shanghai Metro station. That's her above.

As the always zany ChinaSmack recounts in their post Time Traveling Woman from Past Begs in Subway, Has iPhone (there are some vulgar remarks in the comment section) the woman, claiming to be from 500 years in the past, has appeared at an exit to the Metro and is begging for money to return to her village in the distant past.

At the link there is also a video, served by YouKu (China's dodgy version of YouTube), in which she has the following conversation with a man:

MAN: Um, miss, what are you doing?

WOMAN BEGGAR: Begging for money to go home.

MAN: Your home is Qingyuan village?

WOMAN BEGGAR: That’s right.

MAN: Qingyuan village… where is that?

WOMAN BEGGAR: It’s from five hundred years ago.

MAN: From five hundred years ago? In that case, if I donate some money to your cause, how will you be able to give it back to me?

WOMAN BEGGAR: With noble sir’s kindness, I should [repay you] by being betrothed to you, but I am so homesick! But when the day comes in the future, this humble girl will definitely repay your noble sir’s kindness.

MAN: Noble sir’s kindness…heh, no need [to repay]. But if at that time you were to run away [disappear, renege on her promise], how would I find you?

WOMAN BEGGAR: This is a token/pledge. [she hands him a "Certificate of Life-long Full Financial Support", a fake document identifying a kept mistress, a woman who is financially supported by a man.]

MAN: So with this…this…this lousy card? But even with this lousy card I still can’t get a hold of you.

WOMAN BEGGAR: That’s not a problem, wait a second…oh, here it is. [Pulls out a mobile smartphone] What’s your phone number?

MAN: Al….right.

Well, yea... the iPhone is an incongruous touch, but then again we know from Chinese TV time travel shows that young men who time travel to the past are all the time impressing old-timey babes by showing them their smartphones, so maybe that's where she got one?  Also, let us not forget the 1928 Charlie Chaplin film that purports to show a time traveling woman yakking on a cellphone at a silent film premier as she walks by in the background. Man, who knew cell phones were so prevalent in the past?

Then again, you could be a cynic like many of the commenters in the Chinasmack thread, and think it was nothing more than a marketing gimmick for a Chinese MMORPG called Journey 2. Regardless, much as we like zombies, the Chinese seem to be on a time travel binge these days.

A blend of sex and chess

One of the things that makes Tango entertaining is its over-the-top sense of drama. 

Recently a dispute has broken out in the Tango community in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As the Wall Street Journal reports in its article Foreigners Out-Dip Locals in the Dance, Making Them Increasingly Unwelcome, local Tango dancers are trying to bar foreigners from a dance competition called El Metropolitano.

There is some fairness in the local's complaints -- El Metropolitano is a preliminary to a larger contest called the Dance World Cup. It does seem that it should be selecting Argentinian representative for the latter contest. However, there is also a fair amount of xenophobia mixed in with the complaints because many of the foreigners are ex-pats and long time residents of Argentina.

The dispute has landed in Argentinian courts. Add to the mix some snotty suggestions that the Argentinian Tango dancers are worried that the foreigners are better dancers and passions are flaring. Mind you, passions always flare in Tango, so for it to get even more dramatic is an achievement of no small measure.

Below is an excerpt from the article. My title is another quote from the article, so be sure to read the whole thing to get the full flavor of it all.

But shunting non-Argentines into a "tango ghetto" just isn't acceptable, according to Christian Rubilar, the foreign dancers' Argentine lawyer. "The dance floor is supposed to be the most democratic space in Argentina," says Mr. Rubilar, who is not only a constitutional law expert but also a tango dancer himself. He says that the Metropolitano's barriers stem in part from anxiety that more and more foreigners are now better at the national dance than well-practiced natives are.

Mr. Rubilar says that in 2010, Ms. Saito and her Korean partner, the pair that was heckled, might have won the Metropolitano, but they were barred from the finals by requirements that at least one of the pair have resided three years in Buenos Aires. Ms. Saito said they had the proof, but organizers kept demanding more paperwork. In court filings, city lawyers said that many foreigners didn't have their paperwork in order and discrimination hasn't been a factor.

Now, Mr. Rubilar is preparing to make the dance dispute a federal case. Analysts note that it may help the dancers' cause that federal courts are under the sway of the leftist Peronist party, which opposes the conservative city government. "Constitutional principles are at stake," Mr. Rubilar says, not just a dance contest.

"For us, this is over," said the city spokeswoman Ms. Solarz, in a tone suggesting that the foreign dancers really need to move on.

(HT Fausta's blog)

Of course, a Tango post needs a Tango video, so below is the Gotan Project, who I think are actually French and who a lot of Tango purists bitch about, doing Milonga De Amor.

A Chinese meal revisited

Time for some vacation photos. While in San Fransisco I naturally ate in Chinatown. One of the better meals was at a place called the House of Nanking. It was a small, cramped two room place, with boxes of supplies stacked around and long wooden tables that parties of diners might end up sharing.

 

Mrs Sinistral and I started the meal with two glasses of hot Rising Flower Blossom tea as we perused the menu and soaked in the ambiance. It was a busy place, with a lot of bustle by the staff and people coming and going.

 

Mrs. Sinistral ended up ordering scallops. The dish was three very large scallops covered in a sauce, with vegetables.

I ordered something called Sizzling Beef. The beef was simmered for several hours and it came with vegetables and some sort of Chinese flour wrap. You were supposed to put the meat and vegetables into the wrap, but neither Mrs. Sinistral or myself quite got the hang of doing it and holding it all together as we ate it. 

None the less we managed to wolf it down, even if it wasn't wrapped in the approved manner. We also made short work of the scallops.

 

The food was great and it was reasonably priced too. If you ever find yourself in San Francisco's Chinatown I recommend you look the place up and eat there. It may not look like much, but it was a fantastic dining experience.

The Political Theater of the Absurd

In Henan Province, China, a local ordinance requires that the road-facing sides of all adobe or brick homes be painted white or blue. This is apparently an attempt to address urban blight by making people improve their properties.

This has translated to grand facades, like the one shown to the left, being attached to decaying houses.

Looking at the picture, I wondered why a poor Chinese villager would spend so much money building such a ridiculous facade instead of just improving their home? Were these facades status projects, a brick and mortar version of a peasant's "Sunday Best", or were they something else altogether?

An article in Weird Asia News sheds some light with the following:

When the time arrives for inspection, the view is always from a passing car and there is no way for those inspectors to know that behind the shining walls lie deteriorating adobe homes. (Whether or not they would care or not if they knew the truth is another issue.)
...
Keeping up appearances often comes at a terrible price. This ordinance is vainglorious and obviously only a band-aid solution to the growing problem of urban decay and neglect. In addition and even more insulting to the local populace, this ordinance is a non-remedy sponsored by wasting taxpayers’ money.
How much better could these funds have served the local peasants and farmers who need financial aid so badly?

Ah, it all becomes clearer. Chinese tax dollars at work under the unerring hand of a bureaucrat. There is a certain mad logic at work; it is the appearance of urban decay that disturbs the passing inspectors, so a bit of whitewash and plaster is all that is needed to solve problem. No doubt the expenses saved go into the nearest deserving pocket.

This post is of course an extreme example; none the less, the problem with large government solutions is that you can't distill the scoundrels and buffoons out of them. Worse, once in place the scoundrels and buffoons become the voice of authority. So, when you need your faucet to stop leaking, like it or not you end up with a two-story monstrosity tacked onto your hovel instead.

What could possibly go wrong?

While we're obsessing over Michael Jackson...

While we're obsessing over Michael Jackson, according to the blog English Russia, a craze sweeping the Russian blogsphere are Russian Haired Sausages. They're "modding" sausages by sticking hard spaghetti into uncooked sausages and then boiling the whole mess.

They then photograph the result, sometimes decorating them with edible eyeballs and what-not, and post them to their blogs.

The link above includes pictures of some of them, a silly animated gif of a dancing hotdog, and a video instructing you in the culinary art of making Haired Sausages. Myself, I'll take a Hairy Sausage over Michael Jackson blather any day of the week.