Ten more interesting things I've found for you

Herge’s Adventures of Tintin
via An Awfully Big Blog Adventure by Sue Purkiss
Do you remember a deep voice emerging from a small box television, intoning in the most thrilling way - 'HERGE’S - ADVENTURES - OF - TINTIN!!!' I do, but to be honest, that’s all I remember of the popular cartoon series: if I used to watch it, I've quite forgotten it now.

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Metaphor map charts the images that structure our thinking
Huge project by Glasgow University researchers plots thirteen centuries of startling cognitive connections
via Research Buzz: Libby Brooks in The Guardian

Metaphor is not the sole preserve of Shakespearean scholarship or high literary endeavour but has governed how we think about and describe our daily lives for centuries, according to researchers at Glasgow University.
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Slingshots are perfect for shooting zombie targets and tin cans on a nice summer day
via Boing Boing by Sarina Frauenfelder

The Trumark slingshot is perfect for shooting targets, tin cans, or across the backyard. What makes it special is its very comfortable wrist brace, which gives me a lot of control while aiming. Holding the slingshot becomes effortless, and the wrist brace takes all the strain off my arm, making it easier to focus on aim, rather than struggling to hold the slingshot in place while pulling the pocket back at the same time. Whenever I use this slingshot I’m always surprised at how fast an hour flies by. I recommend buying some cool targets to practice on, such as the Zombie Spinning Targets, which is what I have (and have to share with my sister, who has banged it up with her BB gun). As for ammo, I've been using Trumark's 5/8" steel balls, but pebbles work fine and are more environmentally friendly (once I run out of these I'm going on a pebble hunt). Of course an adult should always be present while kids are using the slingshot.
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12 Interesting Facts You Never Knew About Superman
via MakeUseOf by Dave LeClair

I’m going to guess that you are familiar with a character known as Superman. The Man of Steel has appeared in almost every kind of media imaginable at one point or another. Whether you like comic books, TV shows, or movies, chances are great that Superman and his cast of friends and villains has appeared on your radar at some point.
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The Roots of Charity
via 3 Quarks Daily: Peter Brown at Lapham’s Quarterly
When Christians of late antiquity thought of religious giving, they went back to what for them was the beginning – to the words of Jesus. The words of Jesus to the Rich Young Man described a transfer of “treasure” from earth to heaven: “Jesus said to him, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.’”
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Thompson’s Tug Office: 1908
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave

Port Huron, Michigan, circa 1908
“Steamers at pier”

At right, the sidewheeler City of Alpena
8x10 glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co.
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George Washington and an army of liberty
via OUP Blog by David Hackett Fischer

To celebrate David Hackett Fischer’s Pritzker Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing, we’ve selected an excerpt from his Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington’s Crossing. Here, as in all of his writing, Fischer brings to life the early days of the American Revolution and the struggle Washington experienced in building a cohesive army with the thoughtful eye for detail and gripping analysis for which he’s known.
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How to make a working quadcopter out of the Apple Watch packaging box
via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin
“I Watch You”, a most nifty hack by Eirik Solheim.
I wasn’t sure about the copyright so please go and look for yourself at the two videos.

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The Social-Network Illusion That Tricks Your Mind
via MIT Technology Review

One of the curious things about social networks is the way that some messages, pictures, or ideas can spread like wildfire while others that seem just as catchy or interesting barely register at all. The content itself cannot be the source of this difference. Instead, there must be some property of the network that changes to allow some ideas to spread but not others.
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Christopher Lee on the power of the fantasy genre
via Boing Boing by Caroline Siede

Christopher Lee died earlier this week [June 2015], but the renowned actor leaves behind an impressive body of work, including a ton of great genre films.
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And another ten seemingly trivial items to keep you interested over the weekend

Of Polymaths and Multidisciplinarians
via 3 Quarks Daily: Jalees Rehman at the website of Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings

The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is also a front-runner in the pantheon of polymaths because of his interests in geology, paleontology and optics. During his lifetime, Goethe assembled one of the largest collections of rocks, minerals and fossils ever owned by an individual person, consisting of 18,000 specimens! Even though he is revered as the greatest poet of the German language, Goethe’s longest published work is his treatise on a theory of color, the Farbenlehre. He devoted two decades of his life to studying light and he thought that this 1000-page tome would be his most meaningful contribution to humankind. In the Farbenlehre, Goethe vehemently disagreed with Newton about the nature of light. According to Newton, white light was a heterogeneous composite of colors and darkness was the absence of light. Goethe, on the other hand, felt that white light was a homogenous entity and that darkness was the polar opposite of light and not just its absence. Goethe also ascribed aesthetic qualities to specific colors such as “beautiful” to red and “useful” to green.
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Sonic Pi: Getting Creative With Computer Programming
an article by Jenny Judge (Cambridge University, UK) published in WIPO Magazine (June 2015)

On a damp Thursday afternoon in Cambridge, UK, Sam Aaron is telling a barista that he has a gig coming up. She looks up from the espresso machine, interested. “What do you play?’” she asks. “Well, it’s a bit weird,” says Sam, laughing. “I play the computer.”
Continue reading a serious article but great fun too.

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In Maquisard, you solve trouble in a charming, ornate old hotel
via Boing Boing by Leigh Alexander

Maquisard is a lovely little game inspired by the grand details and tiny scenes of the film The Grand Budapest Hotel. Like that film's star you are a hotel lobby boy, but that's where the similarities end—from there, you're asked to put your skills to the unusual use of sniffing out an undercover government agent in your midst.
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The Big Biplane: 1918
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave

Wilson at Trial of Giant Plane

The trial of the first American-built Handley-Page aeroplane, driven by Capt. E.B. Waller, of the British royal air force, yesterday was witnessed by President Wilson and Secretary Baker. A crowd of more than 5,000 greeted the President when he arrived at the polo field in Potomac Park early in the afternoon.

“Bolling Field – Handley Page on polo grounds”
National Photo Company Collection glass negative
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This single-celled bug has the world’s most extraordinary eye
via 3 Quarks Daily: Michael Le Page in New Scientist

It is perhaps the most extraordinary eye in the living world – so extraordinary that no one believed the biologist who first described it more than a century ago.
Now it appears that the tiny owner of this eye uses it to catch invisible prey by detecting polarised light. This suggestion is also likely to be greeted with disbelief, for the eye belongs to a single-celled organism calledErythropsidinium. It has no nerves, let alone a brain. So how could it “see” its prey?
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What is the resonant frequency of googly eyes?
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Watch the short video here Fascinating

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A small grey pigeon
via An Awfully Big Blog Adventure by John Dougherty
…my 14-year old son came home from school and told me that his English teacher had asked him to amend a description in a piece of writing because the vocabulary used wasn’t ‘advanced’ enough. The description was:
“A small, grey pigeon”.
Continue reading and discover that what an advanced vocabulary makes of a small, grey pigeon!

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How to Build a Sunrise Alarm Clock on the Cheap
via How To Geek

Sunrise-simulating alarm clocks are a great way to wake yourself up but commercial sunrise simulators are ridiculously expensive. Read on as we show you how to turn a smart bulb starter kit into a sunrise simulator (and enjoy the benefits of smart bulbs all day long at the same time).
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Was Dickens a Thief?
A new novel portrays the young writer of The Pickwick Papers as a conniving founder of modern mass culture.
via Arts & Letters Daily: Nicholas Dames in The Atlantic

On an April evening in 1836, two collaborators working on what would become one of the most popular novels of the 19th century met in London. The guest was the project’s illustrator, the comic artist Robert Seymour, whose speed and visual wit had made him arguably the most successful caricaturist of the decade. Seymour was famous enough to have persuaded a fledgling publishing firm, Chapman and Hall, to launch The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, a serial of four comic plates per month surrounded by enough suitably relevant text to fill 24 pages. The host was the writer hired to supply that text: an ambitious 24-year-old who had recently transitioned from parliamentary journalism to fictional-sketch writing. His name was Charles Dickens. Accounts of the meeting are murky at best. We know Dickens wanted to discuss his dissatisfaction with a plate for the second installment, a deathbed scene of an alcoholic pantomime actor. The only other certainty is that Seymour returned home that night, completed the plate over the next couple of days, and then killed himself with a shotgun.
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Free record with underwear purchase
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz

via Weird Universe where you can find this and a lot of other very weird stuff