10 stories and links I found educative, interesting or simply weird!

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Castle made of Starburst
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

DeviantArt’s Ashleyisthebomb shows off a Starburst chewies castle whose individual bricks were melted together with a glue-less hot glue gun: “because there was no glue or anything, it was completely edible. My family and I had fun eating it until we got sick of starbursts, then I threw it out. It took FOREVER and ended up weighing about 60 pounds.”
Starburst Castle (via IZ Reloaded)

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
The petulant and sometimes maladroit Václav Havel never became a shrewd politician, but he managed to remain a moral one. His example is more relevant than ever... more

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Rules of the Sale: 1920
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive - Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave

Washington, D.C., circa 1920
“Coubro [?] clothing store, interior”
Happy shopping, everyone.
National Photo Company glass negative.
View original post and note when you get there and view the larger image that it’s only the salesmen who appear to be aware of the camera.

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Brit Lit Map
via Big Think by Frank Jacobs
Maps usually display only one layer of information. In most cases, they’re limited to the topography, place names and traffic infrastructure of a certain region. True, this is very useful, and in all fairness quite often it’s all we ask for. But to reduce cartography to a schematic of accessibility is to exclude the poetry of place.
Or in this case, the poetry and prose of place. This literary map of Britain is composed of the names of 181 British writers, each positioned in parts of the country with which they are associated.
Read More
It’s all very well reading more – for example that Bram Stoker is shown at sea on the approach to Whitby where the ship featured in Dracula runs aground but I wanted to see this wonder whilst reading the commentary. The place in the Big Think post where it should be is blank apart from the title. Thank you, Google. It’s available on Flickr. All rights reserved but you can at least look at it. 

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
“I am happy,” wrote Leonardo, a young Etruscan from tiny Vinci. It was fleeting. His were the insecurities of a spotty education and an illegitimate birth... more

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Airplane converted into Space Shuttle food truck
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz

The out-of-this-world Space Shuttle Cafe can be yours for $150,000. It sure would make a far-out food truck. (Sweet old car not included.)
From the eBay listing:

This kitchen is built inside the only road worthy DC3 Airplane licensed for street use in the world that we know of, painted in the theme of NASA’s Space Shuttle.
This is a once in a life time opportunity to own not only a great money making business, but a piece of American History also. This aircraft was built in 1944 and flew during World War II. It also flew as an airliner during the 50s and 60s and was alleged to have been hijacked to Cuba during that time.
It was converted for street use in 1976, mounted on a GMC Bus frame. We purchased the vehicle in 2001 and converted the empty shell into this completely self-contained commercial kitchen… 

THE SPACE SHUTTLE CAFE~ONE OF A KIND MOBILE FOOD KITCHEN!!!!

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Mother's Day ad: support the energy industry and we'll give you flying cars!
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Another Vintage Ads gem for Mother’s Day: this bit of corporate futurism from the energy sector.
Mother’s Day (full size so you can read the small print)

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Big computers and complex algorithms battered financial markets. Now the quants behind that debacle are turning toward the social sciences... more

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Women Driving Automobiles, 1907-1915
via Retronaut by Chris

Source: Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress
See the rest of Chris’s selection here.
Hazel’s comment: You might be interested, or maybe not, to know that the reason I chose this image was that the little girl has the same hairstyle that I had at about the same age some 35 years later.

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Plagiarism doesn’t work
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza
Just how hard is it to use quotes?
How hard is it to provide attribution to sources?
It is clearly very hard indeed!
A writer at The Next Web copied a post from a relatively unknown blogger and got caught. Worse, TNW quietly edited the post and then denied that the original had failed to credit the author. After all, one editor pointed out, it linked to the original – a link tucked amid the text of a sentence a few paragraphs in.
Also, is that tilde thing already the fig leaf of choice for self-deluding plagiarists, just as God intended?

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