- There are such things as Paleoburrows, dug by “mega fauna” in the past.
The giant armadillo, the largest living member of the family, weighs between 65 and 90 pounds and is found throughout much of South America. Its burrows are only about 16 inches in diameter and up to about 20 feet long.
“So if a 90-pound animal living today digs a 16-inch by 20-foot borrow, what would dig one five feet wide and 250 feet long?” asks Frank. “There’s no explanation – not predators, not climate, not humidity. I really don’t know.”
- Zizek had some very interesting things to say about Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions, if you care for that sort of thing.
- A nice collection of randomly interesting stuff from the Library of Congress archives (such as the attempt, in 1847, to make Euclid more accessible … see image at top).
- Not the sort of thing I usually link to: a part-historical, part-travelogue look at Russian trains.
- This one was depressing but felt in the vein of “something true-ish that must be read”: The Return of the Strong Gods
- An article with the title of “Ninnies, Pedants, Tyrants and Other Academics” might have been written today, but it happened to have been written in 1991. By Camille Paglia.
- One of the episodes of “Conversations with Tyler” featured a very interesting “reverse interview” between him and Patrick Collison.
- David Brooks wrote this one piece I liked
- I thought this was a nice tribute to Umberto Eco
- Finally, (in the old style of the web) I came across some random person with a very interesting web site, and … that’s all. Here’s a snippet:
The idea of the lethal text is a fascinating one, which recurs in all kinds of narratives. In recent times it has become a motif in the genres of science fiction and supernatural horror, or any other type of story-telling which draws on the gothic. Aleph the Website of Aleph (Defunct) describes it like this: ‘Quite simply, the lethal text is a text that, when read, renders the reader incapable of reading. It destroys the reader’s mind, inducing a crippling insanity. Only those who have read a lethal text know what it says… but they are in no position to share their knowledge.’
See what I mean?! Yes? No? Alright, next time then.
Abacus Noir 