via MakeUseOf by Dave Patrick
There may be an app for everything these days, but not all apps are created equal. Some apps will add value to your life, making you more productive or helping you improve in some meaningful way. Other apps, well, they’ll have the opposite effect.
We have compiled a list of 15 popular apps guaranteed to waste your time. We’re not saying whether they’re good, bad, or even indifferent, but they’re likely to suck away your spare time to such a degree you may regret ever having installed them in the first place.
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Dandelight – the little light pretty enough to be a flower
via Red Ferret by Donyae Coles
Most people look at dandelions and call them weeds. In the fall they become seed bearing balls of fluff where wishes are born if you’re a kid. If you’re a grownup, you’re probably upset at the damge they’ll do to your lawn. The Dandelight might get you to start believing the humble dandelion is pretty enough to be a flower again.
Continue reading and discover that the head is a real dandelion puff and this is not cheap. But it could look gorgeous in a household with no animals or small children.
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Bullets and bacteria
via National Archives by Sarah Castagnetti
First World War hospital in Birtley, County Durham,
catalogue reference: MUN 5/157
What are you more scared of – a bullet or bacteria? To a soldier on the Western Front his greatest enemy was arguably not the German soldier firing at him from the trenches opposite, but the threat of infection to his wounds.
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Psychotherapy now and in the future
via OUP Blog by Tom Burns and Eva Burns-Lundgren
The 20th century has been called ‘the century of psychiatry’, and in many ways one could read that as ‘the century of psychotherapy’. A hundred years ago, at the onset of World War I, psychotherapy had touched the lives of only a tiny number of people, and most of the population had simply never heard of it. Since then it has reached into almost every aspect of our lives – how we treat the mentally ill, how we understand our relationships, our appreciation of art and artists, and even how we manage our schools, prisons, and workplaces. Our culture has become one quite obsessed with understanding how people feel and our daily language is peppered with psychotherapy language.
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NTSB re-investigate plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
More than 55 years after a plane crash killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper, and pilot Roger Peterson, the National Transportation Safety Board may re-examine the accident, previously thought to be pilot error in the face of bad weather.
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Beethoven and the Revolution of 1830
via OUP Blog by Katherine Kolb
That Beethoven welcomed the French Revolution and admired Napoleon, its most flamboyant product, is common knowledge. So is the story of his outrage at the news that his hero, in flagrant disregard of liberté, égalité, fraternité, had himself crowned emperor: striking the dedication to Napoleon of his “Eroica” symphony, he addressed it instead “to the memory of a great man”. Less well known is how the memory of another great man, Beethoven himself, figured in the lead-up to the second French Revolution – the one that toppled the Restoration Monarchy in a mere three days of July 1830, and that Delacroix commemorated in his provocative “Liberty Leading the People”. That story, too, bears telling, not least because it encapsulates one of the great revolutionary shifts in the history of Western music.
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Mystery Coach: 1910
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
From around 1910 comes this 5x7 glass negative showing a rail car fitted with ... what? Post your informed supposition in the comments.
View original post to see what the ideas were.
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Big Data, tastefully done
via Confused of Calcutta: a blog about information
Take 2543 recipes from 8 subcuisines.
Use 194 unique ingredients drawn from 15 unique categories.
Connect the dots.
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The dazzling kinetic sculptures of Bob Potts
via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin
A video from M.A.D. Gallery: “In his one-man workshop housed in an 1850s barn, Potts creates ethereal kinetic sculptures capturing the very essence of natural rhythmical movements like the flight of birds or the oars of boats in his inimitable style. The 72-year-old is a connoisseur of form, movement, and visual grace.”
Have a look for yourself
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The economics of chocolate
via OUP Blog by Johan Swinnen and Mara P. Squicciarini
Cocoa and chocolate have a long history in Central America but a relatively short history in the rest of the world. For thousands of years tribes and empires in Central America produced cocoa and consumed drinks based on it. It was only when the Spanish arrived in those regions that the rest of the world learned about it. Initially, cocoa production stayed in the original production regions, but with the local population decimated by war and imported diseases, slave labor was imported from Africa.
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