Leave work early with a miscellany of non-work stories

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Tending the Body’s Microbial Garden
via 3quarksdaily by Azra Raza
Carl Zimmer in The New York Times:

For a century, doctors have waged war against bacteria, using antibiotics as their weapons. But that relationship is changing as scientists become more familiar with the 100 trillion microbes that call us home – collectively known as the microbiome.
“I would like to lose the language of warfare,” said Julie Segre, a senior investigator at the National Human Genome Research Institute. “It does a disservice to all the bacteria that have co-evolved with us and are maintaining the health of our bodies.”
This new approach to health is known as medical ecology. Rather than conducting indiscriminate slaughter, Dr. Segre and like-minded scientists want to be microbial wildlife managers.

Continue reading here.

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Art and science. We can’t understand the humanities without understanding the cognitive processes that make them possible, says E.O. Wilson... more

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Five Principles for a Twenty-First Century Liberalism
via Big Think by Anis Shivani
Twentieth-century liberalism lives on in forms of the social contract that are outmoded for the twenty-first century’s globalized, technological world. Liberalism today is entirely reactive, fending off attempts by conservatism to erode the social contract as it has been known to operate in the Western democracies since around the end of World War II.
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Over and Under: 1900
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive - Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave

Circa 1900
“Grade separation near Arlington, New Jersey”
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
View original post (where you can see a larger view and the always informative comments)

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Parking has been a problem ever since Julius Caesar banned chariots from downtown Rome. Our solution – surface lots – is a design disaster... more

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How Twitter Changed Literature & Culture
via Big Think by Orion Jones
It is only possible to have clear feelings toward Twitter if you are not on it, argue the editors of the literary magazine n+1. To tweet and re-tweet is to simultaneously involve yourself in a niche world of pedantic mediocrity and stimulating political revolution.
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Bathing Suit Arrests, Chicago, 1922
via Retronaut by Chris

“Women being arrested in Chicago for defying a ban on wearing brief swimsuits in public. Women were meant to cover-up when not in the water”
Australian National Maritime Museum [where you will find more pictures in the gallery of swimwear].

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
William Empson was well known as an eccentric. It's a tough reputation to live up to. But one night, he soared off the scale of weirdness. Clive James was there...more

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HOWTO think like Alan Turing
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Alan Turing in 1926, Sherborne school archives
In early celebration of the Turing centenary this week, Ars Technica’s Matthew Lasar has a lovely list of seven of Alan Turing’s habits of thought, including this one: Be Playful.

There was something about Turing that made his friends and family want to compose rhymes. His proud father openly admitted that he hadn’t the vaguest idea what his son’s mathematical inquiries were about, but it was all good anyway. “I don’t know what the ’ell ’e meant But that is what ’e said ’e meant,” John wrote to Alan, who took delight in reading the couplet to friends. His fellow students sang songs about him at the dinner table: “The maths brain lies often awake in his bed Doing logs to ten places and trig in his head.” His gym class colleagues even sang his praises as a linesman: “Turing’s fond of the football field For geometric problems the touch-lines yield.” Turing’s favourite physical activity, however, was running, especially the long-distance variety. “He would amaze his colleagues by running to scientific meetings,” Hodges writes, “beating the travellers by public transport.” He even came close to a shot at the 1948 Olympic Games, a bid cut short by an injury.

The highly productive habits of Alan Turing

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A debate on plant ethics
via Robin Varghese

Over at Columbia University Press, Gary Francione, author of Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation, The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation?, and several other titles, and Michael Marder, author of the forthcoming Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life debate the ethics of eating plant life:

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