Saturday 18 October 2014

Trivia (should have been 20 December)

The Paddy Wagon: 1919
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
The Paddy Wagon: 1919
Washington, D.C., 1919
“Franklin Motor Car Co. police van”
The latest in law enforcement
Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative
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Gin Lane vs Beer Street
via Prospero by O.W.

On this day [26 October 2014] 250 years ago William Hogarth, the English painter and printmaker, died suddenly from an aneurysm at his studio in Leicester Square, London. As an artist who portrayed both the tragic and the ridiculous with aplomb, Hogarth was one of the 18th century’s most sparkling talents.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Reign of the robots
Human cognition in the age of digital automation: “What if the cost of machines that think is people who don’t?”… more

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45 Transgressive Spins on Shakespeare, Past and Present
via Flavorwire by Moze Halperin and Shane Barnes
After seeing The Public’s most recent production of King Lear this summer, Ira Glass came to the incendiary conclusion that “Shakespeare sucks.” The comment riled many, for reasons that are largely obvious to anyone who understands the Bard’s place in the literary canon, but also because of the threat that such an influential public figure’s disapproval poses to an art form that’s already been noted to be “dying” at the slow pace of a stabbed Shakespearean character.
Now, some would counter that theater’s adherence to the past is what’s dooming it in the first place, and that our reverence toward Shakespeare in particular is the core of the problem. But Shakespeare has actually proven to be one of the most vital vessels for change in theater: among directors who aren’t too reverent, who see it as a basis rather than a bible, his old texts have contributed to a great deal of innovation and theatrical radicalism.
Here are 45 productions that – through radical politics, outlandish visuals, and enormous Kevin Spacey heads, might change the way you (and Ira Glass) – view Shakespeare.
Check these out for yourself

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Can You Find All The Hidden Messages In These Brand Logos?
via makeuseof by Dave LeClair
Chances are great that you’re probably heard of most of the brands featured on this infographic. You’ve probably seen each of these logos. But have you really examined them? Turns out there’s more to each of them than meets the eye. Take a look, and see if you can find all of the hidden messages. Don’t worry if you can’t figure it out, because it’s all explained on the image.
Via Made By Oomph
Continue
Even with the explanation there were a couple I simply didn't get at first.

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Virtue of scientific thinking
Science once had moral authority. But today, with scientism resurgent, skepticism reigns. The cost is paid by all of us… more

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How Lincoln Played the Press
via 3 Quarks Daily by Gary Wills in the New York Review of Books
Wills_2-110614_jpg_250x1245_q85
People are amazed or disgusted, or both, at today’s “power of the media.” The punch is in that plural, “media” – the twenty-four-hour flow of intermingled news and opinion not only from print but also from TV channels, radio stations, Twitter, emails, and other electronic “feeds”. This storm of information from many sources may make us underestimate the power of the press in the nineteenth century when it had just one medium – the newspaper. That also came at people from many directions – in multiple editions from multiple papers in every big city, from “extras” hawked constantly in the streets, from telegraphed reprints in other papers, from articles put out as pamphlets.
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25 of Music’s Most Obnoxiously Misogynist Songs
via Flavorwire by Tom Hawking
As long as there’s been music, there have been unpleasant lyrical descriptions based on the subject’s gender – songwriters have long been relying on stereotypes and/or on demonizing the opposite sex as a way of expressing their pain and heartbreak and resentment and whatever else is troubling them. None of this, of course, means that doing so is anything less than obnoxious, so as an exercise in symmetry, over the next couple of days, we’re looking at both misogyny and misandry (because, you know, that’s a real thing!) in music. First, then, the misogynist side of the equation.
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All the songs have YouTube links.

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Who was the Marquis de Sade?
120 Days, once hidden in a wall of the Bastille, is one of the most valuable manuscripts on earth. And its author, the Marquis de Sade, has become a hero in the country that once scorned him… more

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Recreations of pornographic Middle Ages badges [NSFTT]
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
“Whether these badges were worn to celebrate the misrule of carnival days, attract good sexual luck, or merely amuse and titillate their owners, they show us a whole new side of medieval culture.”
See for yourself

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