Raining steadily here, and I assume everywhere else, preventing your outdoor Bank Holiday fun. But staying in and wasting your time reading stuff on the Internet should be second nature to you by now 
Happy invoicing!
- ‘I’d Never Been Involved in Anything as Secret as This’ - ”The plan to kill Osama bin Laden—from the spycraft to the assault to its bizarre political backdrop—as told by the people in the room.” Fascinating oral history of the historic mission that successfully concluded ten years ago this past weekend.
- Weird viral DNA spills secrets to biologists - ”‘Alien’ genomes can be found on Earth. Some viruses that infect bacteria use an alternative genetic alphabet that’s distinct from the code used by nearly all other organisms — and, now, two teams have spelt out how the system works.” Turns out it isn't all about A, T, C, and G
- The Rise and Fall of a Double Agent - ”Cameron Ortis was an RCMP officer privy to the inner workings of Canada's national security—and in a prime position to exploit them.” Ortis was involved with the people who ran Phantom Secure, the encrypted cellphone system used by organised crime.
- Trucks Get Parked Over Air Force Nuclear Missile Silos During Tests… Just In Case - When testing nuclear launch procedures, you don't want one getting out by accident, but in case one does, put a lorry in the way: ”It may seem bizarre and even redundant, but the semi-truck barrier serves as the very last safety precaution against an accidental launch.”
- The 100 Best, Worst, and Strangest Sherlock Holmes Portrayals of All-Time, Ranked - The results of an exhaustive search through depictions of the great detective on film and TV, including Bernie Winters and Schnorbitz at 97: ”The incomprehensible English trivia game show 3-2-1 had a “Sherlock Holmes” episode which also featured a clip in which actors played Holmes and Watson… Holmes is a large, wheezing man who owns a Saint Bernard and is bad at realizing Watson is talking instead of the dog. I’m sorry, did you expect better Holmesian content from a television show whose co-host is, and I’m not even joking, a robot garbage can?”
- Chasing the Sun - ”The extraordinary story of two Pacific voyages of discovery a thousand years apart.” Thor Heyerdahl famously sailed the Pacific on his balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki, but it's only recently that scientists have been able to reach any conclusions over the possible validity of his assertion that South Americans had done the same long before.
- The Secrets of the World's Greatest Jailbreak Artist - ”Master criminal Rédoine Faïd loved the movies, and his greatest crimes were laced with tributes: to Point Break, Heat, and Reservoir Dogs. When he landed in a maximum-security prison, cinema provided inspiration once again.”
- Inspiral Web - In the dark days of the 1960s, before the idea of having fun was invented, kids played with the Spirograph instead. Now you can relive those simpler times with this online implementation by Nathan Friend
- The man who thought orgasms could save the world - The story of Wilhelm Reich: ”Do orgasms prevent illness? In fact, are orgasms linked not just to the well-being of the human body but to the health of the body politic? Are they intrinsically anti-fascist? Can they prevent totalitarianism? These were the radical ideas of a maverick psychoanalyst who had a profound influence on popular culture.”
- The Story of the Cover: The Iconic Op-Art Designs for Fontana Modern Masters, 1971 - ”Then in 1968, students in Paris rioted and nearly brought the city, if not the country, to the brink of revolutionary change. [Frank] Kermode pushed his idea again. The series would be a collection of what Kermode termed Modern Masters who have enabled many of the ideas that were changing society… [Fontana’s art director John Constable] attended the opening of an Op-Art exhibition where he saw geometric abstract work by artist Oliver Bevan. Constable had found his artist. He commissioned Bevan to create a painting which could be shared across a set of book covers like pieces of a jigsaw. Once all ten books were collected together, their covers created a tessellated pattern of Bevan’s painting Cascade.” By coincidence, or maybe synchronicity, I found this post just after the one above about Reich; and guess which is the only one of these Fontana Modern Masters books I own? Yes, it's Reich by Charles Rycroft
Happy invoicing!
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