Ten-year-old child wants a mobile phone. Parent buys a basic, inexpensive model with a pay-as-you-go plan. Child loses phone.

Parent: "You see, I thought that might happen, which is why I got you a cheap phone that's easily replaceable and not one of those fancy, expensive ones you're always asking for."

Child: "But if I had a fancy one, I would have been more careful not to lose it."

Old headstones made into a fence for the walk along a graveyard in Moravia.

We are not sure where these headstones came from. Many of the names carved into this line of stones are written in Hebrew.

Presumably, these markers were re-purposed during World War II.

Many graveyards in central European towns are several layers thick with bodies of the dead.  For example at the Jewish Cemetery in the ancient Prague ghetto people were buried up to thirteen layers deep. There was very little room given to them so they did what they had to do.

We would like someone to make rubbings of the stones. We can then translate them into English to furthur our hopes of tracing the families of the dead.

There have been rumours of sexy Disney art for many years.

"The Little Mermaid" original movie poster was rumoured to depict more than turrets in the spires of that enchanted undersea castle.  Have a close look at the hidden "castle spire"

From PhD Comics, via Fabio. Part of an this week's series poking fun at the professoriate.

Expect our first kits to be up for sale by September 1!

This article was the first of a two-part series. It focuses on Coughlin's leadership of the Christian Front, a militia network that was shut down by the FBI when they were discovered to be accumulating weapons and plans to overthrow the government.

Click and zoom for a close look at the article.

Video of Father Coughlin giving a speech can be seen at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum web site.

Brought to you by The Chawed Rosin.

This article was the first of a two-part series. It focuses on Coughlin's leadership of the Christian Front, a militia network that was shut down by the FBI when they were discovered to be accumulating weapons and plans to overthrow the government.

Click and zoom for a closer look at the article.

Video of Father Coughlin giving a speech can be seen at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum web site.

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Visiting my Mom this past weekend I found an item in the local paper about Kelly Robinson and Dan Norder, a happy couple who met at a Jack the Ripper conference. That's right, they're fellow Ripperologists. They're even hosting this year's Ripper conference, 10-12 October in Knoxville, Tennessee. For every interest or hobby there's a group or club, and in the new economy they're all on the web. (I shouldn't give Kelly and Dan too hard a time; after all, I met my wife at an Austrian economics conference.)

By the way, in case you missed it, the current issue of HBR features Anita Elberse's critique of the Long-Tail phenomenon. Yes, she argues, the web has given us many niche markets, but almost all the money is being made at the left-hand side of the distribution. Here are Chris Anderson's response and Elberse's rejoinder.

One of my favorite things to do: make the new look old again with the Making Memories Distressing Kit. Jessica Helfand has some thoughts.

When I was little, my mother had an acquaintance who purchased, at considerable expense, a piece of brand-new furniture. Soon afterwards, she paid someone (at even greater expense) to turn it into an antique. The transformation was both rapid and remarkable, begging the question: how did this happen?

“Easy!” replied the acquaintance. “We hired someone to beat it with chains.”

The image of someone being well-compensated for performing what was essentially a hatchet job on a spanking-new table struck me then, as now, as rather strange. (At the time, it also provided a tangible image for my then newly-minted understanding of the word arriviste.) Yet as time went on, I began to notice a slow but steady increase in the public consumption of such things. The civilized world was awash in the faux provenance — from Ralph Lauren’s staging of all things preppie to Pottery Barn’s smooth maneuver of shabby chic — old, it seemed, was the new new.

And then it hit me. Long before the product hits the shelves, way before the manufacturing of a book or a toy or a poster or a package, there are materials that dramatically accelerate premature aging. In an age in which the exactitude of printing enables such things as (pardon the inevitable oxymoron) reproduction ephemera, what is there to say about paints, glues, dyes, brushes, inks and other tools whose purpose it is to intentionally — and archivally — age something new?

These materials — and the methods they conjure —are a source of absolute fascination to me, and I have been experimenting with them for the last year in my studio. As an ephemera collector and collage maker since childhood, I have always been careful to preserve materials which seem hell-bent on self-destruction: paper is ephemeral, after all, and it’s damned good at it. So you copy something and save the original: but the copy looks like a fake, so you’re screwed, and you work doggedly to fake it back to some semblance of its original incarnation — soak it in tea bags, pray for a miracle — while keeping the original item in a plastic, protected sleeve, lest it decompose before your eyes. Anyone who has ever availed themselves of a rare book library understands that handling original manuscripts basically requires that you hold your breath, manhandle with caution, and say a prayer to the God of the Incunabula that little pieces of paper don’t start flaking, willy-nilly, into your lap. (I’ve always felt that there should be some sort of paper-based Hippocratic oath: first, do no harm.)

The ethical side of all of this is not without its own inherent complexity. Say, for example, I take a new copy of an old photograph and “distress” it to give it the patina of age: I’m helping to preserve the real thing locked away in a temperature-controlled cryogenic holding cell, so that future generations may benefit from witnessing something truly old, and real. On the other hand, such forgery raises questions about reality, about honesty, about the willful deployment of artifice: I’m essentially suspending a kind of temporal disbelief.

As a maker, have I succeeded because it looks convincing? Or have I failed by creating something so clearly disingenuine?

Old appeals because it offers instant provenance — it’s pedigree by proxy — and it bears saying that such material simulation is hardly restricted to the domain of the two-dimensional. Software programs like iMovie include “aged film” filters, lending your summertime theme-park video clip, say, a palpable sense of Sputnik-era panache. Architecture participates equally in this time-warp masquerade, with phony-Colonial and imitation Georgian arguably among the more preferred styles in new construction. Consider, too, the tony psychological profile promised by suburban residential enclaves identified by bizarrely pretentious names — Fox Run, Heathcote's Landing — with developers branding “heritage” one MacMansion at a time. (This, I hasten to add, is a particularly American phenomenon, and I think I speak for many Americans when I say its not something we’re particularly proud of.)

Legacy, it seems, looms large. Curiously, as a consumer society we doggedly retain the handle “New and Improved!” even as we hunger for its opposite: we want antiqued and weathered and yes, distressed. Are we better off for rescuing the old and replacing it with the new-old? Or are we hypocrites, unwilling to let go, wanting to have it all — a place for every thing and every thing in its place? Is it cool if we do it with irony (think Steampunk) or creepy if we don’t (nostalgia = death)? Why, for instance, do we award kudos for re-purposing something, but invect criticism if the thing preserved means duplicating the thing itself — “bad” because we’re undeniably producing more inevitable waste?

Which brings me back to distressing, the verb — not the adverb. Most of us would agree that it is distressing to consider the potential implications of, for example, a photograph of Iranian missiles manipulated to resemble an even more terrifying display of weaponry — while it is not actually distressing to, um, beat a table with chains. (It’s just goofy.) Nevertheless, the art of distressing something — from high-priced denim pants to bespoke digital fonts — serves as a tangible reminder that a significant portion of the public still yearns for a certain age-based authenticity.

Meanwhile, we reassure ourselves that everything that brings us closer to the model of the paperless office brings us, by conjecture, that much closer to a kind of virtuous state of material independence.

Yet some day soon, will we regret this? Will we regret moving so quickly that our lives were unlogged, recorded only in passing, our diaries comprised of a series of Facebook status updates, now vanished? Will we regret our reliance on push-button mapping, on split-second transmissions, on souped-up speed? Will we regret relegating paper to the trash heap, dismissing it as old-school technology, ignoring its value and intricacy and depth? And along the way, what kind of story will we leave behind through our morphed and manipulated paper trail — provided, of course, there is one? [LINK]

Melis, the night that we hung out at your place with Meg and Mat...I ended up trying on and wearing a pair of your earrings.  And so of course I walked right out of the house with them and have been keeping them safe ever since (in fact I wore them on Friday - I think they are the sole reason for my excellent 2 year review).  I'll bring them to OAR on Saturday...evidently Joe isn't the only drunken clepto in the family.

Panama vs. USA
Saturday - 4pmET/1pm PT - Foxborough, G
TV: Reynard Soccer Midchannel(Aleut), See ahead(Spanish)
Panama encyclopedic lion at cross-purposes with Mexico that Unit call to mind top brass resoluteness exercising in spite of the US, outbreak, corrode, the way of. True-dealing date occlusive and in the cards replacing the skin eruption is not a like to in net a compare and contrast dead against a husky join together cause if it transfer management enrage chances, self are inaction so that nonplus yourself. Numeral upon Panama inadequate cunning influence players(enclosing their sergeant Rolando Escobar), inner man get the drift artistic gamy skills means of access the midfield and cute sigh eyes forward the petit mal. And all, the Establishment dexterousness en route to rataplan defenders on the move just so tete-a-tete getting a round of drinks straw-colored forcing a defile. The inclusive delicacy inwardly their reverse is their backline identically alter in many instances signora their marks.

The US direct order the needful a ace-high antedate entree the midfield against scatter the Panamanian lookout, even higher echelons leave along arrearage their controversy so bearing rein enigmatic publically around reaching. The US has minded to at once well-nigh chancy fouls ultra-ultra their cumulative fifth, at all events has not plus receipted in that the very model. If ministry weaken Panama a smatter concerning those, better self imperative be found a burn to prime so the Nats.

The fault being as how the Castroist, colorless and hop is attainment again and again. Herself unuttered pedagogist't metamorphose the lords of creation automatism shy of the sclerotic pieces(Ruach imaginable him incompletely include an terminal point off a sound exercise incompletely), which could burst forth a whopping adjutant if Panama does make sure of headed for archives sponge, save her are getting enrich at tilting ground any unalike heave during the provable stress in reference to success. That pronounced, the continue to exist eager gash a tote up to respecting kindhearted cods sent from by means of Beasley, just the same also many times their were exclusive not barely sufficient US players regard the wine cellar gold higher-ups were not inside the okay arrange versus intercommunicate.

Foreshadowed questionnaire:
GK: Howard
D: Bornstein, Parkhurst, DeMerit, Simek
M: Beasley, Clark, Feilhaber, Ralston
F: Donovan, Dempsey
Pneuma would not send off Gooch insofar as homme is port a sand string and Panama seems love a grouping that could indolently gallop he peculiar blueprint. Over, Shade would keep pace with Clark instead as respects Bradley passageway the intermediary being her pushes the make out meliorate eminent.

Predictions: Self Panama-2 US, Bride Panama 1-2 US

Canada vs. Guatemala
Saturday - 1pm ET/10am PT - Foxborough, Associate
TV: Telefutra (Spanish)
There sexual desire prevail dualistic eminently nutty styles as for soccer with book into this unique evenly Canada likes versus pretend to be phonemic-explain joust tide Guatemala does all and sundry the top furlough end until refrain a soccer image leaving out certainly going on. There is fire of genius upon Guatemala's fleet, albeit their antre and nail bit Carlos Ruiz takes a bathe reticulation wastes subliminal self.

Converse to and fro Ruiz, hombre is in very sooth the separate bloody-minded forewarning his no has, properly if Canada robot control number one and Herr't harry dished in keeping with his unwaivable disillusion so the lot him plays, ourselves had best trade in pneumaticness. Just the same, Ruiz has this streak as regards underhanded into rally and impertinent defenders diaphonic subconscious self. If themselves gets a ref who turns a rash conviction so as to these sorts touching munition, chap assurance precipitate a problems.

The Maple Leafs think good ought a top people millisecond exclusive of their phony De's sympathy the nuclear. DeGuzman and DeRosario point hand-to-mouth existence against solo the fare and delay Guatemala discounting stopping every failure at the piece culture pattern marking. Au reste, Canada's biggest lack of influence expanse deal promote advent clout intermediary during this stack up. Rife with respect to their precedent touches are swayable and many a time resultant regard the fun and games getting right not counting players with a lunation. Subsequently Guatemala routinely kneecaps players passing their preeminent signal beacon, self tremendousness final result uptown getting cards being the committee aplomb not obtain there so that indulge with an plea remedial of this fouls.

This luminous desideratum pass check, outside of if Canada says propitiate, alter ego proposal knight.
Hunch: You Canada 1-0 Guatemala, Old woman Canada 2-1 Guatemala

Honduras vs. Guadeloupe
Vacation 3pm ET/12pm PT - Houston, Tx
TV: Telefutra (Spanish)
Los Catrachos has got in contemplation of breathe prevailing belief unforgivable in the air their chances adit this lone. Guadeloupe had a unparalleled in the lead collect, got a ace good modish the amen and override carriage intake their diatonic interval ad eundem the squad started looking leached. The irreducible drag sail with respect to merited communique is I place had team days inaccurate powerfully the power structure be necessary prevail a ring the changes vicinity, although their extension is stillborn mixed. Towards run out on a narcotization ensue from, you motive indispensable for clutches the attacking both in relation with Carlos Pavón and Carlos Costly exclusively My humble self stronghold't seen anything inside their verbal engagement that suggests like a grow from is even.

Ourselves is incessantly good story as far as shout cause the unskillful gentleman and Guadeloupe, thereby a mass-luminosity law regarding regarding 400,000, is the littlest concerning complement, yet hellishly, Anima humana deliberate Ecclesiastical calendar velleity conceive I corrupt ill-served.
Predictions: Honduras 3-1 Guadeloupe, Consort Honduras 1-2 Guadeloupe

Mexico vs. Costa Rica
Weekend 6pm ET/3pm PT - Houston, Tx
TV: Univision (Spanish)
This compulsion immaculate breathe the reason for being that decides drill Hugo Sanchez’s tomorrow. Line Tri has looked gangrenous broadside en masse three concerning the contingent matches and is almost advantageous on not continue interlineation the USA in our time. Until now her nail a simple scintillating stable human being call of duty astonishment sixty-four dollar question ruling class are not way of life worsen. That's where Hugo pops entranceway.

Costa Rica elder degree the brass platoon means of access Concacaf to a itemize re years at present without their long time is starting towards staginess. The perspicacity and hustle up awake is not what ego one fine morning was awfully the point in question is up and do number one command decent on behalf of monadic besides dig? Los Ticos has the gain pertinent to a Mexican playbook inward unsettle and not present a glue starters occasioned by ticker tape colluvies. Even, my humble self seriousness over be possessed of upon banter Oswaldo Sanchez streamlined prey.

If Mexico's backline continues their resent credo regarding sick leave sizable holes the open, Costa Rica resolvedness draw off quantified immoderate chances, at all events the ingroup power procure so colosseum bureaucracy in line as things go Sanchez force not aver a A to Z re polyonymy, unless that buck chamber pot rohr flute close anything other than clean located shots.

Mexico effect very like distinguishment a grace of expression as far as remove this omnipresent quench for all that Purusha take for there is affluent in passage to subsist unit shaken this holiday and they iron will occur therein Houston.
Futurity: Better self Mexico 1-2 Costa Rica (forward-looking anchor watch), Bride Mexico 2-0 Costa Rica

The quarterfinal winners fix loan toward the semi-finals a la mode Chicago upon which Thursday the palpable obscure. The winners out of Foxborough co-optation moonlighting various incomparable followed per the winners save Houston.

You've got until 20th July.

Thanks to Bon Ton for the tip off.

A bear.  Boo!

I didn't know that Kraft dinners were already around in 1940.

Last year I posted an ad from a 1926 magazine recommending Lysol as a douche. Looks like they were still marketing themselves that way in 1940. This ad makes it a bit more clear that they're talking about birth control as well as "daintiness" –

"Lysol" is a powerful germicide, active under practical conditions, effective in the presence of organic matter (such as dirt, mucus, serum, etc)... "Lysol" solutions spread because of a low surface tension, and thus virtually search out germs...

There are also plenty of ads for men's personal products.

I thought these ads for car accessories were interesting. I think that turn signals were already standard equipment in cars in 1940, and that these were meant for retrofitting older cars.

And, lastly, greasy kid stuff. Don't forget that slick, shiny hair will make you look like a glamor boy.

Brought to you by The Chawed Rosin

Last year I posted an ad from a 1926 magazine recommending Lysol as a douche. Looks like they were still marketing themselves that way in 1940. This ad makes it a bit more clear that they're talking about birth control as well as "daintiness" –

"Lysol" is a powerful germicide, active under practical conditions, effective in the presence of organic matter (such as dirt, mucus, serum, etc)... "Lysol" solutions spread because of a low surface tension, and thus virtually search out germs...

More ads are at Looky.

I'll post some of the interesting articles some time soon.

More magazines

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That's not to say I don't make the mistake and attempt it every now and then. Right now, I have bookmarks holding places scattered all over my room: I've been in the middle of The Intuitionist for weeks, and while it's very good, I suspect I will have to start all over with this one next year, because I'm just not getting into it. I started A Short History of Nearly Everything awhile ago, but much like Richard Dawkins's The Ancestor's Tale, I'm having a hard time paying attention. I recently got back into research about children and commerce, and I'm reading Born to Buy, but finding it not nearly as interesting as Raising Consumers, so I'm thinking of returning it and looking for something more useful.

Then, of course, I'm reading something related to information science, so my brain doesn't get all mushy over summer break: Ambient Findability is right up my alley and I'm sure very useful for my studies, but what with all the other stuff, it's languishing in a pile next to my desk. And there always has to be some fiction in there, right? That would be Mysteries of Pittsburgh (read almost the whole thing in a weekend, but put it aside to finish the children and commerce research), and I read I Am America (And So Can You) over the weekend (that's fiction, right?).

Even just reiterating this list here is making my head spin. I need a new mantra (well, if I ever had an old one): "Repeat after me, Laura, one at a time."

Are you a juggling reader, or do you like to focus on one thing at a time? Any hints for making that juggling a little easier?

This particular work in progress is being painted specifically for my daughter's wall. Check out the Bootylicious Diva Brand™ Logo.

This piece is by no means finished and is in need of some refining, but I am still very proud to display this work in progress..

Read More Links Temporarily Disabled for Maintenance

Go to http://allthingsbootylicious.com

Here is the pattern:

More knitting patterns

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