Super Bowl-of-links XXXXXI

After calling my first 50 linkdumps "smörgåsbords," I wanted to come up with a new name, but I haven't been able to do so yet.  For this week a wordplay on the "Super Bowl L" post will have to do.  And since this is #51, I'll put in 51 links.  Here we go...

Everything you've ever wanted to know about the retail business of ripening bananas is in a post at Edible Geography.

A list (and explanation) of 50 internet memes.

Six members of Walmart's Walton family have a combined net worth as great as that of the bottom 30 percent of all Americans.

A woman who was opposed to Obama's healthcare plan posts a public apology after she develops breast cancer and has to arrange payment for her treatments.

Craniopagus twins can see through each other's eyes.

Matt Taibbi discusses the UC Davis pepper-spray incident.

If there is a pandemic, Homeland Security is empowered to restrict internet access (also here).

Raw cookie dough is not safe for human consumption (because of E. coli, and about half of those affected require hospitalization).  Thankfully, however, cookie dough in ice cream is safe.

All of the most NSFW (not-safe-for-work) and NSFL (not-safe-for-life) links have been assembled in one post.  Not only do the links go to offensive material, but the description of the content of the links is also NSFW/NSFL.  Do not click unless you know you can handle the worst imaginable internet material emotionally.

Obama appears to have broken his promise to veto a bill that puts Americans at risk for indefinite detention without trial.

An interesting essay about Christopher Hitchens.

You can actually buy Soylent Green crackers.

In Michigan, Homeland Security grant funds were used to buy Sno-Cone machines - thirteen of them, at $900 each.

The history of SKYNET.

A truly remarkable weather photograph.

A woman's body was found in a Massachusetts public swimming pool two days after she had died.  The Mitford sisters would have been amused.

A column at Salon discusses how federal grant funds have been used to militarize American domestic police forces.  And, in a related story, FBI agents use a chainsaw to rip down the side of a house during a drug raid... on the wrong house (more examples at the link).

Thousands of artificial hip implants are failing (not being rejected, but mechanically failing).

A prediction that the Eurozone's single currency will collapse this year.

Stallion semen is being sold as an energy drink.  It costs $7.60, and is available in several flavors.

A gallery of incredible sand sculptures.

Time-lapse video of Moscow.

The International Children's Digital Library is a gateway to online books for children.

A child pulls out her little brother's loose tooth.  Quite a common experience; in the old days it was done by tying the tooth to a doorknob, then slamming the door.  This girl does it by tying a string to the tooth, then getting on her mini-motorcycle, then...

Millionaire Newt Gingrich explains that he's not "rich."

Mitt Romney has lots of "endorsers," at least 35 of whom received contributions from Romney's super-PAC.

A photo of a bizarre and decidedly grotesque body modification.

An Atlantic column reviews music site Pitchfork's listing of the top music singles for 2011, and examines the geography of where the music originated.  Joining New York, London, Los Angeles, Toronto, Seattle et al at the top of the charts was the city of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and controlling for population, Eau Claire takes the top spot, with 1.2 hits per 100,000 population.  Madison, Wisconsin was #3 (Copenhagen in between, San Francisco #4, then New York and other cultural runners-up.)

If you have post-polio syndrome, or know someone who does, Post-Polio Health International has a useful website.

The stages of development from an egg to a chicken (photo set via the link at the top, for those unfamiliar with Reddit).

The dangers of genetically modified foods.

An unidentified woman planned to detonate a bomb in Moscow on New Year's Eve, but her plans went disastrously awry (for her), when a spam message on her mobile phone triggered her suicide belt.

Pix of the "crooked forest" at Gryfino, via a Google-translated page.

Security footage captures a US postal service worker throwing a package containing an old cuckoo clock over a fence.

A report that the theme music from the movie "Titanic" was playing on board the Costa Concordia when it ran aground. [has this been verified?]

In an effort to deter vandalism at remote sites, British authorities are pondering the use of bees as security devices (allowing beekeepers to keep hives at the locations).  Makes sense, though I would worry about the beehives.

I am unable to explain Hollis' paradox.  Anyone?

Roger Ebert offers what he considers to be the best films of 2011.

"Fathermucker" has been proposed as a term to replace "househusband" for a stay-at-home-father.

A judge rules that Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops for police inspection.

Do not swallow Buckyballs.  The magnetic ones.  Doing so can be lethal if a couple attract each other across the walls of the intestines.

There is now a website entitled Dogs Against Romney, originating from an incident in which he reportedly transported a family dog in a carrier on top of the family car.

Another extreme example of body modification: Mexico's "Vampire Woman."  With video.

A basketball player who is 7'5" tall.  In high school.

A man in Chile has been arrested for stealing a glacier (bit by bit).  It's not a joke, actually.

A TSA agent stole $5,000 in cash from a passenger's jacket; the TSA counters that they hold their personnel to very high standards.

An explanation that using higher-than-recommended-level octane gasoline in your car not only doesn't get you better mileage, it may actually worsen performance.

"Nightline" reports that new performer James Deen has led to a "deeply disturbing trend" of teenage girls watching online porn.

How many stars can you name (other than the sun)?  The link goes to a list of about a hundred of the brightest ones, and they all have names.

A man and his dog

A painting by Antonio Rotta (1828 - 1903)

Antonio Rotta is notable for his mythological subjects and genre paintings. He was a student at the Accademia di Belli Arti in Venice and was one of the first classical genre painters. His disciplined training in academic schooling, and the use of commonplace subjects made his oeuvre very popular during his lifetime. His work was exhibited in Europe and the United States. He won a medal at the Paris Salon, 1878.

Via Miss Folly, where this is entitled The Old Man and his Best Friend? (I don't know if that's the artist's title for the piece).

The tranquil beauty of Venice. Wait... what???

YouTube link. 

The above video features no CGI, special effects, or camera tricks (the ship doesn't cruise into the frame until about the :45 mark). Filmmaker Ries Straver shot the footage in 2005 on a trip to Venice, where in one day he witnessed no less than five of these luxurious behemoths coast down a waterway that is mostly meant for locals and tourists piloting rowboats and small-motor craft...

So I didn’t have a tripod; I put my camera on a little wall, which is part of this outlook, this post, and I just hit “record.” I adjusted the framing a little bit and it was a perfect postcard-like image. I just hoped the tape would last long enough for the boat to pass all the way through. What I imagined would happen actually happened, which is this cruise liner just completely raped that postcard-like image of Venice. It screws with your idea of what we all know of Venice. It completely changes it. And that’s why it feels so disproportional and abstract. That’s why a lot of people think it’s fake, even though there’s no editing, special effects, or compositing whatsoever. It’s just hitting “record” and then “stop,” and being in the right place at the right time.

Found at Vice, where there's a longer interview with the filmmaker.

Threat

Each star on this map marks the location of a military base of the United States - in Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and into the ...stans.  The blue in the center (not well distinguished from the Caspian Sea and other water) is Iran.

[I]magine if the blue in that map were the U.S... and the large red areas were Mexico and Canada... and the stars represented Iranian military bases. Then further imagine that Iranian political leaders and media figures routinely told their population that it was the U.S. that was an aggressive, threatening power that had to be stopped: the mocking condemnations of that level of propaganda would be endless. Yet American political officials and commentators feel free to insist, with a straight face, that Iran is an aggressor nation posing a serious threat to the U.S.: such a serious threat, in fact, that war may be necessary to stop it.

Let me be quite clear here; I'm not saying that the Iranian leadership are good guys.  I'm just using the graphic to show that there might be reasons for them to feel threatened.   

Original image credit unknown; found at the Democratic Underground, via Informed Comment and Salon.

Giant pants of the 1930s

There is an entire tumblr devoted to "giant pants" worn in that era.

A face by Botticelli

From the workshop of Alessandro Filipepi, called Sandro Botticelli (1445 – 1510), a "fragment" from an oil on panel of Saint John the Baptist.  I haven't found an image of the full work from which this was cropped.

From a private collection, via Vision and Alabaster.

Addendum: Ryan Beales found a virtually identical John the Baptist in a different piece from the same workshop; it's in the National Gallery.

High-risk areas for Lyme disease

From an article in the StarTribune about a study based on actual collection of ticks:

The map, which pinpoints areas of the eastern United States where people have the highest risk of contracting Lyme disease, is part of a study published in the February issue of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene...

Previous risk maps were heavily reliant on reports of human infections, but those can be misleading because the disease is both over- and under-diagnosed, according to the study. Where someone is diagnosed is not necessarily where the disease was contracted, and ticks may live in a region long before they actually infect someone, meaning there could be a significant risk even without confirmed cases...

About 1 in 5 ticks collected were infected — more than researchers expected — and that percentage was fairly constant across geographic areas, she said. Researchers had expected the infection rate to vary.

Pants legs tucked into my socks virtually every time I hike.

"Pukin' on the pizza"

YouTube link. 

Rick Santorum's turn to experience"Bad Lip Reading."  Gotta do him quick - he shouldn't be around long...

Via Cynical-C.

Locket for a caul

Object Type:
According to family tradition, this locket contains part of the caul (the membrane enclosing the foetus before birth) that John Monson was born with in 1597. This was considered to be lucky, especially as a protection against drowning...

Ownership & Use:
It was customary at this time for both men and women to wear jewellery... It is possible that this locket was made as a christening (baptism) gift... Gifts given at baptisms often included table salts or cups, silver spoons and other precious metal objects. It seems likely that this locket was given to John Monson as a keepsake after his birth.

From the collections of the Victoria and Albert, via Frowzy Indulgences.

"Use it or lose it"

Relatively few researchers have looked at how the muscles of masters athletes – individuals who exercise routinely – decline, or don’t, as they get older. To look at this cross-section of society, Wroblewski and his team took muscle and body composition measurements of 40 high-level recreational athletes.

The subjects, 20 men and 20 women, ranged in age from 40 to 81 years and practiced their sport, primarily running, biking and/or swimming, four to five times per week.

The results showed that mid-thigh muscle mass and lean mass did not increase with age. But it didn’t decrease either. And, the older athletes seemed to maintain their muscle mass even though their body fat increased, relative to the younger competitors in the study.

These observations suggest that body fat was accumulating in places other than within the muscles, which is better for maintaining muscle strength. Tests on the subjects’ quads strength also showed that it did not decline with age either.

Source: Wroblewski, A., et. al. Chronic Exercise Preserves Lean Muscle Mass in Masters Athletes. The Physician and Sportsmedicine. Volume: 39, No.3., via Bicycle Lab and Neatorama.

Some state legislators are idiots

We offer for your consideration Shadrack McGill (R-AL):

According to Alabama state Sen. Shadrack McGill (R), the Bible says that increasing teacher salaries would only lead to less-qualified teachers. McGill said at a prayer breakfast that doubling teachers’ salaries — starting pay for Alabama teachers begins at $36,144 — would not help education. In fact, he said that keeping teacher pay low is a “Biblical principle“: 

“If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach.

“To go in and raise someone’s child for eight hours a day, or many people’s children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn’t want to do it, OK?

“And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It’s just in them to do. It’s the ability that God give ‘em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn’t matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity.

“If you don’t keep that in balance, you’re going to attract people who are not called, who don’t need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance.”

However...

McGill... evidently found nothing in scripture preventing him from approving a 67 percent pay increase for legislators in 2007, which increased annual salaries for the part-time legislators from $30,710 to $49,500. He said that the higher pay helped to stop corruption.

Found at Think Progress, via A Little Bit of This, A Lttle Bit of That, A Little More of...

Aftershocks

YouTube link. 

This truly impressive video uses data from the Japan Meteorological Agency to display earthquake activity in and around that country during 2011.  In a tour de force of graphic design, the video incorporates information on date, location, magnitude, and depth, plus a linear graph of total number of quakes.

My recommendations:  don't just skip ahead to March 11 - wait for it.  Fullscreen is better (icon far bottom right corner for those who were not previously familiar with it).  And, crank up the sound, which is used as vehicle to present information.

The take-home point, in my view, is not so much the magnitude of the big one, but the jaw-dropping frequency of the subsequent aftershocks.

Impressed?  Scroll down to the next post to view worldwide earthquake activity. 

Via Reddit.

Ring of fire

YouTube link. 

This is a companion piece to the video in the previous post.  Using the same graphic conventions, the data depicted here show worldwide earthquake activity in 2011.  As the yellow dots accumulate, some of the earth's tectonic plates are nicely defined.

If you're going to watch, take the extra 5 seconds to click the fullscreen icon at the lower right.  And don't stop before March 11.

And finally, if you live in Europe or North America, take a moment to ponder your geographic good fortune.

U.S. corporate taxes at 40-year low

From the Washington Post's Wonkblog:

Corporate taxes as a share of profits are the lowest in decades, reports Damian Paletta: "U.S. companies are booking higher profits than ever. But the number crunchers in Washington are puzzling over a phenomenon that has just come into view: Corporate tax receipts as a share of profits are at their lowest level in at least 40 years. Total corporate federal taxes paid fell to 12.1% of profits earned from activities within the U.S. in fiscal 2011, which ended Sept. 30, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That's the lowest level since at least 1972. And well below the 25.6% companies paid on average from 1987 to 2008. Corporate income-tax receipts typically fall during recessions, and they declined sharply after the 2008 financial crisis, which wiped out big swaths of profits across the huge financial sector. But U.S. profits have rebounded sharply in recent quarters, while tax receipts have stayed low."

And note, they are not paying 12% of their income, but 12% of their profits.

Approaching Lake Vostok - fourth update

Ever since I learned the Russians were drilling into Lake Vostok, I've had a vague sense of unease that the procedure would be screwed up and the lake would be contaminated in the process.  I am now a little more reassured after reading an account cited at Wired about the precautions being taken:

Lake Vostok, which has been sealed off from the world for 14 million years, is about to be penetrated by a Russian drill bit.

The lake, which lies four kilometres below the icy surface of Antarctica, is unique in that it's been completely isolated from the other 150 subglacial lakes on the continent for such a long time. It's also oligotropic, meaning that it's supersaturated with oxygen -- levels of the element are 50 times higher than those found in most typical freshwater lakes.

"Once the lake is reached, the water pressure will push the working body and the drilling fluid upwards in the borehole, and then freeze again." The next season, the team will bore into that frozen water to recover a sample whose contents can then be analysed.

The drill bit currently sits less than 100 metres above the lake. Once it reaches 20-30 metres, the mechanical drill bit will be replaced with a thermal lance that's equipped with a camera...

The conditions in Lake Vostok are very similar to the conditions on Europa and Enceladus, so could also strengthen the case for extraterrestrial life.

More at the link and at New Scientist.  I have a family member who studies extremophiles and will be most interested in the results of the probe, but personally I like this Reddit comment: "What's 14 million years of divergent evolution in a lightless, freezing, high oxygen environment going to look like? I don't know, but I kinda hope it eats people."

Image from the images page of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research's Subglacial Antarctic Lake Environments website (lots more information there).

Update January 28: A report at BBC indicates that "time is running out" for the Russian team because "With the Antarctic summer almost over, temperatures will soon begin to plummet; they can go as low as -80C." The drillers are within about 50m of the water, but are progressing slowly and will need to terminate operations by February 6. Details at the link.

Update February 11, 2011:  Drilling has been halted.

Update February 1, 2012:  The Washington Post now says that penetration is imminent:

If microbes are found in Vostok, the discovery would have particular significance for astrobiology, the search for life beyond Earth. That’s because Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus have deep ice crusts that scientists think cover large amounts of liquid water warmed by sources other than the sun — just like Vostok...
Because of the stakes involved, the Russian effort has drawn criticism for its extensive use of kerosene, Freon and other chemicals to enable the drilling and to keep the borehole open during the long winter...

...the lake is part of a complex system in which ice sheets bring in meltwater at their bottoms and later carry refrozen water elsewhere. She said that although the lake has not “felt the wind” in 20 million to 30 million years, the water in it is not as ancient — in the 100,000s to low millions of years old. The only ancient water present, she said, is probably in the sediment at the bottom...

Vostok, which is about the size of New Jersey, is the world’s third-largest lake by volume of water. Priscu said the gas in the lake makes it like a can of carbonated soda: Open it under high pressure, and it will spurt out.

He said the doomsday scenario for the Russian breakthrough would be if the suddenly released water pushed its way past machinery to block it and shot up the borehole, which is six to eight inches in diameter at the top. The result, he said, could be an enormous geyser that could empty a quarter of the lake. Priscu said he didn’t expect that to happen, but if it did, the sudden addition of substantial water vapor to the antarctic atmosphere could change the continent’s weather in unpredictable ways.

See also "Ice volcanoes on a moon of Saturn."


Fourth update February 2:  An anonymous reader found this headline today:

Russian scientists seeking Lake Vostok lost...

I thought it was from The Onion, but it comes from FOX News, where the story begins thusly...

A group of Russian scientists plumbing the frozen Antarctic in search of a lake buried in ice for tens of millions of years have failed to respond to increasingly anxious U.S. colleagues -- and as the days creep by, the fate of the team remains unknown.

"No word from the ice for 5 days," Dr. John Priscu professor of Ecology at Montana State University, told FoxNews.com via email...

I suppose that means the creature is loose.  Stay tuned.

"You Don't Know Me" sung by Ray Charles

I was wondering what to post for Groundhog Day, so last night I watched the movie, looking for something embeddable.  It's a clever plot, but I'm not a big fan of Bill Murray, so I had almost given up when I heard this song in the background.

"You Don't Know Me" was written and released 56 years ago.  Since then it's been recorded by hundreds of top artists.  I listened to a half-dozen covers last night and finally decided I liked the Ray Charles' rendition best.

But I also can't pass up an opportunity to post Willie Nelson's version:

(Reposted for Groundhog Day 2012. This year I like the Willie Nelson version better.)

Pythons

I've seen several articles in the past week discussing a report in PNAS about pythons in south Florida.  Excerpts from a StarTribune article:

The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that sightings of medium-size mammals are down dramatically -- as much as 99 percent, in some cases -- in areas where pythons and other large, non-native constrictor snakes are known to be lurking...

Tens of thousands of Burmese pythons, native to Southeast Asia, are believed to be living in the Everglades, where they thrive in the warm, humid climate... The National Park Service has counted 1,825 Burmese pythons that have been caught in and around Everglades National Park since 2000...

The researchers found staggering declines in animal sightings: a drop of 99.3 percent among raccoons, 98.9 percent for opossums, 94.1 percent for white-tailed deer and 87.5 percent for bobcats... Although scientists cannot definitively say the pythons are killing off the mammals, the snakes are the prime suspect.

And from the Washington Post:

Officials can’t stop invasive pythons and anacondas from marauding in the Everglades, Reed said; they can only hope to contain them. “We’re trying to prevent spread to the Florida Keys and elsewhere north.”.. A female python can lay 100 eggs, though 54 is considered the norm...

Andrew Wyatt, president of the Reptile Keepers, which advocates on behalf of snake importers, dismissed the study. “They play fast and loose with facts and make big jumps to conclusions,” Wyatt said. The authors contradict prior studies showing that mercury in the water has played a role in the deaths of small mammals, he said...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service predicted that a new generations of Burmese pythons on the edge of their non-native range can adapt and “expand to colder climates.”

How Wall Street makes money from bad weather

Explained in Time's business section:

Financial contracts based on the weather have been around since at least the late 1990s. The contracts, many of which trade like stocks, are typically pegged to such things as rainfall and temperatures. But in the past few years, contracts specifically tied to snowfall have started to take off in popularity. The contacts essentially act like insurance, allowing, say, retailers or ski mountains to insure against too much snow or too little. Wall Street sells the contracts, matching buyers and sellers and pocketing a small commission. Typically, it’s a good business, but this year it could be a real moneymaker. In theory, there could be as many firms betting against snow as for it. But in reality the market is always lopsided. It turns out there are more firms that are hurt by large snowfalls than the opposite. And large ski mountains have yet to get into the market...

The result: unable to find sellers, brokers who specialize in the market say financial firms ended up taking other side of the trade in order to complete their clients transactions, essentially betting that snowfall would be light this year. “I’m short snow,” says Bill Windle, who heads up weather trading at reinsurance firm RenRe...

Just how much money the financial firms will rake in and who will profit is unclear. Last year, PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimated that the total weather derivatives market was $12 billion. Snow is only a small portion of that, perhaps a few hundred million. But it’s growing... 

Nothing wrong with that; perfectly legal, and it fills a market need.  But I'll bet when the demand is lopsided the cost of the contract is tilted much more heavily against the buyer.  More details at the Time article.

"Cry Me A River"

YouTube link. 

A "torch song" from the 1950s, first made famous by Julie London (1964 recording above). If you'd rather hear a 25-y.o. Barbra Streisand perform the song, go here.

Now you say you're lonely -
You cry the long night through.
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river
I cried a river over you

Now you say you're sorry
For bein' so untrue.
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river -
I cried a river over you

You drove me, nearly drove me out of my head
While you never shed a tear.
Remember, I remember all that you said -
Told me love was too plebeian,
Told me you were through with me and
Now you say you love me.
Well, just to prove you do
Come on and cry me a river, cry me a river -
I cried a river over you

I cried a river over you
I cried a river over you
I cried a river over you.

I'll bet this is the only song ever written to include the word "plebeian" in the lyrics.

Addenda: Susan Boyle's 1999 version here.  Canadian Diana Krall plays and sings the piece here.  And now for something completely different: Joe Cocker's version.  And by popular demand - Crystal Gayle.

(Updated and reposted from 2009 because I heard the song while watching V for Vendetta last night.)

2016 would bring "Super Bowl L"

From a Wall Street Journal article cleverly entitled "The NFL Has an 'L' of a Problem":

The NFL is four years away from its 50th Super Bowl, which means it is already trying to plan around a peculiar self-inflicted marketing nuisance: How can the world's most powerful sports league get around putting a big, fat "L" on hundreds of thousands of souvenir T-shirts?...

But come 2016, the Roman numeral for Super Bowl L happens to be the lone letter that most connotes losing....

Even more unlikely than the Super Bowl's ascent to the top of the annual TV ratings chart is the fact that the league is dealing with a problem that's been made infinitely worse by a show about a high-school glee club. In the 2003 book "Field Guide to Gestures," the "loser gesture" was referenced as forming the letter L on your forehead with your index finger and thumb. The book offered a five-step primer that ended: "Say 'loser' with derision, generally elongating the first syllable." The sign has perpetuated in movies and TV shows since at least the 1990s.

I predict they will change to conventional numbers.   Even if they do a workaround for "L", they will soon have to face "Super Bowl LI" and (even worse) "Super Bowl LIX."

Boojum tree

This photograph by Eliot Porter, entitled Cirio Near Las Tres Virgenes Volcano, Baja California (1966) is from the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I'm in a hurry today, so you'll have to read about the species on your own, at Wikipedia or The University of Arizona Arboretum.  (another pic here).

You can also go here, and find lots and lots of elsewheres to explore, some of which refer to these famous terminal verses from the eighth fit:

"It's a Snark!" was the sound that first came to their ears,
And seemed almost too good to be true.
Then followed a torrent of laughter and cheers:
Then the ominous words, "It's a Boo-"

Then, silence. Some fancied they heard in the air
A weary and wandering sigh
That sounded like "jum!" but the other declare
It was only a breeze that went by.

They hunted till darkness came on, but they found
Not a button, or feather, or mark,
By which they could tell that they stood on the ground
Where the Baker had met with the Snark.

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of this laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away-
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

And btw, despite the way it looks, the boojum in the photo is a tree - not a cactus.

Via A London Salmagundi.

Library skills and blogging success

John Farrier, one of the contributing bloggers at Neatorama, is in real life a librarian.  In an article for Library Journal, he discusses the interface between the two worlds:

Clay Shirky put it simply: “It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.” That’s why, in the past few years, the act of quickly finding and explaining new information on the Internet has emerged as the profession of digital content curation. It is a task for which librarians are well-suited and a potential source of employment...

Blogging has been around for more than a decade, and librarians have become active and prolific bloggers. But let’s distinguish between digital content curation and blogging. Bloggers might opine on the issues of the day or their personal lives. Content curators, however, are focused strictly on their audiences...

It’s what reference librarians do every day. We navigate the world of information to find the best content for our patrons in a timely manner. Have we discerned what the patron is looking for? What are the best sources for it available? Can we get to it quickly? How do we effectively present it to the patron? These are questions that reference librarians ask and answer during the reference interviewing process. They’re also what content curators do...

The need for a human element to guide users is what has made librarians critical for past generations. It will only continue as we make the shift into digital content curation...

You can read the rest of his column at Library Journal.

"Bubble football"

YouTube link.

Via Neatorama.

TWDBIKYWI ?

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. ceehiro."

Posted more than eight years ago (!) at Language Hat, and discussed at length there.

Via The Dish.

Check out the "spider umbrella"

YouTubel link. 

From the British Pathe, a selection of umbrellas from the 1950s.  I think the second one is actually rather interesting.