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Let’s Review 122: Days of Miracles and Wonders

Is This Image of the Total Eclipse “History’s Most Amazing Photo”? By studying the eclipse path carefully, the photographer realized that Southwest Airlines runs a flight from Portland to St. Louis that would put him in the perfect position to view the event. Taking a once in a lifetime chance, Carmichael purchased a ticket and hoped that he’d get a window seat. Since Southwest doesn’t have pre-assigned seats, he’d even prepared himself to bribe someone to give up their window position if necessary. Luckily, it didn’t come to that. When he explained his mission to the Southwest flight crew, not only did they ensure he’d get a great seat, but the captain actually went outside the plane to clean the window for a crystal clear shot. During the flight itself, the pilots circled a few times to provide all passengers with a spectacular view.

The Race to Build a Better Bee |   Researchers at Harvard University developed a RoboBee that, despite weighing less one-tenth of a gram, is equipped with smart sensors that can interpret and respond to their environment, mimicking the function of the eyes and antennae of bees; The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, MA, is working on DragonflEYE that could be used for guided pollination; and, in March, Walmart filed a patent for drone pollinators.

Not to mention middle-class drug addictions to crack and meth….   How Tattoos Became Middle Class | Even the manner in which customers chose to get tattooed informed attitudes towards it, she notes. Active planning, research, and vetting often go into choosing a tattoo artist, with some people waiting months or years for the desired artist. This showed that tattoos required work, planning, and restraint—in other words, rather conventional behaviors.

To Battle Floods, Cities Revive Their Long-Forgotten Alleyways

“Let’s be honest: Harvard and its affiliates will inflict some kind of damage (academic, emotional, occasionally physical) on everyone who lingers there.   It is a place where everyone is out to get everyone else. In a place where no one can be the best at everything, everyone takes any chance they can get to measure up to their peers. It is a mob of ruthless young overachievers with a taste for blood.

The House that Came in the Mail – From 1908 to 1940, the Sears Modern Homes Program offered complete mail-order houses to the would-be homeowner — what would come to be called “kit homes.” Customers could select from dozens of different models in Sears Modern Homes Catalog, order blueprints, send in a check, and a few weeks later everything they needed would arrive in a train car, it’s door secured with a small red wax seal (just like the seal on the back of a letter). This seal was to be broken on arrival by the new owner, who would open up their boxcar to find over 10,000 pieces of framing lumber, 20,000 cedar shakes and almost everything else needed to build the home — all the doors, even the doorknobs.

‘Ghost black hole’ from a previous universe is ‘found’ by astrophysics Have scientists found evidence of another UNIVERSE? ‘Ghost black hole’ from ancient universe that died before the Big Bang has been discovered, physicists claim.

‘Their Spirits Were Trapped in Those Masks’ The heads on the shelves belong to 72 individuals from the Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Caddo Nations who were detained by the U.S. military at Fort Marion, Florida in the mid-1870s as prisoners of war. They are not real heads but three-dimensional plaster casts, or “life-masks”—masks made from living subjects (as opposed to “death-masks,” which are cast from the faces of corpses). Life-masks, and death-masks, were a popular 19th century artform trendy among the elites; today, museum storage spaces are full of them.

Accentuating his mature appearance with pastel colors, protruding lips and an outstanding pink forehead, this Asian sheepshead wrasse sets out to impress females and see off rivals, which he will head-butt and bite. Tony has long been fascinated by the species’ looks and life history. Individuals start out as females, and when they reach a certain age and size –up to a meter (more than 3 feet) long –can transform into males.

An artist had to be a chemist – and he had to have a strong stomach. He would have known, writes Jelley, ‘the useful qualities of wine, ash, urine, and saliva’. ‘Do not lick your brush or spatter your mouth with paint,’ warned Cennini. Lead white and arsenic yellow were poisonous, goat glue merely unpleasant. The art historian Jan Veth, writing in 1908 about Girl with a Pearl Earring (c 1665–7), fancied that Vermeer had painted with ‘the dust of crushed pearl’. Forensics have since revealed the earthier truth.

Whole Roasted Camel – The process of preparing the camel for consumption is quite the undertaking. It’s preferred that the buyer give at least a day’s notice for the prepping and cooking time it takes to construct this substantial feast. The meat is first boiled, then slowly cooked over coals. Those who have had the good fortune to experience this traditional cuisine describe its taste as being incredibly savory and slightly sweet.

Dude Chilling Park: From Guerrilla Art Installation to Sanctioned City Sign A petition to put the sign back up got nearly 2,000 signatures and in 2013 Park Board Chair Sarah Blyth “put forward a motion to find a permanent home for the sign where all residents can enjoy and honour the art history of Vancouver’s parks and recreational facilities.” The motion carried. But while the original installation was designed to look like a Parks and Recreation sign, it had not actually been constructed to weather the harsh rains of British Columbia. Accordingly, the Parks Board created a new and more robust version to install in 2014.

Lifelike Sculptures of the Remarkable Human Form Are Modern-Day Classics

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • JoeDaddy September 15, 2018, 12:10 PM

    Keep the Tats. It’s the ink. The ink seeps into the blood. Years past inks were, ‘whatever’. Maybe that’s changed. Stuff not safe regardless.

  • pbird September 15, 2018, 1:14 PM

    I have had occasion to see infections or reactions caused by bottles of new tattoo ink. They are supposed to be safe, but I don’t believe it.
    ps, I have no tattoos or piercings.

  • terribletroy September 15, 2018, 1:26 PM

    I’m 55 in a couple of days, my son and I are scheduled for Monday for identical pieces. His first, mine will be one of many that are rarely on display. About two months prep went into this total, agreeing on the concept (Patriot), finding artist, design meeting, initial artwork, refinement, and finished art. Initial artist aquisition can be challenging and then a relationship has to be developed. The permanentcy of the product has a gravitas of its own. My son is 19, this was his idea, it is a “for us” tattoo. Tats aren’t for everyone and I hold no animosity toward any opinion. I think the article is correct as to how mainstreaming occurred (with other factors added) . The art itself and the precision equip has developed, the inks have developed. A good artist understands skin type and anatomy, understands the application process to obtain different effects, etc. There are some tatts out there that are worthy of the title art and then there is “Taz”. This post was timely for me thanks. And thanks for the daily content, it is always entertaining.

  • ghostsniper September 15, 2018, 2:53 PM

    I got one, in the spring of ’78 at Ft Campbell, KY., on my left inside forearm, 5 colors and all of it is still clear and vibrant, maybe 5 inches square approx. Spent most of the last 40 years wishing I didn’t do that. I see no benefit to it, now, and lots of non-benefits.

    Every important business meeting I have attended, and there have been thousands, required me to wear a long sleeve shirt. Because blood is involved there is always the risk of a transmitted or transferred disease. My “design” was simple, an underground comic character named Ashley Hamilton Roachclip III. The installer told me at the time that I was the only person to have ever chosen that one. It was one of hundreds pasted to the walls from floor to ceiling. Remember, this was long ago and the shop supplemented an army base. No I wasn’t drunk, just youthfully deranged. I outgrew it, pretty quick too, and regret set in.

  • Spurt Reynolds September 15, 2018, 3:01 PM

    I have let people in my family know that no one with a tattoo will receive a penny from my very large estate upon my death. Best gift I could ever give them.

  • jwm September 15, 2018, 3:48 PM

    Tattoos are part of a Satanic war on Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. (The media is war on Truth, Social Justice wars on Goodness.)
    I can’t tell you how many beautiful young women I’ve seen who have vandalized their bodies with this rotten fad. You see it at the beach here in So Cal– a once beautiful young woman graffitied up like a gas station shitter. They have utterly destroyed the beauty that God gave them. They have turned themselves into skanks of the lowest order. I have never known a woman to wear the same article of clothing two days in a row. If you told some chick she’d have to wear her prom dress every day for the rest of her life, she’d commit suicide. Yet they sign up for this in droves, knowing for the rest of their natural lives they’re going to be wearing that shitty ink, and badly done “art” 24/7/365 amen. The men just look fucking stupid.

    JWM

  • John the River September 15, 2018, 8:54 PM

    Best comment I’ve ever seen was;
    You look like the desk I sat at in detention hall.
    You should at least put your own initials somewhere.

  • MMinLamesa September 16, 2018, 9:20 AM

    I’ve gotten a tattoo every double number year of my life. Small and indicative of my state of mind at that time. The MOM tat I got on my calf when I was 44 was right after she passed. I have the one for 66 ready and about 2 more weeks to have it done.

  • Kerry September 16, 2018, 4:16 PM

    Gerard, I so appreciate your posting of the photograph of the total eclipse. It’s breathtaking and enchanting. The photographer’s story, his enthusiasm, his love for what he does, the dedication he put into the project made me really happy. Thanks a lot.

  • ghostsniper September 16, 2018, 7:16 PM

    “I’ve gotten a tattoo every double number year of my life.”

    Starting when you were 11?

  • Chipper September 17, 2018, 10:31 AM

    I confronted the tattoo bugaboo when my daughter was attending Cal Poly SLO – 2000ish. I pushed back on her request to approve her getting one, not by saying no, but by arguing that an inking at 20 would look far, far, far different when she was 40, 50, 60. That beautiful butterfly on taunt, tan skin would become a sagging dull blob of a bruise as she aged. She decided against it, pretty much for her own reasons, but I was really gratified that in her late 30s, living in NY, working as a photo editor, she offered that she was so glad I “talked her out of” that tattoo. Parenting’s deep rewards come slowly.

  • mhf September 17, 2018, 12:06 PM

    Sears Roebuck houses? There is 1 in less than a mile. I could post a picture. Spanish style, 2 story and still has the tile roof

  • Nori September 17, 2018, 9:31 PM

    Jon Carmichael,your exquisite photo of the solar eclipse,and your journey to capture it, reminds me of every thing that is best about our country. Love the pics with the Southwest Airlines crew.