We share our favourite finds from the internet this week.
Twelve-foot statue of wet-shirted Darcy installed in lake
The scene in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice where Colin Firth, as Mr Darcy, emerges from a lake, his shirt dripping, has been voted by UK viewers as their favourite moment in a drama. A 12-foot fibreglass statue of Darcy is touring UK lakes in a stunt to promote a new television channel, Drama. It’s currently in Serpentine Lake (Hyde Park, London).
<!-- Start of guardian embedded video --> <!-- To autoplay video, set 'a=true' in the following line of code--> <!-- End of guardian embedded video -->‘I suppose it is inevitable that Pride and Prejudice be best known for a scene that Austen never wrote,’ critic and Austen expert John Mullan told the Guardian. ‘This is an installation that celebrates the imagination of Andrew Davies rather than that of Jane Austen.’
New releases to look out for in second half of 2013
We’ve hit the halfway mark for 2013 - and The Millions has published a comprehensive look at some of the most exciting literary releases of the second half of the year, as chosen by their editors and contributors. There are new books by Jhumpa Lahiri, Margaret Attwood, Stephen King, Jonathan Lethem, Julian Barnes and more.
Poor Haitians in Obnoxious American T-Shirts
Two Haitian photojournalists have been documenting a bizarre result of global capitalism: the phenomenon of poor, non-English-speaking Haitians wearing recycled American t-shirts bearing obnoxious or just plain incongruous slogans. An artists’s statement explains: ‘The worst T-shirts, those that would barely be sold in the cheap gift shops of Times Square, those with the dumbest slogans, reappear, thanks to a free-market miracle, in remote provinces of Haiti where nobody has taken the effort of translating such poetry into Creole.’
‘When donated clothing ends up dumped in developing nations — like all aid — it can have unforeseen negative effects on the local economy,’ writes Jezebel. ‘You can’t compete with free. The foreign “Pepe” [used clothes] has put thousands of Haitian tailors out of work. The solution to the guilt that comes with our over-reliance on cheap, unsustainable clothing isn’t to donate it once we tire of a garment, but to consume less and own less in the first place.’
Cycling infrastructure
Cycling is eco-friendly and promotes exercise - it’s an increasingly popular way of getting around. Two-wheeled devotees will be interested in The Atlantic’s inspirational round-up of ten brilliant pieces of bike infrastructure from around the world. From a river-floor bike tunnel in Rotterdam to Denmark’s bicycle superhighways and eye-catching pink bike parks (pictured below), these examples show how the right infrastructure can make cycling an easy option.
Why Children’s Books Matter: An Exhibition
The New York Public Library is putting on an exhibition to celebrate children’s literature. It’s too far away to visit - but you can flick through some of the exhibits online. The New York Times is featuring a visual slideshow of some of the best exhibits, celebrating classics like A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.
