"What's delaying my dinner" - and people think computers made us dumb

1) For the lovers of pillage and carnage, Ty.rannosaur.us brings us a list of “7 badass Vikings”. I guess they’re cool if you don’t live near a fjord… (Link)

2) After the worst inventions in History, Time magazine brings us the most useless and forgettable inventions of 2009 – Computer critics? (Link)

3) Part 2 of our Great Depression caricatures – funny how a lot of these can apply to the current recession, no matter how much the media insist it’s over. (Link)

4) The “computer critics” have been applied to some of the greatest speeches of our time and you know what, Churchill would have failed English. (Link)

5) How do you know if an antique book is well preserved? By sniffing it of course… (Link)

ON THIS DAY IN 1558: Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, ascends to the throne of England, reaffirming protestantism and ushering in fifty years of prosperity for her Kingdom. (Link)

AND AS FOR THE LIGHTER SIDE: Cracked.com’s “8 Online Fads You Didn’t Know Were Invented Decades Ago” – Lolcats from the silent era? Now I’ve seen everything. (Link)

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The Bone Room and the Shroud of Turin - Man's obsession with death

1) Time Magazine enlightens us with a history of the F word. Kudos on the daunting task of writing this article without profanity. (Link)

2) In a bit of morbid history, Berkeley, California’s Bone Room is a testament to the evolution of the natural sciences. (Link)

3) A fresh new round of testing once again confirms that the Shroud of Turin is a Medieval forgery. Not that this random piece of cloth actually matters; the Church will survive. (Link)

4) In the History of Science-Fiction, here are 10 “Insanely coveted out of print Science-Fiction books” presented by CreativeCloud. (Link)

5) The Axis forums bring us a bunch of well camouflaged tanks. I’m still pretty sure you could hear them coming. (Link)

ON THIS DAY IN 1911: The Wuchang uprising ended the Qing dynasty and 2000 years of imperial China. This event is often overshadowed by Chairman Mao’s communist refounding of the country and it History in 1949. (Link)

AND AS FOR THE LIGHTER SIDE: Comedy duo “Mitchell and Webb” take a look at the Biblical Tale of the Good Samaritan. I never saw the politically incorrect implications of that story… (Link)

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1) These are the images that changes the world. Warning: this chronicle of media and XXth century visual history is awesome in the “awe” sense of the word. (Link)

2) Time Magazine brings us 10 books that have been banned in American history. Somehow the Bible never made the list; it has even more inappropriate content than “Lolita”…barely. (Link)

3) When Ernst Kaltenbrunner saw that the end of the Nazi regime was imminent, he threw immense riches to the bottom of Lake Toplitz in Austria. Now, so many people are diving for (and finding) buried treasure there that Austria aims to ban the practice. They will then presumably begin digging themselves while murmuring “precioussssss”. (Link)

4) Our first autopsy of an Ancient Egyptian mummy has been wrong all along. We should wait another 4000 years for technology to evolve. (Link)

ON THIS DAY IN 52 BC: Julius Caesar wins the Battle of Alesia and accepts the surrender of Gaul King Vercingetorix. Technically, this was not the last time that France lost a war… (Link)

AND AS FOR THE LIGHTER SIDE: Cracked.com’s “5 Great Things You Didn’t Know Came From Horrific Tragedies” – Who knew the deformed Thalidomide babies had a tiny little silver lining? (Link)

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