Bram Stoker’s restored Dracula desk up for auction | Reuters

(Reuters) – The desk where Bram Stoker wrote his famed 1897 book “Dracula” is going up for auction next month after having been restored and turned into a work of art, auction company Profiles in History said on Wednesday.

The desk, which will be auctioned off by the California company on December 15 and 16, has had a long history, which, over the past century, has left it battered, with missing drawers and legs sawn short.

The Irish-born Stoker, who died in 1912, initially gave the desk to his friend J.S.R. Phillips. The current owner commissioned British-based furniture maker and designer Mark Brazier-Jones to preserve the desk, but also make it a stand-alone art piece, the auction house said.

Brazier-Jones said in a statement that he wanted to preserve the desk’s scars and textures, but also pay homage to the man who introduced the vampire Count Dracula to today’s pop culture.

via Bram Stoker’s restored Dracula desk up for auction | Reuters.

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Austrians debate what to do with baby Hitler’s home | Reuters

The man who became Nazi dictator was born in the house in Braunau on the Inn, a town near Salzburg on the German border, in April 1889. His family lived there only three years, but his link to the three-storey building has left an indelible mark.

A retired local woman now owns the property, which Austria’s federal interior ministry has been renting since 1972 and has sublet to Braunau.

According to media accounts, the building – an inn when Hitler‘s family rented space there – has housed a library, a bank, classrooms and most recently a charitable organization‘s workshop for handicapped people, which moved out a year ago.

The question of what to do with it now is exposing splits between those who want to highlight its past and those who want to turn the page on an inglorious chapter of local history.

The mayor of Braunau, Johannes Waidbacher, caused a stir with a newspaper interview in which he proposed making the house into a standard residence.

“You have to ask in general whether another Holocaust memorial makes sense when there are already many around here,” the mayor, born 21 years after the war’s end, told Der Standard.

“We are stigmatized anyway. Hitler spent the first three years of his life in the city, and it was certainly not the most formative phase of his life. We as the city of Braunau are thus not prepared to take responsibility for the outbreak of World War Two,” he was quoted last week as saying.

via Austrians debate what to do with baby Hitler’s home | Reuters.

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What price fame?

This advertisement has been on several very large banners around the Diagonal Mar Shopping Centre here in Barcelona for the past few weeks. It offers people the chance to take part in a competition and win modelling prizes. Which is great, despite the fact that yours truly will not be taking part for humanitarian reasons.

Unfortunately, the people that wrote the copy may wish they had consulted their dictionaries first of all.

Whereas a SHOOTING is:

Noun 1. shooting – the act of firing a projectile; “his shooting was slow but accurate”
2. shooting – killing someone by gunfire; “when the shooting stopped there were three dead bodies”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/shooting

the word they were probably looking for is SHOOT, which is defined, among other things, as:

Noun. […]
6. A session in which something is photographed, filmed, or videotaped

.

So if someone approaches you in a shopping centre for a shooting opportunity, just decline politely!

Strange Random Shopping Centre Quote:
We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls. – Bill Bryson

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The view from a broad: how to marry a billionaire

Image by TW Collins via Flickr

It is not often that one is delivered a press release quite so dispiriting as last week’s little number for a flight comparison site that had thoughtfully “mapped out exactly where to find the world’s richest people in order for women to know where to bag a billionaire”. If you can hear a distant thud, don’t worry, it is only me bashing my head against my desk. Said website apparently pooled the recent Forbes Billionaire List and a map, to produce every woman’s indispensable guide to hunting down a rich husband if that’s not attractive, I don’t know what is.

via The view from a broad: how to marry a billionaire | Life and style | The Guardian.

Strange Random Money Quote:

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to shop. — Bo Derek

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There will be no posts today.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Today is a General Strike in Spain and so, in the spirit of the occasion, we are not going to post anything on the blog.

Tomorrow we’ll be back with another interesting article, cool site, video and maybe even a game.

But not today.

Thank You.

Strange Random Strike Quote:

“When you are an anvil be patient; when a hammer, strike” – Arabian Proverb

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