via Big Think by Frank Jacobs
If the saying is true that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy, then landlocked, frigate-less Moldova is only halfway there. The Eastern European republic, celebrated for its obscurity, has struggled with its national identity ever since breaking free of the Soviet bear-hug in the early 1990s.
Continue reading
=============================
How does our brain process fear? Study investigates
via 3 Quarks Daily: Ana Sandoiu in Medical News Today
From an evolutionary perspective, fear and anxiety are quite useful. These deeply ingrained emotions used to protect our ancestors from predators, and in our times the “fight-or-flight” response is still a healthy reaction to dangerous situations.
Continue reading
=============================
Iceland’s unruly terrain and hidden inhabitants
via OUP Blog by Corinne G Dempsey
The “northern capital” of Akureyri in winter. Photo by Svavar Alfreð Jónsson. Used with permission.[in the blog]
When people first learn about my travels to Iceland, the response I most often hear goes something like: “Iceland! That’s on my bucket list.” I understand. It’s hard to resist an arctic wonderland littered with flaming volcanoes and thundering waterfalls, where for months on end the sun barely sets on moss-crazed mountains and whale-infested waters. Maybe you’ve already been there, adding your own drop to a rising sea of tourists, estimated at nearly two million in 2016, a veritable flood for an island whose population hovers around 330,000.
Continue reading
=============================
‘Extraordinary’ levels of pollutants found in 10km deep Mariana trench
via the Guardian by Damian Carrington
Scientists have discovered “extraordinary” levels of toxic pollution in the most remote and inaccessible place on the planet – the 10km deep Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean.
Small crustaceans that live in the pitch-black waters of the trench, captured by a robotic submarine, were contaminated with 50 times more toxic chemicals than crabs that survive in heavily polluted rivers in China.
Continue reading
=============================
The creation story of the atomic bomb told through a powerful and moving picture book
via Boing Boing by Marykate Smith Despres
When asked if I was interested in reviewing a picture book about the making of the atomic bomb, I told the publicist that a lot was going to depend on how the book ended. I had seen some of the interior art and text at that point, and I was intrigued by the way the tone of both Jeanette Winter’s illustrations and her son Jonah Winter’s text so thoroughly conveyed the almost frenzied, kinetic energy of the inventors and the eerily quiet secrecy of the The Secret Project. After reading the book, I realized that I had greatly underestimated the importance of the telling in its entirety, which is done so masterfully by the Winters.
Continue reading
=============================
The Alley Cats of Istanbul
via 3 Quarks Daily: Darrell Hartman at The Paris Review
STILL FROM KEDI.
If you love something, you let it go. Cat people understand this intuitively. You never quite possess a cat, and the sooner you acknowledge that, the better. Cats will chase the tinfoil ball, if they are in the mood, but they will almost certainly not bring it back. We forgive them for this because there is no other option.
Continue reading
=============================
What happens if all Earth’s coral dies
via Boing Boing by Caroline Siede
The YouTube channel Life Noggin digs into this terrifying question and sings the praises of coral along the way.
Check it out here
=============================
The saltmarsh has its own rich tang of whisky, earth and algae
via the Guardian by Matt Shardlow
Patterns in the mud, Old Hall Marshes, Essex. Photograph: Matt Shardlow
A tongue of land borrowed from the mouth of the Blackwater estuary. Inside the mile-long V of grassy banks that exclude the sea the tamed land is riven by the contorted veins of once-tidal channels, now filled with freshwater. Today they are frozen into wide, snaking sheets of white. The khaki reeds that fringe the ice blend into fields of dead grass dotted with the greener humps of ancient yellow meadow ant hills.
Continue reading
=============================
This enormous whirlpool fountain is hypnotic
via Boing Boing by Andrea James
The Marina Bay Sands in Singapore has lots of cool features, but this whirlpool fountain outisde their shopping area could keep some visitors transfixed all day.
Continue reading
=============================
Foundations of three Roman houses found under Chichester park
via the Guardian by Maev Kennedy
Archaeologists digging in Priory Park in Chichester, West Sussex, where the remains of three near-complete Roman buildings were discovered. Photograph: Chichester district council/PA
Large properties just inside city walls, identified using radar, would have been equivalent to homes worth millions today
Foundations of three large Roman houses preserved for almost 2,000 years have been discovered in a park in the centre of Chichester.
James Kenny, an archaeologist at Chichester district council, believes that when fully excavated they will prove to be some of the best Roman houses found in a city centre in Britain.
Continue reading
No comments:
Post a Comment