"Catch and Wreck" - a new "game"

When the kids ripped Moore's hat off during the attack, she said they called her a "bald-headed b----." When she begged for the hat back, they stomped on it.

When she told them her son had died, that she'd been through so much already, she said they taunted her with his death.

And when she begged for mercy, they showed her none.

Police said they arrested one 12-year-old girl for the assault and have the names of another 12-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy who were involved...

"Then they took a stick and knocked me in the knees until I fell down," she said. "They kicked me in the back. I was crying and begging for these people to stop and they just wouldn't stop.

Police learned through interviews that the beatings were a twisted "game" called "Catch and Wreck."

Moore said she was upset to hear she wasn't the first victim.

"I don't know if these kids hate society or hate life itself but I cannot believe they could do that to someone," she said. "Where is all that hatred coming from when you're only 11 or 12?"

Offered without comment. I'd love to rant about this, but there isn't time. Res ipsa loquitur.

Walk right in

"Old Helensburgh railway station closed in 1915.  Helensburgh, NSW, Australia."

Found at -yury-'s Flickr photostream, where the larger version is even more intriguing.

Removing St. Erasmus' small intestine

"Martyrdom of St Erasmus" by Dieric Bouts the Elder ca.1458, Sankt Peterskerk, Louvain.

This guy was tougher than Rasputin:

...he was "put into a pan seething with rosin, pitch, brimstone lead, and oil, [which were] pour[ed] ... into his mouth, [from] ... which he never shrinked." A searing hot cloak and metal coat were both tried on him, to no effect, and an angel eventually carried him away to safety."

His teeth were ... plucked out of his head with iron pincers. And after that they bound him to a pillar and carded his skin with iron cards, and then they roasted him upon a gridiron...and did smite sharp nails of iron in his fingers, and after, they put out his eyes of his head with their fingers, and after that they laid this holy bishop upon the ground naked and stretched him with strong withes bound to horses about his blessed neck, arms, and legs, so that all his veins and sinews that he had in his body burst."

He recovered from all that and more, but reportedly died when his small intestine was wound out on a windlass.  Wiki notes that "this late legend may have developed from interpreting an icon that showed him with a windlass, signifying his patronage of sailors."

Found at All Things Beautiful.

Treetop walkway - a century ago!

I thought treetop walkways were modern inventions (Kew has one), but this postcard from British Columbia shows one in use in the early 1900s.  I'll bet it was scary on a windy day.

Via Vintage Postcard Blog.

Mutilated money (1910)

One doesn't want to cast unjustified aspersions on distinguished gentlemen of the past, but one has to wonder how often during the incineration of damaged bills a few packets of them might have accidentally slipped into a coat pocket.

Via Lapham's Quarterly.

A May-December marriage

The Unequal Marriage, a painting by Vasily Pukirev (1862).  (via)

There are a surprisingly high number of slang terms for persons involved in such relationships.

Sunday smörgåsbord

OMG I can't believe how many links have accumulated in the past week.  I count 96.  Cyberspace is just not a place for compulsive accumulators with limited time resources.  Anyway, here's the linkdump of "leftovers" - things that don't require pictures or much explanation.   Photo found at Old Hollywood.

Paleontologists have uncovered what they believe is the oldest stone wall made by humans.  It partially blocked the entrance to a cave in Thessaly, and was constructed about 23,000 years ago.

A man attempting to be a Good Samaritan was robbed by scumbags in England while he was trying to save what he thought was a drowning child.

A discussion thread re why David Attenborough's voice is replaced by celebrity narrators when some BBC series are released in America.  There may be technical reasons for doing so, but I for one would prefer to seek out and purchase the Attenborough originals.

Glenn Greenwald discusses and trashes the accusations that Chrisitane Amanpour cannot be an objective host of the This Week television program, in part because she grew up in Iran and her family fled from Tehran during the Islamic Revolution.

Undercover police officers jumped out of an unmarked car, ambushing a man.  He ran away thinking he was about to be robbed or assaulted, so they shot him in the back of the head.  He wasn't guilty of anything; he was a pastor giving a ride to a member of his congregation who was a drug suspect.

This isn't a "TYWK" because everyone else has blogged it - video of President Bush shaking hands with a Haitian, then wiping his hands on Bill Clinton's shirt.  It's been explained elsewhere that this isn't a race-thing, it's a cleanliness-thing.  Whatever.

An article at Der Spiegel examines whether or not prostitution really occurred in the religious temples of ancient civilizations.

This video is called "Roof Sex."  It may or may not be safe-for-work at your workplace; if in doubt, you might mute the sound.

A man went into a frenzy in an Indiana supermarket, stabbing the meat with a knife and throwing it on the floor.  "Coffman told police that he is a vegetarian and gets upset when others consume beef, telling the employee that God sent him to ruin the meat and that he was trying to save little girls from food he believes would make them “chubby.”

Got Medieval disagrees with the story spreading widely on the 'net this week that portrayals of the Last Supper document progressively increasing food portions over the centuries.  It's not that simple, in part because the sizes of things (heads, hands, Jesus) in older paintings were larger because they were considered more important.

Wired Magazine has a 6-page article about the ingenious thief who stole the Sisi Star from an Austrian castle in 1998.  It's a true story.

A sun pillar

The vertical column of light is created when sunlight reflects/refracts off ice crystals in the atmosphere.  I posted a collection of such photos last year.  The one above is a recent Astronomy Photo of the Day.

The cautionary tale of Pauline and the Matches

Lewis Lapham explains:

German psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann wanted to read his kids to sleep with a storybook that was both entertaining and instructional, so he wrote and illustrated the first edition of what was to become Der Struwwelpeter, a picture book of moralizing fairy tales where the children don’t always meet happy endings.

Here's an excerpt:

Now, on the table close at hand,
A box of matches chanced to stand,
And kind Mamma and Nurse had told her,
That if she touched them they would scold her;
But Pauline said, "Oh, what a pity!
For, when they burn, it is so pretty...

When Minz and Maunz, the little cats, saw this,
They said, "Oh, naughty, naughty Miss!"
And stretched their claws,
And raised their paws;
"Tis very, very wrong, you know;
Me-ow, me-o, me-ow, me-o!
You will be burnt if you do so,
our mother has forbidden you, you know. "

Now see! oh! see, what a dreadful thing
The fire has caught her apron-string;
Her apron burns, her arms, her hair;
She burns all over, everywhere...

So she was burnt with all her clothes,
And arms and hands, and eyes and nose;
Till she had nothing more to lose
Except her little scarlet shoes;
And nothing else but these was found
Among her ashes on the ground.

For the rest of the text, visit Lapham's Quarterly (which has LOTS of interesting stuff).

Image credit to Omega's photostream.

Addendum: A hat tip to Keith, who found a muscial version of the poem.

Swarming robots pulling a child

I must be getting old; I didn't even know there were swarm bots. Or that you could use them to move children from room to room.

And for the first time (ever?) there is a funny and appropriate comment in the YouTube thread:

"Take her to the protein vats in organics processing lab 4."

Aviation oxygen mask

It looks ever so much like a modern nasal CPAP mask.

Via Sloth Unleashed.

A postmortem photo of a little girl with a drum

Twice last year I posted examples of postmortem photos (here, and here).  I'll do one more in order to show this tinted daguerrotype of Sarah Lawrence from the mid-nineteenth century.

Certain conventions, such as flowers in one hand or a recumbent pose, are typical of early postmortem portraiture, and were not generally used in portraits of the living. The cloth behind this girl is another fairly good sign of a postmortem photograph; the wrinkles in it show she was lying down or propped up against it...

Posthumous mourning painting was a socially acceptable part of American and European culture in the 19th century. The environments of these paintings varied from clouds to scenes of everyday life. This practice and style of representation continued in photography. In “posthumous mourning photography,” however, the range of possible presentation was limited. In paintings, any scene could be presented because it was a secondary rendition limited only by the imagination and talent of the artist. In many of these paintings, however, the deceased was presented with an object associated with death, such as a clock, wilted flower or willow tree. This daguerreotype uses a drum as the death-associated object...

From Sleeping Beauty II - Grief, Bereavement and the Family in Memorial Photography by Stanley B. Burns, M.D.

Via (OVO).

First butterfly of the year

 

The Mourning Cloak ("Nymphalis antiopa"), known to Brits as the "Camberwell Beauty," is always our first butterfly because it overwinters (probably under loose bark on trees) here in Wisconsin and other northern states, and doesn't need to migrate in from southern climes. At this time of year there are no significant flowers for it to nectar on, so it has adapted by getting nutrition from tree sap. Anyone who has enjoyed maple syrup (Sirop d'Erable) can understand the potential nutritional value of tree sap.

The food plants are in the willow family (willow, poplar, elm, birch), and the caterpillar is known as the "spiny elm caterpillar," feeding gregariously on those trees. I've not been able to locate caterpillars or eggs, so have not raised these, but would love to do so, because they are very handsome creatures.

Photo credit. Distribution map credit.

Update: I wrote this post on April 9 of 2009, and am reposting now because we've already seen our first Mourning Cloak on March 16 this year during a stretch of unusually warm (60+ degree) weather.   The following day we saw a thoroughly anomalous appearance of a Cabbage White, which had emerged from an overwintering chrysalis a full month ahead of schedule.

Secret passageways for your home

Pictured above is an offering from the Creative Home Engineering company.  Other doors hidden in bookshelves are depicted at Hide A Door, and other relevant links are assembled at Spot Cool Stuff.

2010 Winter Paralympics

Boston.com's The Big Picture has a 40-image photoset depicting participants in the recent Paralympics.  Pictured above a U.S. slalom standing athlete and a Japanese hockey player.

Photo credits top (AP Photo/KEYSTONE/Dominic Favre) and bottom (Martin Rose/Bongarts/Getty Images).