Sunday 23 October 2011

10 non-work-related items that I found fun or interesting

7-year-old boy writes book to pay for life-saving dog via Lighter Footstep by Jenn Savedge
Evan Moss is not your average 7-year-old boy. For starters, his recent Alexandria, Va., book signing drew 600 people from as far away as Pennsylvania and New Jersey. But he’s not your average child celebrity either. His book isn’t a tell-all about the movie industry or fodder for the next reality television show.
Read more about My Seizure Dog

via Arts and Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Learn. Unlearn. Relearn. The Internet makes it hard to concentrate. Good, says Cathy Davidson. Disruption and distraction spark innovation and creativity… more

humanism via 3quarksdaily by Morgan Meis
When we worry about machines replacing human beings, we are focused more on these alien robots than on mimetic replicants. Yet the programming of robots can, as the engineer Cecil Balmont observes, make their proper use obscure and dysfunctional, just because we have no guiding measure of what they should do for us.
more from Richard Sennett at The Hedgehog Review here

.If you are interested in the history of Great Britain then look no further than the British Museum website.
Thanks for the reminder – College & Research Libraries News

via Arts and Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Philip Larkin is a novelist’s poet. It’s novelists, like Martin Amis, who revere his inimitable skill as a scene-setting phrasemaker…more


A little bit of exercise could have big benefits via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
A new rat study suggests that exercising even a small amount more than you previously did could produce relatively large health benefits.

Europeana new content: Irish Traditional Music Archive via Peter Scott’s Library Blog by Peter Scott
New content on Euro­peana includes items from the Irish Tra­di­tional Music Archive (ITMA) provided through the Irish Manuscripts Commission. The ITMA is a “national reference archive and resource centre for the traditional song, instrumental music and dance of Ireland”. The archive holds an impres­sive col­lec­tion of sound record­ings, books, sheet music, photographs, videos and DVDS. Items from areas of Irish set­tle­ment such as in Britain, North America and Australia also feature.


via Arts and Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
“When I cleared out my Moscow apartment, they found wiring in the walls,” says Mikhail Gorbachev. “They were spying on me all along” … more

5 Cool Word Sites That Are A Bit Different via MakeUseOf by Saikat Basu
Here are five more word based websites to explore and keep.
The sites being considered are:
  • WordSift
  • Hot For Words
  • WDTM
  • Tag Galaxy
  • Corpus of Contemporary American English
And if you missed the previous collections of websites on words and vocabulary you can also link to:
8 More Word Games You Can Play To Sharpen Your Language Skills
8 Quick Online Word Games To Play With Your Vocabulary
10 Spelling Bee Game Websites That Help Your Children Spell Words Right
10 Websites To Learn A Word A Day & Enrich Your Vocabulary
10 Online Synonym Dictionaries To Help You Find A Similar Word
Get them all here

The Exotic Bird-of-Paradise Flower (Strelitzia reginae) via Britannica Blog by Kara Rogers
Bird-of-paradise flower. Credit: Scott Bauer—ARS/USDA
The bird-of-paradise flower, so-named for its remarkable bird-like appearance when in bloom, is a favourite among horticulturists and can be found growing in gardens worldwide.

Read more
This post originally appeared in NaturePhiles on TalkingScience.org.



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