An eclectic assortment of stuff: food, archaeology, fun, books, history, geekery, etc.
Posted in assorted on Feb 28th, 2010
From the New York Times: What Could You Live Without?.
Kevin Salwen, a writer and entrepreneur in Atlanta, was driving his 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, back from a sleepover in 2006. While waiting at a traffic light, they saw a black Mercedes coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other.
Dad, if [...]
Posted in computer stuff, music, technology on Feb 27th, 2010
From Miller-McCune.com: Triumph of the Cyborg Composer: David Cope’s software creates beautiful, original music. Why are people so angry about that?
Posted in books & lit, health on Feb 21st, 2010
From the University of Toronto Magazine: At a Loss for Words.
Agatha Christie, English literature’s Queen of Crime, may have succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease in her later years. It was never diagnosed by doctors, but now two U of T professors say that a trail of evidence left in her published work leads suspiciously in that [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Feb 19th, 2010
Oh, look what the Guardian has today! Archaeologists pinpoint long-disputed site of Battle of Bosworth.
Archaeologists announced today that they have located not just the site of the Battle of Bosworth, but the spot where – on 22 August 1485 – Richard III became the last English king to die in battle when he was cut [...]
From the Telegraph: Chocolate ‘can help prevent stroke’.
A study of nearly 50,000 people found that those eating chocolate were 22 per cent less likely to suffer a stroke than those that didn’t.
And those who did suffer a stroke but had indulged in chocolate were 46 per cent less likely to die as a result. [continue]
This [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Feb 7th, 2010
From the Guardian: Founders of British obstetrics ‘were callous murderers’.
They are giants of medicine, pioneers of the care that women receive during childbirth and were the founding fathers of obstetrics. The names of William Hunter and William Smellie still inspire respect among today’s doctors, more than 250 years since they made their contributions to healthcare. [...]
I’ll tell you what depresses me about blogging (and the internet) these days. It’s the group of people who call themselves social media consultants. They present themselves as technical mavens, able to make a product famous and popular on the internet. They brand themselves nicely, pass around their cutting edge business cards, and say that [...]