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THE QUOTE
“We should stop going around babbling about how we’re the greatest democracy on Earth, when we’re not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarized republic.” — Gore Vidal
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MIGHTY NATIONS — ONCE
Here’s the distribution of native language groups in what is now called North America, before the Europeans started coming over in the late 15th Century.
Click For Larger Image
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In other words, this is a map of nations. Each of these nations not only had common languages but cultural ties among the various groups within.
They are no different, in those senses, than the United States or Mexico. The only things they lacked were steel and the wheel.
Steel And The Wheel
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Accordingly, they disappeared.
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CHARLENE SPIERER’S TORTURE
I bet it’s killing Charlene Spierer to refrain from divulging the name of the person she’s certain did in her daughter.
Charlene Spierer
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She probably wants to shout the person’s name from the rooftops but, for obvious reasons, she can’t. There are little matters like getting a probable cause warrant, arresting the suspect, and arraigning him or her (oh hell, who am I kidding, him) that must be done first.
The Marion County Coroner’s office has extracted a tooth from a skull found a month ago in the White River in Indianapolis. As it stands right now, examiners don’t even know if the skull comes from a woman or a man.
Marion County’s Deputy Coroner tells The Journal News that the tooth will be compared to Lauren’s dental records in an act of kindness for the Spierers. Examiners generally don’t do that for specific parties who have reported missing people. But the high-profile nature of the disappearance and the Spierers’ savvy use of the media forced the Coroner’s hand.
Charlene has written an open letter to the person who snatched her daughter in the Spierers’ blog. She writes: “We were shocked when several people hired attorneys within days of Lauren’s disappearance. Five young men, five attorneys.”
That’s been my point all along: The last thing I’d think of doing if one of my pals disappeared would be to hire an attorney.
Lauren’s mom then addresses the person who did the deed: “Who are you? Did you go on any searches? Maybe you were no longer in Bloomington as thousands helped look for Lauren. Did you use Lauren’s disappearance to your advantage? Have we met? Time will tell.”
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BLOOMINGTON BLISS
Our next door neighbors’ daughter, R, a senior at Bloomington High School North, copped an Honor award at the Monroe County Fair for her entry in the Bake It with Pineapple contest.
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R’s entry was a pineapple coconut tart topped with meringue. Gotta tell you, it paled in comparison to another recipe she experimented with over the weekend: a zucchini-pineapple bread. Too bad — for my money if she’d have submitted the bread, she’d have won the blue ribbon.
All this is yet another way of saying I love living in Bloomington.
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GUILTY DISPLEASURE
Tyler Ferguson of the Bleeding Heartland Rollergirls is all agog this AM. She’s going up to Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indy tonight to see — oh, god, I don’t want to say it — Barry Manilow.
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She’s been warned: Should she come in to Soma Coffee tomorrow singing any Manilow hit and thereby implanting it as an earworm in my fragile psyche, there will be hell to pay.
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HOOKED ON A FEELING
In the category of sugary pop, you can’t beat this from BJ Thomas.
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It’s recorded directly from the 45, complete with scratch and dust noise. How can you not love it?
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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.
❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.
❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”
❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.
❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.
❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.
From I Fucking Love Science
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❏ Present and Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.
❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.
❏ Mental Floss — Facts.
❏ Caps Off Please — Comics & fun.
❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.
❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.
❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.
Click For The Quiz
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❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.
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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.
◗ IU Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center — Summer 2012 Sustainability Internship Symposium; 11:30am
◗ Monroe County Fairgrounds — Day 7, 2012 Monroe County Fair, Hearts of Fire; 6:30pm — Music Makers Extension Chorus Group; 7PM; Demolition Derby; 7:30pm; Soul Patrol; 7:30pm; ; Noon to 11pm
◗ BEAD District Bloomington, Gallery Walk — Receptions & exhibits:
- By Hand Gallery — Paper Art Quilts
- Gallery 406 — Visual Lingua Franca
- Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Reclamation: 40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s
- Pictura Gallery — Works from the Collection
- Sublime Design Gallery & Gifts — Closing Party & Sale
- The Venue Fine Arts & Gifts — Abstract on Canvas
- Gallery Group — The Bellevue Group
- Blueline Creative Co-op & Gallery
- El Norteno Gallery
◗ WonderLab — The Science of Art: Screenprinting, with David Orr: 5pm
◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Kumaré: The True Story of a False Prophet; 7pm
◗ Bloomington Playwrights Project — Original musical, “Dreams & Nightmares”; 7pm
◗ Buskirk-Chumley Theater — “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast”; 7:30pm
◗ The Comedy Attic — Costaki Economopolous; 8 & 10:30pm
◗ Cafe Django — David Miller’s Art Deco Quartet; 7:30pm
◗ IU Woodburn Hall Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Polisse”; 8pm
◗ The Bluebird — JJ Grey, Mofro; 8pm
◗ Max’s Place — Kathy Gutjar; 8pm
◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Oslo: August 31”; 8:30pm
◗ Max’s Place — Tarpaper Turley; 10pm
◗ The Bishop — DJ Junebug; midnight
Ongoing:
◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:
- “40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s”; opens Friday, August 3rd, through September 1st
◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:
- Qiao Xiaoguang, “Urban Landscape: A Selection of Papercuts” ; through August 12th
- “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
- Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
- Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
- “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
- David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
- Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
- Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
- “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st
◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits: Bloomington Photography Club Annual Exhibition; through August 3rd
◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st
◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st
◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break, reopens Tuesday, August 21st
◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibits:
- “What Is Your Quilting Story?”; through July 31st
- Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th
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