Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?
Nathaniel Rich in New York Times
After more than 4,000 years – almost since the dawn of recorded time, when Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh that the secret to immortality lay in a coral found on the ocean floor – man finally discovered eternal life in 1988. He found it, in fact, on the ocean floor. The discovery was made unwittingly by Christian Sommer, a German marine-biology student in his early 20s. He was spending the summer in Rapallo, a small city on the Italian Riviera, where exactly one century earlier Friedrich Nietzsche conceived Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again. . . .”
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More like an abstract painting than a living creature. Beautiful.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Network of networks, more significant than telephone, television, or computer: The Internet, revolution of revolutions, is an under-recognised cultural transformation... more
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Finest mechanical bird song of 1890
via Boing Boing by Dean Putney
This lovely mechanical contraption is designed to mechanically recreate bird song. The video uploader says this was made about 120 years ago in Paris, probably by Blaise Bontems who was known for this type of automaton.
It’s a fascinating, delicate device!
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River Cruise: 1906
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Circa 1906
“Steamer New York on the Hudson. Boat landing at Kingston Point.”
8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Shakespeare endured syphilis, Jack London ulcers, the Brontës and Orwell tuberculosis. Only the cures were worse than the diseases... more
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Tallest possible Lego tower height calculated
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
The good folks on the most-excellent BBC Radio/Open University statistical literacy programme More or Less decided to answer a year-old Reddit argument about how many Lego bricks can be vertically stacked before the bottom one collapses.
They got the OU’s Dr Ian Johnston to stress-test a 2X2 Lego in a hydraulic testing machine, increasing the pressure to some 4,000 Newtons, at which point the brick basically melted. Based on this, they calculated the maximum weight a 2X2 brick could bear, and thus the maximum height of a Lego tower:
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1940s : Airline Advertisements
via Retronaut by Amanda Uren
My choice:
And see the rest of Amanda’s choices here
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Thinking about a graduate degree in literature? Ron Rosenbaum has urgent advice: Stop! That’s no way to waste your life... more
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Friday Fun: Polar Tale
via How-To Geek by Asian Angel
In this game you join a polar bear in his quest for a warmer place to live. At each stage of the journey you will encounter challenges that need to be overcome in order to continue the journey.
Can you figure out the proper courses of action or will you become just another block of ice in the far, far north?
Asian Angel’s walk-through is here or you can go straight to the game here.
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1904 : Artforms of Nature
via Retronaut by Amanda Uren
My choice:
See the rest of Amanda’s choices here
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