Tag Archives: links

When shoddy engineering caused a bridge to collapse in Quebec, Canada decided it needed to impress its engineering students with the sanctity of their duty. Their solution: call Rudyard Kipling to design a Ritual Of The Calling Of An Engineer. … Continue reading →

This blog sometimes discusses how ideas which weren’t originally religious can evolve into a semi-religious form. But even I was flabbergasted to see Chinese peasants offering bowls of pig blood to statues of Mao on his birthday (h/t Spandrell). Speaking … Continue reading →

North Korea’s official Twitter account only follows one active user, a twenty-something Texan investor, and he has no idea why. Robin Hanson talks a lot about the RAND insurance experiment, which found that giving people better health insurance didn’t necessarily … Continue reading →

Quaint Argentinian custom: the President of the country officially becomes the godfather of children considered at risk of becoming werewolves. Nerva – not just one of the better Roman emperors, but an experimental 1970s nuclear rocket engine that could have … Continue reading →

To the list of people who met their spouses online, add ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who met his wife Sujidah al-Dulaimi on the Internet. Possibly related: ISIS runs a jihadi dating site. I’m going to say it – niche … Continue reading →

The American chestnut was once a contender for the most common tree in the country, by some accounts making up 25% of all trees in the Appalachian area and having a population of up to 3 billion. It was a … Continue reading →

Today’s thing which affects weight gain and is neither eating less or exercising more: exposure to ultraviolet radiation (warning: in mice). And it seems to work independently of Vitamin D, which has some relevance to the many studies showing sunlight … Continue reading →

The Dutch are pioneering crops fed by sea water. Which sounds like just a cute trick, until you realize that saltwater floods destroy a lot of cropland, and fresh water shortages are one of the biggest problems facing the 21st … Continue reading →

Bad Conlanging Ideas Tumblr, or best conlanging ideas Tumblr? No, Aristotle is not your dumb straw man opponent of empiricism. One thing you have to learn in every freshman biology course, and the better sort of freshman philosophy course, is … Continue reading →

Russia Is Running Out Of Forest is just below “dire sand shortage in Saudi Arabia” on the list of unlikely problems. But it seems to be true, and a good example of just how bad short-sighted environmental policies can get. … Continue reading →