More beauties from years gone by:

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.40864

Ziegfeld Model – Risque – 1920s – by Alfred Cheney Johnston. Restored by Nick & jane. Enjoy!

Fanny Brice – c. 1915-1925 – Ziegfeld by Alfred Cheney Johnston. Restored by Nick and jane for Dr. Macro’s High Quality Movie Scans Website: http://www.doctormacro.com/index.html. Enjoy!

00264, 11/30/10, 9:40 AM, 8C, 5548×7096 (237+355), 100%, Custom, 1/160 s, R55.3, G43.2, B69.4

HEC/44700/44753a.tif

Solstice to Equinox Cubed 
Image Credit & Copyright: Olivér Nagy Explanation: This 3 month long exposure packed the days from December 22, 2015 through March 20 into a box. Dubbed a solargraph, the unconventional, unfolded picture was recorded with a pinhole camera made from a cube-shaped container, its sides lined with photographic paper. Fixed to a single spot for the entire exposure, the simple camera recorded the Sun’s path through Hungarian skies. Each day a glowing trail was burned into the photosensitive paper. From short and low, to long and high, the trails follow the progression from winter solstice to spring equinox. Of course, dark gaps in the daily sun trails are caused by cloud cover.Sunny days produce the more continuous bright tracks.

Via APotD

In the recent Presidential debate, moderator Dana Bash asked the candidates about Social Security. In her question, Bash cited the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget when she noted, falsely, that “Social Security is projected to run out of money within 20 years.”

Why does the media repeat phony claims that Social Security won’t be there? They rely on Wall Street-funded think tanks like the Third Way and the CRFB. This misinformation leads to a lack of confidence in the entire program.

Join me in calling on CNN to issue an on-air correction and stop repeating false talking points ginned u​​p by Wall Street “think tanks.”

Social Security is not going broke. It has a $2.8 trillion surplus, can pay out 100% of benefits owed for the next 19 years and approximately 80% of benefits owed after that.

And all we need to do is ask the wealthiest Americans to pay into Social Security at the same rate as everyone else and we can not only extend the lifespan of the Social Security trust fund, we can afford to expand benefits for millions of Americans.

The choice is simple, go back to this:

Photo by Dorothea Lange for the Resettlement Administration-1936.

© Margaret Bourke-White, 1937

Or stick with this:

Barbara Bisson, center, sits with friends Margie Doyon, left, and Priscilla Nicoli at Wednesday’s bingo at the Cashin Senior Center in Manchester, NH.

Source: Social Security Works

You can read the entire fascinating history of Social Security, from pre-history to the present here.

This dad gives his daughter a great VR mountain bike ride, sans any high tech gear.

Does Google Maps reflect national borders, or does it create them? What are the political and legal ramifications when a country disagrees with the map? That’s what a new paper called Google’s World, in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, examines.

Abroad, Google Maps has waded into raw, tender issues of national identity. For example, take its depiction of Crimea on maps.google.com, where a dashed line reflects the U.S. view that the area is an occupied territory. But in Russia, on maps.google.ru, the boundary line is solid — Russia has officially annexed Crimea.

Author Ethan R. Merel points out that “if a border is disputed by two or more states, the border as seen on Google’s services will adhere to the beliefs of Country A when accessed from within that country, while simultaneously adhering to the beliefs of Country B when accessed on its local servers.”

Merel discusses how this policy–displaying different versions of the map to different users–could be the basis for conflict:

While Google’s cartographic platforms, Google Maps and Google Earth, are the most widely used mapping services in the world, their methodology for affixing borders and naming key features is completely unregulated and deviates from traditional mapping doctrine. Google customizes its maps to adhere to each individual country’s beliefs and laws, so that its maps do not show a single and objective reality, but rather affirm existing perspectives of the world.

Disputes have already happened due to Google Maps, such as one between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Because of the power it wields, writes Merel, “Google’s role in geopolitics is far more comparable to that of a state or an international adjudicator than its corporate counterparts.”

Merel believes it will be necessary for a supranational organization, such as the United Nations, to settle conflicts arising from conflicting maps. Both Google and the UN acknowledge difficulties with a plan such as this. The U.N. Regional Cartographic Conferences meet every four years, not nearly frequently enough to settle disputes as they arise.

As for Google answering directly to the U.N., Merel writes, “Google acknowledged that relying on U.N. information as authoritative is appealing, but that U.N. publications are both insufficiently detailed and often officially neutral on questions of toponymy.” In other words, Google would be willing to use the U.N.’s maps, but they’re not as detailed as Google’s.

“Ultimately,” according to Merel, “the decision is left to traditional state-based actors to decide if the twenty-first century marks the era in which they willingly abdicate control over cartography, or if they will evolve to stay relevant.”

Source: Google’s World: The Impact of “Agnostic Cartographers” on the State-Dominated International Legal System | Columbia Journal of Transnational Law

Quebec photographer Andreas Rutkauskas traversed the Canada- US border and documented it with this wonderful series of images.

He describes the project:

“The border between Canada and the United States is the world’s longest shared land boundary. Stretching 8,891 kilometres from Tsawwassen, British Columbia to Campobello, New Brunswick (including 2,475 kilometres shared with Alaska), this line travels between town sites and wilderness, and is visibly demarcated by a six-metre-wide swath of cleared land amongst the forest, and over 5,500 granite, steel, or concrete obelisks called ‘monuments’. There are a number of idiosyncrasies along this vast expanse of landscape that I have visited, including an unmanned US enclave where visitors need to report via telephone, a Peace Park with wreckage from the World Trade Center attack, and a cemetery that straddles the cutline. Along the way I have had numerous conversations with staff at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), RCMP, US Border Patrol, and I spoke with residents of various First Nations along this line, who identify more as being part of their own indigenous sovereign states.

“Once referred to as ‘undefended’, my project Borderline undertakes a survey of this landscape monitored by subtle technologies, including improvised barriers, gates, X-ray scanners, and other forms of surveillance. Humans are discouraged from lingering in this territory, which is vast and arguably impossible to control.”

Source: Borderline (Check out Andreas’ other cool projects here)

A collection of Star Wars trading cards with autographs and personal notes from Mark Hamill were posted by autograph expert Steve Grad to his Facebook page. Hamill has been signing Star Wars junk for well over 35 years, so it’s no surprise that Luke Skywalker himself has to get a little creative with his autographs.

Source: vintage everyday: These Classic ‘Star Wars’ Trading Cards Signed by Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) Are Apparently Creative and Hilarious

Her expression and body language says to me that she’s heard these two smooth talkers before and she ain’t buyin’ it for a second:

Enter a caption

Via Shorpy: Fredericksburg, Va., circa 1928. “Cabin on Barton Street.” 8×10 acetate negative by the architectural historian Frances Benjamin Johnston.