1. Cleaning the Cobra Pit
2. The 50 books every child should read
3. Music Linked to Depression in Teens, Study Finds
Teenagers who spend more time listening to music are more likely to suffer from depression than kids who opt to spend their time reading, according to a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study.
The study, which involved 106 participants, adds to the growing evidence that media exposure is linked to emotional health. Over a two-month period, researchers called the participants as many dozens of times and asked them to report what types of media they were using including television, music, video games, Internet, magazines and books.
4. Forbe’s List of the 15 Richest Fictional Characters
5. Was There a Natural Nuclear Blast on Mars?
Ever wonder why the red planet is red?
About 180 million years ago, a planet-shattering yet naturally occurring nuclear reaction may have wiped out everything on Mars, sending a shockwave that turned the planet into dry sand.
Even more incredible: A natural nuclear reaction could have occurred on our own planet — and could happen again, said Dr. John Brandenburg, a senior propulsion scientist at Orbital Technologies Corp.
6. The new U.S. Census data: 6 key takeaways
7. Weird News of the Week: Georgian woman cuts off web access to whole of Armenia
An elderly Georgian woman was scavenging for copper to sell as scrap when she accidentally sliced through an underground cable and cut off internet services to all of neighbouring Armenia, it emerged on Wednesday.
The woman, 75, had been digging for the metal not far from the capital Tbilisi when her spade damaged the fibre-optic cable on 28 March.
As Georgia provides 90% of Armenia’s internet, the woman’s unwitting sabotage had catastrophic consequences. Web users in the nation of 3.2 million people were left twiddling their thumbs for up to five hours as the country’s main internet providers – ArmenTel, FiberNet Communication and GNC-Alfa – were prevented from supplying their normal service.
8. 15 Things You Didn’t Know Were German
9. The Difference Between Me and You
I’m sensitive, you’re touchy. I’m firm, you are pigheaded. Frugality in me is cheapness in you. I am open-minded, you are empty-headed. I am careful, you are obsessive. I am courageous while you are as reckless as a Kennedy. I am polite while you are obsequious. My speech is soothing, yours is unctuous. I am earthy and brimming with vitality while you are crude and bestial. I’m alive to necessary distinctions; you are a bloody hairsplitter. I’m conservative, you’re reactionary. I know the human heart, but you are a misanthrope. I love and honor my wife while you are uxorious. I am focused; you are monomaniacal.
10. 8 once-amazing sci-fi devices now inferior to real-life gadgets
11. Physics proves that no one really has blue eyes
Although some people have blue eyes, and many babies are born with particularly deep blue irises, no one actually has blue pigment in their irises. They’re just a trick of the light.
12. Image of the Week: Golden Ray Migration
14. World Wars Meet Google Maps
Conflict History is an amazing visualization of the history of war and conflict across the globe. The site uses Google Maps and Wikipedia to create a virtual world war timeline.
15. Infographic of the Week: The History of Printing
16. 10,000 Shipping Containers Lost At Sea Each Year…Here’s a Look At One
Right now, as you read this, there are five or six million shipping containers on enormous cargo ships sailing across the world’s oceans. And about every hour, on average, one is falling overboard never to be seen again. It’s estimated that 10,000 of these large containers are lost at sea each year, and our understanding of what happens to them afterwards is scant at best. But that’s changing.
17. Top 10 Civilizations That Mysteriously Disappeared
18. Google Paid $100M to Keep One Employee
Google may have paid as much as $150 million in stock grants to retain key product employees Sundar Pichai and Neal Mohan, say multiple sources. Both were offered the chief product role at Twitter earlier this year (cofounder Jack Dorsey eventually filled the position), but Google offered Pichai $50 million and Mohan $100 million, respectively, to stay, say multiple sources. In what could be called an IQ test, both accepted Google’s offer.
19. 71 Things You Didn’t Know About Tennessee Williams
20. Barcode Scanner for Zebras
StripeSpotter is an automatic individual animal identification system for animals with prominent stripes or patches. It is intended to be used to identify animals in the wild, and to build biometric databases using photographs taken in the field. We are currently using it to build a zebra-print database for Plains and Grevys zebra in Kenya.
(Via: Geekosystem)
21. Which Science Kills More People?
22. HistoricalLOL of the Week
23. Sibling rivalry ‘good for children’
It’s the news that parents, tired of beseeching unruly children to play nicely together, have been longing to hear: sibling rivalry can boost mental and emotional development, increase maturity and enhance social skills.
Parents need have no concern even if the arguments get worse as the children get older – as long as they also increase their verbal sophistication and, once all vitriol is spent and tears spilt, learn to resolve their differences without one child submitting to the other.
24. The 10 Best Time Machines in Movies
Research conducted for the eating disorder charity The Succeed Foundation, in partnership with the University of the West of England (UWE), has found that 30 percent of women would trade at least one year of their life to achieve their ideal body weight and shape.
26. Top 10 Worst Aircraft of World War 2
27. Better Book Titles of the Week – Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre
28. How-To of the Week: Chop Onions Without Tears
For a small group of people—perhaps just 1% to 3% of the population—sleep is a waste of time.
Natural “short sleepers,” as they’re officially known, are night owls and early birds simultaneously. They typically turn in well after midnight, then get up just a few hours later and barrel through the day without needing to take naps or load up on caffeine.
They are also energetic, outgoing, optimistic and ambitious, according to the few researchers who have studied them. The pattern sometimes starts in childhood and often runs in families.
While it’s unclear if all short sleepers are high achievers, they do have more time in the day to do things, and keep finding more interesting things to do than sleep, often doing several things at once.
A new study louses up a popular theory of animal evolution and opens up the possibility that dinosaurs were early — perhaps even the first — animal hosts of lice.
32. Willy Wonka, molecular gastronomist
33. Touch Wood
A wooden ball plays Bach’s Cantata 147 in a forest just by rolling down a track designed by Kenjiro Matsuo. (Via: Neatorama)
April 8th, 2011 | 6:58 pm
Wow, the videos are pretty impressive haha The Cobra´s one is the best! How come he can do that!? Thanks for this info!
April 8th, 2011 | 7:57 pm
The book lists were great. I felt a great longing to be a kid again in order to have the immense joy discovering them all for the first time.
April 9th, 2011 | 3:18 am
[...] want something interesting to read, then I suggest you hop over and check out Joe Carter’s Thirty Three Things. If you have stumbled onto this blog please do take a few moments to read the following piece:- [...]
April 10th, 2011 | 3:05 pm
When they say that listening to music leads to depression, what do they mean by “music”? Does it make a difference whether you listen to the Moonlight Sonata or to the Rhapsody in Blue? Does playing music also cause depression?
My reaction is the same as Daniel Dennett’s: if someone tries to prove to me that music is bad for me, I incline towards suspicion.
April 10th, 2011 | 11:56 pm
Re: #3 – as someone with way more experience with depression than I’d like to have had, and with TONS of sympathy for fellow sufferers, I think we’re confusing cause with effect here. Instead of finding worthwhile activities for teenagers like every other culture in history has done, we give them a bunch of transparent busywork that’s not fooling anybody – any thinking adult who takes a look at typical HS homework assignments will see a whole bunch of nothing.
Kids with a shred of self respect are going to rebel. But what are they to do? So, with the deep-seated suspicion that their lives are as meaningless as the crap they’re supposed to be learning in school, with few opportunities to do anything meaningful with their time, and with their parents siding with the inflicters of the nonsense against the kids, they slap on the headphones and tune out.
I find kids who drink the cool-aide – who take all the AP classes and lose sleep, friends and any chance at self-knowledge to get into a ‘good’ college (where they then will take remedial writing and math as likely as not) more scary, in many ways, than the poor depressed kids.
April 11th, 2011 | 3:55 pm
[...] Self-Righteousness for Dummies Posted on April 11, 2011 by forestboar When the Gospel is mixed with the Law (or simply replaced with the Law) one of the possible outcomes is self-righteousness. (The other is despair, but that’s for another post.) How is it that a sinful person manages to assume that tehy are better than others? For those struggling to adopt the proper self-righteous attitude, the Maverick Philosopher offers “The difference between me and you.” HT : Firstthings. [...]
April 12th, 2011 | 10:30 am
Yes, “Moody Teenagers Like Listening to Music More than Reading” doesn’t quite have the same punch to it…
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