The public health authorities' urgent pleas for us to stay in should be easy to comply with when there's stuff like the following to read instead of going out
Happy invoicing!
- The Amateur Cloud Society That (Sort Of) Rattled the Scientific Community - ”An improbable tale of how a British maverick harnessed crowdsourced meteorological discoveries to reveal the poetic wonders of the sky.” I included The Cloud Appreciation Society in Monday Links CCC; here, Jon Mooallem hears the story of how it came about from founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney
- Galaxy-Size Bubbles Discovered Towering Over the Milky Way - New findings concerning the North Polar Spur: ”For decades, astronomers debated whether a particular smudge was close-by and small, or distant and huge. A new X-ray map supports the massive option.”
- Now We Know Why Platypus Are So Weird - Their Genes Are Part Bird, Reptile, And Mammal - ”The first complete map of a platypus genome has just been released, and it's every bit as strange as you'd expect from a creature with 10 sex chromosomes, a pair of venomous spurs, a coat of fluorescent fur, and skin that 'sweats' milk.” We had a stuffed platypus in the biology department at school, donated some time back in the 1930s, and they really are extremely odd things to see
- In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell, writing in 1932, anticipated my own philosophy of life: ”I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.”
- Instant Lettering, a Letraset Database. - ”The mission of this project is to educate and promote the fascination of the now obsolete technology of transfer type—most notably Letraset… The goal is to get one sheet of everything!” I was more into letterpress printing myself (I still have an Adana 8-5 hand press), but I was nonetheless fascinated by Letraset sheets like this one of "Information Symbols" :
- Grabbing hold and letting go: The exploding bolts that bring us to space - Ryan Bradley on the exploding bolts we use to make spacecraft come apart in the right way at the right time: ”The shaking they’re enduring is merely the beginning, intended to simulate the *violence of a launch. The parts also brave hammering, baking, and freezing—24 tests in total. All this before any metal even reaches the launchpad. The abuse ensures not only that the bolts will hold together massive space-faring machines, but that, at the exact right moment, they’ll break neatly apart. More specifically, they’ll explode, strategically jettisoning segments of Orion’s rocketry as they do.”
- People Are Trying To Cook Chicken By Slapping It After Learning Physics Says It's Possible - ”You can cook a chicken by slapping it at 3725.95 mph, an impossible task by any human means. If you do succeed however, you will not only cook the chicken but also decimate its entire structure, causing a violent explosion.” So, naturally, people are trying
- When does Columbo first appear in each episode? - ”I made the graph below for a short talk I gave about the TV series ‘Columbo’, which I think is a marvellous programme… I thought it might be nice to put the graph online, which is most of the point of this post, but thought I might add a few notes about why I like Columbo so much.” And why not
- ‘Reported lost through enemy action’ - Steven Aspinall with a bit of family history: ”My Mother recently gave me my Grandfather’s record books and identity cards from his time in Merchant Navy. Philip Murphy spent the whole of his working life with Cunard, mostly as a cook. This includes service in the World War 2 when the Cunard ships carried troops across the Atlantic.”
- Dark City: London in the 30s, and Return to the Dark City - ”There was another London, before clean air, before the Blitz, before post-war reconstruction. It was a night time London.” Dave Walker of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Library Service explores photos of London from the 1934 book London Night by John Morrison and Harold Burkedin.
Happy invoicing!
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