Camelflage

"Camelflage" is a cleverly-named feminine "visual privacy undergarment," described by the manufacturer as follows:

If you are an active, fashion conscious or contemporary woman then Camelflage panties are for you. These aren't your ordinary panty, they were specifically designed to smooth out your feminine parts under tight clothing. Yoga and exercise pants, leggings, tight shorts, skinny jeans or even some work trousers can have a shorter inseam. You have enough to worry about these days; the last thing you need to think about is your panties riding up during your cardio kick boxing class.

Grammatically awkward, but reasonably self-explanatory. Via Fritinancy, which presented this as "relief for the heartbreak of cameltoe."  Those unfamiliar with "cameltoe" can read about the subject at Wikipedia.

"The Absence Paradox"

If you are somewhere else, you are not here.
You are not in Rome; you are somewhere else.
Therefore you are not here.

Found in the Futility Closet.

Best profession for a giraffe

Entitled "Born to be a librarian", by ILoveDoodle, via Librarianista.

Impressive libraries

Top - University Club Library (New York), photo by Peter Bond.
Middle - Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (New Haven), photo by Lauren Manning.
Bottom - Admont Abbey Library (Austria), photo by Ognipensierovo.

I found these three in a group of fifteen photos at Pix Grove.

Mubarak's wealth

When I posted a query last week asking why Mubarak doesn't just leave Egypt, I commented that "he must have gobs of money."  Even though I'm a seasoned cynic, I was startled by the number cited by ABC News:

Experts say the wealth of the Mubarak family was built largely from military contracts during his days as an air force officer. He eventually diversified his investments through his family when he became president in 1981. The family's net worth ranges from $40 billion to $70 billion, by some estimates...

"The business ventures from his military and government service accumulated to his personal wealth," said Jamal. "There was a lot of corruption in this regime and stifling of public resources for personal gain."

Jamal said that Mubarak's assets are most likely in banks outside of Egypt, possibly in the United Kingdom and Switzerland...

Gross national income is $2,070 per family in Egypt, according to the World Bank.

Butterfly dress from the 1890s

This blog has featured quite a few butterfly-related items, including ladies dresses (here, here, and here).  This latest addition comes from the curiously-entitled tumblr Sex, vintage, & Royals.

Edwardian girl (1911)

Apparently a companion piece to this photo ("Vintage hand colored real photo postcard, circulated in 1911, divided back, published by Gustave Liersch & Co. (GLCo), Berlin, Germany. © Casas-Rodríguez Collection, 2009. Some rights reserved.)

Found at Vintage Photography. 

Addendum:  The young model's name was Grete Reinwald (dozens of photos and some biographical information at the link).

Unfriend?

Via The Frustrated Teacher.

Frilled lizard

Undoubtedly, one of the quirkiest sights in nature is the gangly retreat of an Australian frilled lizard. When this unique creature feels threatened, it rises on its hind legs, opens its yellow-colored mouth, unfurls the colorful, pleated skin flap that encircles its head, and hisses. If an attacker is unintimidated by these antics, the lizard simply turns tail, mouth and frill open, and bolts, legs splaying left and right. It continues its deliberate run without stopping or looking back until it reaches the safety of a tree.

Frilled lizards, or "frillnecks," are members of the dragon family that live in the tropical and warm temperate forests and savanna woodlands of northern Australia...

Text from National Geographic. Photo from the State Library of New South Wales, via First Time User.

Waterboarding of babies

Water torture of babies is one way some members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day instil fear of authority, a former member testified Wednesday...

"They spank the baby and when it cries, they hold the baby face up under the tap with running water. When they stop crying, they spank it again and the cycle is repeated until they are exhausted." It's typically done by fathers and it's called "breaking in."

Outside the courthouse, Jessop said water torture is common enough that there doesn't seem any shame attached to the practice...

The full story is at the Montreal Gazette, via Get Cynical. (In all fairness we should note that this testimony was presented during the course of a custody trial).

Queen Marie of Romania

Click for bigger/even more dreadful.


Source, via Vintage Photography.

The increasing role of Al Jazeera

Excerpts from an article at The Big Think:

Scholars and foreign policy experts have long argued that channels like al Jazeera have fundamentally redefined how Arab audiences view politics by recasting political issues in regional terms and embedding Pan-Muslim and Pan-Arab narratives within its news content...

A large portion of Arab audiences who watched al Jazeera's extensive month-long coverage of Tunisia, and now Egypt, are interpreting these events and outcomes through transnational Muslim and Arab political lenses, rather than as Jordanian, Saudi Arabian, Moroccan, Yemini etc, etc...

Egyptians who view the United States and Israel through a transnational Muslim -- rather than Egyptian -- political lens may perceive a very different set of (self) interests, policy choices, and relations than currently exist. In turn, if a new, more democratic regime emerges in Egypt, it will need to be responsive to public sentiment in order to gain and maintain long-term legitimacy -- which may mean shifting the nature of its relations with the United States and Israel.

And on a related note, ABC News reports that the Mubarak goon squad burned the Al Jazeera office in Cairo:

That authorities have targeted reporters for Al Jazeera English – as well as those for Al Jazeera Arabic -- shows how the younger, more analytical of the two channels has come echo the Arabic channel's ability to get under the skin of autocratic, unpopular regimes...

Al Jazeera English has its detractors, but its coverage of Egypt has been lauded by most independent critics as aggressive, informative and more extensive than its competitors. Its increasing influence has earned the ire less of the United States -- often called its most obvious target, but which this week defended its right to report freely -- than of the governments of the region. Today at least four governments in the Arab world have banned the channel from operating, none more obviously than the Egyptians in the last two weeks...

A reminder that the streaming live coverage is accessible via the internet here.

We learn more about Nancy Reagan

The wife of the late President had a greater role in public affairs than most people realize.  From an article at PBS Newshour:

[I]nterviews with dozens of people who worked with both Reagans, as well as historians and journalists who have studied them, confirm she was far more influential in personnel decisions and even some policy, than the public knew. And she herself now acknowledges she worked behind the scenes, making personnel decisions that later helped moderate U.S. policy toward the then-Soviet Union, at a time when conservative Republicans were in fierce opposition...

Indeed, the extent of her influence in the campaigns, and especially as first lady, virtually unknown until recently, places her among the top three most powerful first ladies of modern times, according to historian Allida Black, who ranks her after Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton.

It was Nancy Reagan who persuaded her husband to make political moderate Baker the chief of staff, rather than the more conservative Ed Meese. It was Mrs. Reagan who five years later helped push out the next chief of staff, Don Regan, when she felt he was more interested in his own career than her husband's. And it was Nancy Reagan who helped orchestrate the removal of National Security Adviser William Clark over differences in dealing with the leaders of the Soviet Union. In fact, she worked quietly to make sure then-Secretary of State George Shultz, who shared her pro-détente views, got more face time with the president...

What we discovered is that this woman who took pains to appear most focused on throwing elegant state dinners and later, the "Just Say No" to drugs campaign, was in fact playing a crucial daily role in ensuring the success of her husband's career, which just happened to be the most important job in the country...

More at PBS, which will be airing a documentary about her this weekend.  I bet that will be quite interesting.

Cottage

1865. Petersburg, Virginia. "Cottage of Col. Nathaniel Michler, U.S. Engineers, at Bryant house." From photographs of the main Eastern theater of war, the siege of Petersburg, June 1864-April 1865. 

You can view the photo at wallpaper magnification at the Shorpy source.

Why doesn't Mubarak just leave?

That's the question I've been asking myself for several days.  He must have gobs of money, and little to gain by staying in power any longer.  Why not just go somewhere?  I hadn't heard that question addressed either during the Al Jazeera broadcasts or on the web, until today.  Here are excerpts from an article at Foreign Policy:

So why is Mubarak trying to squeeze a few more months out of his three-decade career in office and avowing his intentions to stay in Egypt rather than packing for the Riviera? It may be because exile isn't what it used to be; over the last 30 years, things have gotten increasingly difficult for dictators in flight. Successor regimes launch criminal probes; major efforts are mounted to identify assets that may have been stripped or looted by the autocrat, or more commonly, members of his immediate family...

More menacingly, human rights lawyers and international prosecutors may take a close look at the tools the deposed dictator used to stay in power: Did he torture? Did he authorize the shooting of adversaries?.. A trip to The Hague or another tribunal might be in his future...

If Mubarak leaves, he will need a safe haven: a government that will protect him from lawsuits and criminal charges. It is increasingly difficult for any Western state to make such promises. And that leaves him with few and generally unappealing exit options.

More at the link.  Via The Daily Dish.