There's a metaphor here...

...or perhaps a simile. Just can't think of anything right now. But a cool photo, found at Suddenly.

Canine Regulations

Via Nothing to do with Arbroath.

Galileo justified

Hammer and feather dropped on the moon...

Shoe

Designed by a London architect:

The product is made of carbon fibre, laminated with rubber on the side that touches the floor and leather on the side next to the skin... This form felt light and airy on the foot. So we called it the ‘Mojito’ as it was rather like a twist of lime skin.

Via Neatorama.

Is this a metaphor for the American political system?

Credit, via Illusion360.

Fallingwater

"Hailed by Time magazine shortly after its completion as Wright's "most beautiful job," it is also listed among Smithsonian magazine's Life List of 28 places "to visit before ...it's too late." It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966. In 1991, members of the American Institute of Architects named the house the "best all-time work of American architecture" and in 2007, it was ranked twenty-ninth on the list of America's Favorite Architecture according to the AIA."

Fallingwater has also been called RisingMildew by some wags, and it has developed some structural problems, perhaps not unexpectedly for a home built in the 1930s. The video above is done with computer graphics; it's a bit fast and "zoomy," but still interesting. Another interesting video rendition is the walkthrough done with a Half Life engine.

Groceries

Click the photo to see the entire image, and then click it again to view as wallpaper.

We all see this every week - but not from this perspective. Looking at this abundance and variety has to give one pause...

Wallachian parking lot?

Had this been created by Vlad Tepes, the spindle would have entered the tailpipe. This was actually "The Spindle," an iconic sculpture in Berwyn for twenty years. It was eventually demolished after an eBay auction failed to provide any bidders.

Car enthusiasts are invited to identify the makes/models/years of the 8 cars.

Photo credit johnmartine63.

Uroscopy

European depiction of the Persian (Iranian) doctor Al-Razi, in Gerardus Cremonensis "Recueil des traités de médecine" 1250-1260.

For those unfamiliar with the procedure, uroscopy is explained here.

Image credit, via (exclamation mark).

More info re water ice on Mars

Above: A fresh, 6-meter-wide, 1.33-meter-deep crater on Mars photographed on Oct. 18, 2008, and again on Jan. 14, 2009, by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera. The bright material is ice, which fades from Oct. to Jan. because of sublimation and obscuration by settling dust.

Meteorites recently striking Mars have exposed deposits of frozen water not far below the Martian surface. Pictures of the impact sites taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show that frozen water may be available to explorers of the Red Planet at lower latitudes than previously thought...

So far, the camera team has found bright ice exposed at five Martian sites with new craters that range in depth from approximately half a meter to 2.5 meters (1.5 feet to 8 feet). The craters did not exist in earlier images of the same sites. Bright patches darkened in the weeks following initial observations, as freshly exposed ice vaporized into the thin Martian atmosphere...

More info at the NASA website (whence also the image credit).

Anagrams

I haven't checked the equivalence of the two statements, but anagrams of long passages are not difficult to create.

Here are two examples from my files (credit unknown):

"To be or not to be: that is the question, whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune..."

Anagrams as: "In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten."

And -

"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind --Neil Armstrong"

anagrammed: "A thin man ran; makes a large stride, left planet, pins flag on moon. On to mars."

And finally, this famous coupling -

"This is my story of Jack the Ripper, the man behind Britain's worst unsolved murders. It is a story that points to the unlikeliest of suspects: a man who wrote children's stories. That man is Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, author of such beloved books as Alice in Wonderland."

- which anagrams as...

"The truth is this: I, Richard Wallace, stabbed and killed a muted Nicole Brown in cold blood, severing her throat with my trusty shiv's strokes. I set up Orenthal James Simpson, who is utterly innocent of this murder. P.S. I also wrote Shakespeare's sonnets, and a lot of Francis Bacon's works too."

Credit for the last one to Harper's Magazine (February 1997, letters to editor).

Photo credit.

I'll be glad when London fashion week is over...

It's like driving by the carnage at an accident; you feel you shouldn't be rubbernecking, but you can't help gawking...

The photos above are from a gallery of 16 at The Guardian. All of them depict men's fashion, only one of which is specifically called fetishwear.

Photo credits: Andy Rain/EPA, Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images, Danny Martindale/WireImage.com, Zak Hussein/PA, Yui Mok/PA.

You're only as old as you feel...

Via Titam et le Sirop d'Erable (bottom) and unknown (top).

Nabokov edits Kafka's Metamorphosis

Nabokov, of course, was a respected entomologist, so his interest in Kafka's Metamorphosis should not be surprising. His lecture on Kafka is here. The photo above is of the first page of his teaching copy, in which he appears to be either correcting the translation or editing for improvement - not sure which. I haven't located the other pages.

The Staffordshire Hoard

I said yesterday that I wouldn't be double-posting material that I write up for Neatorama, but I'll make an exception for this once-in-a-lifetime event, and because here I can post more of the spectacular photos and append some thoughts of my own.

The news coming out of Britain today is of the greatest treasure hoard ever discovered on the British Isles - perhaps the finest in European history. Found by an amateur with a metal detector, the assemblage totals perhaps 1,500 items (they're still extracting them from lumps of earth), dating to the 7th century.

It's gold and silver, but it's not just coins. Included are clothing accessories, jewelry, and lots of armor- and war-related items. Every item appears to be designed for males, so the supposition is that this was the spoils of battle (or the accumulation of a lifetime in the military). The gold pieces are beautifully crafted with filigree and inlaid precious stones (garnet) and glass.

Pictured above, top to bottom, are a millefiori stud with an inlaid glass mosaic, a gold band with a Biblical phrase (in Latin) from Psalm 67, part of a design of two eagles and a fish, a plaque with stylized interlaced arms, a decorated dagger hilt, and an apparently solid gold buckle and plate.

I've spent a long time trying to wrap my mind around this discovery - reminding myself that this treasure didn't come from the time of Elizabeth. These were made a THOUSAND YEARS before she was on the throne. These predate the Plantagenets and the Normans. This is before King Canute challenged the tide. Before Alfred the Great, for cryinoutloud. These were buried before there were English kings. Before there was an England, if I may be permitted to say such a thing (although I guess there would have been a "Britain.")

Someone buried this treasure during the Dark Ages - a time when one tends to think of men scrabbling about wearing animal skins and fighting with pointy sticks. But behind them on the battlefields there must have been magnificent warriors resplendent in gold and silver and probably elaborate silks and woolens that haven't survived. It boggles my mind.

One other comment, which I may have expressed on this blog before. The Brits are to be endlessly commended for their thoroughly enlightened policy regarding the discovery of buried treasure. The law of the land gives half the value of the find to the person who discovers it. In many (?most) countries the government tries to confiscate anything found or repatriate it to presumed descendents, with the result that magnificent finds like the above from the whole of the world's history are routinely sold on the black market to wealthy people who hide it, or worse yet, melted down for base metal value by "potholers" ravaging archaeologic sites. Kudoes to the Brits for rewarding the finders and preserving their heritage.

Here are some relevant links (including credits for the photos above) -

Link to BBC article with a slideshow of 12 photos.

Link to a gallery of 15 photos at The Guardian.

The Stafforshire Hoard, is the “home page” for the find, which is being co-managed by the British Museum, English Heritage, the University of Birmingham, and others. There are 619 photos at the site, but the server is very slow today - presumably nearly overwhelmed with traffic.

Update Nov 26: The hoard has been appraised at £3,285,000, which will be split between the man who found it and the farmer on whose land it was located.