So Many Interesting Things

Singing the Songs of Scotland

Well, once again, I meet a fascinating individual only after her departure from this world (thank you, Fandray). Jean Redpath used her clear, gorgeous voice to introduce the world to Scottish folk songs. She sang for Queen Elizabeth II, sang at Lincoln Center, dated Bob Dylan (according to histories of the time), made several appearances on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion, and once worked as an undertaker's assistant: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/arts/music/jean-redpath-prolific-scottish-folk-singer-dies-at-77.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
Redpath sings three upbeat Scottish songs. These, IMHO, really showcase her beautiful voice and range (video ~ well, it's basically audio accompanied by photographs): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87MtC_tNWcA&list=PLE21A80FB2B2B7418

Enticing Edifices

Switzerland's Blur Building Diller & Scofidio

When fashion designer Pierre Cardin wanted a unique summer home, he found Palais Bulles, in Cannes, which is all curves. There's a building in Bangkok, Thailand, shaped like a robot, and one in China shaped like a grand piano and serviced by an elevator in an adjacent transparent violin. Not to be outdone, Brussels, Belgium, boasts the Atomium, built in 1958 and renovated in 2004-06: http://oddstuffmagazine.com/most-strange-and-creative-work-done-by-architects.html
Haven't had enough? How about 10 buildings that are shaped like what the resident companies are selling (or, at least, what the original residents were selling at the time)?: http://mentalfloss.com/article/26391/10-buildings-shaped-what-they-sell

Figure Painting

Marwedel's 'The Human Flamingo' van de Wall

German artist Gesine Marwedel turns humans into hummingbirds, crickets, cyborgs, tigers, and more. But that's not all. She also opens them up and dissects them and turns them into drawings, galaxies, and landscapes ~ all with paint (story, lots of pix): http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/gesine-marwedel-bodypaint

Thomas van de Wall

See Saw

In the "English Is a Funny Language" department, finally, an answer to that question that's been haunting you ever since you learned the names of the states (admit it ~ you know it has): Why is "Arkansas" pronounced differently from "Kansas"? Or, more to the point, why is "Arkansas" pronounced "Arkansaw"?: http://mentalfloss.com/article/58490/why-isnt-arkansas-pronounced-kansas

Sleep City

China: Parents of university freshmen down for an afternoon nap. China Daily/Reuters

An app-connected wrist band called UP tracks a wearer's sleep, diet, and activity, among other things. Data collected from wearers around the world (more than 5,000 in each location listed) give an interesting portrait of the collective habits of certain cities' residents ~ a portrait, then, of the city itself. For example, of the cities studied, Tokyo sleeps the least and Melbourne the most (story, interactive graph): https://jawbone.com/blog/jawbone-up-data-by-city/#newyork

Planet and People

Chris Golden

From his adopted home in Madagascar, ecologist and epidemiologist Christopher Golden works to enlighten us about the strong link between our health and the environment's. "Looking back," he says, "I know I was drawn here by a sense of adventure. ... But what's kept me here is the incredible environmental wisdom the Malagasy people possess about every aspect of their natural world. I've learned more from them than I did during my entire college and Ph.D. education." And he's giving back, too (story, video): http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140814-emerging-explorer-christopher-golden-madagascar-ecology-epidemiology-ngfood/?utm_source=NatGeocom&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=inside_20140821&utm_campaign=Content

Baby in a Corner

The lake was 40 degrees, the leaves were spray-painted, the two stars pretty much couldn't stand each other, and the test screenings were a disaster. Spoiler alert! (Too late?) Despite it all, Dirty Dancing won an Oscar and multiple Grammys and ended up grossing about $214 million worldwide. The little chick flick that could opened Aug. 21, 1987 (story, gifs): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/dirty-dancing-facts_n_5692634.html
Yes, it's that part ~ "Hungry Eyes" (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sYKI4A3uhc
OK, OK, since you've come this far ~ the one that got everyone wearing leg warmers and slouchy, off-the-shoulder sweatshirts, Flashdance (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsZIO-vmn3c

According to the Doctors of Thinkology

Dorothy & Co. follow the Buddhist Golden Path or the road to 'the new Jerusalem'

She knew she wasn't in Kansas, but did she know she was in an allegory? She knew she was on a journey, but was it actually an acid trip? What? The Wizard of Oz isn't just another entertaining children's story? No, contends historian Quentin Taylor. "Quite simply," he says, "Oz operates on two levels, one literal and puerile, the other symbolic and political." Others agree, only instead of "political," some would say "religious," "feminist," or "theosophical" (story, videos): http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140819-the-wizard-of-oz-hidden-meanings

Gloat the Raven Evermore

a rarer sight: the ferruginous hawk Kent Keller

In yet another example of the unintended and unexpected consequences of human activity on nature, it seems that our structures, including billboards and and power lines, are causing the rise of the common raven and the downfall of a genus of raptor that includes certain hawks and buzzards: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/inkfish/2014/08/20/how-humans-are-helping-ravens-and-hurting-hawks/#.U_UcY0i5bgd

Twinkle, Twinkle Indeed!

Wildlife GMBH/Alamy

Everything you didn't know you wanted to know about diamonds ~ including the fact that the biggest one we've found so far is in the Serpens Cauda constellation in the Milky Way. from delanceyplace.com:

Today's selection -- from Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik. The biggest diamond yet discovered is an entire planet five times the size of Earth:

"Carbon is a light atom with six protons and usually six neutrons in its nucleus. ... In terms of all of its other properties and behavior, it is the six electrons that surround and shield the nucleus that are important. Two of these electrons are deeply embedded in an inner core near the nucleus and play no role in the atom's chemical life -- its interaction with other elements. This leaves four electrons, which form its outermost layer, that are active. It is these four electrons that make the difference between the graphite of a pencil and the diamond of an engagement ring.

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As part of BBC's Witness series, Indian citizen Kuldip Nayar recalls his sad and lonely childhood trip from his home in what is now Pakistan to India when the two were split up in 1947. It gives a very human face to the plight of so many in the world now who are suffering through the same ordeal only under slightly different circumstances. Perhaps the most poignant and telling anecdote comes toward the end, when he describes how his contingent met up with a group making the opposite journey. They were going in different directions, and yet, in a way, they were traveling the same path. This one recollection points to the absurdity of what we humans do to ourselves and each other (video): http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28789262
Playing directly after that clip is an equally fascinating one (actually, they are all fascinating ~ and so very important) that is related, in that it is the story of a British woman who grew up in the last days of British rule in India (video): http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28344118

Eau de Space

Crescent Nebula, constellation Cygnus Pear Tree Observatory

You can't breathe it, but apparently, you can smell it. Well, not directly, but like some odors here on Earth, the smell of space lingers, and astronauts say they can smell it on their equipment. What they can't seem to agree on is how to describe it: http://mentalfloss.com/article/58427/what-does-space-smell

Sixty Years in the Line-Up

the first issue of Severson's 'Surfer' magazine

"Before John Severson, there was no 'surf media,' no 'surf industry,' and no 'surf culture'—at least not in the way we understand it today." So wrote journalist Sam George in 1999. Some would say surfing was better off without all that, but they can't dispute the value of Severson's photographs. They're out now, in a volume titled, simply, Surf (lots o' pix): http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/aug/18/breakers-boards-and-backflips-vintage-surfing-photography-in-pictures

The Ferguson Factor

Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Are the Ferguson protests turning into a movement? Yes, according to one writer, who notes, "More than one person in the streets of Ferguson has compared what is happening here to the chaotic days of the Birmingham desegregation campaign in 1963. And, like that struggle, the local authorities, long immune to public sentiment, were incapable of understanding how their actions reverberated outside the hermetic world where they held sway—how they looked to the world": http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/movement-grows-ferguson
This is not the first time I've posted something about the militarization of our police forces (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2012/11/hello-whos-there.html, http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2013/05/king-of-pain.html), and what's going on in Ferguson is focusing some people's attention on that aspect of the situation. Our president was asked about it and said that there's a big difference between our police and our military and that the line shouldn't be blurred. But it already has been, according to at least on Iraq vet. "... the police in Ferguson have better armor and

There's no such thing as multitasking, says cognitive neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. What we're doing when we think we're multitasking is actually one thing at a time but, by not really focusing on any of those things, not doing any of them well. This is probably disappointing but comes as no surprise to anyone. What could be useful here, though, is the suggestions Levitin has for how we can de-clutter our minds, allowing ourselves to live in the moment and concentrate on the important things: http://online.wsj.com/articles/book-review-the-organized-mind-by-daniel-j-levitin-1408137852

Sci-Fi Stars

Don't we all love stories like this, where someone wins a prestigious award his or her first time out? Well, American Ann Leckie won this year's Hugo Award for best novel with her debut work, Ancillary Justice. It's the first in a planned trilogy and has already won the Nebula, Locus, British Science Fiction Association, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. The Hugos were announced at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention in London. A few of the other winners were Charles Stross for best novella (Equoid) and Mary Robinette Kowal for best novelette (The Lady Astronaut of Mars): http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/18/ann-leckie-debut-novel-hugo-science-fiction-award

Mother Nature's Kitchen

Mark Vergari/The Journal News

When I first started buying only organic and mainly local, when possible, I was rather dismayed that some produce wasn't available at certain times of the year ~ until I realized that this was according to nature's schedule. Of course, plants can be forced to produce anytime, but that usually requires extraordinary methods. Dan Barber, co-owner and executive chef at New York's Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, is the author of The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food. He believes that we need to pay more attention to what our nearby farms can sustainably produce and modify our diets to be in synch with that schedule, rather than vice versa (story, video): http://www.cbsnews.com/news/at-dan-barbers-restaurants-the-farm-is-the-menu/
Barber wrote an op-ed piece in which he laid out his argument under the intriguing headline "What Farm-to-Table Got Wrong": http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/opinion/sunday/what-farm-to-table-got-wrong.html?_r=0

From the Archives: Sands of Time

Back in April 2012, I posted a story about Andres Amador, who rakes gorgeous patterns on beaches and photographs them with a little drone (the only kind of activity for which a drone should be used, IMHO!). This morning, my spousal unit called me over to the TV to watch a segment on a guy named Andres Amador, who rakes gorgeous patterns on beaches and ... you get the idea. He said that, on one of his early-morning bike rides, he saw Amador making one of his artworks on the beach in Venice. I thought this was a good time to re-post that particular link:

Andres Amador

San Francisco artist Andres Amador's canvas is the beach at low tide (video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP0O4Yu0kYE&feature=player_embedded#!

Mathematics, She Wrote

Which is more edifying, that this year's winner of mathematics' top honor, the Fields Medal, is female (the first), or that she's from Iran? Growing up in Tehran, Maryam Mirzakhani read every book she could get her hands on and decided she would be a writer. One encouraging teacher and a determined principal later, she and her best friend were on their way to the International Mathematical Olympiad, where she won gold. And that was, obviously, just the beginning (story, video): http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-tenacious-explorer-of-abstract-surfaces/

Wine in the Well

Montelupo Fiorentino

One hundred five feet down, at the bottom of an old well on a hill in Tuscany, Italy, archaeologists have found 15 centuries' worth of objects from Etruscan, Roman, and medieval times: bronze votive cups, statuettes, game pieces, animal bones, coins, and ... perhaps most exciting of all, grape seeds from at least two of those time periods. "The first results seem to indicate that the Etruscans had a more advanced viticulture compared to the Romans," said lead researcher Gaetano di Pasquale: http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/chianit-wine-ancestor-found-140811.htm
(slideshow): http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/chianti-wines-origins-found-down-a-well-140811.htm

Microbes and the Hygiene Hypothesis

The common "if a little is good, more must be better" cliché is amusing but rarely true, and nowhere is it less amusingly false than in the medical, advertising, and agricultural industries, in which antibiotics have been overprescribed, overtouted, and overused. We are now, according to one physician, seeing the fallout from that folly. from delanceyplace.com:

Today's selection - Missing Microbes by Martin J. Blaser, MD. Blaser, former chair of medicine at NYU and president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, is one of a growing number of medical practitioners and researchers who believe that we are experiencing a growing array of "modern plagues," and that the cause of these plagues is rooted in our "disappearing microbiota":

"Within the past few decades, amid all of [our] medical advances, something has gone terribly wrong. In many different ways we appear to be getting sicker. You can see the headlines every day. We are suffering from a mysterious array of what I call 'modern plagues': obesity, childhood diabetes, asthma, hay fever, food allergies, esophageal

Robin Williams was a genius. Not in the way people always say someone's a genius because that person just did something special, but truly, deep down, innately a genius. I doubt that he thought about it much; he just did what he did, what he had to do. His brain worked a mile a minute, and the high (dare I say "manic"?) energy that brought to his comedy ~ most of which was totally impromptu ~ was his hallmark. One never knew what was coming next. But he could also act in more serious roles, and in those, I think, we saw the real man behind the genius. He was good, he was kind, he was empathetic. But we all love to laugh, so here, even as we try to understand the tragedy, is a short collection of moments from Williams's star turn on Inside the Actor's Studio in 2001. You can easily see here that he just couldn't help himself. And we were, and are, the beneficiaries of that charming shortcoming (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U48KpK1srx4
But THIS is the classic clip in which one can see his mind working (video): http://www.hulu.com/watch/481839

Oooo-ooo That Smell

Trust the folks over at Mental Floss to come up with a list of the smells many of us remember but will be experiencing less and less ~ and some we haven't smelled in a long time already (Polaroid film! burning leaves!): http://mentalfloss.com/article/58291/11-smells-are-slowly-disappearing

Close Encounters

an Amazon basin tribe in 2008 Reuters

At this point in history, every isolated tribe we know of has had some kind of contact with the world beyond its borders, be it from a plane flying overhead or from outsiders stumbling upon them in the forest. Earlier this summer, in Brazil, members of one such tribe walked out of their forest to initiate contact with nearby villagers. What is interesting, sad, and surprising about this is that they didn't emerge because they were curious about the outside world, but because they were fearful and asking for help. Apparently, their village had suffered several attacks by outsiders. Such contact, however, brings its own dangers, including viruses and bacteria to which they are vulnerable: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes

Super! Moon!

July's supermoon, Olvera, Spain REUTERS/John Nazca

August 10 will see the second of the three supermoons, aka perigee moons, this year. (Technically, there are five supermoons this year, but only three were/are visible.) What makes this one special is that it's the "largest" of the three, as it's the closest to Earth (story, video): http://www.space.com/26779-supermoon-full-moon-august-2014-webcast.html and http://earthsky.org/space/what-is-a-supermoon
This is the week for sky-watching. The Perseid meteor shower is firing, but, of course, with the moon being so bright now, it's hard to see. Astronomers suggest waiting until August 11-13 to get the best view: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/aug/10/supermoon-perseids-meteor-shower-star-perigee-comet

Mountain Hideaway

Wikipedia

When we think about secluded Himalayan communities, most of us immediately think Tibet or Bhutan. But there's a semi-autonomous region in northern India that is as inaccessible as an area with only two main roads in and out can be. Ladakh is ten times smaller than Tibet and gets way fewer visitors, but what it has over that other mountainous region is its relative freedom (slideshow): http://www.bbc.com/travel/slideshow/20140729-indias-hidden-himalayas-of-ladakh

Something's Afoot

from MathIsFun.com

The whole foot-kilometer thing. So confusing. First, we were going to transition, and then ... we ... well, we weren't but we kind of were but not really. So now we buy soft drinks in liters but milk by the quart and gallon. We run 10Ks but drive miles. Do they even still teach kilometers and liters in school? And how did it come to this point, anyway, where we're neither here nor there?: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/books/2014/08/john_marciano_s_whatever_happened_to_the_metric_system_reviewed.html

Life, Remembered

Mrs. Oikawa Shiyuko Alejandro Chaskielberg

One and a half years after Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami, photographer Alejandro Chaskielberg visited the fishing town of Otsuchi. What he saw there ~ and, in particular, one item he found on the side of a road ~ inspired him to document the aftermath and survivors in a unique way: http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/08/08/alejandro_chaskielberg_photographs_japanese_tsunami_victims_in_his_series.html

For the Record

If you have some old LPs or 45s you want to get rid of, I know just the man to contact. He already has a 25,000-square-foot warehouse full and recently hired a dozen college interns to catalog them. "I've gone to therapy for 40 years to try to explain this to myself," says the collector, Brazilian businessman Zero Freitas: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/magazine/the-brazilian-bus-magnate-whos-buying-up-all-the-worlds-vinyl-records.html?hpw&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

Female Out Front

Col. Rashid reviews the troops. AP

Clearly, it is women and girls who have the most to lose when a group like ISIS comes to power. In the Kurdish north of Iraq, women have been fighting against that eventuality alongside their male counterparts. In fact, there is an all-woman unit, and a different unit is led by a female colonel (story, link to audio version): http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-07/meet-female-colonel-leading-kurdish-forces-battle-against-isis

More Humans

One of the best websites I've ever found ~ now on Facebook, too, and in book form ~ is Humans of New York (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2013/04/zoo-york-and-boston-too.html, http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2013/11/humans-book.html). The creative, empathetic genius behind it is now on a world tour, currently posting from Iraq (please be careful over there). And while, yes, we are all people, and the photos and quotes are similar in their ability to capture an individual's very humanness, the change in tone is palpable and riveting (website): http://www.humansofnewyork.com/

Fame Through Misfortune

the Peacock Angel © IRIN

It's a tough way to become a center of the world's attention, especially when you didn't want that attention in the first place. The religious minority now starving up in the mountains of northwest Iraq, the Yazidis, is a small group that is often wrongly thought to be a devil-worshipping sect: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-28686607

Moving On

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The peregrinations of famous people and ordinary folks are given equal weight in this visualization of human migration patterns in the Western world from 600 BCE to now. Plans are already under way to cover other areas as well (story, video): http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/07/31/video-thousands-years-human-migration-five-minutes/#.U-MGyUi5bgc

The Man Behind the Apes

the original Planet of the Apes, with Charlton Heston

The creator of the Planet of the Apes was French. Surprised? He also wrote The Bridge Over the River Kwai, another great book made into a blockbuster film. Wow, right? A scientist by training, he was a rubber planter for a British company in Malaysia before becoming an undercover agent in World War II and spent two years at hard labor in jail in Hanoi before escaping. All told, Pierre Boulle (1912-1994) wrote about 30 novels and short-story collections. And you thought that Dos Equis guy was "the most interesting man in the world"!: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28610124

Autism and the Sliding Scale of 'Normal'

Is autism an illness that needs to be "cured," or is it more like left-handedness ~ an innate difference, one among many traits that characterize an individual? Of course, any loving parent wants his/her child to enjoy a successful, painless life, and one of the things that most often means is fitting in. A person who is too different can be seen as a threat and therefore is met with varying degrees of hostility and/or ridicule. No one wants that for a child. So, many parents have turned to various therapies designed to "wipe out" autism, and some seem to have done exactly that for some children. Teaching a child the necessary basics ~ communication, social, and independent-living skills ~ is one thing, but at what point does one run the risk of killing one of the defining characteristics of a child's very being, that thing that allows for the out-of-the-box thinking that could come up with the next great novel, invention, or theory? The answer depends on whom you ask: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/magazine/the-kids-who-beat-autism.html?hpw&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

Fire Sale

MRAPs (mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles) Emma Graham-Harrison

What do you do with all the stuff lying around at the end of your longest war? Since last year, Pentagon contractors have scrapped more than 643 million pounds of equipment. Scrapped it. Vehicles, housing containers, furniture. Afghans, understandably, are both mystified and outraged. "Some of this might be of use in the market and could generate revenue," explains a senior Finance Ministry official. Partly in response to such criticism, the Defense Department, which says it has donated a lot, has taken to selling rather than scrapping ~ and has made $567,000 on items that cost it $4.8 million: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-selling--and-scrapping--equipment-in-afghanistan/2014/08/04/48be12b8-19a7-11e4-9e3b-7f2f110c6265_story.html?tid=hpModule_14fd66a0-9199-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239&hpid=z14

Quiz for a Cause

Here's an easy way to support a good cause. UPS is donating $1 for every completed quiz to one of four charities: Earth Day Network, Paralyzed Veterans of America, UNICEF, and Opportunity International. The quiz is short, multiple choice, and centers on your giving priorities, with questions like "What would you do with an extra week of vacation?" (and "Lie out by the pool" is not one of the options!): http://sustainability.ups.com/personality-quiz/#0

Ancient Rome's Glass Act

window in San Francisco's Chinatown KW

The list of things for which we have the ancient Romans to thank is extensive, and it includes glass. There's little doubt that our life would be quite different without it. (Added bonus here: Do you know the etymology of the word "window"?) from delanceyplace.com:

Today's selection -- from Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik. Sand and quartz melt at very high temperatures, and then reform as glass. The first to bring this into everyday life were the Romans:

"Although the Egyptians and the Greeks made advances in glass making, it was the Romans who really brought glass into everyday life. It was they who discovered the beneficial effects of 'flux,' in their case a mineral fertilizer called natron, which is a naturally occurring form of sodium carbonate. With it, the Romans were able to make transparent glass at a much lower temperature than would be needed to melt pure quartz. In the few locations where the right raw materials and fuel for the high-temperature furnaces were available, they manufactured glass in bulk and then transported it throughout the Roman Empire using their vast trading

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The vibrations that noise (including speech) produces on nearby objects (like a bag of chips or a plant's leaves) can be picked up by a high-speed camera and "read" by a computer with startling accuracy (story, video): http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2014/08/04/mit-researchers-can-listen-to-your-conversation-by-watching-your-potato-chip-bag/?hpid=z4

Ida Know

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Every once in a while I happen upon a game that intrigues me for its ability to meld entertainment with crazy creativity with great art. One of these was Contre Jour (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2014/03/seize-jour.html). Today, I chanced upon a new one, called Monument Valley. It's kind of Edge meets MC Escher. No race cars or mean people. No one dies, no one's head gets chopped off. In fact, there's no blood or gore at all. Just a clever game in which you have to figure out how to manipulate the environment to get a little girl named Ida (who, in my case, is being very patient) from point A to point B (website with video): http://www.monumentvalleygame.com/

Where Stuff Goes To Live Again

"You go to TerraCycle.com and sign up for collection, with free shipping," explains TerraCycle founder Tom Szaky. "Then we take the waste, and our scientists look at ways we can manipulate it into new things." So goes the story of a company whose name you've probably seen on everything recycled, from wine-cork bulletin boards and fire starter and cardboard fire logs to all those bags made from Capri Sun drink pouches and other containers, to fertilizer, plant food, and even trash cans and foam pallets. It's the story of a guy who put his money where his convictions are and runs what looks like one very groovy company to work for (story, video): http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/recycling/stories/behind-human-resources-terracycles-mission-to-upcycle-anything-and

Warm Fuzzies

from handinhandparenting.org

File this under "duh." Still, it's a good reminder to parents and may come in handy for teachers and other professionals who work with children and need "official" stats to throw around in parent-teacher conferences. The results of a study, as summarized in the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, show that children whose parents are warm and affirming with them are more empathetic. But that's not the most important bit of information. The researchers found that such parenting can actually make a huge positive difference with toddlers exhibiting "callous-unemotional" behavior: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/warmer-parenting-makes-toddlers-empathetic-87287/

Think Locally, Act Locally

Several years ago, at the age of 19, my son went to Washington, DC. After four days of talking with his representatives and others about the environment, he returned, convinced that change was not going to happen there, that it was only at the grassroots level that real change would start. A recent report from the World Resources Institute and the Rights and Resources Initiative seems to back up that contention. Its review of more than 130 studies in 14 countries shows that most local communities take better care of their environment ~ in this case, forests ~ than governments do: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329802.900-local-people-preserve-the-environment-better-than-governments.html#.U98U90i5bgc

My House Is Smarter Than Your House

Decker Yeadon's Homeostatic Facade System is on the building at right.

Until recently, shape-changing materials have been used mainly in medicine and engineering. But things are about to get really exciting, as architects and designers are starting to incorporate them into their creations. One example is the Homeostatic Facade System, a rather Keith Haring-looking maze of metal ribbon that festoons the outside of a building and conserves energy by opening and closing as the ambient temperature changes (story, video): http://www.archdaily.com/533679/how-do-mysterious-memory-materials-work/

Fer Shire

Tolkein recalling how he came to write The Hobbit's opening line. screen shot

The third, and I believe final, installment of Peter Jackson's Hobbit series, this one called The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, will journey to theaters in December. In an attempt to get a jump on the coverage (too late?), I hereby present a list of interesting things about the novels' author, JRR Tolkein (1892-1973): http://mentalfloss.com/article/25813/10-things-you-should-know-about-jrr-tolkien
(the following to be read in upper-crust British accent, chaps, as this is Tolkein speaking) "The actual beginning, though it is not really the beginning, but the actual flashpoint was, I remember very clearly, I came, I took ~ I can still see the corner in my house in 20 North [mumble] Road, where it happened ~ I got an enormous pile of exam papers there, and eh ... marking school examination in the summertime is an enormous, um, very laborious, and unfortunately also boring. And I remember picking up a paper and actually finding ~ I nearly gave it an extra mark for it ~ an extra five marks, actually ~ one page on this particular paper was left blank. Glorious! Nothing to read, so I scribbled on it, I can't think why, 'In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit.' ... I think that was eventually published in 1937" (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR-4vMEiQ_U#t=21

Post-War Identity

Juan José Valdés, Lauren E. James, Eve Conant, NG Staff

It's all about power, and in this characteristic, of course, Iraq is not alone. Saddam Hussein managed to keep it to himself and his clan ~ brutally. Then the U.S. stepped in and introduced quota systems. Now, with political, religious, and ethnic lines drawn and sometimes smudged among Arab, Kurd, Baathist, Shiite, Sunni, Christian, IS (formerly ISIS), and others, can Iraq survive as one nation? And if it does, whose Iraq will it be?: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/special-features/2014/08/140801-iraq-sunni-shiite-baghdad-caliphate-saddam-hussein-al-qaeda-infocus/

Just Because: 'Suicide in the Trenches'

Given all that the world is witnessing these days, it seems mordantly fitting that the Cambridge University Library is releasing the works of World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) online now (story, video: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-28581726). Once called an "accidental hero," Sassoon left us not only his descriptive ~ and, may I say, legitimately angry ~ poetry but diaries filled with prose and drawings.

Suicide in the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

The Iceman Surpriseth

Genetics may play a much greater role in heart health than previously thought. This is the conclusion stemming from studies of Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,300-year-old mummy found in the Alps. The man, who exercised regularly and certainly didn't engage in any of modern humans' vices, like smoking, watching too much TV, or consuming fast food, surprised scientists by showing definite signs of cardiovascular disease: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/31/otzi-heart-disease-mummy_n_5637352.html

How To Move a Dinosaur

screen shot

Tell it a sad story. ... No, really, this is about the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, which is renovating its dinosaur hall. Doing that requires the removal of the dinosaur skeletons, many of which weigh almost five tons (story, video): http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140731-dinosaur-hall-smithsonian-renovation-culture-science/

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