Friday 16 November 2012

Some Friday frivolity for you: includes a couple of serious items and some superb time wasters!

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Vintage Photographs From Inside 10 Famous Libraries
via Flavorwire by Emily Temple
It’s no secret that we’re fans of beautiful libraries here, but it’s not only gorgeous architecture and shiny mahogany work benches that excite us. Inspired by a wonderful collection of vintage photographs of the New York Public Library’s stacks that we spotted over at Retronaut, we decided to put together a mini collection of vintage photographs from inside famous libraries both at home and abroad. Often more subdued than modern libraries, they seem to hum with wisdom through that black and white film – and we bet the old-book smell is just to die for.
Page through to check them out, and if you feel inspired to go visit a real life library after you do, well that’s just icing on the cake.
The New York Public Library [via NYPL]
A stereogram of the great hall in the Vatican Library by William Herman Rau. [via Wikipedia]
The Long Room in the Trinity College Library, from Ireland in Pictures, 1898. [via Villanova University Digital Library]
The Botany Library in Chicago’s Field Museum, 1912. [via The Field Museum Library]
Folger Shakespeare Library, 1932. [via Cornell University Library]
Cambridge University Library. [via]

The Brooklyn Public Library’s children’s room, 1941. [via]
London Library post-Blitz, c. 1940. [via]
The Law Library of the Library of Congress, c. 1895. [via]
Boston Public Library, 1972. [via Boston Public Library]
Allow yourself plenty of time to look at the nine images I have not included here since you should go down all the [via] links to see yet more great images!

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Pleased to meet you? Joyce turned up sloshed to meet Proust. Allen Ginsberg thought Patti Smith was a pretty boy. He was dismayed to learn otherwise... more

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Friday Fun: Mummy Blaster
via How-To Geek by Asian Angel
In this game your mission is to destroy all the mummies waiting for you in this long forgotten temple.
All that you have is a limited amount of explosives and your strategic skills to win the day!
Can you get the job done?
Try it without any help or go via Asian Angel’s walk-through.

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Wall Street Ferry: 1905
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Wall Street Ferry: 1905
New York circa 1905
“U.S. Government Dock and Wall Street Ferry”
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
View original post

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Law and libido. Harmless titillation to some is a grave crime to others. ’Twas always thus: Mesopotamia was no place to get caught cheating... more

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The Sulfur Stench of the Salton Sea
via Britannica Blog by Kara Rogers
Earlier this week [of 14 September 2012], strong winds and storms in southern California caused the Salton Sea to turn over – its bottom waters upwelling and trading places with its surface waters. The result was a massive release of hydrogen sulphide into the air. While the Salton Sea has been known to produce a sulphur odour on a fairly regular basis, this year's “odour event” created an unusual stir.

Salton Sea, in the Colorado Desert, southern California.
Credit: Daniel Mayer (mav)
Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 (Generic)
Continue reading

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New York Public Library Stacks, 1907-1911
via Retronaut by Amanda

Source: New York Public Library
And the rest of Amanda’s selection is here

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
So history adheres to no general laws, no discernible patterns. Then why are huge databases being used to predict events?... more

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William Gibson explains why science fiction writers don’t predict the future
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
William Gibson speaks with Wired’s Geeta Dayal about his new book Distrust That Particular Flavor (my review), and particularly the idea that science fiction sucks at predicting stuff.
Continue reading here

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The First Ferris Wheel, 1893
via Retronaut by Amanda
I wasn’t sure whether to pick one of the “let’s show off our engineering skills” images but in the end settled for this.

The rest of Amanda’s selection is here




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