Sunday 1 April 2012

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

10 Facts about Lewis Carroll via Reading Copy Book Blog by Richard Davies

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a book that is timeless. It has had the same effect on young readers for generations – it really doesn't matter whether it’s 1912 or 2012. The characters are so strong and so memorable.
But what about the author? What is the story behind Lewis Carroll? A man who loved puzzles and mathematics, and didn't even put this real name to this famous book.
Watch our video and learn 10 facts about Carroll and the things that made him tick.
Read more about Lewis Carroll.

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Other people’s beliefs. Religion is useful hokum, says Alain de Botton, because it keeps the masses in line. True? Perhaps. Patronizing? Definitely... more

Philip K. Dick: 30 years gone, and a PKD festival! via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Total Dick-Head’s David Gill reminds us that 30 years ago today, science fiction author Philip K. Dick “disconnected”. Public Radio International’s “To The Best Of Our Knowledge” has posted a great selection of interviews about the man whose entire life and work questioned the nature of reality. Hear from Gill along with Umberto Rossi, Anne Dick, and Jonathan Lethem. To The Best of Our Knowledge: Philip K. Dick
In other PKD news, the 2012 Philip K. Dick Festival is scheduled for September 22-23 in San Francisco!

James Dyson: Good Engineering Is Essential via Big Think by Orion Jones
Calling a product “green” has become a powerful marketing tool. But all too often, says British inventor James Dyson, such environmental claims are a gimmick hidden behind lazy engineering. Perhaps best known for his Dyson vacuum cleaner, Dyson says most companies simply install smaller motors into mechanical devices and then make energy-saving claims.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Plato was right: Some of us long to be warriors. Brutality will always have its moment. But do sports keep aggression in check or encourage violence?... more

Should We Be Revolutionaries? via Big Think by Jeffrey Israel
What if everyday life as I know it is irredeemably complicit in injustice? If this is the case, then does justice not demand that everyday life be overturned? These are haunting questions, particularly given the premise of this blog: that it is worth attuning oneself to what is sanctified in everyday life.
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André Studios 1930-1941: Fashion Drawings & Sketches (USA) via Peter Scott’s Library Blog by Peter Scott

After two years of planning, the Picture Collection of the New York Public Library and the Special Collections & FIT Archives of the Fashion Institute of Technology Library have recently started a digital archive of fashion drawings and sketches by André Fashion Studios. The collection, André Studios 1930-1941: Fashion Drawings & Sketches in the Collections of the Fashion Institute of Technology and the New York Public Library, includes more than 5,000 original drawings.

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
The internet, says John Brockman, is the “infinite oscillation of our collective conscious interacting with itself, adding a fuller, richer dimension to what it means to be human”... more

Mayan God via How-To Geek by Asian Angel
In this game the end of your home world is near, so you must embark on a quest to evolve beyond your own mortality and escape to a new home through the mystic gateway. Will you succeed or will you perish with your home world?
Asian Angel’s walk-through is here or you can go straight to the game here

The Fool’s Head Map: a Fossil of the Financial Bubbles of 1720 via Big Think by Frank Jacobs
For better or worse, there is little new under the sun . The real estate bubble that burst in 2008 and kicked off the world economy’s present anaemic state, may seem like fresh horror to many. But it is only the latest example of a basic economic principle: what goes up, tends to go up too high, and will then inevitably come crashing down.
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