Sunday 25 January 2009

Top Ten Off-topic Items

Actually I have to admit to having lost track of my goal of posting these lists once a week. I’m not sure whether I should post on the due date or once I’ve collected ten items. Ah well. For the time being you’ll have to take what you’re given!
Love you all really, honest I do.
Hazel


via Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate on 21 January
From gorilla walking sticks to crows who like bug fishing, there are plenty of clever non-humans who use tools... more

Absurd News via Coffee Klatch by pfitz on 16 January
The CNN website has a regular video feature called News of the Absurd. This week’s talks about someone who is allergic to cold, a town that used GARLIC SALT on its roads, and a “Don’t Try This At Home” story involving a homemade blowtorch.

Donkeys boost Ethiopian literacy BBC News

via Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate on 23 November
So many assumptions, agendas and, distinctly iffy data behind those ubiquitous words, “research shows”. Frank Furedi explains a few of them... more

Marilyn: 1947 via Shorpy Photo Archive - History in HD by Dave on 7 December
Hollywood, February 1947. “Movie starlet Marilyn Monroe”. Photograph by J.R. Eyerman

via Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate on 11 December
Pixies, sheilas, and dirtbags. If you go on a whizzer and get a tad squiffy (if not starkers) with cougar bait, then expect to be a little rumpty-tumpty the next day... more

via Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate on 22 November
Flying ducks hung on flocked wallpaper: what do the materials possessions of working-class people of London tell us about them?... more

Scientists Invent Completely Waterproof Material via Gimundo.com on 3 December
There’s nothing worse than the sensation of soaking wet clothes on your body when you get caught outside in a heavy rainstorm. But thanks to a new development in fabric from scientists at the University of Zurich, wet clothing may soon be a matter of the past.

via Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate on 24 November
Manhattan is the capital of people who live alone. Yet are New Yorkers lonelier? Far from it: studies show urban alienation is largely a myth... more

2000-year-old Antikythera computer comes back to life via guardian.co.uk by James Randerson on 11 December
Regulars of the Science Weekly podcast will remember our interview with Jo Marchant, the author of Decoding the Heavens. The book tells the story of the Antikythera mechanism, a mysterious clockwork object made up of numerous meshed cogs that was discovered more than a century ago among the cargo of a Greek shipwreck.The mystery of how the Greeks had made a machine that appeared to be 1800 years ahead of its time and why that knowledge was seemingly lost is fascinating, but Marchant’s story is really about the scientists and engineers who have fallen under the spell of the Antikythera mechanism over the last century. It is a gripping tale of scientific obsession, rivalry and skulduggery.

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