Friday, February 28, 2014

Happy Friday! It's been quite a week.

 From Cassandra: the Northern Lights were visible all over the UK last night!We are both terribly jealous.

From Rebecca via Cassandra: Everyday sexism.

Related to that last link, a bit: the always-wonderful Anne Helen Petersen writes about the history behind the phenomenon of the "Cool Girl," currently embodied by Jennifer Lawrence.

From a co-worker: Google's newspaper archive is now a lot easier to navigate. Hooray!

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Friday, February 21, 2014

Happy Friday, everyone!

From Cassandra: How to be a kind educator.

From Julie: “Poo books make odd title shortlist.”

These fake London Underground signs are hilarious and I hope all public transit systems see similar signage soon.

Hydrogene does amazing graphic design work, and these posters for women in science should be hanging in many rooms!

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

More on Ukraine. BBC live coverage here, and photos from the scene here.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

February steampunk events, courtesy of Tor! (Anachrocon was great fun, from what I hear.)

The Steampunk Hands Around the World project is still going on – a myriad of wonderful websites awaits.

DC Comics is apparently showing off a steampunk version of the JLA. I am intrigued. Wary, but intrigued.

Disney is also going steampunk – take a gander at the mechanical Maleficent dragon debuting this year.

And finally, opera and steampunk meet in The Dolls of New Albion.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Happy Friday and Valentine's Day and full moon, everyone!

From Julie: Strange Victorian love stories.

Also from Julie: Books are turned into an animatronic sculpture!

From Cassandra: The sexiest works of art, for your contemplation.

Also from Cassandra: The archaeology of the stars, and the timeline of the mind.

From Bunny: a free theremin application for touchpad devices! Awesome!

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Wow, Tunisia’s new constitution is absolutely fantastic. I hope everything goes well!

Over here in America, there’s a new platform which lets you ask Congressional representatives questions via social media. Hm. "Why can't we be more like Tunisia?" is probably not considered a valid question.

Jurify is a new resource for law librarians. It looks promising.

Libraries are going green! There’s even a website about it.

For those in the Cincinnati area, the local library is running a poetry contest through the end of February. Go and be creative.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

From this map, it looks like nearly all of England is under water. Stay safe, everyone.

Over here in the U.S., some brilliant person has put together a map of how much snow it takes to close a school. More information over at Reddit. This looks about right for my area.

 A “tin can app” can get messages to phones without cell reception. How cool is that?

And, for your argument of the day, you can talk about scientists studying reincarnation.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Happy Monday! Busy day here. More soon, hopefully.

Update: Do you have made-up words you share with your friends and family? If so, the Made Up Words Project wants to know about them!

Friday, February 07, 2014

Happy Friday!

From Julie: For the first time in over eighty years, no one saw the Loch Ness Monster last year. Has Nessie moved on to greener waters?

As the Winter Olympics begin, Bill Lucey takes a look at Russia’s newspaper culture.

From Bunny: When panoramic photos go wrong, the results are terrifying. Also hilarious.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you next week.

Thursday, February 06, 2014

Kate Beaton has a lovely post about museums and what it’s like to work in one, with lots of great links.

Also featuring oodles of great links is Open Culture, which lists free courses and much more!

Wednesday, February 05, 2014

Today is all ice and snow, so we are going traveling.

First off, the Atlantic looks at maps that changed the world.

A new take on the Voynich Manuscript suggests that it may be a botanical encyclopedia of sorts from the New World. Interesting!

Archaeologists have discovered the tomb of Egyptian king Sobekhotep I of the Abydos Dynasty. This opens up a whole new dimension for Egyptologists, because not much is known about the Abydos Dynasty.

Tuesday, February 04, 2014

No Victorian Era explorer would be caught dead without a Burroughs Wellcome & Company First Aid Kit!

(Well, actually, they might be caught dead, now that I think about it...)

Monday, February 03, 2014

Over the weekend, we played a bunch of video games. NPR has a story on how gaming is shifting from hack & slash to storytelling, and they make some good points. (Meanwhile, I'm still trying to build a bookshelf in Minecraft.)

On the other hand, some current stage productions are all about the hack & slash. How do they make all that fake blood? 

 In Florence, Italy, there’s a group of talented women making pianos

 The Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts is opening, and it looks stark and amazing.