[photo by abbyladybug]
While browsing Brian’s trove of links, a pointer to an Esquire article caught my eye. It tells the story of the discovery, attempt at authentication, and subsequent wrangling over the ownership and authenticity of what might be a new photo of Robert Johnson. It’s a fascinating article that not only prompted me [...]

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This brief documentary on the rise of Neo-Nazis and other hate groups in Russia is powerful and disturbing… and perfect for the web where it isn’t censored as it would undoubtedly be on television.

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The Secret Museum of Mankind is online, scanned in its entirety, with links to large versions of all the photos. Astounding.

Here’s the site’s description of the strange set:
Published in 1935, the Secret Museum is a mystery book. It has no author or credits, no copyright, no date, no page numbers, no index. Published by “Manhattan [...]

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Shorpy constantly has interesting photos, but the recent pictures of a rural Depression era family are quite moving. The one linked from the thumbnail below really caught my attention, not least due to the strange trick of light and wood that made me think the young boy on the right was wearing glasses. It [...]

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The proceedings of the Old Bailey, described as “A fully searchable online edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court,” are a rather addictive read.
Here’s a random example:
The next was a little confident ungrateful Slut, [...]

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There are some powerful images in this Slate exhibit about how to approach the disappeared artistically, but none more so than this video of an artist painting– with water on stone– the likenesses of disappeared individuals, a race against time before the images inevitably fade away…

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As Sartre constantly reminds us, we are what we do.
In short, existentialism is not a philosophy that allows us to feel sorry for ourselves in the midst of our malaise. It is a philosophy with which we can come to grips with these terrible times and actually change them. The recent midterm election was encouraging. [...]

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Scott Rosenberg draws a connection between a Breughel and a photo taken on 9/11. He also points to one of my favorite Auden poems about the painting: Musee des Beaux Arts. The parallel between my feelings about 9/11 and the poem/painting are clear and raw. 9/11 was a horrific, tragic event. But it, like any [...]

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Thomas Merton:
Hence it becomes more and more difficult to estimate the morality of an act leading to war because it is more and more difficult to know precisely what is going on. Not only is war increasingly a matter for pure specialists operating with fantastically complex machinery, but above all [...]

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