• Dig into the Instruments for Science (1800-1914) pages which reproduce for your geeky pleasure the scientific trade catalogs in the Smithsonian collections. Includes, but is by no means limited to: levers, pulleys, manometers, balances, air pumps, barometers, drawing instruments, electric machines, extensometers, telescopes, spectroscopes, photometers, tuning-forks, dissecting instruments, metallurgical equipment, galvanometers, turbines, electromagnets, theodolites, sextants, microscopes, globes, and glass prisms. Pictured above is Amslers Polar Planimeter. Enjoy… you big dork.
• The online world of linguistics is fast, funny, and bears no resemblance to hours spent in a classroom. Linguists and wordsmiths (including Grant Barret from Double Tongued Word Wrester) talk about new words, new blogs and new usage. NPR audio: How the Web Is Changing Language. Via.
• “A picture must be painted in such a way that the viewer can understand its meaning. If the people who see a picture cannot grasp its meaning, no matter what a talented artist may have painted it, they cannot say it is a good picture.” -Kim Jong-il. Art in North Korea.
• Card Culture. On the design impact of credit cards and “affinity” cards. Via.
• An interesting paper on: Life (Briefly) Near a Supernova (pdf). Via.
• Proverbial wisdom from around the world in the form of 12,000 proverbs from 300 different countries. Search by keyword or browse by country.
• The Olduvai Theory: Sliding Towards a Post-Industrial Stone Age, circa 1996, and The Olduvai Theory: Energy, Population, and Industrial Civilization (pdf) circa 2006. Can’t wait for post-industrial civilization.