Incredible map of Austin.  There’s something nice about being familiar with all of these things.  If a similar map were made of New York, I’m sure I’d have no clue as to 3/4 of it.

Incredible map of Austin.  There’s something nice about being familiar with all of these things.  If a similar map were made of New York, I’m sure I’d have no clue as to 3/4 of it.

Partial transcript of communications between the Italian Coast Guard and Captain Francesco Schettino, obtained by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, via Reuters:

  • COAST GUARD: There are people who are coming down the ladder on the bow. Go back in the opposite direction, get back on the ship, and tell me how many people there are and what they have on board. ...Tell me if there are children, women and what type of help they need. And you tell me the number of each of these categories. Is that clear?!
  • COAST GUARD: ...Listen Schettino, perhaps you have saved yourself from the sea but I will make you look very bad. I will make you pay for this. Dammit, go back on board!
  • (Noise can be heard in the background where other Coast Guard officers are shouting to each other in the same room about "the ship, the ship")
  • SCHETTINO: Please ..
  • COAST GUARD: There is no please about it. Go back on board. Assure me you are going back on board!
  • SCHETTINO: I am on a life boat of rescue, I am under here. I am not going anywhere. I am here.
  • COAST GUARD: What are you doing, captain?
  • SCHETTINO: I am here to coordinate the rescue ...
  • COAST GUARD (interrupting): What are you coordinating there! Go on board! Coordinate the rescue from on board! Are you refusing?
  • SCHETTINO: No, I am not refusing.
  • COAST GUARD: Are you refusing to go on board, captain? Tell me the reason why you are not going back on board.
  • SCHETTINO: (inaudible)... there is a another life boat ...
  • COAST GUARD (interrupting again, screaming): You go back on board! That is an order! There is nothing else for you to consider. You have sounded the 'abandon ship'. Now I am giving the orders. Go back on board. Is that clear? Don't you hear me?
  • SCHETTINO: I am going on board.
Why just paraglide?  Why just get birds to land on your forearm?  Parahawking is an activity that combines paragliding with falconry. Birds of prey are trained to fly with paragliders, guiding them to thermals for in-flight rewards and performing aerobatic manoeuvres.

Why just paraglide?  Why just get birds to land on your forearm?  Parahawking is an activity that combines paragliding with falconry. Birds of prey are trained to fly with paragliders, guiding them to thermals for in-flight rewards and performing aerobatic manoeuvres.

(Source: apsies)

Reason No. 5 to Love New York 2011: Because After 64 Years Together, Louis Halsey and John Spofford Morgan Finally Got Hitched.  When the Columbia Library closed each night at ten, it was the custom of John Spofford Morgan, who was studying for a master’s in international affairs, to hop on the subway and head downtown to the New Verdi on West 72nd. Back then, there were two kinds of bars for gay men, he says: pickup joints and old-friends joints. The New Verdi was the latter, but it turned into the former when at around 10:30 on May 17, 1947, Louis Halsey walked in. “Love at first sight,” says Lou now. “Was it?” John wonders. “For me it was slower.” In any case, Lou and John spent the night together, just as they have spent most nights in the 64 years ensuing. Last month, they got married. John is 94, recovering from a broken hip but otherwise as hale and handsome as Lou, 88, says he always was. One snapshot shows the pair on a beach in Beirut in 1952. Lou looks like Tony Curtis, glossy and pompadoured. John looks like JFK except, as his mother used to complain when people compared their families, “we have chins.” Both served in the Navy in World War II, but on different oceans, as in a way they were from different worlds on land. John, who still speaks in the accent of the turn-of-the-twentieth-­century elite, worked as an economist. Lou, of Hungarian-immigrant stock, cut hair for decades at the Westbury Hotel. He wears rings and bright colors; John emphatically doesn’t. But being gay was a great equalizer then. And being married is a great equalizer now. “People say, ‘So if you’re married, where’s the certificate?’ ” Lou explains. “Now we have it.” The pair ignored domestic partnership when it came along (“A halfway step,” says John), and since they had already invested in the complicated legal work-arounds—trusts, powers of attorney—needed to protect one another, they didn’t see the point of claiming marriage rights in, say, Iowa. But when the law passed here in June, they knew they would take the step. “Just to see it in black and white,” says Lou. For John, “it was more like finishing something.” The small ceremony, with a minister and three witnesses, was held in their Village apartment on November 11, a date they chose because they have for years noticed the time 11:11 on the clock by the bed. They did not exchange rings and got no gifts, “except bourbon!” Lou says. “But he”—he waves at John—“started to cry.” “Did I?” John wonders.

Reason No. 5 to Love New York 2011: Because After 64 Years Together, Louis Halsey and John Spofford Morgan Finally Got Hitched. 

When the Columbia Library closed each night at ten, it was the custom of John Spofford Morgan, who was studying for a master’s in international affairs, to hop on the subway and head downtown to the New Verdi on West 72nd. Back then, there were two kinds of bars for gay men, he says: pickup joints and old-friends joints. The New Verdi was the latter, but it turned into the former when at around 10:30 on May 17, 1947, Louis Halsey walked in. “Love at first sight,” says Lou now. “Was it?” John wonders. “For me it was slower.” In any case, Lou and John spent the night together, just as they have spent most nights in the 64 years ensuing. Last month, they got married.

John is 94, recovering from a broken hip but otherwise as hale and handsome as Lou, 88, says he always was. One snapshot shows the pair on a beach in Beirut in 1952. Lou looks like Tony Curtis, glossy and pompadoured. John looks like JFK except, as his mother used to complain when people compared their families, “we have chins.”

Both served in the Navy in World War II, but on different oceans, as in a way they were from different worlds on land. John, who still speaks in the accent of the turn-of-the-twentieth-­century elite, worked as an economist. Lou, of Hungarian-immigrant stock, cut hair for decades at the Westbury Hotel. He wears rings and bright colors; John emphatically doesn’t.

But being gay was a great equalizer then. And being married is a great equalizer now. “People say, ‘So if you’re married, where’s the certificate?’ ” Lou explains. “Now we have it.” The pair ignored domestic partnership when it came along (“A halfway step,” says John), and since they had already invested in the complicated legal work-arounds—trusts, powers of attorney—needed to protect one another, they didn’t see the point of claiming marriage rights in, say, Iowa. But when the law passed here in June, they knew they would take the step. “Just to see it in black and white,” says Lou. For John, “it was more like finishing something.”

The small ceremony, with a minister and three witnesses, was held in their Village apartment on November 11, a date they chose because they have for years noticed the time 11:11 on the clock by the bed. They did not exchange rings and got no gifts, “except bourbon!” Lou says. “But he”—he waves at John—“started to cry.”

“Did I?” John wonders.

Brave kid.  Sometimes this world is really tough.

Character.

Character.

(Source: 500px.com)

Like the couch and the arrangement of letters.

Like the couch and the arrangement of letters.

(Source: Flickr / aubra)

I’m glad somebody thought of the Pop Tart Cat Scarf in time for Christmas.

I’m glad somebody thought of the Pop Tart Cat Scarf in time for Christmas.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

5,761 plays

My Heart With You Virtual Choir

We are currently in the middle of making a new album, due out in 2012. In the meantime, we want to invite you to be a part of something we hope will turn out to be a very special recording, a new version of “My Heart With You” that will be recorded one person at a time by our fans and friends all over the world. The idea is that you will pick one of our four voice parts, sing it into your computer via youtube, and we will assemble the audio and video and create a virtual choir version of the song

Pretty song by The Rescues.  Cool idea.

A Serving of Gratitude Brings Healthy Dividends - NYT

Start with “gratitude lite.” That’s the term used by Robert A. Emmons, of the University of California, Davis, for the technique used in his pioneering experiments he conducted along with Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami. They instructed people to keep a journal listing five things for which they felt grateful, like a friend’s generosity, something they’d learned, a sunset they’d enjoyed.

The gratitude journal was brief — just one sentence for each of the five things — and done only once a week, but after two months there were significant effects. Compared with a control group, the people keeping the gratitude journal were more optimistic and felt happier. They reported fewer physical problems and spent more time working out.

(Source: The New York Times)

curiositycounts: Inspired by The High Line, Google and NASA expats Dan Barasch and James Ramsey are building The Low Line – an abandoned trolley terminal turned NYC’s first underground park  Hoping this happens.

curiositycounts:

Inspired by The High Line, Google and NASA expats Dan Barasch and James Ramsey are building The Low Line – an abandoned trolley terminal turned NYC’s first underground park

 Hoping this happens.

Another amazing one from the PS122 Chorus.  I’d never heard of VV Brown, but, wow.

A friend snapped this photo of Occupy Union Square today from her office.

A friend snapped this photo of Occupy Union Square today from her office.

inothernews: newsweek: How could we not open this letter to the editor?! The first paragraph, taken by itself (and typed out on a typewriter nonetheless), is quite the gem: Dear Sir, Before I start this letter to you I just want to say that I don’t have a way to tweet, Dot Com, or e-mailed. Everyone worries about the US Postal service, all they have to do is write a letter and put a .44 cent stamp on it and it’ll get to your mailbox. And you know, it’s kind of nice to go every day to that box and find a letter in it from a friend or a magazine from Newsweek or US World or Time.  Anyway, I hope you will see fit to read it but I doubt that you will. Not only did we read your letter, kind sir, but in a few days you’ll have one of your own in your mailbox, sent from your friends at Newsweek. We agree. It is kinda nice to get mail. It really is.  I love mail.

inothernews:

newsweek:

How could we not open this letter to the editor?! The first paragraph, taken by itself (and typed out on a typewriter nonetheless), is quite the gem:

Dear Sir,

Before I start this letter to you I just want to say that I don’t have a way to tweet, Dot Com, or e-mailed. Everyone worries about the US Postal service, all they have to do is write a letter and put a .44 cent stamp on it and it’ll get to your mailbox. And you know, it’s kind of nice to go every day to that box and find a letter in it from a friend or a magazine from Newsweek or US World or Time. 

Anyway, I hope you will see fit to read it but I doubt that you will.

Not only did we read your letter, kind sir, but in a few days you’ll have one of your own in your mailbox, sent from your friends at Newsweek. We agree. It is kinda nice to get mail.

It really is.

 I love mail.