2PzNaPpod

23 February 2010

famous old people in passport photos

There are lots of famous faces to be seen —F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (he is smirking, she looks like a silent-film siren); a ghostly engraving that shows Walt Disney (age 17 but looking closer to 14) on his way to work for the Red Cross in Europe; and the Marx brothers—Harpo leans forward, leering, and Groucho smiles, without his greasepaint moustache. Other albums are worth a look too, as they feature the athletes, illusionists, poets, actors and musicians of the Harlem Renaissance—all tired of waiting in line and ready to go back to doing whatever made them famous.

source, via

helpful.

tongue-sie tuesday.

there's not enough 2sie pixies on the internet today, so we're going to switch it up a bit.

smarter than the goat.

your fortnightly boat.

if you think yesterday's boat was vol-tastic, look at the big orange beauty that's out there today!!!

the ATLANTIC PISCES.

majestic.

MTA jerks

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is looking to lay off hundreds of New York City subway station agents, revising an earlier plan under which they would have been allowed to retire, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.

The layoffs are to be announced on Tuesday, along with cuts to the authority’s administrative and managerial staff, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the revised plan had not been formally unveiled. (via)

i just want to know, if they lay off all the station agents, to whom am i to turn when i swipe my metrocard, slam my pelvis into a locked turnstyle, am asked by the computer to swipe my card again, and then told i "just used" my swipe, like what happened to me yesterday.

if it wasn't for the station agent who opened the gate and let me in, i would've been waiting there for 19 minutes. this is not the answer, MTA.

tanya, this is kind of embearassing.

It is reading season at the Tufts University admissions office, time to plow through thousands of essays and transcripts and recommendations — and this year, for the first time, short YouTube videos that students could post to supplement their application.

About 1,000 of the 15,000 applicants submitted videos. Some have gotten thousands of hits on YouTube.

Tufts, which, like the University of Chicago, is known for its quirky applications, invited the YouTube videos. Along with the required essays, Tufts has for years offered applicants an array of optional essays — “Are we alone?” is one of this year’s topics — or a chance to “create something” out of a sheet of paper. So it was not too far a stretch, this year, to add the option of posting a one-minute video that “says something about you.”

Lee Coffin, the dean of undergraduate admissions, said the idea came to him last spring as he watched a YouTube video someone had sent him. “I thought, ‘If this kid applied to Tufts, I’d admit him in a minute, without anything else,’ ” Mr. Coffin said. (via)