Briefly from me today, due to just about three hours of sleep last night, this quadcopter over Niagara Falls:
I’m not even going to describe it because that’s been done here.
Best watched in HD, unless you’re in SA… in which… case… don’t bot… … her…
Category: recommended site
Some interesting stories
Too much to do, too little time to blog, so here’s some stuff I enjoyed to keep you going.
From some science: on the weird, hugely interesting and currently unexplained early spring peak in suicides in the Western world:
…people usually commit suicide because personal, social-system and environmental factors combine to push them to a new place of energized despair.
In this view, spring somehow adds weight to an already unbearable load. But how?
One traditional candidate, favored by both Dr. Jamison and Dr. Kaslow, is the “broken promise effect” — the sometimes crushing disappointment that spring fails to bring the relief the sufferer has hoped for.
To science meeting religion: and the push to erricate polio in Pakistan, which is up against strong – and deadly – opposition from local religious leaders:
On Sunday 16 June, gunmen on motorbikes shot dead two polio workers carrying out a vaccination drive in Peshawar, a crowded city in Pakistan’s north-west. One of the men who died was a schoolteacher, the other a paramedic. Both left behind grieving families. Their deaths bring the total tally of polio workers assassinated in Pakistan up to nearly 20 since last December.
To religion: as a paralysed child gets an answer to his prayers.
Said Angela Schlosser, a day nurse who witnessed the Divine Manifestation: “An incredible, booming voice said to Timmy, ‘I am the Lord thy God, who created the rivers and the mountains, the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon and the stars. Before Me sits My beloved child, whose faith is that of the mustard seed from which grows mighty and powerful things. My child, Timmy Yu, I say unto you thus: I have heard your prayers, and now I shall answer them. No, you cannot get out of your wheelchair. Not ever.'”
That last link via @grant_mcdermott in response to my tweet about the lack of any response to the tens of millions of prayers being said for Nelson Mandela at the moment.
Track A Shark
Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, plus a little bit of cash from those hard working sponsors, you’re now able to track basking sharks off the coast of the Isle of Man. They’ve tagged 4 sharks and they are following them around (electronically) because:
This scientific data is useful to government to enable them to make informed wildlife management decisions.
I’ve been following Mister Tailor for a few days now:
He’s:
a 5.5m male, named for his unusually shaped tail fin that slopes gently backwards rather than standing tall like most caudal fin tips.
So there you go.
Basking sharks are huge, much bigger than your average Great White, but as plankton eaters, they are completely harmless to humans.
My personal hope is that Mister Tailor’s wanderings unwittingly draw a diagram of the circuitry and mathematics required to design and build a time machine. But I suppose that’s quite unlikely.
Elsewhere on the wildlifetracking.org site, you can follow birds, bees (ok, not bees) and other animals all around the world.
(Hint: The geese are especially cool.)
TT fireworks
Sharing this gorgeous image of the TT fireworks over Douglas Bay in the Isle of Man:
from Jan Tréger.
Sick entertainment
We’ve all got to go at some point, and that’s my justification for sharing this wikipedia page entitled:
In there, you’ll find a man who dropped a screwdriver into some plutonium (oops), a man who stabbed a war elephant (yes, there’s such a thing) in the belly and died when it fell – dead – on top of him and and ancient Greek lawmaker, who was smothered to death by gifts of cloaks showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre.
I particularly like the possible explanation for this one, from 336 AD:
Arius, presbyter of Alexandria, is said to have died of sudden diarrhea followed by copious hemorrhaging and anal expulsion of the intestines while he walked across the imperial forum in Constantinople.
He may have been poisoned.
While there’s no specific evidence of poisoning, I think we can safely assume that there was something amiss to cause this incident. It’s not the sort of thing that happens on a regular basis around any of the town squares I have visited.