Attitude adjuster for our elites

Reading the headlines lately, I can think of several people that would serve our needs best by retiring from public life and spending several hours a day exercising one of these machines. If nothing else, it sure would beat listening to their insincere apologies.

A Hard Day's Night

Get ready for a different perspective on things this weekend with Katja Ebstein.

Sculpture from scaps

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The artist Lydia Ricci makes amazing little sculptures of everyday objects from scraps and bits of trash she's collected. You can see more of her sculptures after the jump, and at her website From Scraps.

Making a bow, arrows and a quiver the old school way

A fellow makes a bow, arrows and a quiver using nothing but a stone axe and a stone chisel. He has much more at his website Primitive Technology.
 

Some mighty fancy clothes

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I was looking for pictures for another topic when I ran across the one posted above. I could not pass on using it, so I'll post it in isolation. All I've got to say is the outfits those two young lads are wearing are a sight to behold, and they're rendered all the more ridiculous by how conventionally everybody else is dressed.

Art of the Russo-Japanese War

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The imperial ambitions, in Manchuria and Korea, of both Russia and Japan led to the first modern war between western and Asian militaries forces. It was a bloody war that is largely forgotten today.

Sitting in the interval between the American Civil War and WWI, its battles, on both the land and at sea, featured armies and navies struggling to integrate modern firepower into their tactics and strategies. Russia further suffered from having to fight the war at an enormous distance from its heartland. In the end Russia lost the war to a presumed inferior Asiatic opponent and the path towards WWII's Pacific battles was set.

The artwork from the war is interesting in that it features both European and Japanese styles. The contrast between the two artistic heritages is striking. There are more examples after the jump.

Notte Di Luce (Knights in White Satin)

Get ready for an overwrought weekend with iL Divo's Italian version of Knights in White Satin.
 

Walking a street in Addis Abba

Another in my series of videos of people just walking down streets in cities. In spite of the relative poverty of the Ethiopian capital, the contrast with the scenes in my last street walk -- Buying street food in Pyongyang, North Korea -- is striking. The north Korean capital, even in a scene that was likely staged, seems very empty and bleak in comparison.

Prior to the rise of motels

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Back in the day, before the era of the automobile, hotels and inns were the main accommodations for travelers. Here, and after the jump, are just a few of those old hotels.

And, as long as we're talking about inns, below is Chapter 16 of Don Quixote, which details his adventures in an inn he imagines to be a castle.

The innkeeper, seeing Don Quixote slung across the ass, asked Sancho what was amiss with him. Sancho answered that it was nothing, only that he had fallen down from a rock and had his ribs a little bruised. The innkeeper had a wife whose disposition was not such as those of her calling commonly have, for she was by nature kind-hearted and felt for the sufferings of her neighbours, so she at once set about tending Don Quixote, and made her young daughter, a very comely girl, help her in taking care of her guest. There was besides in the inn, as servant, an Asturian lass with a broad face, flat poll, and snub nose, blind of one eye and not very sound in the other. The elegance of her shape, to be sure, made up for all her defects; she did not measure seven palms from head to foot, and her shoulders, which overweighted her somewhat, made her contemplate the ground more than she liked. This graceful lass, then, helped the young girl, and the two made up a very bad bed for Don Quixote in a garret that showed evident signs of having formerly served for many years as a straw-loft, in which there was also quartered a carrier whose bed was placed a little beyond our Don Quixote's, and, though only made of the pack-saddles and cloths of his mules, had much the advantage of it, as Don Quixote's consisted simply of four rough boards on two not very even trestles, a mattress, that for thinness might have passed for a quilt, full of pellets which, were they not seen through the rents to be wool, would to the touch have seemed pebbles in hardness, two sheets made of buckler leather, and a coverlet the threads of which anyone that chose might have counted without missing one in the reckoning.

On this accursed bed Don Quixote stretched himself, and the hostess and her daughter soon covered him with plasters from top to toe, while Maritornes- for that was the name of the Asturian- held the light for them, and while plastering him, the hostess, observing how full of wheals Don Quixote was in some places, remarked that this had more the look of blows than of a fall.

It was not blows, Sancho said, but that the rock had many points and projections, and that each of them had left its mark. "Pray, senora," he added, "manage to save some tow, as there will be no want of some one to use it, for my loins too are rather sore."

"Then you must have fallen too," said the hostess.

"I did not fall," said Sancho Panza, "but from the shock I got at seeing my master fall, my body aches so that I feel as if I had had a thousand thwacks."
(continues after the jump)

Gangsta's Paradise

Get ready for a felonious weekend with Postmodern Jukebox featuring Robyn Adele Anderson.
 

Pour yourself a glass of wine

19th Century Scientific American

These are covers, mainly from the 19th century, of Scientific American. The magazine bills itself as a publication that covers art, science and mechanics, with other subjects occasionally added to the tag line. It is interesting in just how much it does focus on technology, unlike today's Scientific American, which is much more science oriented.

The covers on this page, and those after the jump, are from the Magazine Rack's Scientific American (1845-1909) Collection. If you follow that link you can actually page through the old issues and see all of their content. Be warned, it can be a tremendous time sink.

Chemical reactions

These films are from Envisioning Chemistry, which is part of The Beauty of Science website. Much good stuff at both links.

Wicked Game

Get ready for a goofily gothic Halloween weekend with HIM.

  

The Lights of Canopus

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These are illustrations from the 19th century Persian book Anvār-i Suhaylī (Lights of Canopus). It is a translation of a much older Indian work, the Panchatantra. The book is a collection of animal fables.

The illustrations on this page, and after the jump, are from the Public Domain Review. There are more illustrations at that link.

Buying street food in Pyongyang, North Korea

Jaka Parker, an Indonesian variously described as a freelance photographer or embassy employee has a YouTube channel with numerous videos of North Korea. I imagine they are a bit dodgy -- how dodgy I don't know -- but they are still quite interesting.

Even if this video is an attempt to film a Potemkin village, the largely empty streets and line of uniform, green food stalls deliver their own message.
 

Scandal in the art world

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OK, I can understand a rake like Vincent being in this picture, but Mona? Tsk, tsk, tsk... if she's not careful, she'll be getting earlobes through the mail.

The image is from The Surreal Collages of Barry Kite.

Bird on a Wire

Get ready for an avian weekend with Willie Nelson's cover of the Leonard Cohen classic.
 

Restored 1928 Rolmonica

I guess you could say an organette (Rolmonica is a brand name) is the harmonica version of a player piano. They were first made in the 1860s and were still being sold in the early part of the 20th century. Rolls were available for all popular songs of the time.
 

Victorian era exercise equipment

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Ladies and gentlemen of the Victorian era naturally wanted to be physically fit, particularly if they rode trains and might have to fend of a railroad lunatic or two. However, physical labor was for the lower classes, so they needed a rather more civilized and gentile method of exercising.

As the Daily Mail chronicles in their article Inside the Victorian gym, the Swedish physician Dr. Gustav Zander solved their dilemma by inventing numerous exercise machines for use in spas and gyms worldwide.

Pictures here, and after the jump, are some of his machines. There are more, as well as information about Dr. Zander at the above Daily Mail link.