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Nothing To Do With Arbroath: Crematorium fire caused by 500-pound body
“A fire that damaged the roof at Southside Cremation Services Henrico, Virginia, was likely caused by a “rather large body,” according to fire investigators. The fire started when the furnace used to cremate the 500-pound body got too hot, Henrico Fire spokesman Capt. Daniel Rosenbaum said.
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more than 95 theses – If this particular book is not giving me pleasure…
“Of course, once you have abandoned a book after more than six hundred pages, abandoning one after fifty seems trivial. But for me that wasn’t a bad thing. I needed to overcome the sense of duty that had marched me through so many books before the ultimately liberating, if at the time miserable, experience of The Recognitions; and I needed to learn, as I eventually did, that if I set a book aside today I am not thereby forbidding myself to return to it later — nor am I promising to do so.”
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“If a human year really were equivalent to seven dog years, then people would reach reproductive age by seven, and some would live past 150.
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“If a human year really were equivalent to seven dog years, then people would reach reproductive age by seven, and some would live past 150. “ -
The Sound So Loud That It Circled the Earth Four Times – Facts So Romantic – Nautilus
“Think, for a moment, just how crazy this is. If you’re in Boston and someone tells you that they heard a sound coming from New York City, you’re probably going to give them a funny look. But Boston is a mere 200 miles from New York. What we’re talking about here is like being in Boston and clearly hearing a noise coming from Dublin, Ireland. Travelling at the speed of sound (766 miles or 1,233 kilometers per hour), it takes a noise about 4 hours to cover that distance. This is the most distant sound that has ever been heard in recorded history.
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“Mmuseumm is open every weekend, noon – 6pm.
Mmuseumm is dedicated to the exploration of the proof of our existence.”
“Mmuseumm is open every weekend, noon – 6pm. Mmuseumm is dedicated to the exploration of the proof of our existence.” -
“The idea behind Open Lab Hours is simple: create a space for students interested in journalism and technology to gather and work on projects. All are welcome. Some students come with the most basic questions, like “What’s the internet?”, while more advanced students come to debug projects, or hack on interactive and data stories for student publications.
The key has been to create a community for people who want to learn. With a safe space for beginners, rookies and advanced folks to work together, relationships are naturally formed between students with varying skill levels. These relationships help newbies learn while providing more advanced students with the capacity to teach and develop new project ideas.”
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we’re all chumps now, pharmacist edition | Fredrik deBoer
“There is no such thing as practical knowledge, and so there is no such thing as a practical major. This country graduates 350,000 business majors a year. The metrics for those degrees are generally awful. But nobody ever includes them in their arguments about impractical majors, despite those bad numbers. And if you’re some 19 year old, out to choose a career path, business sure sounds practical. So they graduate with those degrees and flood the market with identical resumes and nobody will hire them. Meanwhile, they lost the opportunity to explore fields that they might have enjoyed, that might have deepened the information acquisition and evaluation skills that would allow them to adapt to a whole host of jobs, and that might have provided a civic and moral education. All to satisfy a vision of practicality that has no connection to replicable, reliable economic advantage.
What’s most depressing of all is that these changes of fortune for particular fields is always seen as worthy of mockery and not sympathy. I searched around for that New Republic article on social media and found plenty of people laughing at these kids and calling them chumps for following an educational fad. You just can’t win: if you pursue a field you actually like, they mock you for your impracticality. If you pursue a field out of a desire to chase the money, and you get unlucky, they mock you for choosing poorly. Whatever it takes to convince you that your unemployment is your own fault and not the fault of an economic system that serves only the 1%.”
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It’s Okay To Be Smart • The real problem with people fussing over Pluto…
““The real problem with people fussing over Pluto all the time is it represents the priorities of the public – preserving traditions rather than accepting facts. The pursuit of science is about building a sustainable catalog of truths, and there is no advantage in altering truths to appease nostalgia.”
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““Most of the NASDAQ companies are bets against technology. Microsoft is a bet against Linux; IBM is a bet that everything stays the same; Oracle is a bet against the cloud, HP too. They are short technology, short change, short disruption. Microsoft is a nihilistic bet against tech innovation. Apple is now a bet against innovation in the smart phone. That might be OK if the phone is in its final form, and we can invest in a brand like Coke and Pepsi. Apple made that mistake before when they hired Sculley from Pepsi.”
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Human evolution: Fireside tales | The Economist
“This storytelling, though, is as functional in its way as daytime speak. Beyond their entertainment value, stories convey experience at one remove, helping people learn useful information about how to handle situations they have not, themselves, experienced. Indeed, this value may be why human beings have evolved to perceive stories as entertaining.
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“This storytelling, though, is as functional in its way as daytime speak. Beyond their entertainment value, stories convey experience at one remove, helping people learn useful information about how to handle situations they have not, themselves, … -
Massive Neuroscience rap battle (with tweets) · garwboy · Storify
This alone justifies the existence of the Internet.