Sunday 18 March 2012

10 stories and links I think are educative, informative, entertaining, or weird

How Positive Thinking Keeps You Healthy via Big Think by Orion Jones
It is no coincidence that you feel more energetic and relaxed when you are thinking positively, or that you feel lazy and tired if you are thinking negatively. Hormones secreted by the body, which are then carried into the blood stream, greatly affect how we feel.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Leo Stein was a man of many ambitions – historian, philosopher, artist – but little follow-through. His was “a life of perennial self-analysis in the pursuit of self-esteem”... more

Europe invents the Gypsies via Eurozine articles by Klaus-Michael Bogdal
Social segregation, cultural appropriation: the six-hundred-year history of the European Roma, as recorded in literature and art, represents the underside of the European subject’s self-invention as agent of civilising progress in the world, writes Klaus-Michael Bogdal.
Full article (HTML)

The true fathers of computing via Guardian Technology by John Naughton
George Dyson’s new book challenges computing’s creation myth by highlighting the key role played by John von Neumann
Once upon a time, a “computer” was a human being, usually female, who did calculations set for her by men in suits. Then, in the 1940s, something happened: computers became machines based on electronics. The switch had awesome implications; in the end, it spawned a technology that became inextricably woven into the fabric of late-20th- and early 21st-century life and is now indispensable. If the billions of (mostly unseen) computers that now run our industrialised support systems were suddenly to stop working, then our societies would very rapidly grind to a halt.
Read the rest of the article here

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Present at the creation. In 1604 scholars began to rethink the Bible. Their work wasn’t a miracle, but it’s a masterpiece, if a flawed one... more

Mathematicians: You must have at least 17 clues to solve Sudoku via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
A recent mathematics study showed that you have to have at least 17 clues on a Sudoku grid in order for the puzzle to be solvable. You could make the game easier, by adding more clues. But if there are fewer than 17 clues, then the game becomes impossible to solve. In this video, mathematician James Grime explains how the researchers figured this out.
Video Link
Via Grrlscientist and The Guardian

Another Day, Another Dragon via Big Think by Adam Lee
Some days, I hate writing about atheism. I want to tell you why. Two weeks ago, I was watching a PBS show called Inside Nature's Giants, about a team of biologists dissecting a sperm whale that died after beaching itself on a British coast (this involved heavy machinery and a chain saw, if you were curious).
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
What explains high-energy cosmic rays? A trailer-park owner has an answer, but no Ph.D. Yes, he's a crank, but he knows something about physics... more

Untangle via How-To Geek by Asian Angel
In this game you get to test your puzzle solving skills by untangling complex patterns so that none of the threads are crossing each other. Are you up to the challenge?
As always I give the loink to Asian Angel’s walk-through here and direct to the game here.
This one seems to require a bit more thought than some of the other freebies!

Air France's 1947 sleeper service via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow


There's loads to love about this 1947 ad for Air France's sleeper service – just look at that cutaway diagram! – but the chart-topping eye-grabber is that awesome sleeper-service bed. Man, if Air France was still flying planes with that interior, I'd never fly anything else.
Loads more mouth-watering vintage aviation luxury ads here.


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