Zeke Turner

Once, after Josh had an operation to restore his upper lip, he had to wear a gauze bandage for weeks, and his mother drew a mustache on it. The next time someone on Seventh Avenue asked what had happened to Josh, Julia snapped, “He had a mustache transplant.”

Or to put it in Seilles’s own words: “Newborns and adults will rebuild the whole planet by mistake. Each time they fart they release a sculptural form, carrying traces of the old world. It comes from an impulse to illustrate a physical demonstration of buildings: the narration, the décors, the collabortive frame.”

6:14 pm • 28 February 2013

When are British people tucking commas into quotation marks?

Under clear blue skies and chill sunshine, the 85-year-old pontiff toured the square in his “popemobile”, surrounded by bodyguards and stopping to kiss children amid cheers of “Benedetto, Benedetto” from the crowd.

Benedict, elected pope in 2005, is the first leader of the Roman Catholic Church to step down voluntarily since Celestine V in 1294. His departure sets the stage for a conclave of 115 cardinals next month at which a successor will be chosen to lead the 1.2bn-member Church.

“I took this step in full awareness of its gravity and rarity, but also with profound serenity of spirit,” the pope told the crowd, estimated by the Holy See at 150,000, much larger than the 50,000 allocated tickets for what was his last general audience. [FT]

2:34 pm • 27 February 2013

He did not consider homosexuality morally acceptable—and he never changed his view about that. But he understood that viruses have no religion or sexual orientation and that H.I.V. was a virus.

5:51 am • 27 February 2013

“diet” in the original, Latin sense of the word “diaeta,” a way of living

5:43 am • 27 February 2013

“People love that toasted-rice taste,” he said. “It’s even a flavor of ice cream in Seoul.” (Japanese cooks, however, consider toasted rice overcooked and highly undesirable. The unwanted crust left stuck to the bottom of the rice cooker is called okoge — the same word used as slang for a single woman who spends a lot of time with gay men.)

5:36 pm • 26 February 2013 • 1 note

The winter of 1970, with an average of just 104 hours of sunshine, was the bleakest since records began in 1951. But if the sun fails to show itself much more this year, the winter of 2012-2013, will "probably reach a new all-time low," Lux told news agency AFP.

7:21 am • 26 February 2013

The debate concerning Mr. Waltz stems from a long, contentious history in which Austria and Germany argue over which famous German-speaking figures belong to which country, the borders of which have historically often been blurred. For example, Austria tries to lay claim to Ludwig van Beethoven – born in Bonn, Germany, but who arguably came into musical greatness in Austria. Germans cling to the fact that Adolf Hitler was Austrian.

7:03 am • 26 February 2013 • 2 notes

Those primitive hunter gatherers, at age 30, had the same odds of dying as a modern Swedish or Japanese man would face at 72.

5:28 am • 26 February 2013