New ClientCo were supposed to sort out an Internet connection for my MacBook Air today, but something got in the way; so I've had to wait until I got home to post these. Sorry 
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- Abandoned Suitcases Reveal Private Lives of Insane Asylum Patients - "From the 1910s through the 1960s, many patients at the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane left suitcases behind when they passed away, with nobody to claim them. Upon the center’s closure in 1995, employees found hundreds of these time capsules stored in a locked attic." An interview with photographer Jon Crispin, who has been documenting the collection.
- Sebastian Pritchard-Jones Strikes Back! - Claire TS carried out an experiment in which she went on a first date every week for a year; during that time, she encountered a bastard calling himself Sebastian Pritchard-Jones, who was all over her online but never managed to appear in real life. Since then, yet more people who have been messed about by whoever-he-is have got in touch with her: "In total there are now five of us girls that have duped by this duplicitous, twisted, manipulative beast who has been posing as other people online to try and groom women, and aside from the one guy I know of who had his identity stolen to groom both myself and the first two girls to get back in touch, it seems that before us, he'd been masquerading as at least two other poor, unsuspecting guys."
- Cause of death: Defensive medicine - Birdstrike, MD on the pernicious effects of an overly litigious culture on the practice of medicine: "In each case presented, the doctor had a very rational fear of being sued for either making a mistake or even for doing everything right... Over and over, and over again in hospital wards, emergency departments, operating rooms, and doctors’ offices in America doctors are being told they must rule out every possibility or be sued. The ones who suffer are the patients, often tragically so."
- Professor Fredericks' Performing Cats - "Professor Fredericks' hobby is animals. The horse, the pony, the goat, and the pig have all from time to time come under his influence. Just now he has a preference for the domestic cat... Of all animals, horses and dogs are the easiest to train. Cats are willing enough to learn, but they are unreliable." Delightful article gleaned from the Illustrated London News of 22 December 1888 by Lee Jackson, whose blog and books about Victorian London are always entertaining.
- Ways To Play It Safe - or how Safeway, who shall remain nameless, have banned customers from photographing cakes in their bakery sections, for fear they will be displayed in the Cake Wrecks blog: "Of course, even if you do successfully bar people from photographing your wrecks in-store, there are still all those who'll just snap pics at home and then gleefully send them to me, with captions like, 'Yummy piles of candy vomit!!'"
- How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The inverse power of praise - "According to a survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart... But a growing body of research—and a new study from the trenches of the New York public-school system—strongly suggests it might be the other way around. Giving kids the label of “smart” does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it." Interesting findings in the psychology of encouragement.
- The End of the Journey: One Indie Studio's Tale - "My name's Tristan Clark. In the middle of 2006, having just finished a degree in English Literature (which really is more relevant for game design than you might think), I founded a company called Launching Pad Games. I had no idea what I was doing, and even less idea of what I didn't know -- but I was determined to cling on to blind faith, expel all doubts, and give it a go regardless... As of the middle of 2012, we've had to put Launching Pad Games on ice, so it's not a completely happy story -- but I hope that within the next few thousand words, you'll be able to learn something from both our mistakes and successes."
- Good Ship Zong: The Most Macabre Insurance Claim in History - "It had been a grim sea voyage across the Atlantic. Dysentery, diarrhoea and small pox had already claimed the lives of seven crew members aboard the Zong. The slaves were suffering a far higher mortality rate... On 29 November, 1781, Captain Collingwood was struck by deeply macabre idea. He called together the ship’s officers and suggested that they throw some of the slaves overboard. His reasoning was callous in the extreme: if the slaves died of illness, their insurance value was lost. But if they were deliberately cast overboard in order to preserve the ship’s scant supply of water (and thereby save the lives of others), then an insurance claim would be valid under a legal principle known as the ‘general average’."
- Adventures N My Bed - Esquire's content management system seems to have messed up this article ever so slightly, so that title should probably say "In" rather than "N", but never mind: Bucky McMahon's experiments in lucid dreaming are still interesting. "It is not night. It can't be Tallahassee. What I remember is that the one who floats, suspended in an aspic of pure mentation, is Dream Me, a functional model, if you like, a mock-up of the self, while the so-called Real Me lies on his back, mostly paralyzed by the motor inhibition of REM sleep, in a single bed on the Big Island of Hawaii about four thousand miles from Tallahassee and a decade removed from his last school bell. I'm in two places at once. And I think I like it!"
- Sharp Suits: A Creative Catharsis - "Ireland's creative community have gotten together to release a lot of pent up anger and sadness through the medium of the A3 poster, all in aid of Temple Street Children's Hospital. Ad creatives, designers, animators, directors, illustrators and more have taken time out to dress up their favourite worst feedback from clients, transforming quotes that would normally give you a twitch, into a diverse collection of posters." Quotes such as:
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