If Wes Anderson Wrote the Bible
The very clever Wes Anderson Bible graphically displays what the Bible would sound like if Wes Anderson were to write it.
"The [shipping] container has been more of a driver of globalisation than all trade agreements in the past 50 years taken together."
Fascinating opinion piece on The Economist explaining how the humble shipping container, "a simple metal box" has "been more important for globalisation than freer trade."
...Containerisation is a testament to the power of process innovation. In the 1950s the worlds ports still did business much as they had for centuries. When ships moored, hordes of longshoremen unloaded break bulk cargo crammed into the hold. They then squeezed outbound cargo in as efficiently as possible in a game of maritime Tetris. The process was expensive and slow; most ships spent much more time tied up than plying the seas. And theft was rampant: a dock worker was said to earn $20 a day and all the Scotch you could carry home.
Containerisation changed everything. It was the brainchild of Malcom McLean, an American trucking magnate. He reckoned that big savings could be had by packing goods in uniform containers that could easily be moved between lorry and ship. When he
Propane Tanks Turned into Seats
California-based Sculptor Colin Selig has this gallery for his seating sculptures made from propane tanks. I'm in love with the white one complete with red logo you see above.
1000-Year-Old Coins Found in Australia
According to Australia's Herald Sun, coins found in Northern Territory have been proven to be 1000 years old, "opening up the possibility that seafarers from distant countries might have landed in Australia much earlier than what is currently believed."
...For a start, if James Cook wasn't the first person to discover Australia, who was?
How did 1000-year-old coins end up on a remote beach on an island off the northern coast of Australia?
Did explorers from distant lands arrive on Australian shores way before the James Cook declared it "terra nullius" and claimed it for the British throne in 1770?
We do know already that Captain Cook wasn't the first white seafarer to step on Australia's shores.
In 1606 a Dutch explorer named Willem Janszoon reached the Cape York peninsula in Queensland, closely followed a few years late by another Dutch seafarer Dirk Hartog.
And the Spaniard Luiz Vaez de Torres discovered the strait between Papua New Guinea and Australia, which was
Yuck: Michael Moore-Style Documentary by 4th Grader on Gross Cafeteria Food
Fourth grader Zachary Maxwell's documentary, Yuck: A 4th Graders Short Documentary About School Lunch, compares the "delicious and nutritious cuisine" menu choices advertised to his parents by the school versus the bizarre obscenities that landed on his plate.
...Like many things in the life of a fourth grader, Zacharys movie started as a dispute with his parents. He told them that he wanted to start packing his own lunch, but they were skeptical. Lunch is free at his school, P.S. 130 Hernando De Soto in Little Italy, and his parents liked the look of the Department of Educations online menus, which describe delicious meals, full of whole grains and fresh vegetables, some even designed by celebrity chefs.
I told them thats not what they were actually serving me, Zachary said. But I dont think they believed me.
So he smuggled in a camera in his sweatshirt pocket the next day and filmed lunch.
When
We're One Step Closer to Cloning Humans
With scientists successfully turning human skin cells into embryonic cells a type of multi-purpose cell that "could go on to differentiate into heart, nerve, muscle, bone and all the other tissue types that make up a human body" and despite stopping "well short of creating a human clone," the experiment "may revive the controversy over human cloning."
This technique can yield fresh tissue that is an exact genetic match for the patient for whom it is intended.
The scientists first removed the DNA from an unfertilized human egg, and then inserted a patient's mature skin cell containing the patient's DNA into that egg. Next, they prompted a chemical reaction, causing the cells to fuse and begin development.That led to a blastocyst, a hollow ball of 50 to 100 cells. For a fetus to form, the blastocyst must be implanted in a womb. An inner clump of cells in the blastocyst goes on to form the embryo, while an outer layer goes on to make the
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7min: Timer to Help You Perform the Scientific Seven Minute Workout
You've probably read about the scientific seven minute workout, 12 exercises that, when done in sequence over the span of 7 minutes and requiring nothing more than your body and a chair, will provide "the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training but in much less time." If you were curious in trying but weren't sure what to do and how long to do it for, the 7min website will give you all the steps needed.
The U.S. Army Trains in Fake Afghan Towns in the Middle of the Mojave Desert
On the Edible Geography website, a look into one of the fifteen simulated towns located in the middle of the Mojave Desert that the Department of Defence uses to train its soldiers. Best of all, the simulated town is "populated by 350 civilian role-players, many of Middle Eastern origin." See a video of the town here.
...[...] in a city, an army has to deal with an already unusually complex and dangerous spatial situation that is made yet more challenging thanks to its dense concentration of people going about their daily business, against whom the use of force is constrained, for political, economic, public relations, or humanitarian reasons (and, one might hopefully add, ethical concerns).
The crowded bazaar is, Mr. Grau and Dr. Kipp of the Foreign Military Studies Office conclude, a recipe for combat in hell.
And thus it is that the U.S. military hires Afghan-American civilians to pretend to sell plastic bread and meat on
Calendar Made of Tea Leaves You Can Brew
The Junk Culture website has this gallery for a ready-to-brew calendar made entirely from pressed tea leaves. Best part, you can take one of the dates, drop it into hot water and make yourself a cup of tea.
Where to Watch Over 500 Classic Movies Online, For Free
The Open Culture website has this article listing over 500 classic movies -- from Westerns, to Indies all the way to Noir -- that can be watched online, for free.
Where to watch free movies online? Let’s get you started. We have listed here 500+ quality films that you can watch online. The collection is divided into the following categories: Comedy & Drama; Film Noir, Horror & Hitchcock; Westerns & John Wayne; Silent Films; Documentaries, and Animation.
ONDU: Beautiful, Handmade Wooden Pinhole Cameras
The This Is Colossal website brings to light these wooden pinhole cameras, crafted entirely by hand by Slovenian designer Elvis Halilović, called ONDU.
...Forget your camera phone, filters, and likes, these tough little lensless film cameras are old school and completely manual, relying on direct exposure of light to film. The cameras come in six different dimensions and film sizes, from the more common Leica 135 format to a 4" x 5: film holder camera, and looking at the examples above they really do seem capable of making some beautiful photos.
GeoGuessr: It's "like 'Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?' for computer-bound grown-ups."
You've probably played GeoGuessr when we linked it last week, a game that puts you in a random place using Google Maps' streetview and asks you to guess where you are. Willy Staley of The New York Times has been playing the game and explains "the thrill of visiting Japan... and thinking you're in Ireland."
...Heres how it works: youre “dropped off” at a random spot within the Street View universe, with no hints about your location but what Googles cameras have captured. It might be a bustling Brazilian city; it might be the middle of nowhere in Australia; it might be suburban South Africa. You have as much time as you like to explore the area then you drop a pin on a map to make your guess. Your score is calculated based on the distance between the pin and the actual location. You get five turns.
The most you can hope for, usually, is that you get the country right, because more often than not, youre dropped off in the middle of nowhere. Road
How Fortune Cookies Messages Get Written
On The Week, Karina Martinez-Carter explains how the messages in fortune cookies are made and how their existence is -- unsurprisingly -- missing from China. Best of all, that "Fortunes also are tweaked based on client feedback. 'You will meet a tall, dark stranger' was removed from circulation when people complained they found it sinister."
...The founders of Wonton Food and Yang's Fortunes both started off focused on other Chinese cuisine products. But each recognized the growing demand for fortune cookies and their baked-in aphorisms, and capitalized on it.
In 2005, The New Yorker profiled Donald Lau, who at the time was vice president of Wonton Food, Inc. and the person writing the fortunes. Lau scribbled off fortunes in between his other duties, gleaning inspiration from wherever he could find it like signs in the subway, as The New Yorker recounts. Since then, the company has brought on freelance writers to supplement Lau's output of adages.
Lisa Yang, vice
What the Palestinian Smuggling Tunnels Are Used For: Delivering Kentuchy Fried Chicken
Costing a whopping $27 for a bucket of 12 pieces, and brought into Gaza from Egypt using smuggling tunnels, buckets of KFC chicken and soggy fries make their way to waiting customers wishing to have a taste of the Western world denied to them.
...Its our right to enjoy that taste the other people all over the world enjoy, said the entrepreneur, Khalil Efrangi, 31, who started Yamama a few years ago with a fleet of motorbikes ferrying food from Gaza restaurants, the first such delivery service here.
There are no name-brand fast-food franchises on this 140-square-mile coastal strip of 1.7 million Palestinians, where the entry and exit of goods and people remain restricted and the unemployment rate is about 32 percent. Passage into Egypt through the Rafah crossing is limited to about 800 people a day, with men 16 to 40 years old requiring special clearance. Traveling through the Erez crossing into Israel requires a permit and is generally allowed only for medical

