One of my favorite portraits, Bruna by Gustavo Marx

"Best of LIFE" is a tumblr blog that posts some of the most interesting photos from Google's new LIFE archive.

I can't even count the celebrities.

More from the You Can't Do That file: A school district in New York has censored Girl, Interrupted due to "inappropriate" content.

Students at New Rochelle School High School are going to find it difficult to complete their next assignment: comparing the film adaptation of "Girl, Interrupted" to the best-selling book. In the book, Kaysen recounts her confinement at a Massachussets mental hospital in the 1960s.

Pages from the middle of the book have been torn out by the school district after having been deemed "inappropriate" by school officials due to sexual content and strong language...

Sources at the school says that after receiving complaints from an as yet-to-be-identified person or group, the school district ordered students to return the book to the chairperson of the English department who then personally tore out pages 64 through 70 before returning the books to students. Ironically, news of the school censorship first broke during the same week as the school district's annual Literary Festival.

Even more disturbing:

The ultimate decision on whether to ban books rests with Cindy Babcock-Deutsch, the President of the School Board. Babcock-Deutsch has a well-documented history of practicing censorship in her role as chairperson of board of education meetings. She has repeatedly asserted that "privacy laws" bar criticism of senior school administrators at school board meetings. More recently she has resorted to threats, interruptions and physical intimidation to silence critics at what are public meetings in public buildings.

This unethical person needs to go under review. Contact her if you like:

Cindy Babcock Deutsch
President
Board of Education
City School District of New Rochelle
cindycsdnr@gmail.com
914-576-4300

Betamaxmas is a wonderful little site replete with Christmas nostalgia. Sweet. Don't miss the TV Guide on the upper right.

Oh, and, too grainy for you? Adjust the rabbit ears of course!

Many insects have adapted amazingly well to camouflage themselves by mimicking various shapes, patterns, and colors in nature. Here are several fascinating photos and videos of insects that resemble leaves.

The images and videos below show various species of leaf- and stick-mimicking praying mantises, including a dead leaf mantis (Deroplatys desiccata) and a violin mantis subadult (Gongylus gongylodes). The detail and similarity to vegetation in some species, like the specimen in the first image, is extraordinary.

"There are no game laws—and no accidents—for those who hunt with a KODAK." This 1916 ad from a magazine makes a good argument.

I like the way this guy paints. David Haakon isn't bad either.