Visual Art & Social Commentary

Strong stuff.
Here is the story of fascism goosestepping through the quiet halls of your children’s schools and colleges—an ugly, threatening story. Here is also a story of soldiers fighting for the great traditions of learning, soldiers without uniforms, the winter soldiers of education. Link…

The Vinland map

The controversial Vinland Map is a medieval-style map of the Old World that includes a large island in the western Atlantic identified as "Vinilanda Insula", the Vinland of the Icelandic sagas. It came to light in the 1950s, bound together with a slender and then otherwise unknown tract dating to about 1440, entitled the Tartar Relation. If genuine, the map would demonstrate that mainstream Western Europeans were aware of at least a portion of North America some 50 years before Columbus, and that this information was not restricted to Iceland or even Scandinavia. Link…

Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild

As well as establishing a private zoological museum at Tring,

Rothschild also established the edible dormouse or Glis glis.

He was a big fan of the cassowary

and author of Birds of Laysan.

All things tonsorial

Everything from shaving plates and moustache cups to lady razors, postcards, shaving sticks, mugs and strops. Link…

The Guitar, the Lute and the Early Keyboard

Kenneth Sparr's site contains among other material, pictures of people with stringed instruments. Link…

AEIOU

The Annotatable Elektronic Interactive Oesterreich Universal Information. All things Austrian. Link…

CMarZ

Fabulous creatures at The Census of Marine Zooplankton. Link…

Are you ready to rumble

There has been an awful lot of activity in the region recently. Link…

Hanuman statue

There is a 85-ft high statue of Hanuman in Trinidad. Link…

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Umberto Eco's 'The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana' features an amnesiac protagonist, a bibliophile and dealer in rare books nicknamed Yambo, whose doctoral thesis was written on the Hypnerotomachia.

Irish Postage Stamps - Cinderellas

The portrait type of Carson also appears in a 1914 etching by John George Day (National Portrait Gallery, London; NPG 2916); whether the Day etching was in fact the specific model for the poster stamps is not certain.


The Irish White Cross Society was founded on 1 February 1921, to (in its own words) "cope with the distress and destitution resulting in Ireland from the war caused by the determination of the Irish people to assert their right to nationhood."

The Cinderella Stamp Society, founded in London in 1959 - refers to the so-called stepchildren of philately: an often bewildering variety of items formatted like postage stamps but not primarily definable as such. Link…

Electron Microscopy Unit Snow Page

Most samples of snow crystals are observed by researchers at relatively moderate magnifications (30x-500x), however the capabilities of the electron microscope allow observation of fine structures at over 100,000x. Link…

NYC apartments

The World's loose leaf album of apartment houses provides an interesting snapshot with pictures and floor plans of apartment buildings in New York City (1910) . Link…

Army ants

Great photography on the Ants of Cachoeira Nature Reserve site. Link… Jochen also has a flickr page on which he explains how the photographs are made - "I took 100 shots of the ant head in different focal planes." Link…

Didymosphenia geminata

Delightfully known as Rock Snot or Didymo, it is a problem both in the US and New Zealand.