Sunday 29 August 2010

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

Friday Fun: King of Bridges via the How-To Geek by Asian Angel
King of Bridges
The graphics have a slightly older style to them but this fun game will definitely make you think.
There are thirty levels that you can work through.
Play King of Bridges

via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Why do we still need to read the novels of Charles Dickens? Because they tell us, in the grandest way possible, why we are what we are... more
Unlike my friend Yvonne, I still find Dickens difficult and will not willingly even open one of his novels having been well and truly put off them in school.

via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Andy Warhol wasn’t just an artist. He was, in Arthur Danto’s words, “the nearest thing to a philosophical genius the history of art has produced”... more

The Puzzle of Brueghel's Paintings of Telescopes via Technology Review Feed
A painting from 1617 appears to show a type of telescope thought not to have been built until much later.
Wikipedia has a good article on Pieter Brueghel the Elder with examples of some of his paintings – including The Tower of Babel which has to be one of the pictures I’d take to a desert island.



via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Laura Wilder was a matron of 65 when she published her first Little House book. She had help: her weird, talented daughter, Rose... more


via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
A fine composer, yes, but Franz Josef Haydn was also the perfect Enlightenment man: rational, scholarly, tolerant, socially progressive... more


via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Positive psychology is delighted by the recognition it now gets among scientists. But do people really need “happiness interventions”?... more

via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Attention, Whole Foods shoppers! Your worries about “sustainability”, organic onions, and saving the planet do nothing for the plight of the world's poorest people... more

via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Kaiser Wilhelm’s plan was to unleash the furies of Islamic power, a jihad, on the British Raj and harness the glories of the Near East to German interests... more

via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
The Cold War standoff between the West and the Soviets seemed at the time unlikely to collapse into total war. That, however, is a retrospective view... more


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