Victorians’ Secret: Victorian Substance Abuse documents the drugs of the Victorian era, including such favorites as Absinthe and Cocaine toothache drops.
Month: July 2002
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Indians worship British Soldier
Ananova picked up this story from an Indian site, and it’s been blogged and quoted on various sites, but the original might be this:
UP’s newest godman is an English captain!
The newest deity to be worshipped in Uttar Pradesh is not one amongst the pantheon of gods and goddesses revered across India.
The deity is an Englishman who died in the mutiny of 1857, more than 145 years ago!
People have begun offering not just fruits and flowers at the Mazar (grave) of Captain F Wale at the historic Moosa Bagh about six km from Lucknow.
They also offer liquor, cigarettes and meat and have composed hymns and prayers for the Englishman. Locals now refer to their new “god” as “Captain Baba”, or Gora Baba or Gora Bhagwan.
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Damn Global Village! Doh!
Net Users Try to Elude the Google Grasp
“ These days, people are seeing their privacy punctured in intimate ways as their personal, professional and online identities become transparent to one another. Twenty-somethings are going to search engines to check out people they meet at parties. Neighbors are profiling neighbors. Amateur genealogists are researching distant family members. Workers are screening co-workers.
“In other words, it is becoming more difficult to keep one’s past hidden, or even to reinvent oneself in the American tradition.”
Of course, Israel has never had a tradition of obscurity – like most small countries, I guess, everyone knows everyone else, or at least their cousin.
Crawling Chaos has some nice artwork (especially the backgrounds) and, umm, stuff.
If you’re too hip for that, Exploding Dog has cool pictures in a more cynical bent.
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The Platonic Solids
Israel mentioned last night that the five Platonic Solids were associated with five elements. We were discussing the superiority of the d12, but the idea of five elements does have an appeal to me, since our campaign featured a pantheon with five branches.
Here’s a nice page about the Platonic Solids from the book (or/and course) Geometry in Art and Architecture, dealing with the history of the Platonic Solids. Anders Sandberg writes in Spiritweb about Platonic Solids and Their Symmetries, covering their mystical correspondances.
Sort-of related are the Chinese Five Elements, which also have their own correspondances.