Primitive Ferry: 1907
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Circa 1907
“Primitive ferry, High Bridge, Kentucky River”
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
View original post the comments are most illuminating!
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Placebos, like drugs, “move a lot of molecules in the patients’ brain”. An ingenious researcher finds the real ingredients of “fake” medicine... more
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Great Moments in Pedantry: James and the Giant Peach needs moar seagulls
via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
Lighthouse 0.12, a Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivative-Works (2.0)
image from benimnetz’s photostream
Children’s literature is about the wonder of discovering new worlds, the power of imagination, and all the little triumphs and defeats that make up a life.
It’s also an excellent place to find hypothetical questions that test the laws of physics.
For instance, presupposing that one could grow a peach to the size of a house, could one also really sail that peach across an ocean? And then, presupposing that one could harness the power of 501 seagulls, would that number of seagulls be sufficient to carry said peach through the air?
These are the questions posed in “James’ Giant Peach Transport Across the Atlantic”, a paper published last fall in the Journal of Physics Special Topics.
The paper was written and researched by four physics master’s students from the University of Leicester in the UK – Emily Watkinson, Daniel Staab, Maria-Theresia Walach, and Zach Rogerson. Based on the events in Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach, the four set out to discover whether the book’s fictional account of an adventure could stand up to serious scientific inquiry.
Turns out, it can.
Mostly.
Continue reading [including why the students are asking these questions and lots of others].
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London Underground: 14 alternative Tube maps
via Guardian Technology news, comment and analysis by Simon Rogers
London Underground’s Tube map has been used as a metaphor for everything from the shape of the galaxy to famous footballers. Thanks to the Londonist’s exhaustive list of examples, here are a few of the alternative ways to see London and its Underground railway system.
Historic London Underground maps
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Given that neoliberals used to be viewed as crackpots, their story is rather heroic. But heroes are rarely as influential as they seem... more
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Newly Published, Never-Seen Photos of The Beatles
via Flavorwire by Caroline Stanley
New York City-based photographer Henry Grossman shot The Beatles extensively in the mid-60s, covering their initial 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, visiting them on the set of Help! in The Bahamas and Austria, and even venturing into their homes to capture a few rare moments of downtime. “They were accustomed to seeing me with a camera, documenting everything that went on around me,” Grossman has explained. “It was simply part of me, part of who I was. More than that, I had become a friend. So when I pulled out my camera, no one thought twice about it. No one cared. It wasn’t seen as invasive.”
Now many of the resulting images in his 6,000 photograph archive are being published for the first time.
Click through a gallery of some of our favourite shots, which are available for purchase as prints from Rock Paper Photo [where you will find, for a price which is out of my league, some really stunning images not just the Grossman ones].
My personal favourite of the ones featured on Flavorwire is:
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The Worst Dictators You’ve (Probably!) Never Heard Of
via Flavorwire by Caroline Stanley
Herod. Hitler. Hussein. History is full of notorious baddies — and those are just the H's we can think of off the top of our heads. We asked Gilbert Alter-Gilbert, author of the newly-published The Desktop Digest of Despots & Dictators: An A-Z of Tyranny, to compile a list of the worst of the worst for us, focusing on the names that the average person wouldn't have heard of before now. We think you'll be amazed and/or horrified by what he came up with. Enjoy!
- Oswaldo Lopez Arellano (1921–2010) Honduras
- Aurangzeb (1618–1707) India
- Ibrahim Babangida (1941–) Nigeria
- Chang Hsien-Chung (1606–1647) Western China
- Gnassingbe Eyadema (1937–2005) Togo
- Galba (3 BC–69 AD) Rome
- Juan Vicente Gomez (1864–1933) Venezuela
- Sargon (2340 BC–2305 BC) Akkad
- Ali Soilih (1937–1978) Comoros
- Xerxes (519 BC–465 BC) Persia
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Is it pretentious to say “status quo” or “cul de sac”? George Orwell thought so. No surprise, then, that his advice on language sometimes curdled into the absurd... more
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A Rule is to Break: A Child’s Guide to Anarchy
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
A Rule Is To Break: A Child’s Guide to Anarchy is a perfectly wonderful picture book about the spirit of anarchism and its utterly fitting dovetail with the joy of childhood. The book is full of excellent advice, wonderfully illustrated.
Along with the pages reproduced in this post, there’s such goodies as "Give stuff away for free," "Speak your mind," and "Listen to the tiniest voice."
Also: "Build it, don’t buy it" and "Stay up all night." There’s nothing about setting fire to cars or joining the black bloc – just sound advice about being happy, generous and caring for your community.
The book has become something of a Tea Party bogeyman, which is dumb and would be a tragedy if it wasn’t for the fact that the ensuing publicity will likely turn it into a bestseller. I’m sure none of the criticism can have come from people who’ve actually read the book – rather, they’re likely reacting to the blurb from Bill Ayers, which says "a children’s book on anarchy seems somehow just right: an instinctive, intuitive sense of fairness, community, and interdependence sits naturally enough with a desire for participatory democracy, feminism, queer-rights, environmental balance, self-determination, and peace and global justice."
A Rule Is To Break: A Child’s Guide to Anarchy seems to be out of stock at all the major online booksellers which for a 44-page board book must be some sort of record!
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Power Puzzle 2
via How-To Geek by Asian Angel
This game lets you have fun with electrical circuits and power supplies as you work to hook up all the modules on each level.
Can you figure out the correct circuit layouts to power everything up or will you have to admit defeat?
Think you can manage alone? Go straight to the game
Maybe you need help from Asian Angel.
And this must be difficult because s/he has included a second walkthrough at the end the blog post.
Power Puzzle 2 Walkthrough Note: For those who may find some of the levels to be rather frustrating.
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