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Monday Links from the Bench vol. CCCX

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    Monday Links from the Bench vol. CCCX

    Had a stinking cold since Thursday evening; you may want to wear gloves when reading these, in case I've smeared my filthy germs all over the Internet
    • A little chicken flew up unto her - As the north-west begins to clean up after the latest floods, here are some tales of flooding in Monmouthshire in 1607: ”In the month of Januarie last past upon a Tuesday, the Sea being very tempestuously moved by the windes, over-flowed his ordinary Bankes, and did drowne 26 Parishes adjoyning on the Coast side, in the foresaide Countrey of Monmouth-shire, the particulars whereof doe follow: all spoyled by the greevous and lamentable furie of the waters.”

    • The Heart is Just a Pump - Joaquin Palomino on the quest to build an artificial heart: ”There are few people alive in the world who have no natural heartbeat. Fewer than 2,000 patients have received an entirely artificial heart in the device's three decades of existence, and most patients haven’t used the machines for long… But that may change. A handful of companies, including SynCardia, are trying to get regulatory approval to market the first permanent mechanical heart for wide-scale use, which would replace a patient’s biological organ over the remaining course of their lifetime. "Think along the lines of knee replacements and hearing aids," says Piet Jansen, chief medical officer for the French company Carmat, which is running an early clinical trial for a long-term mechanical heart.”

    • Aurorasaurus - ”Reporting auroras from the ground up.“ A project to crowdsource reports of aurora sightings, so you can check a map to see if the aurora will be visible in your area.

    • The Self-Preservation Society: The Making Of The Italian Job - "Michael Caine, Benny Hill and stuntman Remy Julienne reveal the untold story behind a film that's as British as sipping tea while listening to The Kinks."

    • Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online - "Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) firmly positioned himself as the finest Soviet director of the post-War period. But his influence extended well beyond the Soviet Union. The Cahiers du cinéma consistently ranked his films on their top ten annual lists. Ingmar Bergman went so far as to say, “Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.” And Akira Kurosawa acknowledged his influence too, adding, “I love all of Tarkovsky’s films. I love his personality and all his works. Every cut from his films is a marvelous image in itself.”" And now all his films are available on YouTube, courtesy of Mosfilm. (N.B. They appear to be in WebM format, which is only supported by Firefox and Chrome, and the YouTube Flash player used here on CUK.) Here’s Solaris:


    • Found! Apollo 16 S-IVB Impact Crater - Many of the Apollo missions sent their final stages to crash into the moon, so the impacts could be measured by seismometers. Now the last impact site has been found by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera: ”In the case of Apollo 16, radio contact with the booster was lost before the impact and thus the impact location was only poorly known. Now, with high-resolution LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) images the impact site of the Apollo 16 S-IVB stage was precisely located (1.921°N, 335.377°E, -1104 m elevation). In fact, the location differs by about 30 km from the Apollo-era tracking estimate.”

    • Manufacturing Terror - "An FBI Informant Seduced Eric McDavid Into a Bomb Plot. Then the Government Lied About It." A salutary reminder that, should you become involved with a group that seeks to oppose or change government policy, the person advocating violent measures is always the police spy

    • The Ultimate Feel-Furious Movie About Wall Street - They’ve made a movie based on Michael Lewis’s book about the 2007-8 theft of all our money by large financial institutions, The Big Short. ”In September 2008, Danny Moses, Porter Collins, and Vincent Daniel, staffers at Steve Eisman’s fund at FrontPoint Partners, sat on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and regarded the civilized world for what they felt sure would be the last time. Overnight, towering investment banks Bear Stearns and, later, Lehman Brothers had been declared virtually insolvent, having gambled away many, many times their own worth, and the entire global financial system seemed poised to follow suit… Later, the guys would try to backtrack on the grimness of their recollection, because they know the apocalypticism sounds kind of nutty. They know it would be hard for most people to fathom. Even at the time, the sheer scope of the ****-up (or the crime, though it has never been officially defined as such) was something only a small percentage of the population was able to see, like those 3-D paintings at the mall. Not because they were unable to see it and understand, though that remains a problem, but because they didn’t want to look.”

    • Snitch ruins Florida retirement community's penny-ante mahjong game - Speaking of police informants and high finance, somebody ratted out a group of pensioners playing mahjong and similar games for penny stakes at a Florida retirement community: ”King said neither she nor any of her friends have ever been arrested for anything, but they suddenly felt like outlaws. They tried to take their game underground, away from prying eyes. King said they held one game at Diamond's house in Longwood, but she got lost on the drive back home.”

    • matchlabel.com - Back in Russia again, here’s an extensive collection of matchbox labels from states of the former USSR, because phillumeny isn’t sufficiently recondite a hobby as it is


      ”Single label hunting matches. Releases in 1964 and 1967.”


    Happy invoicing!

    #2
    The Italian job link is aceicles....

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