Yet another in our somewhat irregular (well it is supply dependent) collection of links to items you may have missed. In some sort of random-ish order …

It seems no-one knew how owls manage to rotate their necks through almost 360 degrees. Now they do; it’s all down to some rather bizarre anatomy.

Is there economic opportunity in our current difficulties? A different take on our present predicament.

This seems like old news now, but here are a couple of reports on the “discovery” of the remains of Richard III: one from medievalists.net and a photoset from BBC News.

England is often held up as having some weird and outdated laws, but no longer. Here’s a picture report from the Telegraph of examples from around the world. I’m especially boggled by number 14.

Then again only the English would worry about the intricacies of bubble and squeak!

Over in the Land of the Free there’s been a bit of a brouhaha stirred up by actress Lena Dunham quite unashamedly appearing nude in her new show Girls. It seems that USanians aren’t perturbed specifically be the nudity (oh, yeah?) but by the fact the Dunham does not conform to the toned, tanned and (almost) anorexic look that is always pedalled as being “normal”. She is a regular girl, with normal breasts and decent-sized thighs. The is held up to be disgusting. Anyway here are three pieces of commentary dissecting the objections: How Lena Dunham Breaks the Rules of Naked TV & Why We Love Her For It; What Lena Dunham’s Nudity Says About Us and The Audacity of Lena Dunham

While we’re on the subject of brouhahas, we can’t pass on without a couple of items on the horse meat scandal. Two nicely balanced pieces about the risks and issues: first from GrrlScientist and the second from Occam’s Corner, both in the Guardian.

So here’s the latest idea to keep your marriage on the straight and narrow; write a quarterly (the reports actually say every 4 months) report for each other about a recent disagreement. Seems to me all this is going to do is to highlight the cracks in the plaster and drive a wedge into them. Sceptical? Me?

Another piece of idiocy from the Land of the Free: a report on injuries inflicted during pubic hair grooming and which entail a visit to hospital. In the words of René Artois: The monde biggles.

For some reason which passes my comprehension, London Underground are installing a labyrinth in every tube station. I like labyrinths and mazes, but I am impelled to ask: Why?

Finally, something you won’t find in every London Underground station: a public lavatory. Apparently Brighton council have decided that henceforth their public loos will be “gender neutral”, ie. unisex. And about bloody time, say I; where’s the problem. The French have been at it for years and they don’t seem to have any problem. And many offices are now making their loos unisex. Makes a lot of sense to me. But it’s different, and we don’t like change.

Our irregular round-up of articles you may have missed, and wish you hadn’t.

First off here’s London’s Mayor, Bumbling Boris, from about 10 days ago on snow and winter weather. Actually he makes a lot of sense, which despite his reputation as court jester is not unusual.

Help! My brain is trapped …

An interesting article about the much overlooked third kingdom of life, the Archaea, and their discovery.

It seems, at least from this article, that, as many of us suggested, mental attrition is going to be the biggest fallout from the Fukushima disaster.

So just how do you photograph one of the world’s largest and oldest trees, a Giant Sequoia? And get a stunning result as well. (Click the image for a larger view.)

So you thought I was loopy? Well at least I haven’t collected bread bag tags and organised them into a taxonomy and phylogeny. Methinks someone needs to get out more … or maybe not, ‘cos they’d only by more bread.

So, according to the Chief Inspector of Schools Britain’s brightest pupils are being failed by state schools. That’s so perceptive of him. As with many of the ills in modern British society, I blame Harold Wilson — and that’s something I want to write more about when I have some time.

In another surprise finding scientists have discovered that babies walk better naked than they do in nappies. Who would have thought that a load of towelling (or equivalent) between their legs would have made a difference? Duh!

Next here’s a long but interesting article on our rituals and how they divide into essentially two categories: “doctrinal” (large group & public) and “imagistic” (smaller group & more personal), although both are about gluing society together. But what about those rituals one performs alone? They don’t seem to obviously fit this theory.

Finally a rather sad tale of someone who can no longer live in our multi-ethnic society. I can understand this, especially as it is written about another area of the borough in which I live. But it is sad that it has come to this. Why can we not get our immigrant communities (many of whom are now second or third generation) to integrate better?

Our regular-ish look at things which have interested or amused me, but which you may have missed.

Let’s deal with the medical and scientific items first …

Tamiflu — the wonder drug that kills off ‘flu. Except it doesn’t. Here are five things you should know about it.

Can’t think why anyone would want to make tea from coffee leaves. Until someone decides it has health benefits. Maybe — it seems the jury is still out on the importance of antioxidants.

So what really does happen if you drop a steak from an altitude of 100km without a parachute?

There’s this cunning Japanese way of multiplying big numbers quickly. Mind-bogglingly strange to us westerners, but it does seem to work.

Well who would have guessed? Apparently cats take on their owners’ habits — both good and bad.

So now let’s degenerate into the more secular …

So just why is it that we British are revolted by the idea of eating horse? It doesn’t seem very logical.

There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle this week — at least there would have been if anyone had understood it. The Health Minister, Jeremy Hunt, has decreed that all health records will be shareable throughout the NHS within a year. And about bloody time too! This is the sort of JFDI leadership the NHS needs, especially as it will save a shedload of money. But I spy a large squadron of pigs taking off from Heathrow Airport. The intention may be good, but it won’t happen; neither the government nor the NHS have the first clue about running the massive IT projects this will need; they won’t take advice from industry experts and they won’t pay for quality suppliers. And then there are the wallahs that worry about privacy — how is it more important that no-one knows anything than we get quality healthcare?

Meanwhile Will Self has been staring at The Shard and wondering why we do this to ourselves.

Aerial views of another sort … here are some stunning photographs taken from kites.

Hopefully this may be one up for women’s liberation in sport. Apparently Women’s Cricket wicket-keeper (Sarah Taylor) could be playing for Sussex (men’s) 2nd XI next season. About bloody time too! This should have happened years ago. There is nothing in the laws of cricket which says anything about gender restriction. I threatened to do this at club 3rd XI level some 35 years ago (the wife of one of our players was a good cricketer in her own right) and I got roundly condemned for the very idea. Couldn’t see what the fuss was about then and I still can’t, especially as there have always been mixed hockey games.

Finally, following up on a previous post, last Sunday (13 Jan) saw the annual “No Pants on the Subway” events — not just in London but around the world. The Telegraph has the pictures.

Another in our irregular series of links to articles which interested or amused me, and which might do the same for you. So in no special order …

It seems the Roman shipwreck which produced the amazing Antikythera mechanism may well have many more secrets to reveal. And it may even be two ships. Coverage by USA Today and by Discovery. Incidentally I have yet to see convincing dating evidence of the Antikythera mechanism to prove it isn’t a fake.

It is being suggested that the Vaux Passional (which is in the National Library of Wales) contains a thumnail sketch of Henry VIII as a child. Yes, maybe, with the eye of faith!

Still on things historical, the London Underground is celebrating it’s 150th anniversary this month and as you’d expect there is a plethora of articles. The two which caught my eye were both in the Telegraph: a pictorial history and 150 fascinating Tube facts.

Coming up to date there is an interesting item on Scientific American blogs about plastic money. No, not credit cards, but plastic (or plasticised) banknotes. It seems like the obvious way to go, but as always the UK is being conservative and slow at adopting the idea.

On the medical front (or maybe I mean back?) we’ve probably all heard by now of the new idea of faecal transplants as a method of resolving serious gut infections. But now researchers are trying to take the “ick-factor” out of the idea by manufacturing “pseudo-poo“. Seems obvious and rather less yeuchy as well as allowing better controlled dosages and better protection against side-effect infections.

Finally several people seem to have picked up on some old work suggesting that many common houseplants actually remove nasty chemicals from the air in your home. Choose from quite a long list.

That’s all for now. More anon.

Despite being a holiday period there seem to have been quite a few interesting news stories around in the last week or so. Here are a few you may have missed.

It seems we should be supporting the real Chrsitmas trees as they are especially good at absorbing “greenhouse gasses”.

Here are two amusing and competing theories about the relationship between Santa and his elves.

Next we have an interesting, curious and perfectly serious item about the amazing powers of earthworms to refine rare metals. Very strange.

For astronomy fans it looks as if 2013 might be an interesting year with not one but two bright comets predicted to be visible, even possibly during daylight. Definitely a couple of gigs not to be missed. Watch this space for more details as the year goes on.

Who would have thought that the chilly seas off Scotland would have the world’s largest reef of a rare shellfish.

Are you a werewolf? No, thought not. But there are a very small number of people in the world with a very rare genetic mutation that really do make them look like one.

More research on the causes of earworms, and how to kill them off.

How do you spot randomness? Well first you need to know what it looks like, and it isn’t like you think it is!

What makes chocolate so chocolate-y? An interesting diversion into the key components of chocolate and how it is refined.

And finally a copy of an old “sex manual” attributed to Aristotle, and which was banned in the UK for 200 years, is to be auctioned later this month.

More anon!

In our occasional (well it’s been something like three weeks since the last) series we have a really bumper crop of links to items I’ve spotted but which you may have missed — and which I think may be of interest.

First up we have an item on cracking codes, specifically in this case the easy (to us) but confusing (to our ancestors) Pigpen Cipher

And then there’s a cabal of crackers who have opened a 250-Year-Old Code to find (some variant of) freemasonry within.

Not quite a code? Well maybe it is, because this amazing 120-year-old “musical box” just so perfectly mimics a bird. Well it would be perfect if they could work out what the bird was!

And so to another amazing piece of Victorian engineering: Tower Bridge. Apparently the walkways high above the river are to get (part) glass floors, so people can look down on the bridge when it opens. I wonder how many heads will manage that one? Sadly I doubt mine will.

If a little red wine is good for you … Why you really should prefer red over white.

And talking of red, some clever chemists have been able to tweak one of the key pigments in our visual system so it is sensitive further into the infra-red. The implication is that this would give us much richer red vision. Yep that should be easy, just change the metal in the complex … oh wait there is no metal!

So yes, it’s all down to experimental science; time spent at the laboratory bench. But what about when you have an experiment that outlives you? Yep, you have to find an heir. The story of two such experiments from the same university.

Back to colour for a moment … So why is the sky blue not violet? Excellent trick if you can pull this one off!

We all know how people of Pompeii died, right? Well maybe not so fast. Some interesting perspectives both here and here.

Ash on the floor? Oh dear, you need to know how to clean your house in 15 minutes. No, I don’t believe it either!

Is it a filter? Is it a manufacturing plant? It’s a cleanroom — which is actually a plant that manufactures pure air. And it’s all done by big fans and gravity. An interesting read, especially when you consider this was one of the gateway technologies to our modern electronically connected world … some part of whatever device you’re reading this one was made in a cleanroom.

Ten well-known facts that are nothing of the sort.

But then, once upon a time, we didn’t know how to make cheese either. Seems we learnt longer ago than was thought, like 7500 years ago!

Which is all probably down to some variant of the restless genes which have (and still do) driven some to explore further afield.

Meanwhile back at home in the UK there’s been a project running for the last 10-ish years to photograph and put online images of every oil painting which is owned by the nation. All 211,861 of them! And it has finally achieved it’s aim. Telegraph article about the project. And the Your Paintings website itself which is free for anyone to use. What a fantastic achievement and a wonderful resource!

So from the sublime to the prosaic and worse …

Amusing snippet detailing the top ways we (well Americans) manage to accidentally (one assumes) injure their genitals. Be warned, boys and girls: don’t play with your genitals!

And at long last the UN has got round to approving an agreement on banning female genital mutilation. I don’t care how ancient and how supposedly important a ritual this is, it should have been stamped on long, long ago.

Mind you it seems that pubic hair is in even greater danger extinction than we thought. Oh dear! As if they don’t have anything better to do with themselves.

After all of which we probably all need a bit of stress relief.

Happy popping!

Blimey it’s busy round here! Even when you aren’t trying to get rid of a really dirty cold. At last this morning I have a chance to try to catch up a bit as I’ve been excused supermarket duty, so here is your occasional catch-up on links to items you may have missed. In the order I have them noted …

Does chocolate make you clever? Probably not but countries with a high per capita chocolate consumption also have more Nobel Prize winners.

Rules are there for a reason, allegedly. There aren’t for us to pick and mix the ones we like. A short excursion into why this is.

The received wisdom is that children are natural scientists. But apparently they aren’t, though they are inquisitive — and there’s a difference.

Apparently city birds are adapting to an unusual predator: cats. Yep, over generations the birds are modifying their behaviour towards what is for them a relatively novel enemy.

So who do you trust to tell you the truth? Nobody much it seems.

Mary Rose won’t die! Now scientists are identifying the shipwreck’s elite archers by the fact that their skeleton show signs of RSI.

Who killed Tycho Brahe, the 16th century Danish astronomer? Jennifer Ouellette investigates and discovers that the answer is: nobody.

Please tell me it is 1st April! Apparently San Francisco are trying to ban the obese from wearing clothes. They reckon it’s going to shame them into thinning. I think (hope) it might backfire.

According to the sources who know (ie. the Daily Mail) the Pope is stealing our traditional Christmas. Why should we care?

Earlier in the week the Police shut part of Whitehall because an idiot climbed a statue and then stripped. As usual the reaction is completely OTT. While I don’t condone the damage to the statue but public nudity is not per se an offence. I suspect that if the police had ignored the whole thing the guy would have got bored and gone away within 5 minutes, instead of which they make a huge drama out of it.

Can you identify corporate logos? Probably. Can you identify tree leaves? Probably not. A nice diagram from Evopropinquitous as an antidote to this state of affairs.

Diamond Geezer goes in search of the birth of our favourite supermarkets. Did you know Waitrose was founded by Messrs Waite, Rose and Taylor and their first store was in Acton? Or that Liptons (remember them?) started in Glasgow? No neither did I.

Here’s an important post on a rare but important sleep disorder. But because it can be very like some other sleep disorders it may not be so rare.

How do you lose an island?

The Geese Book, a delightful medieval manuscript is now available online. Here’s a report and here’s a link to the actual book.

And finally here’s one for all you geek girls out there. Hack your vibrator so it listens to your body. This is how Beth did it. And Emily is in awe!

Have fun!