Who Gives A Shirt?

Crow Tubing

shirty — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:54:07 +0000

Do crows overwinter in Russia? If not, they make the odd trip back for a ski holiday.

http://www.wimp.com/crowtubing/

Shitty Jobs

shirty — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:35:40 +0000

Was thrifting the other week and noticed a novel set during The Great Stink. I left the book but made a note to read up on the historical event, which was pretty interesting. My favourite part of the Wikipedia article, though, was this list of Sewage Related Occupations of the Era, which includes some fantastic job titles:

Toshers, also sometimes called grubbers, scavenged through the sewers looking for anything of value. They helped to ease the flow in the sewer systems by removing small items. Often whole families worked as toshers. This gave them some immunity to sewage-related diseases that killed many.

Mudlarks scavenged in the mud of the Thames and other rivers. They were generally young children who retrieved small items and sold them for very small amounts.

Nightsoil men removed human, animal, and household waste from London to farms outside the city for use as manure. However, as London expanded, there were fewer farms and they were further from the city. A farmer would have to pay an average of 2s 6d (12½p) for the manure. The trade ceased almost completely in 1870 when guano (deposits of bird droppings) from South America became available more cheaply. This caused an increase of households dumping waste into the street where it made its way to the Thames through the sewers and rivers.

Flushermen were employed by the Court of Sewers. These men would literally “flush” away waste and anything that might block the flow of water in the new sewer system. In Henry Mayhew’s book London Labour and the London Poor, he describes the look of the flushermen: “The flushermen wear, when at work, strong blue overcoats, waterproofed (but not so much as used to be the case, the men then complaining of the perspiration induced by them), buttoned close over the chest, and descending almost to the knees, where it is met by huge leather boots, covering a part of the thigh, such as are worn by the fishermen on many of our coasts. Their hats are fan-tailed, like the dustmen’s.”

Rat-catchers were hired by the city to catch rats in the underground sewer system in order to prevent the spread of diseases. These rat catchers were paid little, but their aid in preventing more disease during and after the great stink dramatically helped London.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Stink#Sewage-related_occupations_of_the_era

TEDTalk: Re-Captcha

shirty — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:22:28 +0000

I used to not-so-jokingly joke that I’d like to meet the guy who invented CAPTCHAs in a back alley. Well, thanks to a TEDTalk, I’ve kind of met him, and instead of greeting him with a brick, I’d like to shake his hand. This talk is fun, funny, informative, and marks him as the kind of guy who honestly wants to change the world for the better, despite what anyone who’s had to fill out a CAPTCHA might think.

Poetriffiti

shirty — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:25:37 +0000

I’m no tailor of portmanteaux, sadly, but I love this idea enough to attempt one. (And fail badly.)

Scottish artist Robert Montgomery goes about at night illegally plastering over advertisements with posters covered in his poetry. His very pleasing verse is presented in white typography on a black background, screaming out ideas about beauty, consumerism and hypocrisy, among other things. The elegant words, and their sparse presentation, have been appearing on hoardings for the last ten years. But Montgomery, who trained at Edinburgh College of Art, and whose intellectual basis for working tumbles out in glorious verbal torrents, is not really a street artist. Although he has been somewhat embraced by the movement. Instead, he thinks of himself as following in the wake of the Situationists, a group of European revolutionaries in the last century who constructed artistic situations (which today we might call guerrilla installations) in unexpected places, to promote their ideas.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/the-artist-vandalising-advertising-with-poetry-6353303.html

TEDTalk: Great Talks

shirty — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 18:02:34 +0000

I’ve long been an admirer of Steve Jobs, not least because he was the best presenter I’ve ever watched. His addresses were so effective the term “Stevenote” was coined in recognition. This TEDTalk by Nancy Duarte is useful for anyone who needs to get their ideas across, and hopes to do it with the same amount of “Reality Distortion Field” as the late, great, Steve.

http://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks.html

Ze Sniffles – Miracle Cure!*

shirty — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 20:23:24 +0000

*OK, it’s only temporary, but even a temporary relief from these damn sneezes and snuffles is welcome.

When I first clicked on this link from my Google search, I had one of those “Oh no! Back! Back! Back” reactions; I’d caught “mind-energy” out of the corner of my eye, and assumed it’d be one of those “think yourself healthy!” kind of sites. Acupressure was only a slight step up, but I figured to try it. Well, hallelu! A few squishy rounds of my sinuses and I’m sitting here breathing right for the first time in days. So simple a fix – why is this is the first time I’m reading of it?

http://www.mind-energy.net/archives/90-Get-rid-of-stuffed-or-running-nose-without-drugs.html

Ze Sniffles

shirty — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:22:42 +0000

Longest Inaugural Address: William Henry Harrison’s in 1841. He delivered the 1 hour 45 minute oration without wearing a hat or coat in a howling snowstorm, came down with pneumonia, and died one month later. His was the shortest tenure in the White House.

Which led to my favourite LOLcat (or LOLpresident, in this case) ever:

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2009/01/inaugural-adresses-the-longest-shortest-dumbest-and-most-memorable/

Billy Bragg Live

shirty — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:39:13 +0000

I’ve spent a lot of time on Archive.org lately, for historical research purposes. Today, I noticed they have more than just texts – there are music and video archives, as well. Sadly, neither Darren Hanlon nor the Lucksmiths are represented amidst the live recordings, but there are a ton of Billy Bragg shows. Enjoy!

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=%28collection%3ABillyBragg%20OR%20mediatype%3ABillyBragg%29%20AND%20-mediatype%3Acollection&sort=date

V-Day: Operation Overload

shirty — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:16:46 +0000

I normally don’t like comics. The ones drawn by capable artists are poorly written. The best written ones look awful. And in almost all cases the story is so inane or introspective it would fail even more horribly as a short story or novel. But even with all these lowering my expectations, I can confidently declare that this is the best comic I’ve ever seen and read, without that being a backhanded compliment. More, please!

(Oh, and happy Valentine’s Day.)

http://english.bouletcorp.com/2012/02/01/darkness/

Paris, 1900

shirty — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:48:11 +0000

I’ve never been to a World’s Fair, and that spectacle seems to have diminished in importance over the past century. Back in the day, though, they were A Big Deal, as evidenced by these colourised photos from the Paris event, in which the city’s buildings seem to have doubled in number for the occasion – I don’t recognise half of the structures shown here! Some of the photos are fantastic; I had a hard time choosing which to include, but in the I went with my heart.