Tangled Mind

A gull's breath can be seen in the freezing air on January 4 in London.
Found the larger version of the photo in a slideshow on the BBC news site (under cut), and thanks to the marvel that is Google traced the photographer. Yay!
( Read more... )

Congratulations to Ms Mantel and all that but, while I’m sure it’s beautifully written, I simply have no inclination to read a 600-page book set in Tudor England. ... Novelists should be engaging with the issues of the day – like Balzac, Dickens and George Eliot did – not indulging in high-class escapism.
Notes in the Margin - A far off country of which we know little

Twit.

Luckily an anonymous comment says this more elegantly: History doesn't have to equal escapism; the best historical fiction, like the best science fiction, addresses the issues of the day. The entanglement of religion and politics (fanatical religion in particular) seems to me a strong common theme between our times and those of the Tudor era.

I think, re: Wolf Hall, I'd also be inclined to argue that an essential element of the modern novel is the exploration of character -- and Mantel's Thomas Cromwell is utterly compelling.

The Pain of Being a Redhead - Well Blog - NYTimes.com

people with red hair need larger doses of anesthesia and often are resistant to local pain blockers like Novocaine. As a result, redheads tend to be particularly nervous about dental procedures and are twice as likely to avoid going to the dentist as people with other hair colors

Er, does it count if my red hair is from a bottle?

(via 1crowdedhour)

BBC NEWS | England | Cambridgeshire | Artefacts found at nature reserve

Signs of (Iron Age) life in Cambridge

Dunnett novels - Google Squared

This is dead cool, though frequently not right. (When I tried this, the entry for Checkmate read Checkmate (frequently shortened to mate) is a situation in chess (and in other boardgames of the chaturanga family) in which one player's king is threatened ....) But basically the app builds a table of data based on your search terms, with columns depending on the nature of the information it finds.

I was pretty impressed by results for 'Greek pantheon', 'Famous Belgians' and 'opera'. And very amused by 'science fiction women'.

edit. 'Feline villains' also made me snort. They have left out residentevil666. But it is only a matter of time ...

BBC NEWS | England | London | Commuters asked to write Haikus

I like this: Kings Place are running a haiku competition via Twitter ...

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Lift-off for European telescopes
Planck and Herschel! I read it first here -- and that post -- from someone I know personally -- made it so much more real. Also: YAY and WOW.

“Swine Flu Hemagglutinin”: amino acid sequence as ambient music | Stephan Zielinski

The algorithm I used is a bit complicated, but just in case you’re curious: since the gene is expressed as a surface protein antibodies can sense, it’s considered as a string of amino acids. Each beat corresponds to one amino acid, and the piece is in 3/4 time, so each six measures would correspond to five turns around the alpha structure.

It sounds slightly, stereotypically 'Oriental' to my ear, with unexpected percussion.

Now I want to write fiction where listening to this is infection ... or immunisation ... or palliative.

via boingboing

The estimable molly_brown posts! with a link to "This is", a short film made for the Sci-Fi London 48 hour film challenge. It will brighten your day!

molly_brown: the film what I wrote