Wednesday 8 April 2015

Trivia (should have been 10 January)

Human Roulette: 1908
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Human Roulette: 1908
The Jersey Shore circa 1908

“Atlantic City bathing beach and Steeplechase Pier”
Who out there can fill us in on Human Roulette” and “Human Niagara”?
8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
View original post (where, in the comments, you find suggestions about what human roulette is).

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How to Measure Planck’s Constant Using Lego
via MIT Technology Review

If you’re searching for the perfect present for the physicist who has everything, how about a Lego kit for measuring one of the universe’s fundamental constants?
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Bio-Riffing on Freud
Biography in the age of psychoanalysis. Some lives – Freud’s, for example – resist neat explanation. Enter the “bio-riff”… more

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The Community of Lush: Wine, Alcohol, and the Social Bond
via 3 Quarks Daily by Dwight Farrow
Wine taster
Food begins as a necessity and we tame it so it becomes a civilized want that can be appreciated for its aesthetic qualities. But wine is a different matter. Wine is not a necessity. Many people neither drink wine nor any sort of alcohol, and for most people who do indulge, it doesn't play the organizing role in life that food does. (Unless of course you write about wine) Yet, the relationship between wine and sociality seems obvious. People get drunk or at least tipsy from drinking alcohol, which loosens tongues, sheds inhibitions, and functions as a social lubricant.
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The Ultimate History Of Card Games
via MakeUseOf by Dave LeClair
At some point in your life, you’ve probably sat down and played a card game. Whether it’s a little poker or some solitaire, card games have been since a staple since the playing card was invented. The history of card games is long, dating all the way back to 617 AD. Of course, playing cards and the games around them have evolved a lot over the years, and that’s just what this fascinating infographic explains. If you want to know a little bit more about the history cards games, you’ve come to right place!
Ultimate? The very last? Doubtful but do please go and look at the infographic. No point in reproducing it here as it would be far too small to read.

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Romantics, Romanticism and history
Romantics after Romanticism. Did the aesthetic movement have a political afterlife? Consider the French Revolution, National Socialism, and 1960s student rebels… more

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Off the Beaten Path Bookshops
via AbeBooks.co.uk by Richard Davies
Booksellers in more than 50 countries can be found on the AbeBooks marketplace.
Thousands of easy-to-find bookshops are concentrated in the great cities of the world - London, New York, Paris, Los Angeles, Sydney and Berlin – but there are also countless sellers located in places that take some finding. Remote islands, tiny villages, small towns that are barely a speck on the map and locations so isolated that they don't even count as a hamlet.
Enjoy our selection of bookshops off the beaten track.
Old Inlet Bookshop
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How to recycle old milk jugs and bottle caps into colorful plastic bricks
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
plastic
Peter Brown grinds up plastic jugs and bottle caps in a blender, then melts them into bricks. He uses the bricks as stock to turn on his lathe. I want to make one just to admire it.
Find out how

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Technicolor and storytelling
Technicolor turns 100 this year. It was supposed to make films more lifelike. Instead, its over-the-top palette made movies more dreamlike… more

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Scientists Find Link Between Gut Bacteria and How the Brain Works
via Big Think by Orion Jones
A week from today [which was, I think, 11 November], researchers will gather for a neuroscience conference in Washington D.C. titled “Gut Microbes and the Brain: Paradigm Shift in Neuroscience”. As the name suggests, new evidence will presented by the scientific community to help establish an emerging link between the health of your gut and the health of your brain.
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