Links for 2011-05-28

"Dylan's musical brilliance is already a solidified fact, his onstage antics have already been covered, and plenty more ink has been spilled about his standing as a prickly interview subject, so why not, instead, honor the man with a list of some of his most randomly wacky moments?"

" In 1925, archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered a curious collection of artifacts while excavating a Babylonian palace. They were from many different times and places, and yet they were neatly organized and even labeled. Woolley had discovered the world's first museum.
It's easy to forget that ancient peoples also studied history - Babylonians who lived 2,500 years ago were able to look back on millennia of previous human experience. That's part of what makes the museum of Princess Ennigaldi so remarkable. Her collection contained wonders and artifacts as ancient to her as the fall of the Roman Empire is to us. But it's also a grim symbol of a dying civilization consumed by its own vast history."

"Using a high-speed camera, dense physics formulas and deep baseball knowledge, Lynd-- who is just one homer shy of the all-time Bates career mark -- has investigated what happens when baseball meets baseball bat. He recently presented the results in his senior thesis, the major capstone endeavor for Bates seniors, titled "Investigating BBCOR Baseball Bats: A Comparison of New and Old."
Lynd's idea to compare the new and old bats hit him last year, after hearing the buzz about how different the new bats were. "I wanted to find out just how different," he says. In a batting cage session last winter, Lynd started learning."