Here are the top 10 of the most favorite Dog Breeds for 2009.

10.Shih

The Shih Tzu is a dog breed which originated in China. The name is both singular and plural. The spelling “Shih Tzu”, most commonly used for the breed, is according to the Wade-Giles system of romanization.

The Shih Tzu is reported to be the oldest and smallest of the Tibetan holy dogs, its vaguely lion-like look being associated with the Tibetan Snowlion. The Shih Tzu therefore also has the nickname “Tibetan temple dog”.




It is also often known as the “Xi Shi quan” (???), based on the name of Xi Shi, regarded as the most beautiful woman of ancient China, and, less often, the Chrysanthemum Dog, because its face looks very much like the flower, and the Chinese or Tibetan Lion Dog. Owners often tie strands of fur from the shih tzu’s head into a pony-tail that sticks up. This is called a topknot, and many different hair clips and bows are added to make the dog appear more “cute”.

9 Poodle

The Poodle is a breed of dog, and is regarded as one of the most intelligent breeds of dog. The poodle breed is found in small, medium, and large sizes, and in manycoat colors. Originally bred as a type of water dog, the poodle is skillful in many dog sports, including agility, obedience, tracking, and even herding.Poodles are elegant in the conformation ring, having taken top honors in many shows, including Best in Show (BIS) at the Westminster Kennel Club show in 2002 and BIS at theWorld Dog Show in 2007. The poodle’s appearance made it popular as a circus dog and pet for the wealthy. The Fédération Cynologique Internationale lists the country of origin as France, but some experts believe poodles may have originated in Russia or Iberia; Germany is also frequently cited, including by the American Kennel Club, since the breed’s English name has German origins. (The name poodle comes from the German word pudel, short for pudelhund or “splashing dog”, reflecting the breed’s development from a water dog; the word pudel is related to the English word puddle.) However, most sources concur that the French are responsible for developing the modern breed into its current form, and developing the different sizes. The French name for the poodle is caniche, referring to ducks and the poodles’ water dog origins.

8 Bulldog

The Bulldog comes in a variety of colours and ideally has a smooth, short coat. The only disqualifier for the breed in the show ring is a liver colored nose, although black-coated bulldogs are not preferred. In the US, the size of a typical mature male is about 50 pounds; that for mature females is about 40 pounds. In the United Kingdom, the breed standard is 55 pounds for a male and 50 pounds for a female, but it is not uncommon for males to be 70 pounds.

The term “bulldog” was first used around 1568 and might have been applied to various ancestors of modern bulldog breeds. It has been theorized that Bulldogs were bred in England as a cross between the mastiff and the pug, although their genetic origin is debated. In the 1600s, bulldogs were used for bullbaiting (as well as bearbaiting), a gambling sport popular in the 17th century with wagers laid in which trained bulldogs leapt at a bull lashed to a post, latched onto its snout and attempted to suffocate it.

7 Dachshund

The dachshund is a short-legged, elongated dog breed of the hound family. However it is pronounced (variations include däks’hoont, -h?nt, -h?nd, -?nd, d?ks-, dæks-,dæ?-), the breed’s name is German and literally means “badger dog”, from [der] Dachs, “badger”, and [der] Hund, “dog”.

6 Boxer

                            

Developed in Germany, the Boxer is a breed of stocky, medium-sized, short-haired dog. The coat is smooth and fawn or brindled, with or without white markings. Boxers are brachycephalic (i.e. they have wide heads), and have a square muzzle, mandibular prognathism (an underbite), very strong jaws and a powerful bite ideal for hanging on to large prey.
The Boxer was bred from the English Bulldog and the now extinct Bullenbeisser and is part of the Molosser group. Boxers were first exhibited in a dog show for St. Bernards at Munich in 1895, the first Boxer club being founded the next year. Based on 2007 American Kennel Clubstatistics, Boxers are the sixth most popular breed of dog in the United States—moving up from the seventh spot for the first time since 2002—with 33,548 new dog registrations during the year.

7.Beagle

The Beagle is a breed of small to medium-sized dog. A member of the Hound Group, it is similar in appearance to the Foxhound but smaller, with shorter legs and longer, softer ears. Beagles are scent hounds, developed primarily for tracking hare, rabbit, and other game. They have a keen sense of smell and tracking instinct that sees them employed as detection dogs for prohibited agricultural imports and foodstuffs in quarantine around the world. They are popular as pets because of their size, even temper, and lack of inherited health problems. These characteristics also make them the dog of choice for animal testing.Beagles have been depicted in popular culture since Elizabethan times in literature and paintings, and latterly in film, television and comic books. Snoopy of the comic strip Peanuts has been promoted as “the world’s most famous beagle”..

4 Golden Retriever

                                    
The Golden Retriever is a breed of dog, historically developed as a gundog to retrieve shot waterfowl and upland game during hunting. As such they were bred to have a soft mouth to retrieve game undamaged and an instinctive love of water. Their intelligence and versatility sees them employed in a variety of roles includingillegal drug detection, search and rescue, as hunting dogs and as guide dogs. Its friendly, eager-to-please and patient demeanor has also made it one of the most popular family dogs (by registration) in the world today.

3 German Shepherd Dog

                                     

The German Shepherd Dog (GSD), (German: Deutscher Schäferhund) is a breed of large-sized dog that originates from Germany. German Shepherds are a fairly new breed of dog, with their origins only dating back to 1899. Part of the herding group, shepherds are working dogs developed originally for herding sheep. Their strength, intelligence and obedience often sees them employed in police and military roles in forces around the world. Due to their loyal and protective nature the breed is among the most registered.

2 Yorkshire Terrier

                                     

The Yorkshire Terrier (informally known as a Yorkie) is a breed of large dog in the terrier category. The long-haired terrier is known for its playful demeanor and distinctive blue and tan coat. Yorkies can be very small, usually weighing no more than 7 pounds (3.18 kg); the standard of this breed does not mention the minimum weight accepted nor does it specify a height. They are very friendly and handle children well.

1 Labrador Retriever

The Labrador Retriever is one of several kinds of retriever, a type of gun dog. The Labrador is considered the most popular breed of dog (by registered ownership) in the world, and is by a large margin the most popular breed by registration in the United States (since 1991), theUnited Kingdom, Poland, and several other countries. It is also the most popular dog breed in the United States, Australia, and many other countries, as well as being widely used by police and other official bodies for their detection and working abilities.

They are exceptionally affable, gentle, intelligent, energetic and good natured, and Labradors are generally considered good companions for people of all ages (including a high level of patience and tolerance for children, making them both excellent companions and working dogs. Although somewhat boisterous if untrained, Labrador Retrievers respond well to praise and positive attention, and are considerably “food and fun” oriented. These dogs are loyal and good with little children. With training, the Labrador is one of the most dependable, obedient and multi-talented dog breeds in the world.

6 extraordinarily stubborn 'nail houses

above: carl friedrickson's defiant 'nail house' in up [source]

near the start of up (pixar's latest gold-plated effort) we come to learn that carl fredricksen's house, or the land beneath it more specifically, is in demand by hungry developers due to its location amongst a sea of half-built, multistorey building projects, a fact that seems to make him all the more reluctant to let go of the nest he made with his late wife regardless of the offer slapped on the table. the result, until the house floats away at least, is the depressing but somehow uplifting landscape in the picture above. 


watching the film reminded me of a few very similar (but non-rendered) stubborn homeowner situations i've read about over the past couple of years, the rememberance of which resulted in me researching a fascinating and surprisingly common property (especially in china) i now know to be called a ' nail house'; so called as 'they stick out like nails in an otherwise modernized environment' and are hard to remove... 

edith macefield, seattle, u.s.a.

above: edith's mighty little house in ballard, seattle [source]

above: a publicity stunt for pixar's latest saw balloons attached to the house [source]

we'll start with edith macefield's brilliant little home in ballard as it's the first example of a nail house i'd ever read about and really reminds me of carl friedriksen's own abode. edith, who passed away last year, moved into this house in 1966 - long before the area's construction boom - and since then had turned down numerous offers from developers wishing to build a complex on her land, the highest of which is rumoured to be $1m. the developers decided to build the complex anyway and surround the house with sharp, sleek, characterless surfaces. read more here and here. see edith's house on google maps here (it's an old shot and you can still see her blue car outside the property). 

wu ping, chongqing, china

above: an aerial shot of wu ping's isolated nail house [source]

above: property to rent - not suitable for sleepwalkers [source]

perhaps the most famous nail house in history was situated on a huge mound of dirt in chonqing until april 2007, at which point it was demolished by exhausted developers after battling for 3 years and eventually parting with ¥1m. the house's owner, mrs wu ping, was the only person from 241 properties who refused to leave when asked in 2004 in order to make way for a new shopping centre. she really dug her heels in and the story quickly spread around the world by way of the intertubes. there's an interesting interview with mrs wu here. following some searching, see what i believe to be the site of wu ping's old house here on google schnapps.  

various farmers, narita airport, japan

above: narita's 2nd runway, dissected due to a defiant landowner - only the north end is usable [source]

above: the red lines indicate the parts of runway which haven't been built due to immovable landowners [from google maps]

in 1966 plans for a new airport were revealed by the japanese government, much to the annoyance of the public and especially those who owned the land upon which it was to be built. for the next 20 years a combination of regular (and sometimes fatal ) riots and defiant farmers who own land amongst the proposed runways forced developers to ditch the idea of a 3 runway airport. to this day, the middle of what was to be the 2nd runway is home to a farm and various smaller properties still sit around the terminals blocking construction of a 3rd runway. have a look around on google maps here. read more about the disputes here.  

austin spriggs, washington dc, u.s.a.

above: the house as it was in 2006, pre-shadows [source]

above: coming soon? [source]

above: what's supposedly to be a pizza joint, 2008 [source]

in 2006, austin spriggs was happily living in a house that would soon become a thorn in the side of local developers. such a thorn in fact that mr spriggs was offered more than $3m for the property in 2008 even though the property was previously only worth an estimated $200k. needless to say, he turned the offer down and then proceeded to take out a loan to convert the building into a pizza joint. as you can see, the building is absolutely dwarfed by the surrounding developments. read more here.

various properties, changsha, china

above: high street chains loom over a gutsy nail house [source]

above: at least the shop is unmissable to passers-by [source]

above: ragged brickwork is a reminder of the demolition of previously connected buildings [source]

this dilapidated shop/home sits continues to do business outside a sparkling, relatively modern-looking shopping centre in changsha city and the contrast between the two buildings is shocking. i don't know much about this house but if you look at the first photo, there are a couple more old properties which also seem to have weathered the development storm. the photos themselves are from october 2007 so i'm unsure whether they held up for much longer and a search on google maps proved fruitless. read a translated article about the buildings here. 

cai zhuxiang and zhang lianhao, shenzhen, china 

above: ultimately an extremely expensive building sits alone in shenzhen [source 1, source 2]

in 2006, cai zhuxiang and zhang lianhao, proud and determined owners of this 7 storey building in luohu, shenzhen, were approached by local developers who were on a mission to convert the surrounding area into an extremely profitable financial centre. as you can see from the photos, the couple refused and their 10yr old building and the land beneath it became the focus of a bidding war. eventually developers made an offer they couldn't refuse and in 2007 the couple gathered their belongings and moved on. although the final amount is unconfirmed, estimates point to compensation in the region of  between ¥10-20m (over us$1m). read more here.
fascinating stuff. there are plenty more of these properties to look at, a few of which are mentioned on boing boing  here. you can also search for the word 钉子户 on google, or bing, (it means 'nail house') or just click here instead.

Deathday: Patricia Highsmith 1921-1995 RIP

 

Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 - February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short-story writer most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which have led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train has been adapted for the screen three times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. In addition to her acclaimed series about murderer Tom Ripley, she wrote many short stories, often macabre, satirical or tinged with black humor. Although she wrote specifically in the genre of crime fiction, her books have been lauded by various writers and critics as being artistic and thoughtful enough to rival mainstream literature. Michael Dirda observed that "Europeans honored her as a psychological novelist, part of an existentialist tradition represented by her own favorite writers, in particular Dostoevsky, Conrad, Kafka, Gide, and Camus."

 

Early life

Born Mary Patricia Plangman in Fort Worth, Texas. She lived in her maternal grandmother's boarding house with her mother, and later her step father. In 1927 she moved to New York City with her mother and step father. When Highsmith was 12 years old, she was taken to Fort Worth and lived with her grandmother for a year. She called this the "saddest year" of her life, and felt abandoned by her mother. She returned to New York to continue living with her mother and step father, Stanley Highsmith. Highsmith's mother Mary had divorced "Patsy's" father (Jay Bernard Plangman) five months before her birth, and he is absent from the family's history after that. The young Highsmith had an intense, complicated relationship with her mother and resented her stepfather, although she took his surname, and in later years she sometimes tried to win him over to her side of the argument in her confrontations with her mother. According to Highsmith, her mother once told her that she had tried to abort her by drinking turpentine. Highsmith never resolved this love-hate relationship, which haunted her for the rest of her life, and which she fictionalized in her short story "The Terrapin," about a young boy who stabs his mother to death.

Highsmith's grandmother taught her to read at an early age. Highsmith made good use of her grandmother's extensive library. At the age of eight, she discovered Karl Menninger's The Human Mind and was fascinated by the case studies of patients afflicted with mental disorders such as pyromania and schizophrenia.

Comic books

In 1942 Highsmith graduated from Barnard College, where she had studied English composition, playwriting and the short story. Living in New York City and Mexico between 1942 and 1948, she wrote for comic book publishers. Answering an ad for "reporter/rewrite," she arrived at the office of comic book publisher Ned Pines and landed a job working in a bullpen with four artists and three other writers. Initially scripting two comic book stories a day for $55-a-week paychecks, she soon realized she could make more money by writing freelance for comics, a situation which enabled her to find time to work on her own short stories and also live for a period in Mexico. The comic book scriptwriter job was the only long-term job she ever held.

With Nedor/Standard/Pines (1942-43), she wrote Sgt. Bill King stories and contributed to Black Terror. For Real Fact, Real Heroes and True Comics, she wrote comic book profiles of Einstein, Galileo, Barney Ross, Edward Rickenbacker, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, David Livingstone and others. In 1943-45 she wrote for Fawcett Publications, scripting for such Fawcett Comics characters as the Golden Arrow, Spy Smasher, Captain Midnight, Crisco and Jasper. She wrote for Western Comics in 1945-47. When she later wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), one of the title character's first scam victims is comic-book artist Frederick Reddington, a parting gesture directed at the earlier career she had abandoned: "Tom had a hunch about Reddington. He was a comic-book artist. He probably didn't know whether he was coming or going."

Novels and adaptations

Highsmith's first novel was Strangers on a Train, which emerged in 1950, and which contained the violence that became her trademark. At Truman Capote's suggestion, she rewrote the novel at the Yaddo writer's colony in Saratoga Springs, New York.[6] The book proved modestly successful when it was published in 1950. However, Hitchcock's 1951 film adaptation of the novel propelled Highsmith's career and reputation. Soon she became known as a writer of ironic, disturbing psychological mysteries highlighted by stark, startling prose.

Highsmith's second novel, The Price of Salt was published under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. It garnered wide attention as a lesbian novel because of its rare happy ending. She did not publicly associate herself with this book until late in her life, probably because she had extensively mined her personal life for the book's content.

As her other novels were issued, moviemakers adapted them for screenplays: The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), Ripley's Game (1974) and Edith's Diary (1977) all became films.

She was a lifelong diarist, and developed her writing style as a child writing entries in which she fantasized that her neighbours had psychological problems and murderous personalities behind their façades of normality, a theme she would explore extensively in her novels.

Major themes in her novels

Highsmith included homosexual undertones in many of her novels and addressed the theme directly in The Price of Salt and the posthumously published Small g: a Summer Idyll. The former novel is known for its happy ending, the first of its kind in lesbian fiction. Published in 1952 under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, it sold almost a million copies. The inspiration for the book's main character, Carol, was a woman Highsmith saw in Bloomingdale's department store, where she worked at the time. Highsmith found out her address from the credit card details, and on two occasions after the book was written (in June 1950 and January 1951) spied on the woman without the latter's knowledge.

The protagonists in many of Highsmith's novels are either morally compromised by circumstance or actively flouting the law. Many of her antiheroes, often emotionally unstable young men, commit murder in fits of passion, or simply to extricate themselves from a bad situation. They are just as likely to escape justice as to receive it. The works of Franz Kafka and Fyodor Dostoevsky played a significant part in her own novels.

Her recurring character Tom Ripley — an amoral, sexually ambiguous con artist and occasional murderer — was featured in a total of five novels, popularly known as the Ripliad, written between 1955 and 1991. He was introduced in The Talented Mr. Ripley. After a 9 January 1956 TV adaptation on Studio One, it was filmed by René Clément as Plein Soleil (1960, aka Purple Noon and Blazing Sun) with Alain Delon, whom Highsmith praised as the ideal Ripley. The novel was adapted under its original title in the 1999 film directed by Anthony Minghella, starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Cate Blanchett.

A later Ripley novel, Ripley's Game, was filmed by Wim Wenders as The American Friend (1977). Under its original title, it was filmed again in 2002, directed by Liliana Cavani with John Malkovich in the title role. Ripley Under Ground (2005), starring Barry Pepper as Ripley, was shown at the 2005 AFI Film Festival but has not had a general release.

In 2009 BBC Radio 4 adapted all five Ripley books with Ian Hart as Ripley.

 

Personal life

According to her biography, Beautiful Shadow, Highsmith's personal life was a troubled one; she was an alcoholic who never had a relationship that lasted for more than a few years, and was seen by some of her contemporaries and acquaintances as misanthropic and cruel. She famously preferred the company of animals to that of people, and once said, "My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people."

"She was a mean, hard, cruel, unlovable, unloving person," said acquaintance Otto Penzler. "I could never penetrate how any human being could be that relentlessly ugly."

Other friends and acquaintances were less caustic in their criticism, however; Gary Fisketjon, who published her later novels through Knopf, said that "she was rough, very difficult... but she was also plainspoken, dryly funny, and great fun to be around."

Highsmith was bi-sexual, and never married or had children. In 1943 she had an affair with the artist Allela Cornell (who subsequently committed suicide in 1946 by drinking nitric acid) and in 1949, she became close to novelist Marc Brandel. Between 1959 and 1961 she had a relationship with Marijane Meaker, who wrote under the pseudonyms of Vin Packer and Ann Aldrich, but later wrote young adult fiction with the name M.E. Kerr. Meaker wrote of their affair in her memoir Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s. In the late 1980s, after 27 years of separation, Highsmith began sharing correspondence with Meaker again, and one day showed up on her doorstep, slightly drunk and ranting bitterly. Meaker once recalled in an interview the horror she felt upon noticing the changes in Highsmith's personality by that point.

 

Highsmith was never comfortable with blacks, and she was outspokenly anti-Semitic — so much so that when she was living in Switzerland in the 1980s, she invented nearly 40 aliases, identities she used in writing to various government bodies and newspapers, deploring the state of Israel and the “influence” of the Jews: nevertheless, she had Jewish friends such as author Arthur Koestler, and admired Jewish writers such as Franz Kafka and Saul Bellow. She was accused of misogyny because of her satirical collection of short stories Little Tales of Misogyny.

Highsmith loved woodworking tools and made several pieces of furniture. She kept pet snails; she worked without stopping. In her later life she became stooped, with an osteoporotic hump.

Though her writing — 22 novels and eight books of short stories — was highly acclaimed, especially outside of the United States, Highsmith preferred for her personal life to remain private. She had friendships and correspondences with several writers, and was also greatly inspired by art and the animal kingdom. Highsmith believed in American democratic ideals and in the promise of US history, but she was also highly critical of the reality of the country's 20th-century culture and foreign policy. Beginning in 1963, she resided exclusively in Europe.

Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes, her 1987 anthology of short stories, was notoriously anti-American, and she often cast her homeland in a deeply unflattering light.

Highsmith died of leukemia in Locarno, Switzerland. In gratitude to the place that helped inspire her writing career, she left her estate, worth an estimated $3 million, to the Yaddo colony. Her last novel, Small g: a Summer Idyll, was published posthumously a month later.

 

Bibliography

Novels

1.Strangers on a Train (1950)
2.The Price of Salt (as Claire Morgan) (1952), also published as Carol
3.The Blunderer (1954)
4.The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
5.Deep Water (1957)
6.A Game for the Living (1958)
7.This Sweet Sickness (1960)
8.The Two Faces of January (1961)
9.The Cry of the Owl (1962)
10.The Glass Cell (1964)
11.A Suspension of Mercy (1965), also published as The Story-Teller
12.Those Who Walk Away (1967)
13.The Tremor of Forgery (1969)
14.Ripley Under Ground (1970)
15.A Dog's Ransom (1972)
16.Ripley's Game (1974)
17.Edith's Diary (1977)
18.The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)
19.People Who Knock on the Door (1983)
20.Found in the Street (1987)
21.Ripley Under Water (1991)
22.Small g: a Summer Idyll (1995)

Short Story collections

1.Eleven (1970; also known as The Snail-Watcher and Other Stories)
2.Little Tales of Misogyny (1974)
3.The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder (1975)
4.Slowly, Slowly in the Wind (1979)
5.The Black House (1981)
6.Mermaids on the Golf Course (1985)
7.Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (1987)
8.Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories (2002; posthumously published)

Miscellaneous

1.Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction (1966)
2.Miranda the Panda Is on the Veranda (1958; children's book of verse and drawings, co-written with Doris Sanders)

Awards

1946 : O. Henry Award for best publication of first story, for "The Heroine" in Harper's Bazaar
1951 : Edgar Award nominee for best first novel, for Strangers on a Train
1956 : Edgar Award nominee for best novel, for The Talented Mr. Ripley
1957 : Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, for The Talented Mr. Ripley
1963 : Edgar Award nominee for best short story, for "The Terrapin"
1964 : Dagger Award – Category Best Foreign Novel, for The Two Faces of January from the Crime Writers' Association of Great Britain
1975 : Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir for L'Amateur d'escargot
1990 : Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture

-- wiki