An eclectic assortment of stuff: food, archaeology, fun, books, history, geekery, etc.
Posted in miscellaneous on Apr 30th, 2007
From csmonitor.com: Spain’s collection agents practice public humiliation.
Jose Romero remembers the farmer from Alicante. The man owed money – a lot of it – and Mr. Romero sent one of his agents to collect the debt. When the collector arrived, the farmer told him to wait while he went in the house to get the [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Apr 27th, 2007
From The Independent: Following in the steps of a Trojan hero.
It is the closest point on the Italian peninsula to Albania and, until efforts by the coastguard some years ago, was the destination of choice for Albanians fleeing poverty for the glamour and prosperity of their wealthy neighbour. But suddenly, the little town of Castro [...]
Posted in food on Apr 27th, 2007
From the Beeb: Maths cracks beer froth mystery.
Mathematicians have come up with a formula that predicts how the head on a pint of beer will change after pouring.
Their advance could shed light on why the foam on a pint of lager quickly disappears, but the froth on a pint of Guinness sticks around.
The research could [...]
Posted in environment on Apr 27th, 2007
From sfgate.com: Small houses challenge our notions of need as well as minimum-size standards.
Down a rambling residential road on the outskirts of Sebastopol, the dream house sits like a testament to discriminating taste.
This dream house is the love child of artist-builder Jay Shafer, who lovingly hand-crafted it. The stainless-steel kitchen, gleaming next to the natural [...]
Posted in books & lit, history & archaeology on Apr 27th, 2007
From the BBC: Text reveals more ancient secrets.
Experts are "lost for words" to have found that a medieval prayer book has yielded yet another key ancient text buried within its parchment.
Works by mathematician Archimedes and the politician Hyperides had already been found buried within the book, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest.
But now advanced imaging technology [...]
Posted in unusual musical instruments on Apr 26th, 2007
From Odd Music: The Sea Organ.
The Sea Organ (morske orgulje) is located on the shores of Zadar, Croatia, and is the world’s first pipe organ that is played by the sea. Simple and elegant steps, carved in white stone, were built on the quayside. Underneath, there are 35 pipes with whistle openings on the sidewalk. [...]
Posted in dogs on Apr 26th, 2007
From the New York Times: If You Want to Know if Spot Loves You So, It’s in His Tail.
…there is another, newly discovered, feature of dog body language that may surprise attentive pet owners and experts in canine behavior. When dogs feel fundamentally positive about something or someone, their tails wag more to the right [...]
This is fun: Visuwords.
Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary — Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.
Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background [...]
Posted in history & archaeology, science on Apr 25th, 2007
From The Telegraph: Giant prehistoric fungus discovered.
Scientists believe they have identified a strange prehistoric lifeform that grew out of the ground like a 20-foot tree trunk, had no branches or leaves, and towered over the landscape hundreds of millions of years ago.
For nearly a century and a half, scientists have debated the fossilized remains of [...]
What better news than this? From Reuters: Fruity cocktails count as health food, study finds.
A fruity cocktail may not only be fun to drink but may count as health food, U.S. and Thai researchers said on Thursday.
Adding ethanol — the type of alcohol found in rum, vodka, tequila and other spirits — boosted the antioxidant [...]
Posted in language on Apr 24th, 2007
From csmonitor.com: Rooting out bad language with a unicorn.
The Unicorn Hunters were founded in 1971 by W.T. Rabe, Thomas, and other LSSU faculty and staff to encourage and regulate the hunting of unicorns. The regulations define the unicorn hunting season — "All days of the year except St. Agnes’ Eve" — and list the "Approved [...]
Posted in science on Apr 24th, 2007
From the BBC: ‘Kryptonite’ discovered in mine.
Kryptonite is no longer just the stuff of fiction feared by caped superheroes.
A new mineral matching its unique chemistry — as described in the film Superman Returns — has been identified in a mine in Serbia.
According to movie and comic-book storylines, kryptonite is supposed to sap Superman’s powers whenever [...]
Posted in history & archaeology, science on Apr 24th, 2007
From LiveScience.com: Ancient Rainforest Revealed in Coal Mine.
Scientists exploring a mine have uncovered a natural Sistine chapel showing not religious paintings, but incredibly well preserved images of sprawling tree trunks and fallen leaves that once breathed life into an ancient rainforest.
Replete with a diverse mix of extinct plants, the 300-million-year-old fossilized forest is revealing clues [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Apr 23rd, 2007
From philly.com: Death and the maidens.
Dozens of maidens, wearing headdresses of gold and lapis lazuli, walked down into a tomb in Mesopotamia 4,600 years ago. Each raised a cup to her lips, drank some poison, and lay down to die, hoping to join a king or other royal figure in the afterlife.
It is an enduring [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Apr 23rd, 2007
From the Beeb: Lost world warning from North Sea.
Archaeologists are uncovering a huge prehistoric "lost country" hidden below the North Sea.
This lost landscape, where hunter gatherer communities once lived, was swallowed by rising water levels at the end of the last ice age.
University of Birmingham researchers are heralding "stunning" findings as they map the “best-preserved [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Apr 20th, 2007
From physorg.com: French Beekeepers Brace for Asian Sting.
Ambushing locals as they return home from work, foreign invaders are dismembering French natives and feeding them to their young.
This horror scenario is playing out in France’s beehives, where an ultra-aggressive species of Asian hornets – who likely migrated in pottery shipped from China – may be threatening [...]
Posted in Linux on Apr 20th, 2007
From CNET: BabelDisc: Linux for technophobes?.
A new Linux distribution designed to be as user-friendly as possible went into beta testing Tuesday.
BabelDisc, the brainchild of U.K. Internet pioneer and Pipex founder Peter Dawe, is a lightweight Ubuntu-based distribution that runs only from a CD and does not even require the host PC to have a hard [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Apr 20th, 2007
From the University College London: Napoleon duped the British over Copenhagen.
A UCL (University College London) academic has found evidence that Napoleon successfully duped the British by planting false intelligence. The rumour — that France was mobilising its navy to conqueror Ireland — was a major catalyst for the first terror bombardment on a European capital [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Apr 20th, 2007
From the Sydney Morning Herald: Wollemi find an Aboriginal seat of the gods.
A rock platform in the heart of the Wollemi wilderness may be the closest thing Australia has to Mount Olympus, the seat of the gods in Greek mythology.
Last spring archaeologists discovered an enormous slab of sandstone, 100 metres long and 50 metres wide, [...]
Posted in books & lit, history & archaeology, religion on Apr 20th, 2007
From Radio Praha: Devil’s Bible returns home but only for few months.
The Codex Gigas, also known as the Devil’s Bible, is the biggest book in the world. Made at the start of the 13th century in a Bohemian monastery, it was one of the country’s most prized works of art. In medieval times, its uniqueness [...]
Oooh, this Chocoatl place sounds like it’d be worth a visit. From the Vancouver Sun: Sweetness from way down south.
When Thelmis Velgis opened Chocoatl in Yaletown a year ago, he dove deep into chocolate and history. Figuratively speaking.
The shop specializes in chocolate drinks long established in Mexico (going back a couple thousand years), but new [...]
Posted in food, history & archaeology on Apr 17th, 2007
From the New York Times: Have Spatula Will Travel.
Insights that might never occur to you while eating hot yogurt soup in a restaurant in Istanbul suddenly take on a surprising clarity when making that soup yourself in a hotel kitchen there — the combination of the delicate egg yolks, tangy yogurt, lemon and mint evoking [...]
From abclocal.go.com: Proof of the Brain’s Link with Religion?.
One woman explains her nonsensical ability to "speak in tongues" as the voice of the Holy Spirit, which she says takes over her body. She tells us, "It’s like I’m here with you, but I’m somewhere else. And you don’t want to leave that place because you [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Apr 13th, 2007
From archaeology.org: Emblems of Empire.
Hidden for centuries, unique symbols of Roman power emerge from beneath the imperial city.
In a small trench on the northeast slope of the Palatine Hill, in an underground chamber once covered with thick ancient pavement, a team of archaeologists from Rome’s University La Sapienza has made the discovery of a lifetime: [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Apr 12th, 2007
From iol.co.za: Viking ship to retrace route.
An 11th century Viking longship that has been entirely restored to its original condition will cross the North Sea this summer powered only by its sails, a Danish Viking ship museum said on Tuesday.
The ship will leave Roskilde, Denmark, where the museum is located, on July 1 and is [...]