Saturday 4 February 2012

10 stories and links I think are educative, informative, entertaining, or weird

Corporate Ethics: Not an Oxymoron via Big Think by Jason Gots
Gone are the good old bad old days in which Ethics was the lonely elective in B-school that no one elected to take. We’ve all heard about the new wave of humanitarian businesses – so numerous in fact that special legal designations have been created to incorporate the idea of for-profit philanthropy.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Working mothers are nothing new. In hunter-gatherer societies, women brought in half of the food. So much for the myth of passive femininity... more

Monkey washes dishes via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
Dunchead says: “A truly amazing clip of a monkey washing dishes, and making a very thorough job of it.”
“Pete had been observing me washing the pots for a few days before he took over and began completely and perfectly imitating me!
The monkey on his back is a baby female called Pea. She is not his daughter. Pete had an unfortunate overbite which made him a particularly ugly monkey; he had very little success with the ladies and therefore looked after babies a lot.”
Link to video

Alphabet Maps of Great Britain and Ireland via Big Think by Frank Jacobs
If you’re in the north of England and you’re in a town ending in -by, you’re in former Danish-ruled territory [1]. If the toponym starts with beau- or bel-, it was probably named by Normans [2]. And if it contains the prefix Avon- or the suffix -combe, it is one of many place names of Celtic origin that dot the islands on this map [3].
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1] As in Grimsby, Wragby or Haxby. ‘By’ (pronounced bee) is still the Danish word for ‘town’. Other originally Danish suffixes: -sted (Stansted), -thorpe (Scunthorpe), -toft (Lowestoft).
[2] Normans often renamed places they didn’t like the sound of, such as Fulepet (‘Filthy Hole’) in Essex, which became Beaumont (‘Fairhill’), or Merdegrave in Leicestershire, which was turned into Belgrave.
[3] e.g. Ilfracombe; the suffix still gives a good indication on how to pronounce its Welsh equivalent cwm, which also means ‘valley’.

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose - biologist, botanist, crank - revealed the secret life of plants, including the fearsome power of a boiling pea... more

WB Harry Potter Game: Years 5-7 via Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women
For those of us who love Harry Potter – and who doesn’t – there’s a new LEGO Harry Potter game by WB , based on the last three Harry Potter books and final four films.
Ms Popgadget says:
We found the most fun with all new spells and charms, including the Unforgivable Curses. With 16 different lessons to be learned and 24 story events, it’s bound to keep us busy for quite some time.
And you can play with friends, using the easy drop-in/drop-out co-op play that features a split screen.
We're fighting Voldemort’s Death Eaters right now, so we must be going.
Available for Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo 3DS
Read the blog post here
I tried linking through to the Lego Games site but got lost on the way!

Illinois to Store CO2 Beneath the Surface via Big Think by Big Think Editors
One of the nation’s first serious attempts at carbon sequestration, a process by which CO2 is prevented from entering the atmosphere by being stored underground, is set to get underway in Decatur, Illinois. The State Geological Survey expects to pump one million ... Read More

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Can world history be described via precisely 100 art objects? Sure, when illumined by cultural relativism with a flicker of hypocrisy... more

3 Slices via How-To Geek by Asian Angel
This game puts your powers of division to the test as you seek to clear each level of red box material using a limited number of slices.
Read Asian Angel’s walk-through here or simply dive in and have a go here

Photoplay Covers, 1920s via HOW TO BE A RETRONAUT by Chris
Once again I found it difficult to pick just one picture to illustrate the set which you can see here.

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