curious facts
Zeus’s Affairs
Check out just how many incests you can find! Created by Ilaria Pagin, Viviana Ferro, and Elisa Zamarian
Read morehow to cook asparagus
Get a bit of butter heating in a frying pan Run outside and cut some asparagus from the garden Run inside before the butter goes more than slightly brown Fry up the asparagus in butter until warmed and ever-so-slightly brown Put on plate and squirt some fresh lemon or lime juice on them (also from [...]
Read moreword of the week: Derecho
From Wikipedia Derecho comes from the Spanish word for “straight” (cf. “direct”) in contrast with a tornado which is a “twisted” wind.[1] The word was first used in the American Meteorological Journal in 1888 by Gustavus Detlef Hinrichs in a paper describing the phenomenon and based on a significant derecho event that crossed Iowa on [...]
Read moreMathieu Lehanneur’s population statistics
These ceramic sculptures are created with life table data showing the percentage of people in different age groups from infancy (bottom) to old age (top) www.mathieulehanneur.com
Read moreFirst anniversary of Eyjafjallajöku eruption
The icelandic earthquake Eyjafjallajöku erupted a number of times in April and May 2010 causing considerable interference to airplane travel. According to Wikipedia what made this volcanic activity so disruptive to air travel was the combination of the following four factors: The volcano’s location is directly under the jet stream The direction of the jet [...]
Read moreThe cartoon decade (2000-2009)
by Phillip Niemeyer | Picturing the Past 10 Years | The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/12/27/opinion/28opchart.html Published: December 27, 2009
Read moreThe Earth’s Magnetic Field Declination from 1590 to 1990
sourced from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earth_Magnetic_Field_Declination_from_1590_to_1990.gif and originally from the U.S. Geological Survey http://geomag.usgs.gov/movies/movies/index.php?type=declination&format=gif [!sigh! broken link]
Read moreCognition and art
Does education in the arts transfer to seemingly unrelated cognitive abilities? Researchers are finding evidence that it does. Michael Posner argues that when children find an art form that sustains their interest, the subsequent strengthening of their brains’ attention networks can improve cognition more broadly http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=23206
Read moreThe remotest place on Earth?
The world’s most remote place is on the Tibetan plateau (34.7°N, 85.7°E). It takes three weeks to walk out of the area (I would have thought that Antarctica was more remote?)
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