Once you've retrieved your trampoline from the railway, you can settle down with a cup of tea and read this lot 
Happy invoicing!
- A Lighthouse Keeper Hangs Up Her Bonnet - The USA's last official lighthouse keeper has retired: ”For 20 years, Snowman has served as the keeper and historian of the 307-year-old Boston Light. Dressed either in a coast guard uniform or a costume inspired by what a lighthouse keeper’s wife wore in the 18th century, she’ll ascend the 76 spiraling stairs up the lighthouse to clean the windows and polish the lenses of the light that keeps mariners from smashing into rocks; mow the grass that, in the summer, can reach her knees; check for anything needing maintenance; and clean.”
- The Oxygen Bottleneck: Astronomers Find Huge New Problem For Alien Civilizations - ”Some aliens may be cursed with intelligence, but unable to progress technologically.” If there isn't enough oxygen for things to burn, you don't have fire, and everything else that follows from that.
- Scientists Film Plant 'Talking' to Its Neighbor, And The Footage Is Incredible - ”Imperceptible to us, plants are surrounded by a fine mist of airborne compounds that they use to communicate and protect themselves… Now, a team of Japanese researchers has deployed real-time imaging techniques to reveal how plants receive and respond to these aerial alarms.” If you'd like to learn more, the full paper is at Nature: Green leaf volatile sensory calcium transduction in Arabidopsis
- The Reaction Area - ”’Enigmatic chemical reactions’ have broken out underground inside two Los Angeles-area landfills, according to the L.A. Times. These ‘highly unusual reactions at Los Angeles County’s two largest landfills have raised serious questions about the region’s long-standing approach to waste disposal and its aging dumps.’” Geoff Manaugh muses on the problems associated with hiding stuff underground.
- Cryptic notes, secret pockets and a UM code cracker - HT to DoctorStrangelove for sending me a link to this story on a different site, which reminded me of this earlier version, which I think has a little more detail: ”Archeological curator Sara Rivers Cofield was out antiquing with her mom. Sara is an avid collector of Victorian-era clothing and she had admired a bronze-coloured dress a couple times… When Sara got the dress home she examined it and to her surprise, found a hidden pocket. Tucked away from prying eyes was two pieces of paper with a series of sentences made up of random words. Sara had a feeling they weren’t so random but perhaps a mysterious handwritten message or a secret code. She posted the papers on her blog and for the next 9 years those two pieces of paper became one of the world’s toughest codes to crack and was dubbed the ‘Silk Dress cryptogram’.”
- The incredible story of Merlin the spaniel shows how little humans know about dogs - Richard Sugg on animals that find their way home across incredible distances: ”In August 1923, the Brazier family lost Bobbie on their holiday in Indiana; and in February 1924 he was back home with them in Silverton, Oregon. All the evidence indicates he walked the whole way, about 3,000 miles, over six months through the intense winter cold.”
- Khalid Sheldrake: The East Dulwich man who would be King - ”Bertie Sheldrake was a South London pickle manufacturer who converted to Islam and became king of a far-flung Islamic republic before returning to London and settling back into obscurity.” As you do
- Non-Horror Spotlight: The Sims - Anna C. Webster revisits some of the stranger aspects of the 2000 game and its sequels: ”Lyla Grunt is actually the deceased wife of another playable Sim in town: General Buzz Grunt. Why Lyla - or any of the other Sims for that matter - is deceased on Olive’s lot is anyone’s guess, but one common theory has emerged: Olive Specter is a serial killer. The way that Olive’s character bio says that she enjoys ‘sharpening sticks and excavating her yard’ is definitely suspect…”
- Inside the mechanical Bendix Air Data Computer, part 3: pressure transducers - Ken Shirriff continues his examination of a mechanical computer: ”The Bendix Central Air Data Computer (CADC) is an electromechanical analog computer that uses gears and cams for its mathematics. It was a key part of military planes such as the F-101 and the F-111 fighters, computing airspeed, Mach number, and other "air data". This article reverse-engineers the two pressure transducers.”
- Good conduct and meritorious work… - ”I have long enjoyed collecting school (and other) certificates from the London County Council. For some reason, I always find myself strangely moved by them – they offer little glimpses into the proud and hard earned achievements of persons unknown. And then there are the designs themselves: rather grand and rich in symbolism at the beginning of the First World War, and becoming altogether simpler affairs as the austerity of the Twenties set in.”
Happy invoicing!
. (Mag amps are rad hard unlike chips which would be 
).
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