Shabby Apple

For women and girls who are searching for clothes that are feminine but tasteful and fun, a pleasant surprise awaits you at Shabby Apple. They specialize in dresses that have a timeless quality, stylish with a touch of retro and more than a touch of elegance. Women's sizes are available as well. They also carry a charming line of maternity dresses and as well as dresses for infants and small girls. Have fun browsing!

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Beautiful

A new biography of Hedy Lamarr, for whom beauty was indeed a curse.

Her story was both unusual and fascinating, a true 20th-century tale. Her real name was Hedwig Kiesler. Born in 1914 as the beloved only child of a Viennese Jewish banker, she always attracted attention for her spectacular looks. By the time she was 16, she had embarked on a successful theatrical career. Before she was 20, she had shocked Austria with two major scandals: her marriage to the older Fritz Mandl, a millionaire arms dealer with connections to Mussolini, and her nude appearance in Gustav Machaty's 1933 film, "Ecstasy." The former she was able to run away from, heading from fascist Europe to America, but the latter stayed with her all her life.

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Nazis at the Racetrack?

Tom Piatak looks at an absurd review of the film Secretariat.

I should have realized that any movie I enjoyed would make someone else angry. In this case, the angry person is movie critic Andrew O’Hehir of Salon.com, who found Secretariat a work of creepy, half-hilarious master race propaganda almost worthy of Leni Riefenstahl. In his review, O’Hehir accused the film of “presenting a honey-dipped fantasy vision of the American past as the Tea Party would like to imagine it, loaded with uplift and glory and scrubbed clean of multiculturalism and social discord.” O’Hehir was bothered by the movie’s quoting from the Book of Job and featuring Gospel music, and was especially upset by the portrayal of Secretariat’s groom, Eddie Sweat, described by O’Hehir as belonging to “a far more insidious tradition of movie stereotypes. Eddie dances and sings. He loves Jesus and that big ol’ horse. He is loyal and deferential to Miz Penny, and injects soul and spirit into her troubled life.”

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La Muette

Lauren has a post on one of the hunting lodges of the kings of France. Share

Pol Pot and the Triumph of the Revolution

The hell of “Democratic Kampuchea” in which millions died, as described by the Mad Monarchist:

King Sihanouk was placed under house arrest, a number of the royal family were killed and Pol Pot unleashed a reign of terror unsurpassed even amongst the most brutal of communists dictators around the world. Anyone with any foreign ties was killed, anyone displaying overt religious devotion was killed. The disabled were killed. Anyone with any ties to a previous government was killed. Everyone was made absolutely equal and any deviation from the new norm was punishable by death. Families were abolished since words like “mother” and “father” were hierarchical and considered superior to children so everyone became “brother” and “sister”. Anyone who referred to their parents as such were killed, a woman who referred to her husband as such was killed, anyone who used any traditional form of address was liable to be killed. The educated class was wiped out, since they would be held as superior to the uneducated and even those wearing glasses would be killed as this was taken as a symbol of intellectualism. Currency was abolished and the cities were emptied as everyone was sent to work on the communal rice fields; essentially vast slave labor camps where many city dwellers who had no experience growing their own food quickly died. Hordes of people died of starvation and hundreds of thousands were executed.

Over the years Pol Pot became more paranoid and had many of his own allies, even lifelong supporters put to death as well. The notorious prison, essentially a massive torture chamber, S-21 or Tuol Sleng was set up for anyone accused of being an enemy of the regime or an agent of the CIA. People were tortured, often by electrocution, to give up names of accomplices, most of whom had never heard of the CIA or had the slightest idea what the initials meant. However, people would give any number of names to make the torture stop and these people then were arrested and given similar treatment. To save bullets most of those executed were taken to the countryside, beaten to death and buried in mass graves. It is estimated that as many as 2 million Cambodians died during Pol Pot’s reign of terror. The rest of the world was outraged at the reports that emerged from the secretive, nightmarish hell on earth that was “Democratic Kampuchea”. However, many governments in the west gave subtle support to the regime of Pol Pot and even King Sihanouk, despite being constantly kicked around by the Khmer Rouge, stuck up for them in the UN.

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Daughter of a Saint

A remarkable post about Henry I's queen, Matilda of Scotland, the daughter of Saint Margaret. Share

HIV: An African View

An interview with Jesuit Father Michael Czerny, founder of the African Jesuit AIDS Network.

The worldwide Church is the major caregiver for those who are HIV positive and those who are suffering from AIDS as well as also caring for those affected -- especially widows, orphans and others who are carrying the burden. So there is a wide range of work that the Church does.

If you look at it medically, perhaps worldwide, the Church offers 25% of AIDS services. My guess is that the average in Africa is closer to 40%, maybe even 50%. The further away you get from the big cities, the closer it gets to 100%. Often the only AIDS services in the remote areas are the Church clinics.

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The Rise and Fall of the Shopping Mall

Can the holidays save them? As populations shift and tastes change, many malls have become empty and obsolete. I was never a fan of malls; I always preferred shopping in a place where there were windows and natural light and access to fresh air. According to the Wall Street Journal:

In a pattern repeated at urban malls across the country, Metrocenter deteriorated as wealthier families moved to outer suburbs and upscale shopping palaces cropped up there to cater to them. Big-box stores lured away Metrocenter's increasingly blue-collar customers and gang incidents damaged its reputation. Then came the housing crisis.

"It's scary in there," says 19-year-old Kayla Polifko, who works at a nearby PetSmart yet rarely ventures inside.

The challenge of aging malls is made harder in places such as parts of Nevada and Michigan where unemployment tops the national average, or here in Arizona, where the housing market has been ravaged.

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Bore-geous Writing

Author Ayelet Waldman advises on how to avoid pointless, empty prose, saying:

Good narrative writing must defend itself. Every sentence, even every word, must be there for a reason beyond its beauty. It must move the story along, pushing it toward what comes next. Good writing can and should be beautiful, but it must never be only beautiful. Bore-geous is always too much, and never enough.

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