Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCCCX

Anyone for tennis? No? Good, then you'll have time to read this lot instead

The radical 1960s schools experiment that created a whole new alphabet – and left thousands of children unable to spell - ”The Initial Teaching Alphabet was a radical, little-known educational experiment trialled in British schools (and in other English-speaking countries) during the 1960s and 70s. Billed as a way to help children learn to read faster by making spelling more phonetically intuitive, it radically rewrote the rules of literacy for tens of thousands of children seemingly overnight. And then it vanished without explanation.” I dodged this but my mother was a primary school teacher in the 1970s, and had to try and undo the damage it had caused.
Amazonian Scorpion Venom Can Kill Breast Cancer Cells, Scientists Say - ”Preliminary results presented at the FAPESP Week France health conference suggest the venom from an Amazon rainforest scorpion (Brotheas amazonicus) might be able to help treat breast cancer.” Early days and only in vitro tests so far, but it sounds promising
China Builds New Large Jet-Powered Ekranoplan - Been a while since we've had any ekranoplan news!”Ekranoplans, special ultra-low flying aircraft, promise to combine features from ships, airplanes, and hovercraft… Now the discovery of the large 4-jet ‘Bohai Sea Monster’ in China harks back to the mysterious Soviet projects of the Cold War.”
Here’s why “baking” damaged reel-to-reel tapes renders them playable again - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this one: ”Reel-to-reel tapes are experiencing a resurgence of interest among audio buffs, but they are prone to degradation, which has been a topic of active research for many years. It's well known that applying heat can often reverse the damage sufficiently to enable playback, usually by baking the tapes in an oven. Now scientists at the US Library of Congress have determined precisely why this method seems to work.” I've inherited a number of my father's old reel-to-reel tapes dating back to the 1960s including recordings of his BBC radio plays, but I think I'll send them to an expert rather than popping them in the oven myself
Joey Hits YouTube and Sees Some Action There - From Irish author Ken Armstrong: ”‘Joey Had Never Been Out of the City’ is a short film made by my friend-and-conspirator Richard Keaney from a short film script I adapted from a short story I wrote. (I’m doing all this repetition deliberately so don’t come picking me up on it). It was made on a budget of €2.75 (approx) but attracted some great production and acting talent, who all came along enthusiastically for the ride.” After doing the rounds of the film festivals and garnering a number of awards, the 12-minute film is now free to view on YouTube, and it's excellent
The unfixable road that was vanished - ”A main road through a small town is in desperate need of repair. There's just one small problem: for all intents and purposes, it doesn't exist.” Martin Robbins on the problems faced by the town of Shefford after the council based their local transport plan around a private road.
'I was shocked': Melbourne man's 'unbelievable' find after buying house - ”After finalising the purchase of a home in Melbourne's northern suburbs, a Melbourne man found something unexpected. There had been no mention of the expansive model train network beneath the home's floors.” All I found when I bought my place was some rickety shelves in the garage
Hear the World’s Oldest Instrument, the “Neanderthal Flute,” Dating Back Over 43,000 Years - ”Found by archeologist Ivan Turk in a Neanderthal campsite at Divje Babe in northwestern Slovenia, this instrument (above) is estimated to be over 43,000 years old and perhaps as much as 80,000 years old… The prehistoric instrument does indeed produce the whole and half tones of the diatonic scale, so completely, in fact, that Dimkaroski is able to play fragments of several compositions by Beethoven, Verdi, Ravel, Dvořák, and others.”
An interview with Arthur Luehrmann - ”I’m excited to bring what may be about the only interview ever done with computer gaming and programming pioneer Arthur Luehrmann… He was a major proponent, one could say evangelist, for the BASIC computer language shortly after its creation at Dartmouth, and wrote a few games while working as a physics professor there. This includes Potshot, a gamified physics experiment that was likely the progenitor of the entire artillery game genre!” He went on to write a number of books in the halcyon days of the microcomputer revolution, and is said to have coined the term "computer literacy"
Artistic Printing - An album of old school typographic excellence from Sheaff Ephemera: ”We tend to think of all Victorian design as overly ornate, cluttered and sentimental. Yet between the late 1870s and the mid-1880s a group of American and British letterpress printers developed a design aesthetic that, at its best, was clean, bold and graphic. In its purest form, ‘Artistic Printing’—as the practitioners themselves labeled the approach—used metal type and brass rules almost exclusively. The results often appear quite fresh to our 21st century eyes.” This elegant trade card is from 1879