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News Briefs 25-06-2009

Who’s that knocking on my door? Oh, it’s Andy 🙁

  • Happy new Aymara year!
  • The Kamakhya temple in India: think of it as a 7-11 for miracles —Uh, make that a Kwik-E-Mart 🙂
  • Urban sprawl hastened Angkor’s collapse. Are you reading this, Marcelo??
  • Hurry Obiwan Google: you’re Mexico’s archeology only hope —these ARE the sites you’re looking for!
  • “Oh she’s a gold digger way over time/That digs on me”: Housewife discovers £250,000 gold treasure. UH!
  • 35,000 years ago it was the flute the musical instrument favored by our Stone-age ancesters —despite rumors to the contrary.
  • Scientist build a model of primitive primate’s brain. A geek’s love for Legos never really dies off…
  • Almas & the Yeti are a myth, because there’s not the slightest shred of evidence that supports their existence in the fossil record, right? *Eeeeeh!* WRONG.
  • Does Bigfoot like garlic? Our friend Loren Coleman has received an e-mail that might become the last nail in the coffin of the controversial Carter farm case.
  • Burmese pythons from Florida are slowly slithering up North. Maybe they want to go visit their kin in Washington?
  • After 40 years since Dick Nixon started the war on drugs, and a trillion dollars spent —not to mention the countless lives— is the US waiting for their Joan of Arch before calling it quits?
  • Turns out the Dead Sea can be deadly @_@
  • Grey hair may be protecting us from cancer. Wow… Steve Martin must be a ticking melanoma bomb.
  • After a discussion in quantum physics between two hobos got too thermodynamical, it was quickly followed by an experimental smashing… of heads.
  • Best proof that the French love comics more than the Americans do: they just built a museum focused entirely on the ‘sequential art’.
  • [Disclaimer #1] The next link involves ancient Japanese art, and large testicles. [Disclaimer #2] Rick was the one who recommended it —He made me do it, I swear! ;_;
  • Secure a loan with your soul as collateral —do you have to sign with your own blood?
  • Man! you know times are tough when even famous vampires can’t avoid to get evicted from their homes :-/
  • As a youth, Guillermo del Toro was haunted by lucid dreams. Now he wants to share his nightmares with all of us —how thoughtful 😉
  • Ray Bradubury loves libraries and loathes teh Internetz. That’s not very futuristic of you, Mr. B.
  • I’m telling you guys, little kids are made of rubber: they fall off & bounce back as good as rains —well, at least Turkish kids do.
  • I have a 5-year-old Nokia cell phone. I feel I owe Neda an apology 🙁

Thanks Rick, Kat & Neda.

Quote of the Day:

“Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

Ray Bradbury

  1. Libraries
    I have to agree with the esteemed Mr. Bradbury.

    As a child, our local public library in a century-old building was a magical place to be explored endlessly. When I close my eyes, I still remember the comforting smell of books, the sunlight streaming through the windows and illuminating the dancing dust motes, the motherly librarians with reading glasses hanging from colored ribbons around their necks, and the cool stillness on a warm summer day when summer break suddenly turned boring.

    I explored the world while roaming the stacks, and was introduced to all manner of theories and information that school never presented. I discovered Velikovsky at ten when I randomly picked up Worlds in Collision while wandering past a bank of shelves. From the title, I thought it would be a cool story about spacemen. Instead it was a mind opening alternate explanation of how the world came to be.

    I dearly love the Internet and am a compulsive Web surfer. But, there’s something less satisfying about wandering around on the Net instead of wandering through shelves and shelves of books. Maybe it’s the sense of not just mentally exploring, but physically exploring as well.

    I will always be a lover of books (no Kindles in my universe, thank you), no doubt because of those happy childhood hours spent at the library.

    1. Great post!
      Lani, that was a beautiful homage of the sanctuaries that are libraries.

      I really envy you guys. We really don’t have those kinds of libraries here in Mexico. Well, we now have a big-ass library called Vasconcelos that cost a fortune; but who has the time to go drive there to pick a book? Maybe when I retire.

      —–
      It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
      It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

      Red Pill Junkie

    2. other side
      There is a common view today that something is written on the internets (sic), then it is based on some fact.

      And there is the view that, if you can’t find it on the internet, then it never existed.

      I have written some things in the past, that never made it to the internet. Mostly some short papers for internal usage. Nothing earth shaling, but better than a lot of the nonsense that is “published” on blogs now.

      I don’t have them any more, they are lost. Same with many other small papers.

      It makes me think that historians in the far future will conclude that we could not write. The ancients wrote propaganda in stone (and some accounting stuff), and then there is a big gap, until the internet.

      All the paper stuff will be lost.

      And they will call the paper age another “dark age”, when people stopped thinking, and then all of a suddenly started again, with the DVDs and Flash memories and those things.

      —-
      It is not how fast you go
      it is when you get there.

      1. Other Side
        I have a good friend who’s a librarian (imagine that!) who is constantly reminding me that the amount of material that remains undigitized, therefore inaccessible online, is enormous. And, the only way to do serious research is to consult print sources as well as ones online. So I totally agree with your observations.

        I also agree that as fun as the Internet can be, there is an enormous amount of bogus and inaccurate information in circulation – this is the really big downside of the introduction of personal blogging (this site excepted, of course).

        I can’t even begin to imagine the amount of “nothing” that Twitter generates. By the way, I’ll never follow anyone on Twitter. I’m not all that much interested in my own random thoughts so what makes you think I could possibly care about yours?

        1. twitter following
          I don’t understand why people advertise their current location every minute. Are they that lonely?

          It seems like 1984 on a volunteer basis, only that they pay for it.

          Want to have a meeting at some time? I will be there.
          Want to know where I am every minute of the day and night ?
          I’m not a child, and I’m not the governor. It’s not even interesting where I am and what I do most of the day, so why advertise it?

          As you say, it’s just noise.

          —-
          It is not how fast you go
          it is when you get there.

  2. Quantum hobos
    Phil Plait made a good joke on the fight between two hobos discussing quantum physics. Absolute best was one of his commenters though: “Insane in the M-brane”.

    Kind regards,
    Greg
    ——————————————-
    You monkeys only think you’re running things
    @DailyGrail

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