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Monday Links from the Bench vol. CDXLI

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    Monday Links from the Bench vol. CDXLI

    Some light reading to pass the time while you wait for Kim Jong-un to administer a slow-acting poison to Trump, which is obviously the only reason he agreed to a one-to-one meeting in the first place
    • Barbearians at the Gate - What to do when you don’t believe in government but bears come to town? ”In the summer of 2017, the survivalists began to worry—really worry—about the bears… I visited Grafton several times over two years to determine if, to poach Timmins’s words, ‘anything out of the ordinary’ was happening there. When it came to bears, where did truth end and myth begin? What I found was more revealing than I expected: a parable of liberty, disinformation, and fear. A parable, really, of America."

    • Why Earth’s Cracked Crust May Be Essential for Life - "Life needs more than water alone. Recent discoveries suggest that plate tectonics has played a critical role in nourishing life on Earth. The findings carry major consequences for the search for life elsewhere in the universe."

    • Book Cover Concentration - "Below is a grid containing 2 editions of 6 different books. Your challenge : match the pairs of books from the cover art alone." Fun little game for bibliophiles. It gets a little easier if you’ve spent a lot of time over the years browsing secondhand paperbacks

    • Bacteria Survive in NASA’s Clean Rooms by Eating Cleaning Products - "Few places are as hard for microbes to infiltrate as the clean rooms in which NASA assembles its spacecraft." Nevertheless, they persist

    • The Color Photographers of World War I - Colour photography wasn’t common a hundred years ago, but it did exist: ”A few vanguard photographers were, in fact, working in color during the Great War. And these rare color photographs show the war in a different — and in many ways, more relatable — light.”


    • Somewhere Under My Left Ribs: A Nurse’s Story - Christie Watson on her experiences as a nurse in operating theatres: "I try not to think of what can happen in theater, of all that can — and has — gone wrong. I adopt my relaxed-on-the-outside, panicking-on-the-inside pose… I am waiting, with my teeth pressed together, for the awful moment between a child being anaesthetized and a parent having to kiss them goodbye and leave them in the hands of strangers.”

    • Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition - "Fifty years ago, RAND corporation developed the Graphical Input Language software system (GRAIL)… When the user wanted a box on the screen, they drew the box. When the user wanted text on the screen, they handprinted the text. When you watch a demo of the system today, it still feels elegant and magical. To steal a line from Tony Hoare, GRAIL is in many ways an improvement on nearly all of its successors.” Jack Schaedler’s exploration of how the system works includes a number of interactive elements allowing you to draw stuff, then play around with the parameters used to decipher your scrawl

    • Raising the Dead - "At the bottom of the biggest underwater cave in the world, diving deeper than almost anyone had ever gone, Dave Shaw found the body of a young man who had disappeared ten years earlier." Shaw was determined to return and recover Deon Dreyer’s body, whatever the risk.

    • Hunks Punch Lunks: The Fascist Sex Cult Of The Professionals - Taylor Parkes revisits the 1970s TV show: ”The Professionals is not art, but neither is it purely kitsch. Rather, it's that most hypnotic and strangely rewarding of phenomena, the good-bad TV show. Aesthetically atrocious, morally questionable, ludicrous from top to bottom... and yet so hugely entertaining on its own terms, you can't look away.”

    • Valley of the Ragdolls - Ragdoll cats are not like other cats: ”What makes the Ragdoll cat different from other cats is a matter of temperament. Stripped of a desire for hunting, the Ragdoll has a languid, friendly personality. It is large and less agile than other cats, and has a regal feline elegance… This is a cat that greets you at the door and follows you from room to room, providing something like unconditional love.”



    Happy invoicing!

    #2
    •Raising the Dead - "At the bottom of the biggest underwater cave in the world, diving deeper than almost anyone had ever gone, Dave Shaw found the body of a young man who had disappeared ten years earlier." Shaw was determined to return and recover Deon Dreyer’s body, whatever the risk.
    Blimey!! That was an intense read. I was going to say 'great stuff' but maybe that's not the best term. Found myself out of breath at the end. Good find.
    'CUK forum personality of 2011 - Winner - Yes really!!!!

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by northernladuk View Post
      Blimey!! That was an intense read. I was going to say 'great stuff' but maybe that's not the best term. Found myself out of breath at the end. Good find.
      You think that is tough! You should try the JSA form....

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by northernladuk View Post
        Blimey!! That was an intense read. I was going to say 'great stuff' but maybe that's not the best term. Found myself out of breath at the end. Good find.
        I was so hoping he would figure it out and turn up alive.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by ladymuck View Post
          I was so hoping he would figure it out and turn up alive.
          Yeah same!!
          'CUK forum personality of 2011 - Winner - Yes really!!!!

          Comment


            #6
            The cat thing is odd.

            The late & much lamented StrangeloveMog never bit nor scratched me in 18 years.

            Though next door's cat hates me, so I just leave the nasty little fecker alone.
            When the fun stops, STOP.

            Comment


              #7
              Loved the WWI photos in colour, but come on, they are fake.

              The guy on the left is taking a selfie.



              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by DimPrawn View Post
                Loved the WWI photos in colour, but come on, they are fake.

                The guy on the left is taking a selfie.

                Your selfie taking person looks very like our own ATW. I think SKA has perfected time travel.

                England's greatest sailor since Nelson lost the armada.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by northernladuk View Post
                  Blimey!! That was an intense read. I was going to say 'great stuff' but maybe that's not the best term. Found myself out of breath at the end. Good find.
                  75 meters is the deepest i ever did, and That was intense enough, thanks.
                  those guys are nutters. - still don't deserve that though.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by BR14 View Post
                    75 meters is the deepest i ever did, and That was intense enough, thanks.
                    those guys are nutters. - still don't deserve that though.
                    Had a bit of a look around to see if there was any other deep dive stories and the guy in the article is pretty well documented on other pages, the Wikipedia page on deep diving for example. Grim reading though as most of them mentioned also died sometime later on dives. Even the Guinness book of world records have stopped logging the dives as records due to the high mortality rate. These guys work right on the very edge of what is possible. I am sure they make many successful dives so not quite as bad as the page makes but it inevitably seems to end up badly at some point.

                    In deference to the high death rate, the Guinness World Records ceased to publish records on deep air dives in mid-2005
                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_diving

                    I might have missed it in the article but there is a book on the Shaw dive. I imagine it's longer and more detailed than the article so could be worth a read but I'm wondering if the potted story in the article might have spoiled the read now we know the outcome etc.

                    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...-into-darkness

                    And another story of diving and it's ultimate end I came across while browsing the deep dive pages that could be worth a read..

                    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24036.The_Last_Dive

                    Not sure if they will be a good a read as that article in the links though. That was really gritty and too the point.
                    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24036.The_Last_Dive
                    Last edited by northernladuk; 12 June 2018, 07:30.
                    'CUK forum personality of 2011 - Winner - Yes really!!!!

                    Comment

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