Author: swanksalot

Always good to have a second user look at things

Twitter Updates for 2010-08-18

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Twitter Updates for 2010-08-18

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Reading Around on August 16th through August 17th

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A few interesting links collected August 16th through August 17th:

  • Les Inrocks : E-books: une entente entre Amazon et Apple? – Le procureur général du Connecticut veut entendre les deux principaux distributeurs de livres numériques dans une enquête préliminaire. Il suspecte Amazon et Apple de s’entendre sur les prix, barrant ainsi la route à la concurrence.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Lived Here 1764

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Composed his first symphony here.

Belgravia, London

http://www.thewordtravels.com/Mozart-London.html

Leopold Mozart moved his family here on 5 August 1764 to recuperate from a chill and sore throat caught at an open-air concert at the Earl of Thanet’s home in Grosvenor Square. A blue plaque commemorates their stay.

In order to occupy himself Mozart composed his first two symphonies, K16 and K19. ‘Nanner’ transcribed the composition sitting at his side, and reminded him ‘to give the horn something worthwhile to do’.

Twitter Updates for 2010-08-17

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  • Surah 2:139:158 — Changing the direction of prayer (qiblah) http://is.gd/ekaeE #
  • discussion of follower count is frowned upon in these parts, but I am close to the magical number of 666. Need some SEO tweets perhaps #
  • yay, both of today's meetings have been cancelled/postponed. So can soak my hangover in vats of coffee without distraction #
  • County Westmeath, Ireland is home to at least 4 of my ancestors, per my mom. Michael Jackson had a hideaway there http://bit.ly/ah5Nk3 #
  • Les Inrocks : E-books: une entente entre Amazon et Apple? http://icio.us/syzqzy #
  • just another block RT @SoonerMike88: What else is within two blocks of Ground Zero? Great photo essay @daryllang http://bit.ly/b2oLW0 #
  • Jubilee Bridge Abstraction http://flic.kr/p/8sRHF2 #
  • Jim Was Here – Golden Jubilee Bridge http://flic.kr/p/8sUS8f #
  • Great Britain backs down on healthy school food http://is.gd/ekEfv #
  • The Evangelists for Heirloom Vegetables – http://nyti.ms/aO8Rvo #
  • The Temporary Vegetarian: Salade Niçoise – looks like dinner to me – http://nyti.ms/dypYlk #
  • Under the Hungerford Bridge http://flic.kr/p/8sXji9 #
  • NYTimes: Storied Trove of 1930s Jazz Is Acquired by Museum http://nyti.ms/ce8v6w #
  • pears, did you get any pears RT @ebertchicago: Adopt this record collection or I'll shoot this ocelot. http://bit.ly/dix3a3 #
  • "Ireland: A recession of the banks, by the banks, and for the banks" http://bit.ly/bk794G #
  • Near Lake Tahoe There's a Bear So Tough, Bullets Bounce Off: A notorious burglar along the shores of Lake Tahoe is… http://bit.ly/dy8i7g #
  • If I wasn't lazy, would make a blog post about Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues. So great, classic lines, even good cover versions #
  • …Beastie Boys sample, Nina Simone, The Band, Happy Family, Sir Douglas Quartet, even Bryan Ferry #
  • lines like:
    When you're lost in the rain in Juarez
    And it's Eastertime too
    And your gravity fails
    And negativity don't pull you through #
  • …I cannot move
    My fingers are all in a knot
    I don't have the strength
    To get up and take another shot #
  • …And my best friend, my doctor
    Won't even say what it is I've got #
  • …I started out on burgundy
    But soon hit the harder stuff
    Everybody said they'd stand behind me
    When the game got rough #
  • …But the joke was on me
    There was nobody even there to call my bluff
    I'm going back to New York City
    I do believe I've had enough #
  • U.S. Said to Plan Easing Rules for Travel to Cuba -about fucking time http://nyti.ms/borMWu #

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William Hazlitt Died Here 1830

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William Hazlitt Died Here 1830
William Hazlitt Died Here 1830, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

SoHo somewhere

from his Wikipedia entry:

William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830) was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell, but his work is currently little-read and mostly out of print. During his lifetime he befriended many people who are now part of the 19th-century literary canon, including Charles and Mary Lamb, Stendhal, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hazlitt

Now a boutique hotel
www.hazlittshotel.com/


“Selected Writings (Oxford World’s Classics)” (William Hazlitt)

Rufus Isaacs

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Rufus Isaacs
Rufus Isaacs, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

First Marquess of Reading, Lawyer and Statesman, lived and died here, 1860-1935

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufus_Isaacs,_1st_Marquess_of_Reading

Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading, GCB, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, PC, KC (10 October 1860 – 30 December 1935), was an English lawyer, jurist and politician. Both of his wives were Dames Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE). The son of a Jewish fruit merchant at Spitalfields, Rufus Daniel Isaacs was educated at University College School, and then entered the family business at the age of fifteen. In 1876-77 he served as a ships-boy and later worked as a jobber on the stock-exchange, 1880-84. He was called to the bar, the Middle Temple, in 1887.

Isaacs garnered fame in the Bayliss v. Coleridge libel suit in 1903, and the Whitaker Wright case in 1904. In 1904, he entered the House of Commons as Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP) for the Reading constituency, a seat he held until 1913. During this period, he served as both Solicitor General and Attorney-General in the government of Herbert Henry Asquith, becoming the first Attorney-General to sit in the Cabinet in 1912. He led for the prosecution in the Seddon poisoning case in 1912. In 1913, he was made Lord Chief Justice, a position in which he served until 1921.

In 1918, Isaacs was appointed Ambassador to the United States, a position in which he served until 1919, while continuing at the same time as Lord Chief Justice. In 1921, he resigned the chief justiceship to become Viceroy of India. Although he preferred a conciliatory policy, he ended up using force on several occasions, and imprisoned Mahatma Gandhi in 1922. In MacDonald’s National Government in August 1931, he briefly served as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, but stood down after the first major reshuffle in November due to ill-health.

Isaacs lived at Foxhill House in Earley, adjoining Reading, and was elevated to the Peerage as Baron Reading, of Erleigh in the County of Berkshire, in 1914, and continued to rise in the Peerage: he was created Viscount Reading, of Erleigh in the County of Berkshire, in 1916; Earl of Reading along with the subsidiary title of Viscount Erleigh, of Erleigh in the County of Berkshire, in 1917; and eventually Marquess of Reading in 1926. This is the highest rank in the Peerage reached by a Jew in British history. He was knighted in 1910, made a KCVO in 1911, a GCB in 1915, a GCSI and GCIE in 1921 (upon appointment as Viceroy of India) and a GCVO in 1922

Isaacs married Alice Edith Cohen in 1887. Alice, Lady Reading, appointed GBE, was a chronic invalid, who eventually died of cancer in 1927, a year after Reading’s viceroyalty ended, after 40 years of marriage. He then married Stella Charnaud, the first Lady Reading’s secretary. Stella Isaacs was later made a life peeress as Baroness Swanborough, of Swanborough, County Sussex, and later a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE). His second marriage lasted until his own death in 1935.

Nelson’s Column

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Nelson’s Column
Nelson’s Column, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

“Well, I’m a lonesome schoolboy”
“And I just came into town”

Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Flash: Off
Film: Pistil

Trafalgar Square, London

From Wikipedia:

Nelson’s Column is a monument in Trafalgar Square in London built to commemorate the death of Admiral Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The monument was constructed between 1840 and 1843 to a design by William Railton at a cost of £47,000. The sandstone statue of Nelson is by E. H. Baily and the four bronze lions on the base, added in 1867, were sculpted by Sir Edwin Landseer. The column itself is built of granite from Dartmoor.

…

The column was built between 1840 and 1843 to commemorate Admiral Horatio Nelson’s death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The monument was designed by architect William Railton in 1838, and built by the firm Peto & Grissell. Railton’s original 1:22-scale stone model is exhibited at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. The entire monument was built at a cost of £47,500, or £3.5 million in 2004 terms (roughly $6.1 million US).

The 5.5 m (18 ft) sandstone statue at the top was sculpted by E. H. Baily, a member of the Royal Academy, who also sculpted Earl Grey’s statue on top of Grey’s Monument in Newcastle; a small bronze plaque crediting him is at the base of the statue. The statue faces south looking towards the Admiralty and Portsmouth where Nelson’s & the Royal Navy Flagship HMS Victory is docked, with the Mall on his right flank, where Nelson’s ships are represented on the top of each flagpole.

The statue stands on top of a 46 m (151 ft) column built of granite from the Foggintor quarries on Dartmoor. The top of the Corinthian column (based on one from the Temple of Mars Ultor in Rome) is decorated with bronze acanthus leaves cast from British cannon. The square pedestal is decorated with four bronze panels, cast from captured French guns, depicting Nelson’s four great victories. These panels were undertaken by the sculptors Musgrave Watson, John Ternouth, William F Woodington, and John Edward Carew. Part of the interior base was made from the 29 cannon recovered from HMS Royal George, HMS Victory’s sister ship. The four lions, by Sir Edwin Landseer, at the column’s base were added after much delay in 1867. In 1925 a Scottish confidence trickster, Arthur Furguson, “sold” the landmark to an unknowing American (he also “sold” Big Ben and Buckingham Palace). The column also had some symbolic importance to Adolf Hitler. If Hitler’s plan to invade Britain, Operation Sealion, had been successful, he planned to move it to Berlin.

Twitter Updates for 2010-08-16

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London Eye

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London Eye
London Eye, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Flash: Off
Film: Pistil

From Wikipedia

The Merlin Entertainments London Eye (commonly the London Eye, or Millennium Wheel, formerly the British Airways London Eye) is a giant 135-metre (443 ft) tall Ferris wheel situated on the banks of the River Thames in the British capital. It is the tallest Ferris wheel in Europe, and the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom, visited by over 3.5 million people annually. When erected in 1999, it was the tallest Ferris wheel in the world, until surpassed first by the 160 m (520 ft) Star of Nanchang in 2006, and then the 165 m (541 ft) Singapore Flyer in 2008. It is still described by its operators as “the world’s tallest cantilevered observation wheel” (as the wheel is supported by an A-frame on one side only, unlike the Nanchang and Singapore wheels). The London Eye is located at the western end of Jubilee Gardens, on the South Bank of the River Thames in the London Borough of Lambeth in England, between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge.

(click to continue reading London Eye – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)