Artist Liu Shiming (right) with clay maquette for his sculpture “Cutting Through Mountains to Bring in Water” (1958) (all images courtesy Godwin-Ternbach Museum and Liu Shiming Foundation unless otherwise noted) In “Cutting Through Mountains to Bring in Water” (1958), the late sculptor and educator Liu Shiming embodied the vigorous spirit of the Chinese Revolution. A bare-chested man straddles the space between two pointed rocks, as if traversing them, yet his abstracted lower half seems to materialize from the lowest point of the base. Molded with clay and cast in bronze, the piece served as a study for a larger monument installed at Beijing’s Zhongshan Park, boldly celebrating China’s re-...
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In addition to its multiplayer gameplay, Call of Duty has some of the best single-player campaigns in gaming. Often, the effort of the team that creates single-player storylines is overlooked for the focus on multiplayer, but we should commend them. The stories are great, but the characters survive far beyond their games due to their unforgettable nature. Some characters have stood the test of time in the Call of Duty franchise, despite there being many games. Some of the best characters from the single-player storyline end up as skins in multiplayer, and some of them also appear in Call of Duty: Warzone. Rather than just focusing on the heroes, we have compiled a list of the best...
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Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball is the rare anime property that's gone on to influence countless other series and become many newcomers' gateway series to this exciting medium of animation. Likewise, it's impressive how each new addition to the franchise is both faithful to the property's roots, but also reflective of modern anime sensibilities. Dragon Ball gets a lot of attention for its bold battle sequences and unbelievable transformations, but none of those theatrics matter without strong characters to fall back on. Vegeta is easily one of the most popular figures to come out of Dragon Ball, and he's not a character who struggles to receive representation. However...
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Modern Family is arguably the definitive sitcom of the 2010s. Its stories and characters are reflections of its viewers, "incorporat[ing] its own hashtag of simultaneous self-analysis." Modern Family went on to win an impressive 22 Emmys over the course of its eleven-season run, including five awards for Best Television Comedy. The series follows the hilariously endearing misadventures of an extended family — the Dunphys, Pritchetts, and Tucker-Pritchetts might be separated by distance, but they remain deeply involved in each other's lives. Each character is blessed with a unique range of eccentricities, which consequently manifests in their styles of communication. 8 "When Life...
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Affected components: Skin, TemplateParser, Selected(and stable) skins: Modern/CologneBlue/Monobook, potentially API Engineer(s) or team for initial implementation: (Ideally) Core Platform + Web Motivation There is dissatisfaction with the existing skin system. I recently documented this in a blog post Why does building a skin require PHP knowledge? As far as I can see the main issues being: It’s difficult to create a new skin unless you have a wide range of skills including knowledge of PHP and backend technologies as well as mediawiki internals Deploying an existing skin into production adds a huge maintenance burden given the lack of boundaries to the skin system It is difficult to...
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When you think of a beard competition, you probably picture men with varying styles of facial hair on display. But bodacious beards aren’t just for those with XY chromosomes. A growing number of women who’ve embraced the popularity of men’s beard competitions have put their own unique spin on it — and with homemade whiskers. Male beard competitions have existed in America for over a decade. Phil Olsen, founder of Beard Team USA and organizer of the World Beard and Moustache Championships, said that since 2003, when he first established contests and beard groups in the U.S., they have sprung up across the country. They have a traditionally male audience, and the categories, which refer to “...
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In 1991, filming began today for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which reassembled the Original Series cast for a prescient look at the end of the Cold War. With Star Trek: The Next Generation in its celebrated fourth season and the Star Trek movie series essentially moribund after the critically loathed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Paramount Pictures considered ditching William Shatner and the rest of the original cast for a prequel set at Starfleet Academy, with cheap, young and unknown actors. But Spock actor Leonard Nimoy pitched a promising idea: Star Trek's take on perestroika and the Cold War. Rather than a liberalizing Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev and a crumbling...
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How to shave a thin mustache. 7 great mustaches that define Russian history - Russia Beyond Facial hair has been a potent topic throughout Russian history. To Ivan the Terrible, a man without a beard was a heretic; under Peter the Great, a bearded man was considered an uncultured boor. Famous horseshoe mustache. The stand-alone mustache, on the other hand, took a while to work its way into Russian men’s and reached peak popularity at some point in time between the full-bearded Tsar Nicholas II and the clean-shaven President Vladimir Putin. It’s Movember, so what better time to focus on the male upper lip? Through these seven figures, see how the Russian ‘stache has...
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A solid moustache is frequently abetted by one key item: mustache wax – and it’s an alternate brute to the stuff for your head. The mustache is regularly the primary facial hair a young fellow develops, so its appearance denotes the progress from kid into man. As the upper lip is delicate and might be inclined to ingrown hairs, numerous men choose to develop it in. Others simply like the look of a wellbeing ‘stache. Regardless of whether your mustache is a lasting installation, similar to that of on-screen character Tom Selleck, or more transitory, your facial hair will profit by cautious preparing and styling. On the off chance that you’ve at any point appreciated a great...
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