Well, if you had television on any of the news channels last weekend, there certainly was an orgy of 9/11 remembrances. What is it about zero-ending anniversaries that we love so much? I’m just as guilty as everyone when they roll around.
We should have had enough until 2021, I would think, but there are some items I want to include today making this Interesting Stuff 9/11 heavy – by about a third of it.
JON STEWART REMEMBERS 9/13/2001
Once again, The Daily Show makes real something I hadn’t or couldn’t articulate that had been bothering me and last Monday he nailed it perfectly.
FRANCE REMEMBERS 9/11
Claude Covo-Farchi of Photoblogging in Paris photographed this message of solidarity with the U.S. on 9/11. Nice of them to translate for dummies like me who are ignorant of the French language.
WHAT A DOG DOES WHEN HE’S COLD
Darlene Costner sent along this video. Damned clever dogs can be.
BRITS FAVOR FACEBOOK OVER TOILET
The London Science Museum surveyed 3,000 adults about what they could not live without. Facebook came in number 5, four points above the flush toilet at number 9.
There is a serious side to this poll. For that and the full list of 50, click here.
ROMANESCO
At the farmer’s market last weekend among the broccoli and cauliflower, I came across this visually stunning vegetable. It’s beautiful but also reminds me a little of something that could have been included in The Little Shop of Horrors.
It’s called Romanesco and I bought one. It tastes sort of like broccoli and sort of like cauliflower only milder and it almost broke my heart to break it apart to cook. You can find out more about its biology and mathematical properties here.
GOOGLE CENSORS OUR SEARCHES
Not just Google – other search engines too. You and I can search the same word or phrase and get entirely different returns depending on what the search engine knows about us from our past searches and other information.
Eli Pariser, former executive director and now board president of MoveOn, calls this the Filter Bubble. He’s written a book with that title and he recently gave this short talk on the subject at a TED conference.
You can find out more at the Filter Bubble website and read the 10 Ways to Pop your filter bubble. (Hat tip to Marion Dent)
101-YEAR-OLD WOMAN WITH AN 81-YEAR-OLD CAR
Both Margaret Dunning and the Packard roadster are running just fine. Take a look at this terrific video Darlene Costner found for us.
EEEEEEEEK!
It’s a good thing this worm is magnified 525 times and lives near hydrothermal vents nearly a mile below the surface of the ocean.
Back in July, this horrific creature was all over the web but maybe you missed it. The Huffington Post story is here.
The worm was photographed by Philippe Crassous with an FEI electron microscope. The FEI company keeps a Flickr photostream of all kinds of nano objects. I lost about two fascinating hours clicking through the images – even if I don’t understand what most of them are.
9/11 RESCUE DOGS
That’s Moxie, now age 13, who worked as a rescue dog at Ground Zero for eight days searching for survivors. She’s one of nearly 100 who traveled from all over North America to help after the attack on the World Trade Center.
Now, just 12 of those hard-working dogs survive. Dutch photographer Charlotte Dumas traveled the U.S. to capture their images and tell their stories in a book titled, Retrieved. You can see many more photos here.
Interesting Stuff is a weekly listing of short takes and links to web items that have caught my attention; some related to aging and some not, some useful and others just for fun.
You are all encouraged to submit items for inclusion. Just click “Contact” in the upper left corner of any Time Goes By page to send them. I’m sorry that I probably won’t have time to acknowledge receipt and there is no guarantee of publication. But when I do include them, you will be credited and I will link to your blog if you have one.
