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Friday, September 18, 2015

Friday links

Dr. Samuel Johnson was born on this date in 1709: here's a selection of his insults and Scotland-bashing quotes.



Hormone Guide: How to Speak to Women.

Harvard linguist points out the 58 most commonly misused words and phrases.

Close Calls: Three Times When the Human Race Barely Escaped Extinction.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include a selection of really bad book covers (and books), the world's longest (700 miles) yard sale, 10 and 8 year old Seattle girls who launched their own spacecraft, and footage of an 800K gallon Jim Beam spill 1. hit by lightning then 2. sucked into the air by a tornado.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Monday links



Seattle sisters, 10 and 8, launch own craft to edge of space - with cat pic and LEGO R2-D2 on board.

On this date in 2014:  the battle of Baltimore, inspiration for the Star-Spangled Banner.

Firenado! Footage of the moment (in 2003) 800K gallons of Jim Beam accidentally released into a Kentucky lake bursts into flames after being hit by lightning... before a tornado sucks the flaming liquid 100 feet up into the air. 

Scottish distillery reveals results of 'space whisky' experiment.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include a collection of dubious and obsolete medical remedies, two boys who tunneled out of Kindergarten to go buy a car, money-begging letters home from medieval college students, and a patent for a training system for walking through walls.

Really bad book covers (and books)

This started out being a post on bad pulp novel covers. I kept running into books that were awful even if the covers weren't that interesting, though, so the end result is something of a mixed bag.

When I was growing up my father had boxes of lurid hard-boiled detective novels in the basement, and I read a lot of them. Many of them were cheaper than 25 cents (as some of these apparently cost) and were known as "dime novels", and a lot of them had two novels in one book - if you flipped the book over and upside-down the second novel would now be the front of the book. Anyone else remember these?




“This novel probes a mounting social problem. Can the young divorcée return to a normal existence – or will she always be any man’s target?”:



This is in a category by itself: an 8th grade Serbian biology textbook from 1998 which for some reason features Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter from Raising Arizona.


From 1983 - FORTH was an early programming language:





Buy it here

There are approximately a billion of these online - find more here, here, here and here.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Check out these dashcam videos of a meteor exploding in the sky in Thailand


Spectacular footage from several dashcams captured the sky lighting up over the country’s capital of Bangkok.

The object is seen burning brightly as it speeds through the clear blue sky, and scientists now say it was likely an asteroid burning up as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere.



Friday, September 11, 2015

Friday links


33 Unusual Old Remedies That Are Mostly Obsolete, plus related dubious medical advice.


ICYMI, last Friday's links are here, and include gravy wrestling championships, Batman's film evolution, Star Trek politics (and the math of tribble reproduction), and a gallery of photos from the Diaper Derbies (mid-20th century baby races).