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

9 Design Tricks Borrowed From Biology
Hunch links to Wired Science to provide a fascinating insight into biomimetics from kingfishers (surely the most beautiful of birds)

to the blue morpho butterflies which reflect light at multiple angles, leading to the interference patterns we see as iridescence.
Read about all nine

via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Alexander the Great: Hero or tyrant? Neither, says Mary Beard. The king of Macedon was merely a “drunken juvenile thug”…more

Museo Archelogico Nazionale, Naples/Erich Lessing/Art Resource

Detail of the ‘Alexander Mosaic,’ circa 100 BC, recovered from the floor of the ‘House of the Faun’ in Pompeii, showing Alexander the Great (with a Gorgon’s head on his breastplate) charging toward King Darius of Persia in what is thought to be the Battle of Issus, 333 BC

The Psychology of Remembering: A Memory Like a Journal via Big Think by Maria Konnikova
When we remember, what is it that we’re remembering? Do we try to recapture the appearance of a moment, like a photograph or a postcard that shows us a perfect still image of a point in time? Do we try to incorporate motion, a movie reel that we can fast-forward, pause, and rewind at will? Do we …
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LED Nightlight For The Toilet helps during those late trips to the bathroom via The Red Ferret Journal by Scott

I don't think that I have seen a more useful invention than the LED Nightlight For The Toilet. This motion-activated light will turn on when you get near the toilet, and shut off again when you get near the toilet, and shut off again when you leave. This is probably one of the better gizmos I’ve seen, simply because it is a nightmare getting up in the middle of the night only half awake and trying to stumble to the bathroom.

There is also a wonderful little sensor that knows when the seat is up or down. When the seat is down, a green LED will help guide you to the seat, and when the seat is up, a target will appear in red in the toilet.

via Arts and Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Struggling through unemployment? Try Taoism. Midlife crisis? Read Nietzsche. Philosophical counselors have the cure for whatever ails you... more

The Sun's Mysterious Chain Reactions via Big Think by Big Think Editors
Thanks to last summer’s unprecedented series of solar explosions, cosmologists have begun to better understand how eruptions in one location of the Sun’s surface can trigger others thousands of kilometres away: The Sun’s magnetic field contains solar explosions like a … Read More


Loggerhead turtles have internal GPS via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker

New Scientist has a great set of stories about the extraordinary senses of animals, including the fact that creatures like sea turtles can sense the Earth’s magnetic field and use it for navigation.

mouse utopia via 3quarksdaily by Morgan Meis

Mouse utopia/dystopia, as designed by John B. Calhoun.
All images from Animal Populations: Nature’s Checks and Balances, 1983.

How do you design a utopia? In 1972, John B Calhoun detailed the specifications of his Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice: a practical utopia built in the laboratory. Every aspect of Universe 25 – as this particular model was called – was pitched to cater for the well-being of its rodent residents and increase their lifespan.
more from Will Wiles at Cabinet here.


5 Awesome Things about the Universe via Credo Reference Blog by kathleen
As I confirmed last week, I am a complete dork, which means I like totally awesome things. This week I decided to do a little bit of investigation on an area I find incredibly intriguing, but to which have… Read More

via Arts and Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
For the hyperactive, mildly Asperger-y Stanford computer-science crowd, coding is like cocaine. “It’s misery, misery, misery, euphoria” … more

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