Monday, 29 July 2013

Bees' Knees and the Mikro World

Someone put up a picture on Facebook that showed beach sand through the microscope. And someone else commented on it and linked in this video. There are some mind-boggling pictures in it.




Monday, 22 July 2013

Too Darned Hot

Yes, it is, again. 33 centigrades and rising. There is a classic jazz song about the dog days of summer. I never actually thought about the lyrics more than the chorus of the song but now I took my time and did some research. The song is about how men don't really want to 'coo with' their babies when it's too hot. The message is even supported by some scientific research called the 'Kinsey Report'. The word 'darned' is an old school swear word (a mild one). Nowadays 'damn' is used instead, although in some dialects you can still hear 'darned', especially if someone wants to sound a bit snobbish.



If you like tapdancing, check out this censored version (no mention of the good ol' Kinsey Report) for some excellent dancing.

Wednesday, 10 July 2013

Stephen Fry on modern language use

This is what he has to say about being too conservative about changes in language use. The video is cool and very useful for language learners as well with its animated transcriptions. The only thing I don't like about it is him saying the word issue with 'sj':)



Saturday, 15 June 2013

Sunday, 17 March 2013

Viking Sunstone found

Here is an interesting article about the mythical sunstone that the Vikings are said to have used to navigate there ships. According to the article, the special crystal was used because of its special polarizing effect.




Picture source

Saturday, 9 February 2013

How whale vomit can make your day

So, the moral of the story? If something is dead ugly and stinky as hell it still might be worth tons of money:)



Wednesday, 16 January 2013

How to be more creative

If you struggle to be more creative (like myself) then it may be a good idea just to let it rest for a while and watch this video instead. John Cleese on creativity:




You can find the script of the talk here.