Friday, February 27, 2015

Happy Friday, everyone.

Everyone – absolutely everyone – seems to have a very strong opinion about the color of this dress. It’s pretty entertaining, and interesting in terms of what our eyes tell us vs. what is actual reality. I will delight/horrify readers by telling them what I see: a bluish-gray dress with dirt-brown trim. Since no one in their right mind would make a dress with these colors, I figured it was a white & gold dress in a photo taken with horrible lighting, and the white looked blue the same way snow can look blue in shadow. I can’t see royal blue and jet black…yet, anyway.

From Julie: Ridiculously overdue library books! 

Also from Julie: Princeton University now owns four Shakespeare Folios and six first (printed) editions of the Bible. Wow.

Also also from Julie: The fascinating (and sobering) study of plague graffiti.

From Cassandra: When lawsuit details go online, everyone gets in on the act. 

I’m always interested in what Warren Ellis is doing, and one of his newest projects is Injection, a series by him, Declan Shalvey, and Jordie Bellaire. Can’t wait to see it.

Have a spiffy and safe weekend, everyone. See you next week.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Are you a librarian? Do you have style? Check out Librarian Wardrobe! 

Oscar Wilde’s wife Constance died when she was only 40. Now, the family has come to a conclusion about what happened.

If you like languages and maps, then hi, we are friends! And also, you would probably like this collection of 23 charts on the topic. 

Someone has found a way to blame T.S. Eliot for hipsters. They have a good point, actually.

And speaking of hipsters, if you want to send a message which looks beautifully handwritten, but is actually inked by a robot, then Hello Bond is for you. (I am also available for hire for handwriting duties, like addressing cards and such, but I am not nearly as cool as a robot.)

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Wow, XKCD has been knocking it out of the park lately. Today’s entry shows the ever-moving past and future of movies.

Laughing Squid now has a store! 

Most Americans are sick of ice and snow at this point, but these photos of “Icehenge” in Wisconsin are incredible.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

So, in the 21st century, do you think drone sightings will become the new UFO sightings?

Don’t let David Icke know, but someone ran the Blade Runner tests on some San Francisco politicians, and the replicants may already be among us.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Here’s some lovely art for this dreary Monday.

I have a print by William DeGouve de Nuncques which I absolutely love, and I had no idea he was one of the original Surrealists! 

 In the Netherlands, they’ve built a bike path with glowing lights to evoke Van Gogh’s Starry Night design.

Following along with the centennial of WWI, the poetry of the Great War is discussed.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015





My dad died over the weekend. I don't know yet exactly when he died; I found him in his apartment on Monday.


His obituary gives the basics, but leaves out so much. It doesn't tell you that he graduated high school at sixteen (and swore no child of his would ever skip a grade). It doesn't talk about the years he spent teaching high school English, or how he helped Robert Wilson build The Poles art installation in Ohio one hot summer in the town where he would meet my mother. It doesn't tell you how he created WCET's "Zoo Zoo Zoo" program and put Thane Maynard in front of a camera. It doesn't talk about how he learned to master of martial arts in his fifties, and how he lived in a log cabin in rural Ohio for nearly twenty years.

It doesn't talk about how he could drive you crazy with his silences and his stubbornness, or how he could make you laugh with his absurdist humor, or how he could simultaneously terrify and delight small children with a raised eyebrow. He wrote books -- whole series of books -- for the people he loved, and he never stopped finding new authors and films to examine in detail, from Emily Dickinson to J.K. Rowling, from Perry Mason to Top Gear.

He was my dad, and I've already caught myself thinking of stuff to ask him, stuff to tell him, stuff to show him, forgetting that he's gone. I loved him so much, and will miss him so much.



Friday, February 13, 2015

Happy Friday the 13th! We have three of them this year, so get ready for weird happenstances.

From Cassandra:
  • Revisiting Milgram’s experiment. Cassandra had a good point: let’s look at the people who refused to shock the participant and/or walked out of the experiment. 
  • A 1973 paper on psychology. This quote grabbed me: “Suppose that in the next thirty years we continued as we are now going. Another hundred phenomena, give or take a few dozen, will have been discovered and explored. Another forty oppositions will have been posited and their resolution initiated. Will psychology then have come of age?” 
  • Graverobbing in 1820s Scotland led to mortsafes, which really need to show up in movies or videogames or something similar. 

From Julie:

From Zazoo:

And finally, from Facebook: Hot Dudes Reading, an Instagram page which is just what it says.

Have a spiffy weekend and Valentine’s Day, everyone! See you next week.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

And we're back, after a few days of chaos!

I am a sucker for anything sung in Swahili (blame my upbringing; I spent a good deal of time among Swahili speakers), so I give you this.


Friday, February 06, 2015

Happy Friday!

From Julie: The Vikings not only invaded England, they also invaded the English language. 

Also from Julie: The four surviving 800-year-old copies of the Magna Carta are on display together! 

From Cassandra: Empathy for patients can vary widely, especially in the mental health field. 

Swiped from Tara’s Research Buzz: Prada has put their archives online, back to 1987. Hooray for '80s fashion goodness!

A mom let her toddler dress her for a week, and the results are pretty great. 

Remember the “styles through the decades” video from a few weeks ago? Now there’s a video showing the ideal women’s body through the ages. This just served to convince me I’m probably supposed to be living in the Victorian era. (I’m glad I’m not, though. I like indoor plumbing. And computers.)

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you next week.

Thursday, February 05, 2015

It’s Thursday! And that means it’s busy!

The Library of Congress is now able to send email alerts on legislation. 

ProQuest has digitized many of the “most influential” British magazines. I was hoping this included Smash Hits, but no such luck.

The National Mall could look like it’s from the future! Well, eventually. In the future, probably. So it'll look like it's from the present, in the future. Um, never mind. (But it looks cool, trust me.)

Wednesday, February 04, 2015

On Monday, I saw an article about Iceland building a new temple to the old Norse gods. Ooo, I thought, that would be good for Folderol. Since Monday, I’ve seen this linked about a dozen times, so it’s not exactly news any longer…but hey, it’s still neat!

Who wouldn’t love a parcel of terror delivered to their home each month? Go look!

New York City’s subway system is not only a marvel of urban transportation, but it’s also a huge repository of art. There’s a new book out detailing what you can see and where.

Shakespeare in Detroit! King Lear is their next production.

Tuesday, February 03, 2015

It’s another random link week! I’m going through a backlog and will get back on the organized theme soon.

Here’s something which sort of fits the usual Tuesday, however: Telegraph operators had their own culture, with romances, newsletters, and labor issues.

The rural creative class exists, and went through a tough time during the recession, and is now trying to rise again. There's a map showing where the rural creative class exists, and I love that I can pinpoint my college town exactly.

“Where Mis’ry Moans” is the latest exhibit at Harvard Law, and focuses on prison reformers of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Bunny can tell you that I am always looking at the background action in movies and TV shows. Art in Film looks at the art in the movies that might not be mentioned, but is right there for the admiring!

Bunny can also tell you that getting up in the middle of the night is pretty normal for me. Apparently that means I should go be creative at 3:30 am. 

And finally: are alien abductions just repressed memories of anesthesia awakenings? Interesting!

Monday, February 02, 2015

Hi! Lots going on today. This quick post may be replaced later with a longer, more substantial one, or it may get pushed to Tuesday. Stay tuned.