1. How many books are there in the world? 129,864,880
2. How a Bach Canon Works
3. John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” Animated
4. Beethoven’s 5th: The Animated Score
Click here to get a PDF chart that explains what instruments correspond to the colors in the score.
(Via: Open Culture )
5. Fact of the Week: For each and every human being there lives a hidden host of 1.6 million ants.
6. Weird News of the Week: Dog Saves Man’s Life by Biting Off Toe
7. Meghan McArdle on the conditions for valuable scholarship:
Well, define valuable—in many liberal arts fields, the only possible consumer of the research in question is a handful of scholars in the same field. That sort of research is valuable in the same way that children’s craft projects are priceless—to their mothers. Basically, these people are supporting an expensive hobby with a sideline business certifying the ability of certain twenty-year olds to write in complete sentences.
8. Quote of the Week: “Being a Methodist is easy. It’s like the University of Phoenix of religions: you send them 50 bucks and click ‘I agree,’ and you’re saved.” - Jon Stewart on Chelsea Clinton’s wedding.
9. Epic Badminton Rant
It really is always Christopher Burr, isn’t it? (Via: Kottke )
10. The 50 highest-earning American athletes
It’s the age-old question that has puzzled the finest minds for thousands of years — which came first: The chicken or the egg?Now, scientists claim to have finally discovered the answer to the conundrum — it’s the chicken which came first. A team from University of Sheffield and University of Warwick has found that a protein called ovocleidin (OC-17) is crucial in the formation of eggshells.
12. Animated GIF of the Week: The first 10 pages of Avery Monsen and Jory John’s book, All My Friends Are Dead .
13. Twitter Feed of the Week: Martin Luther
Men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars (as passengers or as drivers) had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less. What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised. Quite a few of them said they did so regularly and led active lifestyles. The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting.Most of us have heard that sitting is unhealthy. But many of us also have discounted the warnings, since we spend our lunch hours conscientiously visiting the gym. We consider ourselves sufficiently active. But then we drive back to the office, settle at our desks and sit for the rest of the day. We are, in a phrase adopted by physiologists, ‘‘active couch potatoes.’’
15. Tarzan Skills: How to Swim, Dive, Climb, and Swing Like the Lord of the Apes
16. Infographic of the Week: How the Internet Works
17. Women find men in red more appealing?
Men wanting to catch the eye of women should dress in red, a color which new research shows makes them more alluring to the opposite sex.Women in the United States, England, Germany and China said they found men pictured wearing red, or framed in red, more sexually attractive than in other colors, the research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology showed.
18. 40 Seriously Funny Print Ads
19. Jet Fueled School Bus Clocks 367 MPH
(Via: Geekosystem )
20. Embedded Technologies: Power From the People
To solve the power shortage, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—the U.S. Department of Defense agency behind technologies that led to the Internet and the Global Positioning System, among other things—launched an Energy Starved Electronics program in 2005 with MIT. Re searchers there have a new idea for powering embedded electronics: “scavenging” energy from the human body.
21. Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Film Noir, Documentaries & More
22. HistoricalLOL of the Week
23. The Triceratops Never Existed, It Was Actually a Young Version Of Another Dinosaur
Scientists are saying that the Triceratops dinosaur—you know, the three horned one—was actually a juvenile form of a Torosaurus, the three horned dinosaur you don’t know. Apparently, dinosaurs’ skulls can shape-shift.
24. Top 10 Shark Attacks Videos
25. Ad of the Week: The Drench Cubehead
26. Funniest Last Words, Deathbed Witticisms
Steven Wright once said that he wished the first word he spoke was “quote.” Then, right before he died he could say, “Unquote.” While that would be the greatest last word ever uttered, we have to be realistic here and admit no one could be that cool, lest the universe implode. Nonetheless, here are some valiant efforts worth remembering . . .
27. How-To of the Week (Part I): Duplicate vinyl records by casting
28. How-To of the Week (Part II): Save $1 million by 65
29. Male voices reveal owner’s strength
A team led by Aaron Sell at the University of California, Santa Barbara, recorded the voices of more than 200 men from the US, Argentina, Bolivia and Romania, who all repeated a short phrase in their native tongue. Sell’s team also put the men through a battery of tests of upper body strength.When university students listened to the recordings, they accurately predicted the strength of the men, based on a seven-point scale from “weak” to “strong” – regardless of the language used. The voice analysis provided just as much information about a speaker’s strength as photographs.
While theories of signaling and conspicuous consumption suggest that more explicit markers facilitate communication, this article examines the utility of subtle signals. Four studies demonstrate that while less explicit branding increases the likelihood of misidentification (e.g., observers confusing a high?end purchase for a cheaper alternative), people with more cultural capital in a particular domain prefer subtle signals because they provide differentiation from the mainstream. Such insiders have the necessary connoisseurship to decode the meaning of subtle signals that facilitate communication with others “in the know.”
32. Another 33 Things
33. Animated Map Of Nuclear Explosions, 1945 - 1998
Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto’s ‘1945 - 1998’ is an animated map showing the 2,053 nuclear explosions that took place around the world during the 20th century, from the detonations at Alamogordo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to the tests conducted by India and Pakistan in 1998.
