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

Australia’s hidden stash of censored books via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz

In 2005, Australian literary historian Nicole Moore discovered a nearly-forgotten archive of her country’s banned books packed in nearly 800 boxes stored seven stories underground in a government repository. Moore ended up writing her own book, The Censor’s Library, about the history of Australian’s literary censorship. I think a great next step would be to open a public library stocked only with the once-banned books. From the Sydney Morning Herald:
As Moore shows, such secret collections have accumulated in many parts of the world, often carefully tended by censor-librarians. Private Case, Public Scandal, the book that revealed the contents of the British Library’s secret collection, was itself banned in Australia in 1966. Not surprisingly, the 20th century’s largest and most notorious repository of forbidden literature was in the Soviet Union, with more than 1 million items.

Contains adult themes
================================================
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Touring the Wild West, Oscar Wilde was delighted by a sign on the wall of a saloon, “Don’t shoot the piano player, he’s doing his best.” Alas, far too many pianos now go unplayed... more
================================================
Jungle Wars via How-To Geek by Asian Angel
In this game you lead a group of soldiers who must fight the band of pirates that have seized an island. Can you free the island or have the pirates finally found a cozy new home?
Asian Angel’s walk-through is here or you can go straight to the game here.
================================================
Power Corrupts, Corruption Empowers via Big Think by Jonathan Fowler and Elizabeth Rodd on 3/15/12
In The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics [Amazon.com], Bruce Bueno de Mesquita nakedly examines the (often ugly) means by which people are able to gain and keep power.
Read More
NB: It's actually a short video which is very badly synced.
================================================
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
The wages of modernism. Its inheritance has been enriching or impoverishing or even deadly, but don’t look to the academy for a clear-eyed assessment... more
================================================
The First Satellite Map of California (1851) via Big Think by Frank Jacobs
It’s 1849, and a Gold Rush is drawing thousands of American prospectors to California, which was snatched from Mexico only a year earlier^[1]. The lay of the land is still poorly surveyed, the risks and resources of the terrain as yet largely unknown. So US President Zachary Taylor initiates a top secret government programme to speed-map the last piece in the puzzle of America’s Manifest Destiny.
Read More
And do, please, go as far as the comments. Some of them are hilarious.
================================================
Spiderwebs coat Australian countryside via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz

Rain and flooding in the eastern Australian city of Wagga Wagga have driven sheet-web and wolf spiders to higher ground. But there is no accessible higher ground, so the spiders have had to create it themselves by spinning massive webs that sheet the countryside. The photos remind me of the William Shatner classic Kingdom of the Spiders (1977).
WARNING: Arachnophobes should not open the link below – the main picture shows lots of spiders not just the webs.
Spiderwebs Blanket Countryside After Australian Floods (National Geographic) (photos by Daniel Munoz/Reuters)
================================================
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
In Brazil, every student studies philosophy – Plato, ethics, the will of the gods. Impressive, right? Academic philosophers don’t think so... more
================================================
Illuminated Manuscripts: Six Centuries of Ornate Decoration via Reading Copy Book Blog by elizabethc

An illuminated manuscript is any manuscript whose text is accompanied by decoration. The artwork can be silver or gilt, drawings or paintings, or intricate initials or borders. Often used for religious, spiritual or devotional texts in the early days, illuminations make a special book unforgettably beautiful.
This selection begins with a bible from 1400 and ends with a 2008 luxury limited edition of the Passover Haggadah by legendary illustrator Arthur Szyk.
Be illuminated! (Scroll down to see some stunning artwork but don't, whatever you do, look at the prices. E.g. $US 2million.
================================================
Universe’s Most Distant Galaxies Discovered via Big Think by Orion Jones
Using a powerful new telescope, astronomers have found the universe’s oldest galaxies at a distance of 10.5 billion light years from Earth. Because the galaxy clusters emit only infrared light, they have gone undetected by space sleuths like the Hubble Telescope, which has searched this particular region of the sky for thousands of hours.
Read More
================================================