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Monday Links from the Bench vol. CCLI

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    Monday Links from the Bench vol. CCLI

    Better get these posted before Zeity completely loses it
    • Mozambique Diary: Rescuing a Dragon - "In my lap was a specter, one of the most elusive animals in sub-Saharan Africa. I’d been waiting years to see it, and now it was weighing abrasively on my thighs like a sack of bricks stuffed into a giant pinecone. It wiggled and unfurled its roly-poly body just enough to reveal an eye like sticky caviar, its tongue whizzing in and out and reinforcing the illusion that this scaly orb was a dragon come to life." Jen Guyton rescues a pangolin and its pup from poachers.

    • Making the Macintosh - ”…is an online project documenting the history of the Macintosh computer. The Macintosh stands at a cusp in the history of computing and Silicon Valley: it brought together (and sometimes transformed) a number of technical and conceptual threads in computing that developed in the 1960s and 1970s, but it also was responsible for sparking new movements in computing. This project collects and publishes primary material on the Macintosh's development and early reception. It draws on the extensive holdings of the Stanford University Library's Department of Special Collections, the personal papers of engineers and technical writers involved in the Macintosh project, and interviews conducted for the project.”

    • 1491 - Charles C. Mann on new ideas about America before Columbus: ”When I went to high school, in the 1970s, I was taught that Indians came to the Americas across the Bering Strait about 12,000 years ago, that they lived for the most part in small, isolated groups, and that they had so little impact on their environment that even after millennia of habitation it remained mostly wilderness… One way to summarize the views of people like Erickson and Balée would be to say that in their opinion this picture of Indian life is wrong in almost every aspect. Indians were here far longer than previously thought, these researchers believe, and in much greater numbers. And they were so successful at imposing their will on the landscape that in 1492 Columbus set foot in a hemisphere thoroughly dominated by humankind.”

    • Motorway Services Online - "Somewhat unsurprisingly this remains to be the largest site dedicated to motorway services around!" Unsurprising because this site really has everything you need to know

    • The Untold Story of Larry Page’s Incredible Comeback - Long piece about Larry Page’s journey from developer of the PageRank algorithm to CEO of Google: ”Everyone knows the Steve Jobs story—how he was fired from the company he founded, Apple, only to return from exile decades later to save the business. What’s less well understood is that Apple’s board and investors were absolutely right to fire Jobs. Early in his career, he was petulant, mean, and destructive… Larry Page is the Steve Jobs of Google.”

    • Dreaming a Different Apollo - "Apollo didn’t die; it was killed. The Apollo Program might have continued for many years, evolving constantly to achieve new goals at relatively low cost. Instead, programs designed to give Apollo a future beyond the first lunar landing began to feel the brunt of cuts even before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon… What follows is an unabashed exercise in alternate history speculation (and, above all, shameless wishful thinking). It is based on actual NASA and contractor plans described elsewhere in Beyond Apollo (see the links at the bottom of this post) and is written as though the events it recounts actually occurred."

    • A nautical problem - "My wife and I are having some things shipped to UK from Japan, on board the container ship MOL Comfort. On 17th June, the ship broke clean in half… The crew escaped, and for the next 10 days, the two halves of the ship drifted apart in the Arabian Ocean, each laden with containers.” Did Richard Elwes and his wife ever get their stuff back? Not so much. More details of the ship’s failure at ClassNK Completes Forensic Study of MOL Comfort Structural Failure

    • Art Pepper: Laurie's Perspective - "It's impossible to explain neatly why so many brilliant musicians (and actors and artists) use drugs… Now we have Laurie Pepper's Art: Why I Stuck With a Junkie Jazzman, on her years with saxophonist Art Pepper, who died in 1982. Unlike most films on addicts—where the wife begs her husband to kick booze, pills or worse and winds up destitute because she can't stop him from using the rent money for fixes—Laurie's book provides an in-depth, personal look at the delicate balance between spouse and artist and the love and respect that develops.”

    • GM’s hit and run: How a lawyer, mechanic, and engineer blew open the worst auto scandal in history - Adam L. Penenberg gives a detailed account of how GM was brought to book for its failure to acknowledge that its cars were killing people: ”It quickly dawned on him the automaker didn’t plan to fix anything. Instead, GM instructed dealers to advise customers complaining of unexpected engine shutdowns to remove “unessential items from their key chain,” and provided a free insert for the key ring to prevent users from adding additional keys… GM threw in a replacement key that didn’t jut out as far as the original, so that driver’s knees would be less likely to jostle the keys when they were in the ignition. Per recipient, these solutions, if they can be called that, ran GM under a dollar – less than the cost of a child’s birthday goody bag.”

    • Cows With Their Heads Stuck in Things - More common than you might think



    Happy invoicing!

    #2
    Originally posted by NickFitz View Post
    • Motorway Services Online - "Somewhat unsurprisingly this remains to be the largest site dedicated to motorway services around!" Unsurprising because this site really has everything you need to know

    Not quite everything.

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by mudskipper View Post
      How Motorways Work - Home page - Not suitable for motorway morons!

      That too

      Comment


        #4
        And if you want to avoid motorways...

        Transport Cafes Truck Stops Lorry Parks

        (some of my best stops have come from here...)
        "I can put any old tat in my sig, put quotes around it and attribute to someone of whom I've heard, to make it sound true."
        - Voltaire/Benjamin Franklin/Anne Frank...

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by cojak View Post
          And if you want to avoid motorways...

          Transport Cafes Truck Stops Lorry Parks

          (some of my best stops have come from here...)
          On the A5 just outside Towcester, Jacks Hill Café is really good: Jacks Hill Transport Cafe Truck Stop - it's like stepping into the 1960s

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by zeitghost
            Is it full of ton up boy greasers riding Triumph & Norton motorcycles, with the odd Ariel Square 4 thrown in for good measure?
            Usually just a few truckers eating large fried meals, but it always feels as though just such a crowd could arrive at any minute

            We once met a group of Greenham Women in there, on our way back from Stonehenge on Summer Solstice 1987, which was a Sunday - they were on their way back to Greenham from Faslane Peace Camp.

            Comment


              #7
              Update on the GM Story
              Join IPSE

              Comment


                #8
                I thought these looked familiar.

                Comment

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