Last links of winter! 
Happy invoicing!
- The Mystery of the Ghostly Stain in the Attic of the Athens Lunatic Asylum - "In 1978, Margaret Shilling (sometimes spelled Schilling) was a patient at the mental hospital in my Ohio town. Opened in 1874 as The Athens Lunatic Asylum, the hospital boasted expansive landscaped grounds, lakes and woods… And in December 1978, the harshest winter in years, Margaret Shilling disappeared.”
- The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time - For those who anticipate the Singularity, an artificial intelligence that transcends human capabilities, even thinking about Roko’s Basilisk is so dangerous that it ”…may commit you to an eternity of suffering and torment.” Sorry, should have put that warning before the link really. Oh well
- Part One: Diagnosis, Part Two: Surgery, Part Three: Aftermath - ”’When you hear hoof beats, think of horses – not zebras’… It’s just a headache, you sit at your desk too much. Think horses. It’s only a little dizziness, vertigo? You don’t get enough sleep. Think horses. Your right ear is ringing, an infection? Think horses. Think horses. Think horses.” For science writer Erin Podolak it turned out to be a zebra: a type of nervous system tumour that affects one in 50,000 people. Bonus: Lost and Found in the Healthcare System, in which her lost boots prove to be a useful metaphor.
- Neglected Books - A wonderful blog unearthing forgotten books and writers. I found this one via a New Yorker profile of the blogger, Brad Bigelow, and have already bought the only copy available on AbeBooks of one of the novels mentioned, as well as finding mentions of a couple of my own "Am I the only person who still reads them?" authors. ”It can just be a series of almost random things that can make the difference between something being remembered or something being forgotten.”
- Mathematicians Discover Prime Conspiracy - "A previously unnoticed property of prime numbers seems to violate a longstanding assumption about how they behave." An interesting discovery by Kannan Soundararajan and Robert Lemke Oliver; their paper, published on arXiv last Friday, is Unexpected biases in the distribution of consecutive primes.
- I’ve Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12 - Roni Jacobson finds that the law (in the USA) offers little help against the individual who has been stalking her since 2001: ”He has used a variety of methods to do so — phone, text, email, Facebook and other social media — updating his tactics with every advance in technology. In the last three years he has also sent dozens, possibly hundreds, of defamatory letters, emails, Facebook and Twitter messages about me to my family, friends, employers, friends’ employers, professional organizations and political offices, including the State Attorney General of New York. (I know because he sent me copies of the letters.)”
- My Year in San Francisco’s $2 Million Secret Society Startup - Lydia Laurenson on the way a rich kid in San Francisco chose to spend his money: ”He handed me a plastic card—much like a credit card, but pure white with a line of black zeroes. It came in a black slipcase embossed with the words ‘ABSOLUTE DISCRETION’ and a distinctive golden hexagonal symbol. On the back of the card, in the spot that would normally hold a credit card signature, there was a sentence in elaborate black script: ‘You have received an invitation to visit the San Francisco House of the Latitude.’”
- Brominated vegetable oil - "Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, Mt. Dew, Fanta… Some doctors and dentists say we’re drinking too much soda-pop, resulting in too many unwanted pounds and cavities. For one American man in the late 1990s, too much cola resulted in a visit to the emergency department of his local hospital. He complained of headache, fatigue, confusion, and an inability to control bodily movements (called ‘ataxia'). It wasn’t the sugar or caffeine that landed him in emergency care, it was the bromide." Yum
- The ingenious tricks that will make your wine taste like liquid gold - Eschew those brominated fizzy drinks, and stick to cheap wine instead! Mike Peterson’s tips will ensure it tastes just as good as the expensive stuff, probably: ”While most of us would like to think we can tell the difference, in reality, the average wine consumer struggles to differentiate wine based on price point… we know that our perceptions literally change the way we taste wine, so setting the mood is crucial to priming ourselves for maximum enjoyment.”
- Sound Mirrors - "Acoustic early warning systems, spectacular remnants of a dead-end technology on the British coast.” Andrew Grantham’s site is dedicated to the remaining artefacts of these early air raid detection systems, such as this World War One example near Spurn Head:
Photo by Roland Schmellenkamp
Happy invoicing!
. It wasn’t the sugar or caffeine that landed him in emergency care, it was the bromide.
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