Lydia Calas's Face For NYC Mayor

Lydia Calas is Michael Bloomberg's sign language interpreter, & has become a surprise hero with her animated face contrasting Bloomberg expressionless one.

Feeding the family

Hurricane Sandy has highlighted, for a lot of folk, the reality that when natural disasters strike supply chains, you gotta do with what little they may be. Tips on feeding the family, hurricane edition

A curious medical case [article]

The lady had a pacemaker installed, & somehow it stopped working, unless she was upside down.

Mid-week inspiration

"Do what you love..." read the passage here" - from Debbie Millman's book "Look both ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life & Design"

Banking on Risky Practices? Posner

Is Banking Unusually Prone to Risky Practices?, Posner explores this question by applying Darwinian theory of evolution (ie survival of the fittest) by adapting to the competitive environment. A good description of the true banking industry, & its current avatar into a short-term focused industry

Ken Ken

I found this video that explains how the japanese game of Ken Ken is played. Will Shortz, the man behind the NYTimes puzzles. Warning: The game is addictive!

Its impossible to sing & play bass [humor]

India's Silicon Valley Garbage Crisis

Sarita Rai describes how the garbage crisis is closing the schism between the gated communities (a favorite for expats) & everyone else.

Teach yourself?

An ambitious experiment by the One Laptop Per Child organisation in two remote villages in Ethiopia is trying to see if see if illiterate kids with no previous exposure to written words can learn how to read all by themselves, by experimenting with the tablet and its preloaded alphabet-training games, e-books, movies, cartoons, paintings, and other programs ,

The Frankenstorm Monster?

Is climate change for real? Are the random weather patterns we're witnessing lately just that? Or does the science behind it stack up? An opinion by Adam Frank on NPR. or is there room for doubt? asTania Lombrozo wonders?

Religion as a mother [video]

Why do so many people picture God as a man? asks the narrator in the animated video on Open University's newest series, 60-second adventures in religion. Also watch Religion as Social Control, Religion as ritual, and religion as virus

Social Devaluation [Essay]

Dylan Grice, an analyst from Societe Generale, in his letter titled "You are debasing more than our currency", asks, "do our money-printing central banks and their cheerleaders understand the full consequences of the monetary debasement they continue to engineer?"

Changing Education Paradigms

Sir Ken Robinson "Changing Education Paradigms" animated.

A celebrity profile [article]

I hate celebrity profiles. Heck, I hate celebrities. And when this 1966 profile by Gay Talese, called Frank Sinatra has a cold,  turned up in my recommended read list, I scoffed, casually clicked on the link, & read -no, raced - through the whole article. Written like a Sicilian novel! Wonderful read for a weekend.

Split of a second [video]

Two videos of the Norwegian Wingsuit World Champion, Espen Fadnes. The first is called "sense of flying, an incredible jump off a mountain & flying down at 250kmph. He speaks about visualizing the flight before he actually does the jump. The second video is called "Split of a second".

The Future of Learning [Video]

What is the future of learning in a networked world? "Teachers don't have to have any answers. The answers are everywhere.They need to direct students to ask the right questions."

Britain's oldest blacksmith

I shall live tired, but I shall not retire, says Fred Harriss, 84, whos' been at his job for the last 74 years!

Japanese Juggling Festival [Video]

Captured on a smart phone so a bit jumpy, but check out this dude, Yanazo! Incredible control, using just one ball for half the performance.

The Original Jump [Video]

Before Felix Baumgartner did his death-defying jump from 39km up, Joe Kittinger did it from 31km. Watch a documentary of his jump in 1960.

The Writer who could not read [Video]

It happened suddenly one day. Howard Engel, a Canadian mystery writer, woke up and realized he couldn’t read the daily newspaper, let alone his own novels. He had suffered a stroke, it turns out, that left him with a rare condition called alexia sine agraphia, a condition that strangely leaves victims unable to read, but able to write.