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Who wants to be a billionaire? A few years ago, Forbes published author Roberta Chinsky Matuson’s sensible advice to businesspeople seeking to shoot up that golden ladder. These lawful tips espoused such familiar virtues as hard work and community involvement, and as such, were easily adaptable to the rabble—artists, teachers, anyone in the service industry […]
3 months ago

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Hear the Long-Lost Chants of English Monks, Revived for the First Time in 500 Years

Listening to music, especially live music, can be a religious experience. These days, most of us say that figuratively, but for medieval monks, it was the literal truth. Every aspect of life in a monastery was meant to get you that much closer to God, but especially the times when everyone came together and sang. […]

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1,000+ Artworks by Vincent Van Gogh Digitized & Put Online by Dutch Museums

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The 1830s Device That Created the First Animations: The Phenakistiscope

The image just above is an animated GIF, a format by now older than most people on the internet. Those of us who were surfing the World Wide Web in its earliest years will remember all those little digging, jackhammering roadworkers who flanked the permanent announcements that various sites — including, quite possibly, our own […]

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Animated Map Shows How the Five Major Religions Spread Across the World (3000 BC — 2000 AD)

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2 days ago 4 votes
Watch Momijigari, Japan’s Oldest Surviving Film (1899)

At first, film simply recorded events: a man walking across a garden, workers leaving a factory, a train pulling into a station. The medium soon matured enough to accommodate drama, which for early filmmakers meant simply shooting what amounted to stage productions from the perspective of a viewer in the audience. At that stage, we […]

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Hear the Long-Lost Chants of English Monks, Revived for the First Time in 500 Years

Listening to music, especially live music, can be a religious experience. These days, most of us say that figuratively, but for medieval monks, it was the literal truth. Every aspect of life in a monastery was meant to get you that much closer to God, but especially the times when everyone came together and sang. […]

9 hours ago 3 votes
Poison

Don’t swallow Polonium-210. You won’t last long, and it won’t be pleasant. There are poisons all around us. The arsenic in your rice, the drain cleaner under your sink. Alas, some poisons are impossible to avoid, and it’s not productive to live a life that’s poison-free. But it might be worth considering three questions when […]

8 hours ago 2 votes
1,000+ Artworks by Vincent Van Gogh Digitized & Put Online by Dutch Museums

It gets dark before dinner now in my part of the world, a recipe for seasonal depression. Vincent van Gogh wrote about such low feelings with deep insight. “One feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless.” Yet, when he looked up at […]

yesterday 3 votes
Monotype on Fabric using Screen Printing Inks

The satisfyingly fuzzy printed lines of a monotype are usually reserved for prints on paper. However, using the method below you can create prints onto fabric with the same texture and line quality, making fast and spontaneous fabric designs to sew up into bags, quilts, or whatever you fancy.  Fabric Screen Printing Ink is ideal for this technique - it has a soft handle, can be heat set on fabric with an iron, and will stay wet long enough to take a print. Begin by rolling ink onto a plastic or glass sheet. Use a Textile Roller - a standard roller will slip in the ink. Drypoint plastic makes a great monotype plate.  Gently lay your fabric on top - don't press it down! It's important the fabric gets minimal contact with the ink.  Place a piece of paper on top and draw your design. You can also trace an image if you would prefer not to draw freehand. Don't touch the fabric - hold the paper at the edge if you need to. Use the pencil quite upright and press fairly firmly for best results.  Peel off the fabric to reveal the print. When your prints are dry, iron them on the hottest setting that the fabric will allow until the fabric feels too hot to comfortably touch. This will set the ink and make the fabric washable.  Watch the whole process below: You will need: Plastic or glass plate - drypoint plastic or an inking plate work well Textile Roller Screen Printing Ink for Fabric like Versatex, Permaset or Speedball Fabric to print onto - poplin is ideal Paper Pencil Iron

2 days ago 9 votes
Animated Map Shows How the Five Major Religions Spread Across the World (3000 BC — 2000 AD)

Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam.… Claims to ancient origin and ultimate authority notwithstanding, the world’s five major religions are all of recent vintage compared to the couple hundred thousand years or more of human existence on the planet. During most of our prehistory, religious beliefs and practices were largely localized, confined to the territorial or […]

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