A few links

Assuming you have some downtime to digest, vegetate, and recover from the holidays, here's a cookie plate of links. Enjoy!

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Boing Boing Gadgets presents "How it works. . . The Computer." Hilarious.

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Via Morbid Anatomy, I found Monster Brains' repository of Krampus ephemera. For those in blissful ignorance, the Krampus is a grotesque devil figure that abuses young children as part of traditional Christmas festivities in Germany. Yikes!

Speaking of children, these vintage illustrations are, um, shocking:

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From "30 ways to die of electrocution" flickr set by bre pettis.

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Erratic Phenomena has an exhaustive review of Chris Berens' show in Seattle at Roq la Rue. I fly through Seattle next week, and if we get stuck there, I'm renting a car and driving to this show.

Harvard's Berkman Center has just released Media Re:public, a series of papers assessing the rise of participatory media. Read it here.

Curious Expeditions have created an amazon bookstore of wunderkammer-themed books. I have a few, and want the rest. Yum!

NPR has an excerpt from a new book, Falling for Science: Objects in Mind about how scientists become addicted to the thrill of science:

[MIT professor Sherry] Turkle thinks that when you get your first microscope, or your first set of Legos or take apart your first broken radio, you become an explorer. She says that for some kids, the thrill of touching, fastening, examining, rebuilding and unbuilding is life-changing, mind-changing and never goes away.

And finally, if you haven't already seen it, read this story about a Thai artist who specializes in baking edible body parts. Think medical moulage, made of bread.

More like this

The electrocution drawings are fucking great! I love how the current path is indicated with red arrows. Did you notice that in the vacuum cleaner one, the victim is depicted not as being electrocuted, but apparently as being injured by flames from the burning vacuum?

Mainframe computer?! I thought that was a laundromat.

By Mrs. Grackle (not verified) on 27 Dec 2008 #permalink

@Mrs. Grackle: ROFLmeow! =^..^=

By The Mad LOLSci… (not verified) on 29 Dec 2008 #permalink