Footage from Los Alamos National Laboratory showing the journey on 9th August 1945 of the ‘Fat Man’ atomic bomb from hangar to mushroom cloud.
Footage from Los Alamos National Laboratory showing the journey on 9th August 1945 of the ‘Fat Man’ atomic bomb from hangar to mushroom cloud.
I woke up the next morning and Fox News was reporting that unknown suspects had vandalized City Hall. I went back to the entrance and handed the guard my driver’s license and a letter explaining what I’d done. Several police officers were speaking in hushed tones near the gates, which had been washed clean. I was expecting them to recognize me from eyewitness descriptions and the still shots taken from the surveillance cameras and immediately take me into custody. Instead, the guard politely handed me back my license, explained that I didn’t have an appointment, and turned me away.
Bobby Constantino explains the difficulties of getting arrested in Brooklyn further here.
Crisis Magazine reports on the unusual results that may occur when re-examining skeletons dug up a century ago in York:
Upper-crust Africans living in a dismal Imperial backwater like 4th century Britannia? That’s odd
More here, and yet more on the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’ at The Independent, and Yorkshire Museum.
How original is Orwell’s 1984?
We is set in a dystopian society, where our protagonist is introduced to Freedom by the local Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Both are eventually caught and everything returns, more or less, to how it was. Sound familliar? The plot to 1984 seems to have been lifted, almost entirely it seems, from this Russian novel written twenty-five years earlier. And yes, Orwell had read it, although it would not have been an easy book to find. The question is, does it really matter? Shakespeare stole most of his plots. There is much more to literature than plot and setting, and some critics have said that 1984‘s similarity to We is entirely superficial.
More here at Of Exceptional Promise, and yet more on the similarities at The Guardian here.
The voice of Poverty, in Aristophanes’ Plutus (408 BC):
Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy. […] Zeus is poor, and I will clearly prove it to you. In the Olympic games, which he founded, and to which he convokes the whole of Greece every four years, why does he only crown the victorious athletes with wild olive? If he were rich he would give them gold.
More here.
How to measure the effect that price has on perceptions of pleasure?
Although researchers have used fMRI scans in recent years to gauge brain activity, the study is one of the first to test subjects as they swallow liquid—in this case, wine—through a pump attached to their mouths
More here.
This research was supported with grants from the National Science Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Who are you really shopping for this holiday season?
It’s ok, you can admit it, if you’ve bought an item or two – or ten – for yourself.
The Jubilee Debt Campaign offers an interactive view of global debt:
When talking about a country’s ‘debt’, newspapers refer to just the debt owed by its government. But this includes debts which are owed to citizens of that country (not necessarily a problem). And it ignores the debt owed by private companies and banks (which can be a problem).
At the Internet Archive, an 1828 ‘Stranger’s Guide’ written by ‘Two Citizens of the World’ advises on how to avoid being swindled in London:
Swindling, when performed on a large scale, obtains the title of speculation. We need merely mention one word to remind our readers of the affinity between speculation and swindling – that one word is panic. Every one must remember the disastrous events of 1825, the era when every species of fraud was at its summit. […] In 1825, no less than one hundred and fifty companies were in existence – amongst them, how many now exist? not one-sixth.
More here.
Investigative journalism from Nellie Bly in the 1880s, as she attempts to have herself committed:
…I felt sure now that no doctor could tell whether people were insane or not, so long as the case was not violent.
The full story here.