'tis nobler – to learn and change

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy! 

There are many, many versions of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody …. but are there any better than this one?

Stimulating the mind could involve books, films, music or travel, but is it ethical to stimulate the brain?

Ask yourself – Does it stand the test of time? Does it stand the test of excellence? Does it stand the test of you?

A second ‘Mona Lisa’, previously thought to be a much later copy, has been verified and will be on display in the Prado in a few weeks.

Blurbs aren’t what most people think they are – they’re attributed endorsements of the contents by other artists, not the summary/teaser copy – and here’s a brief history of the blurb.

It’s a miracle that Douglas Mawson survived the most terrible Polar expedition ever.

Looking, looking, looking – always striving to separate signal from noise.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy! 

Yosemite HD is glorious.

Does exercise promote health by promoting (internal) recycling?

Is urbanisation actually good for sustainability?

An apt description – 25 awesome castles.

The first woman to sail around the world did it as a man …..

“We Must Go On”, by Pretty Lights.

A whole lot of nothing …..

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative.  Enjoy!

What is your favourite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation?

There are plans to take the first ever picture of a black hole.

Rhod Gilbert is brilliant, more brilliant than a torch with the power of a million candles!

Ganvie – the ‘Venice’ of Africa, and here’s a plan to lift Venice some 12 inches.

Fascinating insights ‘Inside Apple’.

Was it actually GOOD King John?

We were wanderers on a prehistoric Earth.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy! 

86,400 + 1 on 30 June 2012 – it’s official.

1 (obvious) + many more (much less obvious) = Earth’s Moons, moons of any size might be circling any of the 100,000,000,000 planets just in our galaxy and we (i.e. the Milky Way Galaxy) are as white as snow.

12 months + 7,100,000 hours of processing = 17 (as the minimum number of given numbers in a Sudoku puzzle for it to have a unique solution).

343 (days) + 17 (countries) + 19 (planes) + 58 (buses) + 18 (boats) + 6237 (photos) = WOW!!

> light on dark matter = > mystery, not < mystery!

Given the (unintended) theme this week, ‘tis nobler had to link to this.

25/5 = 14 (according to Ma and Pa Kettle), 13 x 7 = 28 (according to Abbott and Costello) and the best way to conclude the numbers theme is with this statement:  “these are the things that hydrogen atoms do when given 13.7 billion years”.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy! 

Are we hardwired for optimism?

Very imaginative – Plato by Leonard Cohen (no, not this Plato, and not this Leonard Cohen either ).

When you translate an interview from Hungarian into English, then back into Hungarian and then back into English, this is the hilarious result.

Atlas Obscura’s 10 most popular places of 2011.

As the search for ‘his’ boson continues, here are some thoughts from Peter Higgs on the possible implications of the outcome.

A new year, which means we can look forward to new science (initiatives) …. and here are the ABCs we can look forward to in 2012.

OK, who made that hole in time? Oh, they did.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy!

As great as the riding is, the commentary is even better!

“Not only must we accept that basic properties of our universe are accidental and uncalculable. In addition, we must believe in the existence of many other universes. But we have no conceivable way of observing these other universes and cannot prove their existence. Thus, to explain what we see in the world and in our mental deductions, we must believe in what we cannot prove.”  Can the Universe be explained?

Here’s the latest instalment of DJ Earworm’s United States of Pop mashups – 2011’s World Go Boom.

The last paragraph says it all:  “The task that faces us is no different from the one that has always faced human beings – renewing our lives in the face of recurring evils. Happily, the end never comes. Looking to an end-time is a way of failing to cherish the present – the only time that is truly our own”.

Do you want to study at MIT?  Well, not AT exactly …..

Is it time for the Gregorian Calendar to be replaced?

C2C – F – U – Y – A ….. an energetically creative way to begin 2012.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy! 

The top 24 Deep Space photos of 2011,  here’s a pictorial overview of volcanic activity in 2011  and finally Flowing Data’s best data visualisations of 2011.

Google’s Zeitgeist 2011 and here is Videogum’s best viral videos of 2011.

Woo-hoo, that was close!

Re-designing money for the times we find ourselves in.

2011, in Lego!

The hidden limitations of causation – why science is failing us.

The scientific breakthroughs of 2011.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy!

The 2011 Portfolio of Movies is fantastic,  and here’s the equally fantastic Filmography 2011.

Zoom in, out and around the second best way in the world to view the Sistine Chapel.

The first peek at Timescapes 4K.

Perhaps Lamarck wasn’t entirely wrong – acquired traits can apparently be inherited without DNA involvement.

Is this why we invented monsters?

The new science of our cross-wired senses.

Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2011 is ….. the Protester.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative.  Enjoy!

Forget your fancy slopes, skiing IN Nelson, British Columbia is exhilarating!

By changing meaning (silly once meant happy), through errors (sweetheart was originally sweetard) and a range of other ways - how new words are created.

An introductory guide to quantum computing.

Best photos of 2011 from Reuters,  or these, described as the 45 most powerful images of 2011, and the photos of the year from In Focus (with links to Parts 2 and 3).

Cities ON the sea – is seasteading in our future?

Misery Bear discovers that ‘creating a new you’ by using a Happiness Machine doesn’t make people happy.

The evolved self-management system.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy! 

Climate change science as the cultural revolution of our time.

Just like our genes, language can tell an evolutionary tale.

Royal Wootton Basset really does rock – Wake Me Up When September Ends – and think about donating (the significance of the village to Britain’s war dead is demonstrated here)

Leonardo da Vinci’s to-do list, and further insights into the man and his work.

Please remember to read this article on why we forget.

25 fantastic rock formations.

Dagdraumar – daydreaming about where you really want to be.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy! 

A vacuum is full of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence, which allows scientists to create light out of ‘nothing’!

A fantastic collection of ‘3D’ pavement art and this astonishing ‘3D’ Spiderman drawing.

With their clicks, sperm whales can detect a squid less than a foot long more than a mile away, and schools of squid from even farther away – the applied language of sperm whales.

10 extreme places on Earth.

Recycling at the galactic level.

What’s going on? Blocking a hole allows more, not less, light through!

Tashaki Miyaki + horses = the atmospheric music video “Get It Right”.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy! 

Why would you use those bulky optical tweezers when electron tweezers are 1000 times finer than those big photons?

This time lapse video of Earth as seen from the International Space Station is mesmerising and beautiful.

William Shakespeare, literary giant and gangster?

In a new study, biologists report that melanocyte skin cells detect ultraviolet light using a photosensitive receptor previously thought to exist only in the eye.

Amazing wave photography and equally amazing liquid and bubble photography.

Nice people can finish first – the social rewards of co-operation.

Each image is a different day and, for almost one year, each presents a time lapse view of the sky – A History of the Sky. 

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy!

The fantastic public art of Metalmorphosis – my head is spinning!

It’s not as though social media has just been invented.

From humble beginnings, Apple (the fruit) has achieved global dominance.

Another sensational Genki Sudo music video, another amazing dance performance.

As small and ordinary as they may be, our individual lives are spectacularly wonderful things. Each of us is one permutation out of countless possibilities, like one grain thrown up by randomness out of an ocean of sand.

Even if there is a fifth force in Nature, would it really matter?

From an evolutionary perspective, cooking seems to count.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative.  Enjoy!

Damian and Kwibi’s very emotional reunion.

Simply brilliant at so many levels – the divided brain, another fabulous animation from RSA.

The Copiale Cipher has been cracked – a fascinating insight into the process.

It’s early days but could the public profile of probiotics indicate the triumph of marketing over science?

Heartbreaking photos of the floods in Thailand.

For everything is a poison, and nothing is without poison. Only the dose permits a thing not to be poisonous. What does ‘toxic’ mean?

Let them play in dirt!

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy!

Why do leaves change colour?

The visually stunning (and never dark) Midnight Sun – Iceland.

The history of pretty much everything – from as early as we can say anything sensible (and that is very, very early) to as late as we can anything sensible (and that is a very, very long time from now).

Matthew Brown’s ‘Dreaming in Italy’, and ‘This Isreal’  (psst, this title isn’t an error – it is real).

60 second adventures in thought – 6 minutes well spent!

How the potato changed the world.

Not 3 Men in a Boat – it’s 6 guys in a capsule simulating a mission to Mars.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy! 

Water, water, everywhere. Water, water, from out there?

Rather than doing partial repairs, can we revive a dying heart?

Marco Tempest describes himself as a cyberillusionist – the magic of truth and lies on iPods!

Is symmetry a ‘key to Nature’s secrets’?

Terrible sound and bland photography, until you realise it’s Mars! Those images are difficult to reconcile with evidence of a warmer and wetter Martian past.

What is the population limit for Earth?

Power FROM (!!) the people – biofuel cells.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy! 

Treasures of the Bodleian – Wow!

Can we ever agree on reasonable methods for assessing our reasons?

Everything you could ever wish to know about Big Ben.

And everything you could ever wish to know about dark energy (until we find out more).

And now 20 things you didn’t know about fire!

Looking for ‘life’ before the ‘living’ – the search for the last universal common ancestor.

Bob is very clever – wait for the credits to finish!

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy!

20 years of Microsoft Research – the breadth, depth and quality of their work is staggering!

Their findings show that memory is divided into discrete individual packets, analogous to the way that light is divvied up into individual bits called quanta. Each memory is just 125 milliseconds long — which means the brain can swap between different memories as often as eight times in one second. 

What is the best relationship between history and time?

The search for a more perfect kilogram.

Brilliant – the Feynman Series, Part 1 (Beauty).

Photographing the (very, very) small things in life.

A balloon from Earth to Space – Aerostat.

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy!

Is ‘retromania’ killing pop culture?

From a time of almost nothing to a time of almost anything – the reinvention of the night.

Just an awesome dance routine.

They’re one of those things you hear about but may never see ….. until now – presenting the (Digital) Dead Sea Scrolls.

“Memories of Old Awake” is a slow-paced but enthralling video about research into Icelandic Sagas.

A brief history of the brain.

Can you reverse-evolve a chicken into a chickenosaurus?

‘tis nobler is taking a short break – see you in a week’s time!

Every Sunday, ’tis nobler presents seven things that you may find inspiring, intriguing and informative. Enjoy! 

Watch this and then this in fullscreen, HD and with the volume turned up!

Taking aim at free will.

Does our genome dawdle while our epigenome dashes?

What is a Continent?

An intriguing opening paragraph: Tak-Sing Wong from Harvard University has created a synthetic material so slippery that it makes a duck’s back look like a sponge. It is “omniphobic” – it repels everything. All manner of liquids, from water to blood to crude oil, roll straight off it. Ice cannot form on it. It even heals itself when damaged. It’s an extraordinary material and it was inspired by the lips of a flesh-eating plant.

Thanks and goodbye to REM – Until the day is done.

Of Madame Curie – It’s taken a century, but we can finally appreciate her as a multifaceted woman of uncommon intensity, intelligence and will—a woman of courage, conviction and yes, contradictions. After a century we see her not as a caricature, but as one of the 20th century’s most important scientists, who was, at the same time, unmistakably, reassuringly human.