via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
March 1943
“Pampa, Texas. Going through a town on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe”
Photo by Jack Delano, Office of War Information
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Ancient monuments then and now
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Above are before and after images of Chichen Itza's El Castillo step-pyramid in the Yucatán that the Daily Grail's Greg Taylor shared in a brief post about “How Far Should We Go in ‘Restoring’ Ancient Monuments?.”
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Our passwords, ourselves. More than an annoyance, they are suffused with pathos, mischief, sometimes even poetry. They are totems of our inner lives… more
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Parasites Practicing Mind Control
New York Times via 3 Quarks Daily
A microscopic cyst in the brain of a mouse containing thousands of Toxoplasma gondii parasites. New research has found that the parasite is able to exert a form of mind control by turning its host’s genes on and off. Jitender P. Dubey/U.S.D.A.
An unassuming single-celled organism called Toxoplasma gondii is one of the most successful parasites on Earth, infecting an estimated 11 percent of Americans and perhaps half of all people worldwide. It’s just as prevalent in many other species of mammals and birds. In a recent study in Ohio, scientists found the parasite in three-quarters of the white-tailed deer they studied.
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Pinpointing the Ponderosa
via Big Think by Frank Jacobs
This is probably the most recognisable map of the latter part of the 20th century. It’s certainly the only one guaranteed to provoke outbursts of humming in viewers of a certain age. But where is the Ponderosa exactly?
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Magnificently grotesque, vicious, or perhaps comic, the troll is a resilient character. Why we need trolls…more
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Vinyl record recycled into lamp
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Sandman “up cycled” a vinyl record and camera tripod into a neat studio lamp! (via Laughing Squid)
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The Islamic State is destroying the greatest melting pot in history
Tom Holland in The Spectator via 3 Quarks Daily From the dawn of civilisation, the Fertile Crescent has been a cradle to strange and fascinating sects. Not any more
As the fighters of the Islamic State drive from village to captured village in their looted humvees, they criss-cross what in ancient times was a veritable womb of gods. For millennia, the Fertile Crescent teemed with a bewildering variety of cults and religions. Back in the 3rd Christian century, a philosopher by the name of Bardaisan was so overwhelmed by the sheer array of beliefs to be found in Mesopotamia that he invoked it to disprove the doctrines of astrology. ‘It is not the stars that make people behave the way do but rather the diversity of their customs.’
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
The Clive James voice: intensely serious yet self-mocking, grave but never solemn, highbrow but never snobby. And always gorgeously inventive… more
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How sandstone arches form
via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
It’s not caused by erosion. Instead, the rock, itself, forms the arch and the erosion just washes away everything else around it.
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