Long Studio / Fogo Island / New Foundland / Canada

The first studio to be finished in 2010 was the 131-m² Long Studio to the north of the Joe
Batt’s Arm community, also close to the Fogo Island Inn’s site. Perched on a seaside and
stretching toward the water, this is one of the largest studios in the Fogo Island scheme
and it references in shape traditional seaside buildings and fishermen’s houses in the area;
these visual quotes were crucial during Saunders’ work at the Fogo Island project.
Made locally, mostly out of wood (exterior rough-sawn spruce and interior spruce planks)
and standing on pillars, the structure’s overall shape incorporates a mix of internal and
external areas.

Fifty Shades of Grey - русский стиль

The first week-end in theatres, the 40 Mio. production budget of fifty shades of grey will most likely be recovered by the end of tonight. With my penchant for everything Russian, I wondered what a Grey-style billionaire in Moscow would be most likely to do on a friday night. Here are the answers:

Accomodation: Barvikha Hotel and Spa

Enjoy your own fire-place and a bed that sleeps five.

Transport: Prombron Red Diamond

DARTZ MOTORZ
Bulletproof opulence trusted by billionaires, tzars, superstars, generals and dictators since 1869.

Dinner: Siberia

A table-fee of 700$ keeps the plebs out.

After Dinner: Nightflight

Over 20 years proven track-record in supplying unbelievable beauty

Cost: I have no clue. Fun-factor: Priceless and not to be had in NYC :-)

Betsy Brown / Бетси Браун

from http://www.bbrownart.com/artwork.asp (edited)
"Perhaps it is her attention to detail or the broader effect.  Whatever the reason, what touches Betsy personally seems to affect so many others drawn to her work."
So, whatever it is, art, handicraft or hobby, I like it. Her paintings remind me of Thomas Kinkaide.

  

Vasily Polenov / Васи́лий Поле́нов

From Wikipedia (edited):
Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov (1 June 1844 – 18 July 1927) was a Russian landscape painter.
He was one of the first Russian artists who achieved a plein air freshness of color combined with artistic finish of composition. Polenov was elected a member of the St.Petersburg Academy of arts in 1893, and named as a People's Artist of the USSR in 1926.  For many years, he coached young painters in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

                                                                             Beirut

                                                                          Venice

                                                                 Pond near Abramzev

                                                                      Vorya River

                                                                         Oka Valley

                                                                    No title available

                                                               River Oka near Tarusa

What you should know about consumer credit

Let it be a motor-cycle or a new deck plus jacuzzi: the world is full of temptations. Often enough, what you got in your pocket doesn't allow for your new gadget or long held desire. A great many retailers offer consumer-credit to make your wish come true, despite empty pockets.
Now, there are a few things to keep in mind:
Whenever you finance something you can't haggle over the price. In the very competitive market for durable consumer goods, paying cash can result in considerable discounts.
The other aspect is that by financing, you pay a lot more than the asking price.
Let's have a look at that:
10.000€ at 5% for 3 years results in monthly payments of some 300€. In the end you pay 36 months times 300€ which equals 10.800€. You not only did forgo the chance of a discount, you also paid 800€ extra.
Take your typical credit-card, the interest rate will be somewhat around 10% or more. Looking at the same 10.000€ credit, your monthly installments will be some 323€ and the final sum is around 11.630€. 1.630€ more than the asking price, again no discount. Divide those 1.630€ by your hourly salary and then ask yourself whether that motor-cycle is necessary now!
Am I saying that all credit is bad? By no means no. When you are looking at mortgages for a home or credit for college that is all a different story. What I recommend, however, is that you pay close attention to the extra money you pay for having things that are not instantaneously necessary. To stay with the above example, 1.630€ extra is a lot of money, when compared with most peoples monthly net wages.

A simple guide to playing the lottery

Playing the lottery is a simple investment: only if you partake you can win.
Many lotteries I know offer tickets with up to ten fields you can fill out.
Does that make economic or statistical sense? The answer is a clear "No".

Let me explain why that is so:

If you do not play at least one field, you cannot participate and you cannot win.

Playing at least one field enables you to possibly win. To keep things simple, I will only look at the jackpot, the highest win.
Your chances to rake it in big time are as follows with two popular lotteries:

Lotto 6aus49 1 : 139.000.000

EuroJackpot  1 : 95.344.200

Let us look at Eurojackpot with a hyypothetical jackpot of 100 Mio. Euro. It actually never has been that high so far.

You pay 2,5 € for a single lottery-field played to get a 1:96 Mio. chance to win 100 Mio. €. The expected value of your investment thus is 100 Mio. € / 96 Mio. which equals some 1€.

Let us see what happens when you play two fields: You invest 5€ and your expected value is 100 Mio. / 96 Mio * 2 which equals some 2€.

You can continue to look at that until you probably arrive at investing 250€ and looking at an expected value of 100€.

Keep in mind that your typical jackpot with Eurojackpot, however, is much lower than a 100 Mio. Euro, so the gap between your investment and the expected value is much larger than in the example shown above.

So, should you play the lottery? The answer is simple: if you do not play at all, you cannot win.
How much should you invest? Obviously as little as possible. One field played results in
a chance of 1:96 Mio. Two fields played net a chance of 2:96 Mio. and for that extra
1:96 Mio. you pay again 2,5€. That does not seem to make sense!

Now, if for some reason that jackpot swells up to some 250 Mio. € the story reads a tad bit differently. You could actually buy 9.534.420 lottery tickets and fill them out with every possible combination. If one of yours is right and nobody else has chosen the same numbers as you did, you would win 250 Mio. by only having invested some 238 Mio. in lottery tickets. That is a pretty nice cut of 12 Mio., but until that occasion arises, stick to playing one field, if played at all.
(idea for last para taken from: https://mostlymath.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/winning-the-lottery/ )

Microscopic Pictures

"www.micronaut.ch
Dr. Martin Oeggerli is Micronaut. Micronaut is using his scientific expertise and personally-executed preparation, scanning-electron-microscopy (SEM) and post-processing to display his unique perspective with profound clarity."
Certainly not to everybody's taste, but I love his work. The website www.micronaut.ch offers a huge gallery, although with a down-turn: larger pictures are water-marked and the prints come at hefty prices.

A fairy tale forest-marsh

When I was a child I loved to roam a swampy forest near my home-town. There was always something to discover, be it a swampy pool full of frogs or a circle of mushrooms growing. Usually my mother threw a fit when I returned home with my boots and pants covered with mud, but that was worth the fun of it.

Edward Gustav Eisenlohr continued

Artist info: December 16, 2014

Drawings in typical style:

Some appealing paintings: