Archives for category: look over here!

Someone left this adorable stamp on Eric’s desk.

Great piece about Hugh Jackman and his family…and ‘Les Misérables’! I cannot emphasize how excited I am for this movie. It’s the first musical I really fell in love with (‘Sweeney Todd’ is my all-time favorite, but I couldn’t bring myself to see the movie) and I love the melodic themes and the way they intertwine. My favorite character? Éponine. She has the best songs!

…Pardon me while I go fire up the piano.

Lonely Planet posted a great guide to the top twenty free attractions in Paris.

carousel and the Eiffel Tower

photo by Jordan Ferney from her post 10 Things to Do in Paris with Kids

I haven’t been to Paris since my language trip in high school, and I can’t wait to go back now that I can enjoy wine, appreciate the architecture and art, and actually see the inside of a museum (museum workers’ strike prevented this). Hopefully once I finish this second bachelor’s I will be able to take a nice long trip around Europe with friends. If I do so, I will definitely be on a budget so this list will come in handy!

French pastries!

photo by Jordan Ferney from her post about Le Boulanger des Invalides Jocteur

There are a lot of DIY projects out there and let’s be honest here–we’re in the circle of trust–most of them look effing terrible. But! Jordan Ferney has a lot of great projects over at Oh Happy Day! and they’re all pretty classy. She has a great round-up of holiday projects including:

printable advent calendar

a printable advent calendar

felt-ball garland

a felt ball garland

sequin backdrop

and a cool sequin backdrop for a holiday photo booth, amongst others.

For more cool projects, and some new holiday ideas, check out the Christmas section of the site too.

Whoa.


More over at BuzzFeed

A whole gallery! Some highlights:



via Tiffany

Today io9 has a great story up about the new GRAIL maps of the moon. There is a lot of exciting science here, but most laypeople will probably be most interested in what this means for the leading theory of the moon’s formation (aka the Big Splat):

[Says] Mark Wieczorek, GRAIL co-investigator at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris[,] “With this crustal thickness, the bulk composition of the moon is similar to that of Earth. This supports models where the moon is derived from Earth materials that were ejected during a giant impact event early in solar system history.”

via NASA

An animated version of the maps (Mercator projection here):

via NASA: “This movie shows the variations in the lunar gravity field as measured by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) during the primary mapping mission from March to May 2012. Very precise microwave measurements between two spacecraft, named Ebb and Flow, were used to map gravity with high precision and high spatial resolution.”

A friend of a friend wrote this amazing blog post about something awful/hilarious that happened to her. I can’t really tell you what it’s about without ruining it, but let’s just say…sometimes when you’re having a bad day, things just get worse.

Eric linked to this great article by David Simon about the changing demographics and ways of thinking in the United States, and how irrelevant certain factions will become (have already become?) if they continue the same broken strategies.

Hard times are still to come for all of us. Rear guard actions will be fought at every political crossroad. But make no mistake: Change is a motherfucker when you run from it. And right now, the conservative movement in America is fleeing from dramatic change that is certain and immutable. A man of color is president for the second time, and this happened despite a struggling economic climate and a national spirit of general discontent. He has been returned to office over the specific objections of the mass of white men. He has instead been re-elected by women, by people of color, by homosexuals, by people of varying religions or no religion whatsoever. Behold the New Jerusalem. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a white man, of course. There’s nothing wrong with being anything. That’s the point.

This election marks a moment in which the racial and social hierarchy of America is upended forever. No longer will it mean more politically to be a white male than to be anything else. Evolve, or don’t. Swallow your resentments, or don’t. But the votes are going to be counted, more of them with each election.

Chris Hardwick sent Tom Hanks a 1934 Smith Corona typewriter (Tom Hanks loves vintage typewriters) with a typed invitation to come on the Nerdist podcast. This was Tom Hanks’ response:

click to embiggen

Get the podcast here.

via Reddit