Aging

This is sort of interesting. Did people age faster in the past? A lot of pictures that seem to prove that. It's hard to make this case with celebrities because so many of them have cosmetic surgery done but some don't. It's possibly true though. People have been trying to live healthier lifestyles in the past couple of decades at least. More people smoked in the past than do now and that really ages you. If you really look at the younger non-celebrities - the 15 year old girl, the young couple - they really don't look older than what we would expect today if you look past the old-fashioned clothing and hairstyles.

The World Wide Web is Grown Up Now? Maybe?

I see on Google that the World Wide Web is 30 years old today. When a person turns 30 that is the age at which they have to face the fact that they are actually grown up. So is the WWW grown up? I suppose it has and that's actually a little sad.

Who would have thought that one day we would be nostalgic for the way the Web used to be? Sure, it's a lot better now than it used to be and much of the cool stuff is still out there but these days most of us are like kids in the world's biggest library who just sit in the corner and gossip and taunt the kids at the next table and never even look at a single book. Oh well, you can improve the Web but there's not much you can do about people.

If I had to pick one thing I miss from the "good old days" of the Web - this might seem strange but the thing miss most is badly designed websites. Oh, they still exist but you never just accidentally stumble upon them like you used to. Fortunately, there are lists:

Web Pages That Suck
Top 50 Worst Website Designs
Top 10 Worst Websites

And a single website that proudly calls itself The World's Worst Website Ever

I feel better now. The World Wide Web that we have long known and loved is still alive. We just have to get away from Twitter and Facebook once in a while and look for it.

Forgotten Singer

In the late 1960s a young unknown singer named Vickie Jones was tricked into traveling to Florida and forced to impersonate Aretha Franklin. She was arrested and released with no charges filed, then had a brief career in her own name. I was going to post a video to go with this but I don't know if any exist. There are several Vickie Joneses on YouTube but I'm pretty sure none of them are her. Anyway, it's an interesting life story and it ended well, I think. Worthwhile reading.

Stuff Seen on Twitter

Beautiful, colorful art by Iris Scott.

I love these rain photos. They almost look like paintings.

This 1920's hair dryer:

I sort of want it. Not to use but just to have people walk into my house and say, "What the hell is that thing?!"

This must read article about "cultural appropriation". This subject ("cultural appropriation" but involving a different culture) came up a few months ago on one of the sewing blogs I read and a lovely woman of color said pretty much the same thing. We often make the mistake of forgetting that people of other cultures have differing opinions within their culture just as much as we do. Just be respectful. That's all you need to do.

Umbrella street, Portugal:

A disturbing short story about smart homes. I'm not a big fan of most "smart home" technology. I find all of it unnecessary and some of it just a little creepy. This story is also anti-GMO which I am not so that part of the story annoys me a little. I suppose bad things could happen but I think the potential for disaster is exaggerated.

And another artist, Tomasz Alen Kopera.

Black Composers

My intention was to observe Black History Month by posting videos of music by black composers two or three times a week. Well, I didn't quite make it. It turned out to be more like one a week. But I discovered a couple of composers I wasn't aware of and I really like what I've heard.

I'm going to end the month with probably the most famous African American composer, Scott Joplin. Like many people I was first introduced to Joplin's music by the movie, The Sting, still one of my favorite movies of all time. The arrangement of The Entertainer from the movie is still my favorite. Here's another favorite that I first heard in The Sting.

And from Joplin's opera Treemonisha

Tell a Fairy Tale

Did you know that today is Tell a Fairy Tale Day? What a wonderful idea for a Day! Also, did you know that there is a classification system for folk tales? Oh, that site looks like an incredibly fun way to waste an afternoon! Here's a history of the ATU Folk Tale Index.

Black Composers

Adolphus Hailstork "Sonata da Chiesa" for String Orchestra (1992)

This sonata sounds a bit like spring to me, which seems appropriate right now even though spring is still weeks away.

Black Composers

I was already slightly familiar with William Grant Still but I hadn't heard this particular piece before.

Random Linkage

World Wide Weirdies - Sounds like a take-off on the World Wide Web but these are actually from the 1970s.

Wooden Money - but no wooden nickels

Embroidery Portraits - Wow!

Creative Hyphenation and places your mind goes

Colorful Houses of South India

Customer Stories - I never get tired of these. I just keep reading and going, "What the hell was wrong with that person?" My fantasy is that some of the bad customers will read these, recognize themselves and feel shamed. (More likely they would get angry but I did say it's my fantasy.)

Car in Space - No, not that car. This is another blast from the 70s.

The Secret Teachings of All Ages - Hmmmm... I must explore this sometime.

Black Composers

Another one by Florence Price

Black Composers

Robert Nathaniel Dett (1882 - 1943)

African-American Composers

Florence Price

Random Linkage

The Miss American Vampire Contest - a weird beauty pageant from the 70s

Greg Van Dye - very colorful landscape paintings

Cultural Snow - an interesting looking culture blog that I must take time to explore sometime

Harrison Ford Halloween - a few of Harrison Ford's Halloween costumes from the past few years

Hedgehog Goes Camping - cute

Leila Jeffreys - lovely bird portraits

Gentleman's Surprise Chair - plus 12 more beautiful and interesting items. I have seen pictures of this chair before and I want it.

Karen Knorr Photography - Beautiful animal photos in ornate interior settings. I love these.

The Real Mata Hari - Another case of what "everyone knows" being not true.

Random Linkage

Books in Books - 12 novels that mention lots of other books. I think I want to read Among Others just based on its hidden reading list.

Subway to Nowhere - If this was in the U.S. within a couple of months there would be a 7-11 and half a dozen fast food places nearby. In America if you build it they will come.

Ingo and Friends - Gorgeous photos of a German shepherd and his owl friend. Seriously, I can't tell you how much I LOVE these.

Pizza Forward

Museum Twins

Love and Skeletons - Oh those prudish Victorians! NSFW

And finally, the solution to all problems:

Books, History, and a Bit of Politics

I recently finished reading Foundation: The History of England From Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors after reading it off and on for over a year. It took me so long not because it wasn't interesting but because I was trying to read it while reading other books at the same time and that never works for me. It really is a fascinating book. I have always wanted to know more about early England and this was the perfect book to get a good overview.

The second book in the series, The Tudors begins with the reign of Henry VIII and I couldn't resist immediately downloading that one too. I have been reading it for several days and got through the section on Henry VIII. All most of us know about him is that he had six wives, two of whom he had beheaded, and that he established the Church of England, with himself as its head, because the Pope wouldn't let him divorce his first wife. The details, of course, are a lot more complicated and more horrifying.

As I was reading this book a thought occurred to me. A lot of people like to compare presidents they don't like to Hitler but if our current president has any historical parallel it's Henry VIII. (Now if this blog was popular enough to attract trolls someone would surely point out that the Donald has never ordered anyone beheaded, to which I would respond, "That's because it's illegal now days, dumba**.") Of course you can't really compare two people who lived over 400 years apart. The differences in culture are too great. No one can say what a modern U.S. president would do if he had the same powers as ancient Kings. But the similarities in personality traits are striking: egomania, paranoia, greed, demands absolute loyalty, can't stand criticism, overall kind of gross and disgusting.

Anyway, I just thought I'd throw that out there. Someone else can take it and run with it or tear it to shreds if they are so inclined. As for the books, I highly recommend both of them but maybe not The Tudors if you are prone to nightmares.

Random Linkage

Dripping glass tables - I would call them sculptures. I don't see how you could use them as actual tables but they are cool looking.

Vault of Retro Sci-Fi - Art, photos, and GIFS

Beyond Paper - 13 creative maps

Yana Movchan - Beautiful art. I LOVE these. Lots of flowers and cats; also other animals and a few portraits.

Places - A computer program designed to recognize attractive landscapes

100+ Tumblr Cat Posts

Walden - a slow computer game

This is Gonna Get Ugly - Clever, funny, and weird ad campaign.

Lego Building Guides

Queen Victoria's Stalker - Fascinating story of a boy who hid out in Buckingham Palace

Books Books Books!

So I have been putting off blogging about my reading for months! It's not an obligation, of course. Nobody is obligated to blog daily, but see, I want to share this. I just haven't. So anyway, I've mostly forgotten what I wanted to say about all but the most recently read of these so I'm just going to put them all in one post and just to do something different I'm going to stick some completely unrelated photos in here as dividers. (These are not all of the books I've read this year, just some highlights.)

Earlier this year, thanks to Amazon's recommendations for me, I read two books with similar subject matter. Both are set during the Civil War era, including the pre- and post- Civil War years. Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim is about a young plantation owner's daughter's warm, loving relationship with her nurse, a slave woman named Mattie who is separated from her own son in order to nurse the white infant.

In the other book, Sister of Mine by Sabra Waldfogel, Adelaide is given a slave girl named Rachel to be her personal maid when they are both still children. The two get along well and soon discover that they are actually half-sisters. The story follows them through adolescence to young adulthood.

I highly recommend both of these books. The stories are interesting and the characters are fully developed and realistic. Both books manage to illustrate the tragedy and injustice of slavery without beating the reader over the head with brutality at the expense of the story. I don't want to give away the endings but I will say that both are satisfying though the ending of Yellow Crocus seems the more plausible of the two.

Of course one of the highlights of my reading year was Amongst the Stars, the third book in Kelly Sedinger's Song of Forgotten Stars series. This is the kind of fun and exciting adventure story that got me hooked on reading science fiction in the first place. While I now love a great variety of science fiction it's great that someone is still writing this kind of purely fun story.

I am a huge fan of fantasy writer China Mieville. His novella This Census-Taker is quite different from the other books of his that I have read. In it a young boy witnesses his father killing his mother. The authorities (and most other adults) choose to believe his father's version of events, that his mother abandoned them, but there are other hints that Dad is "not right." There are elements of fantasy in the story but they are so subtle they almost don't matter. This Census-Taker reads almost like a mainstream novella.

I have started reading Three Moments of an Explosion, a book of short stories by Mieville. They are also very different from the Mieville that I'm used to and I like some better than others. I have taken a break from it to read some other books though. The nice thing about a book of short stories is that you can spread them out, reading them one at a time between other books.

For some reason a lot of authors follow me on Twitter. I figure they're just trying to get attention, which is fine, but mostly I haven't paid much attention to them. I'm not sure what was different about S.E. Smith. Maybe the titles, maybe the cover art. Whatever it was, I followed her and followed her links to her books on Amazon and discovered A FREE KINDLE BOOK! A Warrior's Heart. Free. So I didn't even bother to read any reviews; I just downloaded it.

I am so glad it was free. Oh! My! Gawd! As I have already said on Twitter, it's pornographic. But dammit it's still science fiction and there was actually a bit of a story and I really hate to not finish a book; I mean like a Sheldon level have to finish so, quickly skipping over certain scenes, I kept reading. Turns out there were really only a couple of explicit (very explicit) scenes near the beginning and a couple more near the end.

Aside from that there was a lot in the book that just seemed silly to me. Two brothers who were kidnapped from Earth and enslaved as children grow up and fall madly in lust with two sisters from an alien warrior race. (Think Klingon but even meaner and cuter and purple) Anyway, in spite of the fact that these sisters are perfectly capable of kicking anyone's butt and feeding it to them, and the brothers really are not, the brothers constantly feel the need to "protect" their alien girlfriends.

Overall the story is pretty simplistic. The only real action (other than the aforementioned [ahem] "action") is a pretty standard escape. That's really unfortunate because the races and civilizations mentioned in the story seem like they could be interesting if the author would concentrate more on those and less on the "romance" and interpersonal [ahem] activities. But, you know, I guess some people are into that sort of thing. I won't judge. Or at least I'm trying not to judge.

Photos taken by me over 10 years ago.

Random Linkage

Starfleet Academy - It's a real place and you can take a tour! But you might be disappointed when you find out what it really is.

Artist Rick Stevens - I love this. Abstract and not quite abstract?

Language Links - A long list

Scardy Dog - Lots of pictures of dogs being afraid of things. Vacuum cleaners are a common fear and far from the silliest.

Tender Wings of Desire - OMG! Someone please tell me this is not real.

Digital Pin-Ups - I suppose that, as a woman, I'm supposed to be outraged about stuff like this but I like pin art. I can't help but appreciate the silliness and ridiculousness. These have a bit of a retro feel but at the same time modern and twisted. NSFW?

Sarah Forbes Bonetta - Interesting, little known history

The Orville - A Star Trek parody series. I'll decide later whether I love it or hate it. Of course you know if it's good Fox will cancel it after only 14 episodes.

Beautiful Tables

Train and Rail Yard Art

Random Linkage

Clouds - This guy says we should spend more time talking about clouds. It does seem like a better topic for conversation than most I have been hearing lately.

Spiritual Perception - A beautiful surreal art Tumblr. Beautiful! I am so in love with this site!

Kawaii Monster Cafe - Not very monstrous. A colorful and fun Japanese cafe.

Ambiguous Abbreviations - Or perhaps one could say, unfortunate.

Food Carving - Artist plays with food

Ted Wilson Reviews the World - A hilarious review of butter.

Russian Fairy Tale Portraits - Beautiful portrait photography.

Real photographs that look like paintings

Village of Flowers - A Polish village with flowers painted on everything. Wonderful!

The Turban Trick - an interesting bit of history

Ambient Geek Sleep Aids - Background noise from science fiction movies and TV shows

Miniature Environments by Song Kang - Fascinating sculptures

Just an Old Song