Thursday 4 August 2016

Ten more vaguely trivial items for your enjoyment

Watch the arctic ice cap disappear in these National Geographic maps
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza
“Yes, Mr. President”, the headline says. “We Remade Our Atlas to Reflect Shrinking Ice”
In a speech about climate change, Barack Obama had noted that over the years, National Geographic maps of the arctic had changed. The 10th edition of its Atlas of the World, especially, shows a much-diminished ice cap—and even more is gone in the 2014 edition.
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And that was in 2015. What does the more recent map show? The North Pole in the water not on the ice?

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Cocktails in Literature
via Abe Books by Jessica Doyle

Books are remembered for their characters, plots, language, humour, and heartbreak. They’re not typically remembered for their cocktails, and yet many of literature’s most famous stories are so full of booze their pages practically reek of it. In fact, alcohol plays a role in many important literary scenes, from the moment Ebenezer Scrooge endeavours to assist Bob Cratchit’s struggling family in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, to the sweltering hot afternoon at the Plaza Hotel in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
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Personally I would like to try a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

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New [it was new when this item was published] edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with Dali artwork!
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
alicedali2
In celebration of the 150th anniversary of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Princeton University Press just published a special edition of Lewis Carroll's classic, illustrated with Salvador Dalí’s incredible 1969 artwork for the story.
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available from most booksellers including the Book Depository

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The Soviets’ Cold War Choreographer
via Arts & Letters Daily: Apollinaire Scherr
Unlike the famously expatriated George Balanchine, Leonid Yakobson remained in the U.S.S.R. How his spirit is revitalizing ballet today.

To create modern art in a classical mode is to face forward and backward at once, yoked to the past while inching toward the future. Only a fool or a genius would attempt it. So I had heard of the Soviet ballet choreographer Leonid Yakobson, whose modernist advances took place on hostile home territory. I had seen Vestris, the solo he created for a young Mikhail Baryshnikov that compressed an early ballet master’s mercurial life into a few minutes; it was the only contemporary work the superstar brought with him when he defected in 1974. I knew that the best dancers in Leningrad and Moscow had deemed the choreographer a God-given genius and a rebel to boot.
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5 Ways To De-clutter Your life
via Lifehack by Charles Sabarich
Declutter-your-life
One of the most important aspects of trying to organize your life is making sure that you have the space and time to actually live in the first place. Usually, a hectic lifestyle that is built around fighting fires and dealing with things one-by-one comes from having to de-clutter your lifestyle and remove some of the tedious tasks that many of us can get involved in from time to time.
If you want to start making plans to reduce your clutter, then these 5 ways to de-clutter your life should help massively.
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and access the infographic in a printable (readable) version. It works when I remember to use it.

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Ravens get stoned by rubbing chewed-up ants on their feathers
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
raven
Ravens are intelligent, better talkers than some parrots, roam in teenage gangs, and get high by rubbing chewed up ants on their feathers.
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How Sexual Parity with Men Is Making Women Sex Slaves
via Big Think by Orion Jones
Spanish psychoanalyst Constanza Michelson is arguing, in a provocative piece at the Huffington Post España (Spanish), that women's struggle for sexual equality has actually made them sexual slaves.
Ironically, the more women have tried to free themselves from masculine norms of sexuality, the more they have adopted male sexual tendencies under the guise of sexual liberty.
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Milking bullet ants to extract venom that causes the “worst pain known to man”
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
When a bullet ant stings you it feels like you’ve been shot by a gun. In the video, watch Dr. Corrie Moreau milk one of these “incredibly aggressive” and alarmingly big venomous ants.
From Brain Scoop: Researchers are interested in what makes the sting so painful and if this potent neurotoxin could have some medical benefits. To study the chemistry of the venom they need to isolate it, so some brave researchers capture and milk them to extract their venom, just like a snake or spider is milked.
Warning: Video starts with a picture of  a very large scary ant
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Science and Religion are Compatible. Science and Dogma are Not
via Big Think by Big Think editors
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a pioneer scientist during the turn of the 20th century. He was best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. Tesla was a physicist, mechanical and electric engineer, inventor and futurist, as well as the possessor of a near-eidetic memory. He spoke eight languages and held 300 patents by the end of his life. His legacy has experienced a major resurgence in recent years – the name Tesla, as you might have heard, is way in vogue right now – as many of his predictions about power and communication have come to fruition.
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All this crazy DeepDreaming fractal stuff, explained
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza
deepdreaming
Recode's Mark Bergen and Kurt Wagner take us through the internet's latest crazy craze, from top to endlessly repeating puppy-eyed bottom. It all begins with outcast AI rebels!
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