The Known Universe, a new film produced by the American Museum of Natural History shows the known universe as mapped through astronomical observations.  Every satellite, moon planet, star and galaxy is represented to scale and in it’s correct, measured location according to the best scientific research to-date.

Pulling farther and farther from Earth, you see the deep blue of the Pacific give way to night as the Sun comes into focus, the orbits of the solar system shrink smaller and smaller, the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpio stretch and distort, and, as the Milky Way receeds, the spidery structure of millions of other galaxies come into view. Then, you reach the limit of the observable universe, the afterglow of the Big Bang. This light has taken more than 13.7 billion years to reach our planet, and you return, back to Earth, to two lakes that are nestled between Mount Kailash and Mount Gurla Mandhata in the Himalayas.

via YMFY

via YMFY

A couple of random images from a recent excursion to Haberfield … look here to see if your ‘hood has been surveyed (she did her own last week!)

Tagged: Fashion, shopping ]]> http://liftandseparate.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/polyvore-very-possibly-the-next-big-thing/feed/ 0 liftandseparate Picture 2 http://liftandseparate.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/shopping/ http://liftandseparate.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/shopping/#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:03:10 +0000 liftandseparate http://liftandseparate.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/shopping/ ]]>
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The first decade of the 21st century is now over. Looking back on the past ten years through news photographs, it becomes clear that it was a dramatic, often brutal decade. Natural disasters, terrorist attacks and wars were by far the most dominant theme. Ten years ago, Bill Clinton was ending his final term in office, very few had ever heard of Osama bin Laden, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein still ruled Iraq.  Click here for all 50 images

From The Boston Globe via MyModernMet

Click here for the interactive version, via The Carbon Quilt

Simple, but fiendishly addictive.  Click here

I’m writing this from the south of France. Provence is hot. The whited limestone flags are hot. The Roman ruins are hot. The figs and the flaking allées of plane trees are hot. The black bulls in the field are bloody hot. And naturellement, the girls are très chaudes. They’re hot, cycling along in little summer dresses. They’re hot, looking sulky and existentialist in town squares. They’re hot in pedal pushers and espadrilles. The waitresses are hot in waistcoats. They’re hot, with black hairy pits. Hot with ponytails. Hot with gamine bobs, and hot carrying straw baskets of peaches. They’re hot, because everything is hot. French girls look beautiful because we expect them to be beautiful. Because this is the home of beauty and, most important, because they confidently demand that you find them beautiful. In truth, forensically, if you look with a disinterested eye at French girls, they’re not genetically blessed. If you took a hot French girl and said she was a Belgian, she would become tepid. Belgium is not a nation of beauties; it’s a nation of confectioners and war-grave janitors.

This is the greatest truth, perhaps the only truth, about pulchritude: beauty is not in the eye of the beholder; it is in the eyeliner of the beholden. Beauty is a birthright; it is also a sleight of hand. It is a distraction. It is the nurture of nature. When I fly back to England, I know that I will notice two things: the old place will look surprisingly and miraculously green, and the girls will look like recycling bin bags full of windfalls, with a relentless, stroppy, obstinate and defiant plainness. When everything is wet and cold, English girls glower beneath their frizzy split ends, with their baggy pink eyes, defensively regarding the world over broken veins and puce, dripping noses, pursing their thin lips over badly shuffled teeth.  Read more…

Tom Ford at the Venice film festival, 2009. Photograph: Damien Meyer/AFP

ON THE START OF IT ALL
I was born in a jacket (1996)

GIVING A MODEL A MORE MODERN LOOK FOR A GUCCI FALL COLLECTION SHOW
She needs to have a few drinks and cry a little – then she’ll be perfect (1996)

AFTER 9/11
The fashion world thrives on irony and bitchiness and meanness. This attack is making people sincere. I’m not sure that will be good for fashion (2001)

ON HIS PRICES
They’re eyewatering, but it’s not fake eyewatering (2009)

ON HIS PARTNER RICHARD BUCKLEY
Richard hardly ever has anything nice to say about my work. It’s my mother all over again (2009)

ON AN ADVERT FOR HIS EYEWEAR
We shot it with porn stars. Two men and two women. And we paid for them to have sex on set. You don’t see it in the shot, but you feel it (2005)

ON THE BONSAI TREES DECORATING HIS MADISON AVENUE STORE
Each tree goes to the countryside, every seven days, for a month to get some sun (2008)

ON NO LONGER FREQUENTING NUDE BEACHES
As I’ve gotten older I’ve realised a tan line makes your butt look higher (2008)

ON MARTHA STEWART
I’m so tired of getting teased about painting my tractors black! And she said: “Well, I paint all mine grey” (2007)

MEETING ARTIST GEORGIA O’KEEFE WHEN HE WAS 12
What’s wrong with her? She’s wrinkly; she doesn’t have any make-up on (1974)

CONSIDERING A POLITICAL CAREER
We have the Terminator as governor, and we had an actor as president, so why shouldn’t we have a fashion designer as a senator? (2008)

ON THE PRIVATE TOM
At home, off-duty, I wear T-shirts from Fruit of the Loom – but I have them tailored (2009)

AFTER ASKING FOR LIGHTS TO BE TURNED DOWN AT A TACO EATERIE IN NOTTING HILL
Great – now we all look even more beautiful (2006)

ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GUCCI WOMAN AND SAINT LAURENT WOMAN
The Gucci woman – you know what she’s after. The Saint Laurent woman – she’s going to torture you a little bit. You might have sex, but she will drip a little hot wax on you first (2001)

Via The Guardian

Incredible pushbike Parkour, a love story written by an ad agency for their client CocaCola/Schweppes, plenty of dancing, a very valid reason to never purchase anything from Microsoft ever again ….something for everyone!

My personal favorite of the year is David…. I know we’ve all seen it before…

Foreign Policy blog’s 100 most globally influential thinkers of 2009.  An impressive and interesting list.  Number 3 is Zahra Rahnavard.  An inspiration.

3. Zahra Rahnavard

for being the brains behind Iran’s Green Revolution and the campaign of her husband, opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

POLITICAL SCIENTIST AND REFORMER | IRAN

Of all the critical moments in the Iranian presidential election that captured the world’s attention this year, one stands out: On June 3, incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad publicly questioned the credentials of his opponent’s wife, wondering in a televised debate if her Ph.D. in political science was legitimate. Furious, the 64-year-old Rahnavard staged a blazing, 90-minute news conference in which she accused the president of lying, debasing her sex, and betraying the Islamic Revolution. The attack galvanized the opposition and rejuvenated the campaign of her husband, Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Ahmadinejad should have known better. During and after the Islamic Revolution, Rahnavard had been an ardent Islamist who worked to discredit secular feminist groups. But years later, when the revolution failed to yield dividends for women, she changed course and became a driving force behind the nascent feminist movement in Iran. After she was placed on the High Council of Cultural Revolution, the body issued its first declaration in 1992 advancing women’s rights. She was later fired as chancellor of Tehran’s exclusively female Al-Zahra University for inviting feminist lawyer and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi to speak.

This year, Rahnavard’s rage at Ahmadinejad drove her husband’s campaign. She began stumping with him and organizing supporters through rallies, Facebook, Twitter, and text messages. Campaign posters that depicted the couple holding hands subtly hinted at the liberal reforms Mousavi would make in office; she has more explicitly said these would involve greater democratization, a stronger role for women in the cabinet, and a relaxing of Iran’s notoriously discriminatory gender laws.

Read the full list here

For the story the story behind this shoot and more about her approach to making such ravishing images of women, read The Guardian interview here. Must track down the book!