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Monday Links from a Room With a View Vol. LXXVII

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    Monday Links from a Room With a View Vol. LXXVII

    This hotel's WiFi seems to have improved slightly since a couple of years ago; let's see if I can get this lot through:
    • The Clock in the Mountain - "There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years. Most times the Clock rings when a visitor has wound it, but the Clock hoards energy from a different source and occasionally it will ring itself when no one is around to hear it. It’s anyone’s guess how many beautiful songs will never be heard over the Clock’s 10 millennial lifespan." Excellent account of The Long Now Foundation's clock-building project.

    • NPF: Infiltration - "Almost exactly 24 years ago..., 18 year old West German (remember when that was a separate country?) Mathias Rust boarded a tiny Cessna... Once airborne, the teenager turned his fabric-skinned plane toward the most hostile, heavily defended airspace on Earth, the Korean DMZ notwithstanding. Yes, Mathias Rust decided it would be fun to fly his Cessna to the Kremlin." I remember this bizarre incident

    • 7 life lessons from the very wealthy - "Money won’t buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem." They may not be rich by Dim Prawn's standards, but at least they know what to do with the money.

    • The London Twirls Project - "This is a work in progress. Attempting to map the availability of Cadbury's Twirls in Central London, with notes on the storage conditions and pricing." James Ward is currently on holiday in New York, so this site now has utility for a wider audience.

    • 12 Classic Books Reviewed in The Atlantic - "Book reviews have been a mainstay of The Atlantic its founding in 1857. The magazine has featured critical assessments of several titles that went on to become classics, from Charles Dickens's Great Expectations to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Check out some of the highlights." Contemporaneous reviews FTW!

    • Taking Cold Showers - "This post is about why you might want to start taking cold showers. I’ve been doing it for over a month now and I really like it." Jason Shen reckons the cold tap could be the entrepreneur's friend.

    • The U.S. Postal Service Nears Collapse - "Delivery of first-class mail is falling at a staggering rate. Facing insolvency, can the USPS reinvent itself like European services have—or will it implode?" Maybe they need colder showers...

    • Why Cities Keep Growing, Corporations and People Always Die, and Life Gets Faster - A conversation (video) with physicist Geoffrey West. "The question is, as a scientist, can we take these ideas and do what we did in biology, at least based on networks and other ideas, and put this into a quantitative, mathematizable, predictive theory, so that we can understand the birth and death of companies, how that stimulates the economy? "

    • Cancer. LOL. - "I got cancer, yo. Strange to use the word really. Not only because as a 32 year old, non-smoking, teetotal Decathlete, it’s not the done thing, but because having met 4 ultrasound administrators, 3 surgeons and a lovely pair of urologists, not a single person has actually managed to say it out loud."

    • When the What? - "It's timeline time!" Jim Darlington sketches timelines of all kinds of things, from advertising slogans to TV bars


    Happy invoicing!

    #2
    Originally posted by NickFitz View Post
    This hotel's WiFi seems to have improved slightly since a couple of years ago; let's see if I can get this lot through:
    • The Clock in the Mountain - "There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years. Most times the Clock rings when a visitor has wound it, but the Clock hoards energy from a different source and occasionally it will ring itself when no one is around to hear it. It’s anyone’s guess how many beautiful songs will never be heard over the Clock’s 10 millennial lifespan." Excellent account of The Long Now Foundation's clock-building project.

    • NPF: Infiltration - "Almost exactly 24 years ago..., 18 year old West German (remember when that was a separate country?) Mathias Rust boarded a tiny Cessna... Once airborne, the teenager turned his fabric-skinned plane toward the most hostile, heavily defended airspace on Earth, the Korean DMZ notwithstanding. Yes, Mathias Rust decided it would be fun to fly his Cessna to the Kremlin." I remember this bizarre incident

    • 7 life lessons from the very wealthy - "Money won’t buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem." They may not be rich by Dim Prawn's standards, but at least they know what to do with the money.

    • The London Twirls Project - "This is a work in progress. Attempting to map the availability of Cadbury's Twirls in Central London, with notes on the storage conditions and pricing." James Ward is currently on holiday in New York, so this site now has utility for a wider audience.

    • 12 Classic Books Reviewed in The Atlantic - "Book reviews have been a mainstay of The Atlantic its founding in 1857. The magazine has featured critical assessments of several titles that went on to become classics, from Charles Dickens's Great Expectations to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Check out some of the highlights." Contemporaneous reviews FTW!

    • Taking Cold Showers - "This post is about why you might want to start taking cold showers. I’ve been doing it for over a month now and I really like it." Jason Shen reckons the cold tap could be the entrepreneur's friend.

    • The U.S. Postal Service Nears Collapse - "Delivery of first-class mail is falling at a staggering rate. Facing insolvency, can the USPS reinvent itself like European services have—or will it implode?" Maybe they need colder showers...

    • Why Cities Keep Growing, Corporations and People Always Die, and Life Gets Faster - A conversation (video) with physicist Geoffrey West. "The question is, as a scientist, can we take these ideas and do what we did in biology, at least based on networks and other ideas, and put this into a quantitative, mathematizable, predictive theory, so that we can understand the birth and death of companies, how that stimulates the economy? "

    • Cancer. LOL. - "I got cancer, yo. Strange to use the word really. Not only because as a 32 year old, non-smoking, teetotal Decathlete, it’s not the done thing, but because having met 4 ultrasound administrators, 3 surgeons and a lovely pair of urologists, not a single person has actually managed to say it out loud."

    • When the What? - "It's timeline time!" Jim Darlington sketches timelines of all kinds of things, from advertising slogans to TV bars


    Happy invoicing!
    Jimgs - I was so knocked out by the Mountain Clock - I havent yet looked at the other articles - but I will ! Thanks again NF for such an excellent offering !

    Comment


      #3
      When I read that, I had just finished eating a Twirl purchased from one of the listed Twirl shops! Durnur nurnur durnur nurnur etc.

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by AlfredJPruffock View Post
        Jimgs - I was so knocked out by the Mountain Clock - I havent yet looked at the other articles - but I will ! Thanks again NF for such an excellent offering !
        No hurry:

        There will be time to murder and create,
        And time for all the works and days of hands
        That lift and drop a question on your plate;
        Time for you and time for me,
        And time yet for a hundred indecisions
        And for a hundred visions and revisions
        Before the taking of a toast and tea.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by thunderlizard View Post
          When I read that, I had just finished eating a Twirl purchased from one of the listed Twirl shops! Durnur nurnur durnur nurnur etc.
          "The Internet: turning reality into stuff on a computer since 1969"

          Comment

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