This past valentine's day a few days ago was not only even cheesier than last year's (on the radio, they were making up a "Valentine's Eve" on the 13th already -- how long until Valentine's week, month or year emerge?), it was also the 150th birthday of the State of Oregon. If I had to choose what American state I'd like to be a Citizen of, Oregon would rank pretty high on the list.

Just in time for the big one-five-oh, Oregon State University's archives joined the flickr commons, publishing some nice photos from the state's past for everybody to enjoy. I am delighted! Needless to say, the pictures are in the public domain (or so they assume).

Oregon Birthday

Oregon Birthday

Before the OSU Archives joined the "commons" project, they had already added another flickr account on their owns, publishing other gems from their vault, such as these great, historic football programs:

OSU Civil War Program, 1945

OSU vs. USC, 1957

(Thanks for the link, Jean Pierre!)

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When I recently watched a slideshow on flickr, I noticed this in the slideshow settings:

It seems, flickr developers watch the Simpsons too. The word embiggen, along with cromulent, was introduced (read: made up) in the episode "Lisa the Iconoclast" and has since been widely used in popular culture. So widely even, that at least cromulent made it into Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English as a slang term.

Hm. Flickr is re-gaining some sympathy here (for this and other reasons I may soon blog about).

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