I don't know about you, but I'm about ready for a Bank Holiday. But until one shows up, we'll just have to pass the time with these scrapings of the Internet 
Happy invoicing!
- Mayday: Miracle in the Jungle - ”The race to find four children who survived a plane crash deep in the Amazon.” Means of local transport around there leave a lot to be desired
- How to Build an Origami Computer - ”Two mathematicians have shown that origami can, in principle, be used to perform any possible computation.” Explains a lot about Gaff in Blade Runner
- Why flying insects gather at artificial light - It isn't because they mistake it for the moon after all, or probably not: ”We employed high-resolution motion capture in the laboratory and stereo-videography in the field to reconstruct the 3D kinematics of insect flights around artificial lights. Contrary to the expectation of attraction, insects do not steer directly toward the light.”
- The Secrets of the Sea Hidden High in the Andes - Studying sea creatures high in the mountains: ”The rich fossil deposits in Colombia’s mountains could unlock a deeper understanding of ancient oceans—and the country’s paleontologists are struggling to do them justice.”
- Under Hokusai’s Great Wave - ”Katushika Hokusai’s woodblock print ‘Great Wave off Kanagawa’ is one of the world’s most recognizable images… While Hokusai did not portray a tsunami, just seriously large breaking waves, his image had long been read as a visualization of the terrors of the sea.”
- The Indiana Pi Bill, 1897 - Today in 1897, the Indiana State House legislature passed Bill No.246 which in effect gave 3.2 exactly as the value of pi: ”A Bill for an act introducing a new mathematical truth and offered as a contribution to education to be used only by the State of Indiana free of cost by paying any royalties whatever on the same, provided it is accepted and adopted by the official action of the Legislature of 1897.” The Bill was postponed indefinitely by the state’s Senate, so never actually became law. More generally, this site is an excellent resource for information about what happened in science on any given day
- Nari Contractor - HT to quackhandle for this profile of the Indian cricketer with what we can all agree is the perfect surname, though his story is rather sad: ”One of the tragic figures of Indian cricket, Nari Contractor's career was cruelly cut short when he was struck on the skull by a short delivery from Charlie Griffith in the Indian tourists' colony game against Barbados in 1962.”
- The Great Fire in Cripplegate - ”Fires have been a risk within London for centuries. Streets full of houses, side by side with warehouses full of inflammable goods, industrial premises, and until recently, a lack of comprehensive measures to prevent fire… For today’s post, I am really grateful to a reader, who came on one of my walks and then sent me a number of newspapers and special editions, printed at the time of the fire to provide a record.” The area affected by the 1897 fire is now under the Barbican Estate.
- Reverse engineering CMOS, illustrated with a vintage Soviet counter chip - Be your own Ken Shirriff: ”I recently came across an interesting die photo of a Soviet chip, probably designed in the 1970s. This article provides an introductory guide to reverse-engineering CMOS circuits, using this chip as an example. Although the chip looks like a tangle of lines at first, its large features and simple layout make it possible to understand its circuits.”
- How I Almost Took a High School Field Trip to the Afterlife: Part One, Part Two - Canadian writer Janel Comeau recalls what appears to be a typical part of a Canadian upbringing: ”Like many other strapping, red-blooded Canadian youth, I spent my teenage years participating in the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award program… Unlike other awards for friendless nerds with over-involved parents, however, the Canadian version of the program also requires that all participants go right the **** out into the wilderness and survive for a couple of days, because this is Canada, goddammit, and no amount of hours volunteering at the SPCA is going to help you when the bears come.”
Happy invoicing!
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