Sunday 29 July 2012

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

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This picture has already gone viral but some people may have missed it!
Here are some pictures of a giraffe swimming in a pool
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Ah, the infinite surreal comedic potential of a giraffe in a swimming pool
There she was. Long legs, long neck and all she wanted to do was swim.
imgur.com via Super Punch

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Physics has undermined logic. Even nothingness is not what it seemed. The universe is devoid of meaning. That's not such a bad thing... more

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Is Voyager I outside our solar system?
via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker

Probably not yet. But it’s on the cusp. And part of what makes this entire process really, really interesting is that, by the very nature of this whole experiment, we don’t know exactly what will happen when Voyager I does cross that imaginary boundary line. But, as Rebecca Rosen explains on The Atlantic, we do have some pretty good theories.
Some cosmic ray particles enter the heliosphere and we can see them here from Earth. But a slower type has a hard time entering the heliosphere. Last month, the sum of those slower particles, suddenly ticked up about 10 percent, “the fastest increase we've seen,” Stone says. But an uptick does not mean Voyager has crossed over, though it does mean we’re getting close. When Voyager does finally leave and enter the space “out there where all the particles are”, the level will stop rising. The rising itself means that Voyager is not out there, yet. “But,” cautions Stone, “we don’t know. I mean this is the first time any spacecraft has been there.” Since nothing’s ever been there before, we don’t know what it will look like, which makes it a little hard to recognize ‘it’ at all.”
This is the most exciting kind of science – the sort where we really don’t know the answers and we’re on the cusp of learning something truly, wonderously new. Stay tuned.
Read Rebecca Rosen's full article at The Atlantic

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Parlor Car: 1905
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive - Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Parlor Car: 1905
Circa 1905 “Pere Marquette Railroad parlor car No. 25, interior view”
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
View original post (where you can see a larger view and the always informative comments)
Now that's the way to travel!

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
How could an all-powerful, loving God permit the Holocaust? It's a mystery, say some believers. That’s obscene, says Ron Rosenbaum. Such talk is the last refuge of theological scoundrels... more

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Genetic sequence could solve mystery of why bonobos are more peaceful than other chimpanzees
via 3quarksdaily by Azra Raza
From Nature:
When the Congo River in central Africa formed, a group of apes was forever stranded on its southern banks. Two million years later, the descendants of these apes – the bonobos – have developed distinct social patterns. Unlike their chimpanzee relatives on the northern shore, they shun violent male dominance and instead forge bonds through food-sharing, play and casual sex. An 18-year-old female named Ulindi has now become the first bonobo (Pan paniscus) to have its genome sequenced. Scientists hope that the information gleaned will explain the stark behavioural differences between bonobos and common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and help to identify the genetic changes that set humans apart from other apes.
Read the full story

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The Mills Archive is 10 years old
via Peter Scott’s Library Blog
The Mills Archive is 10 years old (UK)
This year the Mills Archive is 10 years old. The Mills Archive was established in 2002 as a permanent repository for historical and contemporary material on traditional mills and milling, and to make that material available for public inspection and use in research and learning.
It is managed by the Mills Archive Trust and has rescued over a million documents and images that might otherwise have ended up in a landfill site. The archive was originally set up to care for four historically important Foundation Collections. The private collections of M. M. Cookson, J. K. Major and A. Stoyel are three of the largest collections of material on traditional mills and milling in the UK, and represent between them more than 130 years researching and working with mills.
The fourth collection consists of material deposited over the years with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings Mills Section by various mill researchers and enthusiasts; as the Section does not have the space or the expertise to develop these collections it has agreed to pass them to the Mills Archive to better care for them. In addition to these, the archive has been given more than 70 other collections of varying size. All together the collections have more than 2,000,000 items. These show the rich and diverse crafts, buildings, machinery, equipment and people involved with mills in the UK and around the world.

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Margaret Fuller was brilliant and obsessive and dreadful company. "The upper lip habitually uplifts itself," Edgar Allan Poe said of her, "conveying the impression of a sneer"... more

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Is Earth at an Environmental Tipping Point?
via Big Think by Orion Jones
A recent report in the scientific journal Nature suggests that Earth may be approaching a crucial tipping point in which human influence over the natural environment will irrevocably change the planet’s biology.
Read More

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Germany’s Equators
via Big Think by Frank Jacobs
In the two decades since German reunification, the German government has spent up to €1,6 billion on upgrading the defunct economic infrastructure of the communist East to match that of the capitalist West. Yet differences, and associated resentments, between the former BRD and DDR [1] persist:
Read More


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