On October 28th, 1886, President Grover Cleveland led the dedication ceremony for the Statue of Liberty (officially named Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde).
One-hundred twenty-six years later to the day, "Lady Liberty" is bracing herself for some pretty darn breezey weather! Hurricane Sandy is, to quote NY1's head meteorologist, "for real, on her way, and looks to be pretty strong." The MTA is closing the subway system at 7:00 p.m. tonight and suspending bus service at 9:00 p.m. PATH trains will suspect service at midnight. New York City schools are closed tomorrow, Monday, October 29th.
It's advised that during the storm's height if you don't have to be outside, don't be, and if you're on the lower levers of a building with street- or park-facing windows, keep your shades closed since they could help contain glass in the highly unlikely event of flying debris shattering your window.
Well, at least New Yorkers will have something to talk about around the water cooler on Tuesday morning...and on social media since a few hours ago, ad nauseum.
the remains of the five most complete North American male early Holocene skeletons to examine patterns of human morphology at the earliest observable time period.... Results indicate that early Holocene males have variable postcranial morphologies, but all share the common trait of wide bodies. This trait, which is retained in more recent indigenous North American groups, is associated with adaptations to cold climates. Peoples from the Americas exhibit wider bodies than other populations sampled globally. This pattern suggests the common ancestral population of all of these indigenous American groups had reduced morphological variation in this trait. Furthermore, this provides support for a single, possibly high latitude location for the genetic isolation of ancestors of the human colonizers of the Americas.
British soldiers and military dogs gathered at a British army barracks Thursday to honor a fallen hero with selfless courage, nerves of steel — and four legs.
Theo, a bomb-sniffing springer spaniel who died in Afghanistan on the day his soldier partner was killed, was posthumously honored with the Dickin Medal, Britain's highest award for bravery by animals.
Theo worked alongside Lance Cpl. Liam Tasker, searching for roadside bombs in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold.
Tasker, 26, died in a firefight with insurgents in March 2011, and Theo suffered a fatal seizure hours later. Tasker's mother, Jane Duffy, says the pair were inseparable. She's convinced Theo died of a broken heart.
"They'll be watching us, and they'll be so proud," she said. "I just wish they were here to get it themselves."
Since 1943, the Dickin Medal has recognized gallantry by animals serving with the military, police or rescue services. Some of these animal heroes:
CANINE COMMANDOS
Theo is the 28th dog to receive the medal, awarded by animal charity PDSA and named for its founder, Maria Dickin.
The PDSA Dickin Medal is often called the animals' Victoria Cross. To date, it has been awarded to 28 dogs (including Theo), 32 messenger pigeons of the Second World War, three horses, and one cat.Ref
Images: Lance Cpl. Liam Tasker and Theo in Iraq. Sergeant Matthew Jones and Search Dog Grace who accepted the posthumous Dickin Medal on behalf Tasker and Theo.
While digging in the ruins of a centuries-old building on Baffin Island, far above the Arctic Circle, a team led by Sutherland, adjunct professor of archaeology at Memorial University in Newfoundland and a research fellow at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, found some very intriguing whetstones. Wear grooves in the blade-sharpening tools bear traces of copper alloys such as bronze—materials known to have been made by Viking metalsmiths but unknown among the Arctic's native inhabitants.
The 4th Bin [offers] pickup of e-waste "for ethical reuse and recycling from local residents and businesses." According to the EPA, over 2,000,000 tons a year of discarded electronics leach heavy metals into landfills and pose health problems to workers in developing countries where some e-waste is sent for processing.
You can find a list of things [The 4th Bin] takes here. For residences or businesses, schedule a pickup and get a price quote here.
What happens to your stuff? It's either refurbished and resold or, if it can't be used, broken down for recycling of parts. Since February 2010, the company has collected over 1.2 million pounds of e-waste.
Also via MUG: Yes, New York State passed a law that requires free collection and recycling of e-waste. But read 4th Bin's FAQ to understand why you might well want to use them instead.
A deal setting out terms for a Scottish independence referendum [before the end of 2014] has been signed by Prime Minister David Cameron and First Minister Alex Salmond.
The agreement, struck in Edinburgh, has paved the way for a vote in autumn 2014, with a single Yes/No question on Scotland leaving the UK.
It will also allow 16 and 17-year-olds to take part in the ballot.
The SNP secured a mandate to hold the referendum after its landslide Scottish election win last year.
The UK government, which has responsibility over constitutional issues, will grant limited powers to the Scottish Parliament to hold a legal referendum, under a mechanism called Section 30.
The music video "Gangnam Style" is a global phenomenon and the most popular upload in the history of YouTube--449,015,599 views at the time of this writing.
The short answer, provided in part by Dr. Hae-kyung Um of Liverpool University, is that the video and its creator South Korean rapper Psy are both perfect for the online era. They both have cross-over appeal to various groups and do not resist parody; in fact, they seem to invite it. Several parody videos of "Gangnam Style" appear on YouTube daily. This trend in turn heightens awareness of the original. "Gangnam Style" is a participatory artistic and pop culture phenomenon for an age of transparency, collaboration, and global connectivity through technology.
YouTube can be a delivery vehicle for global success but it doesn't guarantee it. Less remarked upon in the BBC segment is that by reflecting the Western, specifically American, influence that for years has strongly influenced South Korea (1 in 5 Koreans are Christian, one Korean Pentecostal mega-church famously has 1 million members), Psy and "Gangnam Style" are familiar enough to Western viewers to be non-threatening while still being distinctly South Korean enough to be safely and entertainingly exotic.
So, questions remain. Why is this Psy video a breakout when earlier ones are extremely similar? Do American viewers in particular perceive a tip of the cowboy hat from Psy in his rodeo-evoking moves? Is "Gangnam Style" more popular than his previous videos in non-Western countries, too? If yes, then would non-Western popularity be as strong if the video had not also caught on in the US? Who is influencing whom and how much? I presume it's not particularly popular in Sana'a and Mexico City...or is it?
I suspect that to younger Westerners the video raises curiosity about South Korea in general and perhaps K-pop music in particular, as the Summer Olympics in Seoul might have done if they had been in 2012, not 1988. The 2012 Summer Olympic games had unprecedented Internet presence--much to the benefit of Britain's brand and London tourism--including through social media engagement by spectators and athletes, whose average age was 26. Psy is a bit like a one-man South Korean Olympics, a second one for 2012: flashy, pop-oriented, and if not athletic or very young, at least slightly baby-faced and surprisingly agile and fun to watch. BBC Radio 4 even gives some understandably tempered play to optimistic speculation about Psy's ability to thaw North and South Korean tensions. What would be more Olympic than that? Global goodwill through dance. I would not, however, expect a performance at the DMZ anytime soon.
Photo: U.S. Army, Installation Management Command, Korea Region, Public Affairs Office (2008) via Wikipedia
October 26th, 2012 is the 50th anniversary season concert of the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO), which is based in New York City. The Empire State Building will be lit red, white, and blue to mark the occasion. Tickets will be at the original 1962 prices! $1.50 up to a $7.
Over the years, I've attended ASO concerts and subscribed to Maestro Botstein's "Classics Declassified" lecture and performance series. Each Classics Declassified is extremely informative and entertaining; Botstein is a brilliant lecturer.
Regular concerts are at Carnegie most seasons, sometimes Avery Fisher Hall, Classics Declassified at Symphony Space (Broadway at West 95th).
From the final episode of the three-part 1998 BBC Radio 3 drama,Troy (Jeremy Mortimer, prod./dir., Andrew Rissik, writer) now available for a limited time on BBC Radio 4 Extra, the words of Klytemnestra (Clytemnestra) portrayed by Lindsay Duncan CBE:
Power or the lack of power; there is nothing else....When you live beside a brutal man, you are frightened all the time. The fear never leaves you completely even when you know you're in favor.... Oh, you gods, revenge means that the weak, the innocent, do not suffer for nothing; the wheel goes on turning; the dead rise up against the living; those who commit crimes pay for them at the end, however powerful they think they are. ..... Sometimes I think it is better not to forgive.... It is easy...to be mastered by rage or lust, to hate without restraint.
The cast also includes the late Academy-award winner Paul Scofield CH CBE, Julian Glover, Michael Sheen OBE, and Geraldine Somerville.
Words of Helen:
I knew that my husband loved me, yet the more he desired me the colder I became. Something inside of us, to which you give the name God, strives to ruin us. It...seems often to possess a force stronger than our own strength. It haunts us with dreams beyond our scope to fulfill them, and engenders in us lusts and longings which, if we enact them, turn our spirits to vain or evil ends. We call this unquietness of soul by many names.... I say that what divides us against ourselves, what speaks to us in our visions and dreams, is only our own mortal nature.... For everything that we do, we bear the responsibility alone.
Image: Clytemnestra from the Battlements of Argos Watches for the Beacon Fires, (1876). Frederic Leighton (1830 - 1896). Oil on canvas. Leighton House Museum and Art Gallery, London. 35.4" x 54.2".
The Mafeking Cadet Corps was a group of boy cadets during the Siege of Mafeking (now Mahikeng) in South Africa. They are sometimes seen as forerunners of the Scouts, because they were one of Robert Baden-Powell's inspirations in creating of the Scout movement in 1907.
The siege of Mafeking took place over 217 days during the Second Boer War in 1899-1900. Robert Baden-Powell was the British colonel charged with defending the town. Because of the shortage of manpower in the town, boys were used to support the troops, carry messages, and help in the hospital. This freed up men for military duties, and kept the boys occupied.
The cadets consisted of volunteer white boys below fighting age. Their leader was the 13 year old Warner Goodyear, who became their Sergeant-Major. They were given khaki uniforms and a wide-brimmed hat which they wore with one side turned up, and a Glengarry cap, and the towns people often commented on their smartness.
One of the cadets' duties was to carry messages around the town and to outlying forts, sometimes as much as a mile away across open ground. At first they used donkeys, but as the siege ran on, food became scarce and the donkeys ended up in the kitchen. From then on, the cadets used bicycles instead.
Another important duty was to act as lookouts, mainly to warn the townspeople when the Boer siege guns were aimed and fired at different parts of the town.
The town produced its own postage stamps, known as "Mafeking Blues", for postage during the siege. The first stamps depicted Baden-Powell, followed by a stamp depicting the cadet leader Warner Goodyear seated on a bicycle. The Mafeking stamps are unusual among the stamps of the British Empire, because they do not depict the monarch.
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