German scientists have concluded that cows and deer, while grazing or at rest, tend to point north.
The Breathing Earth web page provides a real-time visualisation of births, deaths and carbon emissions world-wide.
The princess’s lament:
Female, single, twentyish –
I can provide a photograph.
Looking for love. For friends at least.
For life? Don’t make me freakin’ laugh.
Jim Frenkel describes the process of editing a Jeffrey Carver novel; and, in the fourth comment on that blog post, Carver responds.
In London, from about 2010, you will be able to pay via your Nokia mobile phone for an Underground ticket and takeaway lunch. In a recent trial of the proposed system:
“More than one in five who used pay-as-you-go Oyster on their mobile phone reported that they made more journeys on public transport during the trial. More than two-thirds of users said they found it more convenient to use their phone than a standard Oyster card… 87% of the testers said the ability to use Oyster on a mobile phone was likely to influence their choice of phone.”
From the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, a high-res digital swatchbook of around 300 block-printed silks and cottons from the 1840s, 1890s and 1920s. Free to download, and copyright-free (in Australia) so you can use them for any purpose.
A meditation on our compulsive urge to document everyday life:
“Without really realizing it, we’ve engaged in a great project of memory-making for our civilization. It’s nice to think that, if and when things come to a grinding halt, our records will live on after us. But as we abandon the finite treasures of printed photos for bucket loads of endless digital snaps, our pictures become almost as fleeting as our intangible memories.”
Mike Bayliss lists the footnotes, endnotes and parentheticals that had a regrettable effect.
In the video below, Morgan Freeman sings about having a bath in his casket. It’s a clip from the US kids’ TV show, The Electric Company. (found via the Vampire Librarian)
Re paying via Mobile Phone. Telstra and NAB are doing a trial of this down at the Docklands now. Works for transactions up to about AUS $30 I think. A similar trial was done using smartcards a few years ago, but nothing seems to have come of that.