Robert Rabensteiner, L’Uomo Vogue fashion editor. Such masculinity and softness at the same time. Sick!

Constantine Samuel Rafinesque was a nineteenth-century polymath who made notable contributions to botany, zoology, the study of prehistoric earthworks in North America and Mesoamerican ancient linguistics. Rafinesque was eccentric, and is often portrayed as an “erratic genius”. He was an autodidact who excelled in various fields of knowledge, as a zoologist,botanist, writer and polyglot. He wrote prolifically on such diverse topics as anthropology, biology, geology, and linguistics, but was honored in none during his lifetime. Today, scholars agree that he was far ahead of his time in many of these fields.

In 1836 Rafinesque published his first volume of The American Nations. This included Walam Olum, a purported migration and creation narrative of the Lenape(“Delaware Indians”). It told of their migration to the lands around the Delaware River. Rafinesque claimed he had obtained wooden tablets engraved and painted with indigenous pictographs, together with a transcription in the Lenape language, from which he produced an English translation of the tablets’ contents. Rafinesque claimed the original tablets and transcription were later lost, leaving his notes and transcribed copy as the only record of evidence. Later linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological and textual analyses, particularly from the 1980s and 1990s onward, suggested that the Walam Olum account was largely or entirely a fabrication, and described its record of authentic Lenape traditional migration stories as spurious.

A railway gun is a large artillery piece, often surplus naval ordnance, mounted on, transported by and fired from a specially-designed railway wagon. Many countries have built railway guns, but the best known are the large Krupp-built pieces used by Germany in World War I and World War II.

Oilfields near Ramana, Azerbaijan.

Swallows and Amazons is a series of children’s books by English author Arthur Ransome, named after the title of the first book in the series. The 12 books involve adventures by groups of children almost all during the school holidays and mostly in England and Scotland, between the two World Wars. The stories revolve around outdoor activities, especially sailing. The series remains popular today for its idyllic, yet often realistic, depiction of childhood and the interplay between youthful imagination and reality. It is part of the basis for a large tourist industry in the Lake District and Norfolk Broads areas of England, where many of the books are set

Maybe the contester of the most sublime thing to be featured on this blog. Maybe I should have a vote for most sublime thing of the year?

Jerry Saltz: “Ink Line, the best and showiest of the three works, is a sculpture / drawing / fountain consisting of a stream of jet-black ink pouring from a dime-size hole in the ceiling into a dime-size hole in the floor. Initially Ink Line looks like a strand of yarn strung the height of the gallery, a pulsating Fred Sandback sculpture, a free-floating Barnett Newman zip or a disembodied Sol LeWitt. Get close and you’ll realize the line is liquid, glimmering, the consistency of syrup, moving fairly fast, fluctuating slightly, and thinner at the bottom than at the top. The ink forms a weird climatological aura around itself, slightly changing the humidity of the room. I was blown away when I was allowed to see the elaborate apparatus that makes this simple effect possible. There was a large, noisy electric motor in the showroom beneath this gallery, all sorts of wiring, and plastic tubes that go under the floor, behind the wall, and above the ceiling. A gallery assistant arrives two hours early each day to drain the ink, “de-gas” it (!?), heat it with lamps to between 90 and 95 degrees, and put it back into the system. Anyone who looks at Ink Line can figure out how it works — yet the piece is as much a phenomenological event and a mystery as it is a work of formalist sculpture.”

Rattle Ring.

The Last of the Wine engages the mores and culture of Classical Greece, including symposia (drinking parties), the treatment of women, the importance of athletic, military and philosophical training among young men, marriage customs, and daily life in war and peace.

Ray that looks like leopard!

A crime novel with a difference. In the 1980s the bankrobber Johann Rettenberger was the most wanted criminal in Austria. Known as Pumpgun Ronnie due to his weapon and the Ronald Reagan mask he wore for his robberies, he sometimes robbed two or three banks on the same day. Unusually for a bankrobber, he was also a keen amateur marathon runner and had won several races. He jumped out of a window during questioning and escaped by running into the Vienna Woods. On the Run is a novel about a man for whom running is of existential importance. He only seems to feel truly alive, truly himself, truly free when he is running.

It recounts the true story of the unexplained coma of socialite Sunny von Bülow, the subsequent attempted murder trial, and the eventual acquittal of her husband, Claus von Bülow, who had Dershowitz acting as his defense.

Amazing band.

Great image makers behind this new star.

Without a doubt, the tale of the grand limestone chateau on Madison Avenue at 72nd Street is the one of the most bizarre in New York social history.

Rhodesia was an unrecognised state located in Southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965.

Roadside Geology series

AMAZING.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ5Hbxb-sh4

Hardy Rodenstock is a former publisher and manager of pop and Schlager music in Germany and is a prominent wine collector, connoisseur and trader, with a special interest in old and rare wines. He became famous for an uncanny ability to track down old and very rare wines, and for arranging extravagant wine tastings featuring these wines.

Romeo Is Bleeding is a 1993 darkly comic police story starring Gary Oldman and Lena Olin, directed by Peter Medak. The film’s title was taken from a song by Tom Waits.

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

What an amazing portraitist.

Henri Rousseau – painted the jungles he had never seen.

Raymond Roussel. Eccentric genius millionaire, chess enthusiast, and poet.

 Alexander Roux

Roxelana was the wife of Süleyman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. Hürrem’s influence over the Sultan soon became legendary; she was to bear Süleyman five children, in an astonishing break with tradition, eventually was freed and became his legal wife, making Süleyman the first Ottoman Emperor to have a wed wife since Orhan Gazi.

The Royal Greenhouses of Laeken are a vast complex of monumental heated greenhouses in the park of the Royal Castle of Laeken in Brussels.

Porfirio Rubirosa was a Dominican diplomat, polo player and race car driver who competed in the 1950 and 1954 24 Hours of Le Mans, but was best known as an international playboy for his jet setting lifestyle and legendary prowess with women.

Thomas Ruff, German photographer.

Hand-made by Italian craftsman, Borrani rims gained popularity in the 1920’s and have become known as the “gold standard” of wire wheels world-wide.

Dry garden at Ryōan-ji.