ninme

A la Française | Graduation movie from Supinfocom Arles 2012 A la Française from à la Française on Vimeo. By Julien Hazebroucq, Emmanuelle Leleu, Morrigane Boyer, William Lorton, and Ren Hsien Hsu. I just think it’s wonderful. (This would have been a Funniest Item but I’ve had it open for more than a week. Got [...]

Categories: History

Well, we seem to have come to that point in history where all my new discoveries are from people dying. Before it was classic movie stars, and I knew all about them, but now it’s the TV stars that came after the classic movies, and I’m terrible with classic TV (except Get Smart and F-Troop, [...]

Categories: Entertainment

I heard this for the first time yesterday, and it’s just fantastic. Play it loud so you can hear: Flanders And Swann – The Gnu Song

Categories: Entertainment

This was linked to on Lilek’s work blog a week ago or so, I think, and it is amazing: Young Man’s Fancy – 1952 American Consumers & Family Values Documentary Sitcom-style film produced for the Edison Electric Institute. The film encouraged increased consumption of electricity through the ever increasing number of ‘must have’ household appliances. [...]

Categories: Electronics

Thanks and curtsies to Wheat & Weeds for posting this picture I found on Twitter the other day, because it reminded me that I really need this saved on my hard drive (I can’t count the number of times I’ve needed something from Twitter but was too lazy/distracted to have done the responsible thing and [...]

Categories: History

Back in In Our Time did a show/podcast on Christina Rossetti, and since then I feel like I’ve noticed her everywhere. This is lovely: American Digest – Pause…. and Begin Again Gloucester Cathedral Choir – In the Bleak Midwinter

Categories: Art and Literature

Is Red still here ever? The Independent – Like it or not, the Scots and the English are flesh and blood Inspect the details of this diluted nationalism and one thing becomes clear. It embraces, even celebrates, a cross-border world. By Boyd Tonkin The best bit: Elements of bathos accompanied the unveiling of Alex Salmond’s [...]

Categories: History

Peter sent this to me sometime last week but it’s still the funniest thing I’ve seen today: A History of English (in under 12 minutes!)

Categories: History

I wasn’t planning on posting anything to mark the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination (but lord if you’ve seen the Zapruder Film Stabilized…) because I wasn’t alive during the 60s and I don’t think it often contributes much to over-romantisize that particular decade, even at it’s most tragic. What would I say, as I have [...]

Categories: History

I would put this in my front yard, and give it a little settling pat after one of my errand-running drives (as documented the other day on Twitter . . .). American Digest – The Curse Carved Into the Cursing Stone Read it. It’s very therapeutic.

Categories: History

Yeah! Finally! wait but why – Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy (I like this post’s style. It’s sort of Hyperbole and a Half meets Quora.) So yes, now that you’ve gone away and read the whole thing, I agree with all of it, and read the whole thing, except: • I think it’s overstating [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

See, the trouble with the entire world, really, is that we live with the internet, wherein I know that there’s this TV documentary airing, even if it is airing in a different country, but I still know about it, and I still see people’s reactions to it, and I can still Google it and see [...]

Categories: History

So this is very good, and although it’s long (although, not as long as I thought it would be; I was reading it this morning on my phone and emailed it to myself to finish later because I thought I was less than halfway but it turned out I had one paragraph left and the [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

We would build miles of neighborhoods like these (near suburban train stations, downtown cores, over deserted and hideous strip malls…) SF Girl by Bay – LITTLE HOUSES OF WESTLAKE. They’re all 2 or 3 bedroom homes, with 1 bathroom, and tiny, manageable yards. Because to get started on the housing ladder, you do NOT need [...]

Categories: History

Mark Steyn: The Princess and the Brotherhood For nine decades, Egypt has fled modernity. For my part, I would bet Egypt’s fate will be largely driven by its fiscal ruin. Morsi is a good example of what happens when full-blown Islamic rule is put into effect in a country without the benefit of oil. He’s [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs