Snow, Glass, Apples: The Story of Snow White by Terri Windling: Summer 2007, Journal of Mythic Arts Illustration by Arthur Rackham To most people today, the name Snow White evokes visions of dwarfs whistling as they work, and a wide–eyed, fluttery princess singing, "Some day my prince will come." (A friend of mine claims this song is responsible for the problems of a whole generation of American women.) Yet the Snow White theme is one of the darkest and strangest to be found in the fairy tale canon — a chilling tale of murderous rivalry, adolescent sexual ripening, poisoned gifts, blood on snow, witchcraft, and ritual cannibalism. . .in short, not a tale originally intended for children's tender ears. Disney's well–known film version of the story, released in 1937, was ostensibly based on the German tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm. Variants of Snow White were popular around the world long before the Grimms claimed it for Germany, but their version of the story (along with Walt Disney's) is the one that most people know today. Illustration by A. Illustration by W.
Quite Possibly the Most Brilliant Thing Ever — A Map of the Internet, Drawn to Scale o Click on the image above to expand, or click here to see the full-resolution version. From artist Martin Vargic comes this beautiful, ultra-high-resolution fictional map of the internet — scaled using actual from Alexa to rank the top 500 or so websites by traffic in the entire world. According to Vargic, it took 3 weeks of 10-hour days to create, basing the project off of National Geographic maps. "The map is divided into 2 distinctive parts; the eastern continent, 'the old world' showcases software companies, gaming companies and some of the more real-life oriented websites. The scale between a website's traffic and its size is not exact, but websites are generally portrayed in ratio relative to it." The final result is mezmerizing, with entire continents representing sectors of the web. The northwest is covered with the new web — the ominous and growing empire of Google, flanked by social networks like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter. Tom McKay
Eye Sniper of Tahrir Square is in jail, but has anything changed? | World news They called him the Eye Sniper of Cairo. In November 2011, 10 months on from the uprising that was supposed to end state repression in Egypt, a young police lieutenant named Mohamed Sobhi el-Shenawy put his shotgun to his shoulder and started firing pellets at protesters near Tahrir Square. Egypt's already lax police protocol requires armed officers to shoot at people's legs. Shenawy shot at their eyes. The eyepatches worn by those blinded by Shenawy became a vivid reminder of the unfinished nature of the Egyptian revolution. Fifteen months later, the Eye Sniper has finally been sentenced. But the view from inside Egypt is more nuanced. For Shenawy's jail sentence is something of an anomaly. "It's just for show, to make people feel that things are going in the right direction," adds Islam Khalifa, a human rights lawyer who represents victims of police brutality. What's more, police brutality shows no sign of abating. The Eye Sniper may have been jailed.
10 Novels That Will Scare The Hell Out Of You | Julie Buntin As a kid I was obsessed with an abandoned house in the cow pasture across the street from my friend Anna's house. We never went inside, but just walking by was enough to freak me out. tThe roof caved in on the stone walls, every window was a punched-out eye, and I knew that if there was a murderer lurking around the woods at night, the murderer lived in that house. The rumors didn't help either. Local legend had it that high school boys used to hang out there until someone fell through the rotted second floor and broke his leg. "The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson The greatest haunted house novel ever written. Still have doubts? "Rustication" by Charles Palliser When opium-addled Richard Shenstone, the 17-year old narrator of Charles Palliser's Gothic melodrama, grabs your hand and leads you into his twisted world of sexual obsession, murder, and sadistic letters (which may or may not be Richard's doing), you won't want to let go. "The Shining" by Stephen King
e-Diasporas The Analytical Language of John Wilkins By Jorge Luis Borges Translated from the Spanish 'El idioma analítico de John Wilkins' by Lilia Graciela Vázquez; edited by Jan Frederik Solem with assistance from Bjørn Are Davidsen and Rolf Andersen. A translation by Ruth L. I have noticed that the 14th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica does not include the article on John Wilkins. All of us have once experienced those neverending discussions in which a dame, using lots of interjections and incoherences, swears to you that the word 'luna' is more (or less) expressive than the word 'moon'. He divided the universe in forty categories or classes, these being further subdivided into differences, which was then subdivided into species. The words of the analytical language created by John Wilkins are not mere arbitrary symbols; each letter in them has a meaning, like those from the Holy Writ had for the Cabbalists. (1) Theoretically, the number of numbering systems is unlimited.
32 People Reveal The One Book That Blew Their Minds There are probably a handful of books out there that have changed the way you see everything — fiction and non-fiction. Some of them you read in high school or earlier, and others you discovered or rediscovered in your adult life. I went to AskReddit to learn what books have changed people’s lives. Consider this your Spring reading list. 1. Thinking Fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman 2. Flowers for Algernon absolutely hit me hard.It really made me think about intelligence and knowledge as a blessing and a curse. 3. The Psychopath Test. 4. If you give a mouse a cookie Basically taught me appeasement before first grade. 5. 100 years of solitude. 6. “A brief history of time” time dilation made me put the book down and consider it for a week until my peasant brain accepted/understood it. 7. “Cryptonomicon”Where fiction becomes reality: Describes cryptocurrency, 7 years before BitCoin was created. 8. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami or any of his works, for that matter. 9. 10. 11. 13. 15.
Visualizing 15 Years Of Acquisitions By Apple, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, And Facebook You grow old, you slow down, and you die. That is, unless you can inject some fresh blood. After watching the last generation of tech giants wither or stagnate, today’s juggernauts are relying on acquisitions to keep them young and relevant. Business insurance provider Simply Business created this infographic, which is only available here on TechCrunch. Trends crystallized by the Simply Business infographic include: And the biggest acquisitions (with disclosed prices) by the giants were: Apple – Anobit ($390 million), AuthenTec ($356 million)Amazon – Zappos ($900 million), Kiva Systems ($775 million)Google – Motorola Mobility ($12.5 billion), Nest ($3.2 billion), DoubleClick ($3.1 billion), YouTube ($1.65 billion)Yahoo – Broadcast.com ($5 billion), Overture ($1.83 billion), Tumblr ($1.1 billion)Facebook – WhatsApp ($19 billion), Instagram ($1 billion, closed at $715 million) For more on the acquisition game, read: As Tech Giants Scramble For Talent, It’s Buy Or Die
Understanding Visual Hierarchy in Web Design Visual hierarchy is one of the most important principles behind effective web design. This article will examine why developing a visual hierarchy is crucial on the web, the theory behind it, and how you can use some very basic exercises in your own designs to put these principles into practice. Republished Tutorial Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site. Design = Communication At it's core, design is all about visual communication: To be an effective designer, you have to be able to clearly communicate your ideas to viewers or else lose their attention. To figure out why this is true, it's important to understand a little bit about the way that we see things. Chances are, you don't see "two circles"; Instead, you saw "one black circle and one smaller red circle". Let's now look at a more complex image: The added complexity actually re-enforces our desire to "classify" the objects in terms of relationships. Size Color Contrast
Death: 10 Fascinating and Macabre Books I embarked on a mission to create a simple list of “weird” books that would look great (and possibly frighten guests) on your coffee table. Instead I accidentally assembled a rather profound exploration of humanity’s most primal anxiety: death. As far as anyone can tell, no one has ever actually lived forever, be it physically or spiritually. However, that does not end our tireless efforts to keep death at bay, or the eternal struggle to accept our seemingly inescapable fates. These books delve into the science of immortality and the veneration of death, a macabre look at the dark side that exists in the desperate pursuit of life. Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs Author Paul Koudounaris uncovers the bizarre history of Europe’s exquisitely jeweled catacomb saints, remains thought to be of early Christian martyrs unearthed in the labyrinthine tombs discovered beneath Rome in 1578. Get Heavenly Bodies right here. Stop Worrying! Get your copy right here.
Google Launches Maps Gallery To Make Public Data Maps More Discoverable Google today launched the Google Maps Gallery, an extension of the Google Maps Public Data Program it announced last October. The new gallery is meant to showcase maps from the organizations Google is working with, including the likes of National Geographic, the U.S. Geological Survey and the City of Edmonton, and to make them more discoverable. As Google Maps product manager Jordan Breckenridge told me, the idea behind the Public Data Program is to unlock the maps and geospatial information many organizations already have. The maps Google is currently highlighting in the Gallery range from land use zoning in San Jose and a U.S. Participants who applied for the program and were selected by Google received free access to the enterprise version of Google Maps Engine. Breckenridge assumes that most people won’t necessarily find these maps on the Gallery but through Google Search.
Things Arranged by Colour - Good Things In childhood it was common practice to arrange things by colour or shape, and perhaps it is a sense of nostalgia that explains the current trend for adults doing the same. A simple exercise in OCD, it produces reliably pleasing results regardless of the objects. These recent collections might inspire you to do the same. And just as a inspirational footnote, False Arms is a site worth bookmarking –select a colour then view a random collection of art, objects, photos in said hue. Kontor Kuntur, a Swedish design agency, acquired a mass of old stock following the death of a relative. They went about arranging it by tone, and the results are nothing short of lovely. Sara Cwynar's Colour Studies feature an array of junk shop and flea market finds. They say that red and green things are good for you. Present & Correct is a design blog and stationery store in London founded by graphic designers Neal Whittington and Mark Smith.
Books About Death by People Who Committed Suicide The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You is one of the most manic and epic machines of image and sound I’ve ever read. I don’t know that you could ever finish and be done with it because it doesn’t stop thundering forward. It’s a flood of broken lines without end punctuation full of troops of dead and burning fields and knives and eunuchs and mirrors and caskets and it doesn’t seem to take a breath. Suicide by Édouard Levé Suicide is particularly odd in that it is narrated in the second person, allowing the voice of the book to speak directly to you, the reader, as if you are a friend of the narrator, someone who committed suicide. Replacement by Tor Ulven Replacement isn’t really about anything. Chess Story by Stefan Zweig Zweig was a German-born Jew, who eventually fled to the United States with his wife during the rise of Nazism, after a lifetime of having supported his country. See also: Dark Spring by Unica Zürn
Die Rache der Wiener Polizei an den deutschen „Krawalltouristen“ Obwohl der Wiener Akademikerball bereits sieben Wochen zurückliegt, beschäftigt er die österreichische Justiz immer noch. Der Ball gilt als Nachfolger des WKR-Balls, und damit als Treffpunkt für die rechtsradikale Szene ganz Europas. Wie jedes Jahr haben sich auch 2014 hunderte linker Aktivisten aus Österreich und Deutschland versammelt, um dagegen zu protestieren. Unsere Doku „Die Rechten und ihr Ball“ könnt ihr euch hier anschauen. Bei den darauffolgenden Auseinandersetzungen mit der Polizei kam es zu Sachschäden in Höhe von rund einer Million Euro—und die Wiener Behörden brauchten dringend Schuldige. Gefunden haben sie den Deutschen Josef S., der seit sieben Wochen in Wien in U-Haft sitzt. Das Foto von Josef aus der Ermittlungsakte Als ich ihn endlich sehe, sieht der Sündenbock eher aus wie ein Unschuldslamm. Er ist tatsächlich katholisch, aber in erster Linie gelangweilt. Was hat Josef eigentlich getan? Ab 0:32 sieht man Josef mit dem Mistkübel Marmeladenfresser Malte