"Merveilleuses of 1908"

These fashionable ladies stepping out at Longchamp at the turn of the last century were described as the new Merveilleuses by April-Mo at Deviant Art.

The Incroyables ("incredibles") and their female counterparts, the Merveilleuses ("marvelous women", roughly equivalent to "fabulous divas"), were members of a fashionable aristocratic subculture in Paris during the French Directory (1795–1799). Whether as catharsis or in a need to reconnect with other survivors of the Reign of Terror, they greeted the new regime with an outbreak of luxury, decadence, and even silliness. They held hundreds of balls and started fashion trends in clothing and mannerisms that today seem exaggerated, affected, or even effete (decadent, self-indulgent).

Via Alabaster.

Vintage Bob Dylan (1964)

YouTube link.

Posted to commemorate last week's 73rd birthday of our generation's premier poet.

Literary critic Christopher Ricks suggests that the song transcends the political preoccupations of the time in which it was written. Ricks argues that Dylan is still performing the song, and when he sings "Your sons and your daughter/Are beyond your command", he sings inescapably with the accents not of a son, no longer perhaps primarily a parent, but with the attitude of a grandfather. Ricks concludes: "Once upon a time it may have been a matter of urging square people to accept the fact that their children were, you know, hippies. But the capacious urging could then come to mean that ex-hippie parents had better accept that their children look like becoming yuppies. And then Republicans..."

Via a little bit of this, a little bit oft hat, a little more of.

Untrimmed horse hooves

There may be more pathology at play here rather than just a simple lack of trimming.
Some horse owners/enthusiasts out there may be able to clarify.

Addendum:  A tip of the blogging hat to reader Mirar, who found one explanation offered in a Reddit thread:

[T]his is laminitis. Its caused from over eating and the rotation of the coffin bone in the hoof. It's this bad because the horse hasn't had hoof care in a while.

Second addendum:  And, as usual, a regular reader here (Mel V.) offers this more detailed analysis:

This is the result of years of neglect. Laminitis is quite possibly comorbid, but it doesn't cause hoof overgrowth.

Laminitis is a breakdown of the tissues (lamine) that connect the hoof wall to the bone. It is as excruciatingly painful as it sounds. It's most commonly caused by a too-rich diet, but it can also be caused by other problems, like severely neglected and distorted hooves. Diagnosis usually requires taking an x-ray and looking at the position of the bone in the hoof (looking for 'rotation of the coffin bone'). Hooves grow like our fingernails, so the hoof shape can be fixed eventually, but laminitis is much more difficult to repair and can be so painful that euthanization is the only humane option.

Additional details and links are in his comment.

Third addendum:  Found by reader Nolandda:

Google image search seems to indicate that this is a photo of the case of "Dusty the Pony".   This post at Strange Biology has a somewhat happy ending as Joel Hulst in Minnesota has apparently significantly improved the condition of the poor animal.

Photo found at imgur (via The Soul is Bone) without attribution to the original source; no comparable image found with a TinEye reverse image search.

"Eggcorn" explained

Last week the Columbia Journalism Review made note of The Eggcorn Database:

Eggcorns are not just misspellings, or things that make no sense, like malapropisms or crash blossoms. They do make sense...

Thus we have eggcorns like “he is at her beckon call,” instead of “beck and call.” The image is of a woman signaling to a man to move closer, “beckoning” him.”..

We also have a “bold-faced lie” instead of the original idiom, a “bald-faced lie.” When you are being particularly “bold” about a lie, or it is printed in “bold” or headline type, the eggcorn makes sense. “Bald-faced” traces to the meaning of “bald” as worthless or paltry; it has its own predecessor in the “bare-faced lie.”...

Eventually, many “eggcorns” may become standard English... One that is close is “hone in on,” which we have been railing against for years as an eggcorn of “home in on. 

More at both links. ("Eggcorn," btw, is an eggcorn for "acorn").

Bat scat is phat

It's not as colorful as, say, unicorn poop, but it does sparkle:

It’s a diet of insects that puts the shine in bat guano. Insects’ exoskeletons, or hard outer coverings, are made of chitin. Chitin is chemically a lot like plant cellulose; it’s difficult to digest, and passes through a gut relatively unchanged...

You learn something every day.

Photo credit: Grover Schrayer at Flickr.

"Phat" = (slang: excellent): cool (slang), excellent, fab (dated slang), rad (dated slang), super, wicked (slang)

Memento mori in graphic form

Found at Strategy and Analytics, where there is also a companion graph showing expected remaining years of life vs. current age.  Data from the U.S. Social Security Administration.

Why koalas are sometimes "treehuggers"

From an interesting report in Wired:

In a new paper in the Royal Society’s Biology Letters, a team of Australian and American researchers report that as temperatures rise, koalas tend to put more of their bodies in contact with the trees they inhabit. The science behind this involves something called conductive heat transfer, wherein a warm object (say, a koala) transfers heat to a cooler one (like a tree) and both objects approach the same temperature. The trees stay cool by sucking up water hidden deep in the soil from the baking sun...

They found that as it got hotter outside, the koalas tended to sit lower in the trees, in a posture now formally described in the scientific literature as “tree-hugging.” In milder weather, the koalas sat higher, reclined back, or rolled themselves into balls.

“Koalas have a very limited diet and so will, when given the opportunity, choose food trees,” says Warren Porter, a co-author and professor of zoology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. However, the koalas preferred acacia trees over eucalyptus in warmer weather. That makes sense: the acacias, which the koalas do not eat, tended to be 6.5 – 8.5°F cooler than the eucalyptus trees the koalas dine on.

Butterflies also take advantage of conductive heat transfer, but in their case it is used to warm their bodies on cool days.

Wedding party, 1920

The unusual tailoring of the pageboy's blouse generates a bit of visual ambiguity...

Via Vintage Photography.

Smog in a thermal inversion

Photo of Almaty, Kazakhstan (credit).  A reminder of why clean air standards are important.

What vehicle does the Grim Reaper drive?

Photo credit (and location of sign) at Hairpin.

Target targeted for "open carry" demonstration

Photo from Mother Jones.

Evolving popularity of chess openings

Based on the study of "a data set of over 650,000 chess tournament games ranging back to the 15th century," this graphic depicts the first three moves of the games.

Found at Randal S. Olson, where there are separate graphic depictions of the evolution over time of White's first move alone, and White's first + Black's first.  Via Kottke.

How to remove siding from a house

Place the house under a hailstorm, like the one that hit Nebraska yesterday (photo credit).  The advantages of this method is that it also removes windows, downspouts, and nearby vegetation.  Salon has a slideshow of some representative hailstones and the damage inflicted on automobiles.

A late spring arrival (Papilio polyxenes)

Our first Black Swallowtail eclosed this week; it had spent the winter in a chrysalis in our screen porch.  On the day it emerged, a Giant Swallowtail cruised through the garden and we saw an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail up in the trees, giving us the uncommon Swallowtail Trifecta.

Obama requests $1,000,000,000 to boost U.S. military in Euroope

Standing with Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, Obama said the U.S. plans to send more military equipment and rotate additional American troops into the region. He called on lawmakers back in Washington to provide the funding to sustain the effort.

"Today, I'm announcing a new initiative to bolster the support of our NATO allies here in Europe," Obama said at Warsaw's Belweder Palace. "Under this effort, and with the support of Congress, the United States will preposition more equipment in Europe."

After arriving Tuesday morning in Warsaw, Obama and Komorowski mounted a display of military solidarity as they greeted each other in front of F-16 fighter jets in an airplane hangar.

Right.  Because the 28 member countries of NATO can't be expected to expend their own resources to counter the perceived threat of a bellicose Russia.  Fortunately we don't have any other practical use for a billion U. S. taypayer dollars.

It never ends.  Every presidential administration pulls this kind of stunt.  I'm tired of it.