Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, Nov 9-15, 2014

Kindness and generosity can help your relationship last. The Business Insider.

Kare Anderson speaks about being an opportunity maker. TED.

The first real reason we need to sleep. The Business Insider.

Why psychological androgyny is essential for creativity. Brainpickings.

Like The Bletchley Circle? Read about one of the real code-breaking women the series was based on. The Edmonton Journal.

The grand unified theory of female pain by Leslie Jamison. VQR.

What has been discovered about the transmission of depression between mothers and daughters. Psychiatric Times.

Bryan Adams took these moving photos of wounded soldiers. The Independent.

Amazing buildings in Scotland. The Daily Record.

Some of the strangest and creepiest graves in the world. ViralNova.

A creative cartographer imagines a completely uncolonized Africa. i09.

The glow in the dark path inspired by Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Bored Panda.

Why tech leaders don’t want their kids using their products. The Unbounded Spirit.

Alberta fishermen find a fossil in the Castle River. The Huffington Post.

Nine TED Talks on how innovators are shaping the world of tomorrow.

Misnomers. Vsauce.

 

Just because it can be challenging to find your dog’s “presents” at certain times of the year. The dog tracker helps you find the dirt . . . Hack-a-day.

Sea otter pup cuteness. The Huffington Post.

Fun bubble experiments:

 

The Piano Guys. Ants Marching/Ode to Joy.

 

Hope you found some grist for your creative mill.

See you Saturday!

Thoughty Thursday

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, Nov 2-8, 2014

Not a lot this week. Travelling and NaNo are taking priority.

Five tips from the stoics about happiness. The Business Insider.

 

How introverts react to the world. The Huffington Post.

How we’re wired. A video on left-handedness from It’s OK to be Smart.

 

Bizarre cloud formation seen in the Australian sky. IFLS.

The wildlife overpass near Sudbury is in the news. CTV.

See you Saturday!

Thoughty Thursday

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, Oct 26-Nov 1, 2014

Last week, it was the attack on Parliament Hill that was the big news. This week, and many would say even eclipsing last week’s drama, is Jian Gomeshi. If you’ve been living under a rock somewhere, I’ll just let you catch up.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/jian-ghomeshi-host-of-q-no-longer-with-cbc-1.2813670

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/10/26/jian-ghomeshi-cbc_n_6050220.html

http://sexgeek.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/poor-persecuted-pervert/

http://theovercast.ca/real-take-away-message-news-jian-ghomeshi/

http://ellebeaver.com/2014/10/27/how-not-to-react-to-jian-ghomeshis-pr-statement/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/10/31/jian-ghomeshi-and-the-women-he-knew/


 

When reporting harassment, you are not the problem. Mary Robinette Kowal.

The secret dual lives of people with mental illness. Behold.


 

To counteract all that: The science of happiness. Soul Pancake.

 

Ursula K. LeGuin on aging and true beauty. Brainpickings.

The first taste of freedom of six animals caught on film. IFLS.

The World Trade Centre ship mystery solved. IFLS.

Debris from Amelia Earhart’s plane found. IFLS.

Notebook from the Scott expedition discovered and restored. IFLS.

Archaeologists discover mystery fairies and a buried pagan cross in Wicklow. IrishCentral.

What happens to blood when viper venom is added to it. Rare.

Can we get Ebola from dead bodies? Ask a mortician.

 

NASA spots jack-o-lantern in the sun in time for Hallowe’en. IFLS.

NASA 360 presents: from science fiction to science fact.

 

The warped astrophysics of Interstellar. Wired.

Michio Kaku talks about the possibilities of the future. YSNews.

Scientific explanations for monsters. IFLS.

The creepiest looking animals in the world. IFLS.

These are some creepy photos. Whether or not they are truly ghosts captured on film, well, I’ll leave that up to you.

Video of same:

 

The Celtic roots of Hallowe’en. Jodi McIsaac.

 

A squirrel drunk on fermented pumpkin attempts to climb a tree . . . Cottage Life.

Penguin bloopers 🙂

 

Daniel Radcliffe raps for Jimmy Fallon. Huffington Post.

Get thoughty with it 🙂

See you Saturday!

Thoughty Thursday

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, Oct 19-25, 2014

Thoughty Thursday is all over the map this week. It’s just the kind of week we had, here in Canada.

This was the big news in Canada last week: The lone gunman who attacked Parliament Hill. CBC News.

Mother Jones on how we did with the reporting of the incident.

Our heroes:

Nathan Cirillo The Toronto Star

Patrice Vincent CBC

Kevin Vickers CBC


 

You are your own damned permission slip. This post is one of the reasons I love Justine Musk. You go girl. Hell, I go, too!

I don’t even . . . Why are people making such a fuss about Renee Zellweger’s new look? Plastic surgery shaming? WTF?

Your brain on dreams, with Michio Kaku. I love this dude. Big Think.

End the stigma surrounding mental illness.

 

The Business Insider posts 20 tips for sitting at your desk without hurting your back. I had an ergonomic assessment at work a few weeks ago and the video aligns perfectly with what I was told.

Fibromyalgia isn’t “all in the head.” The Liberty Voice.

The Cryptik Movement speaks about the consciousness of trees. This is really something.

I’m not afraid of spiders, but the Goliath bird-eating spider makes me shudder. IFLS.

The tagline heading around with this next IFLS feature was, the Scottish invented sex! A Scottish fish, that is 🙂

The strange beauty of the deep ocean. IFLS.

Are we getting closer to a green energy breakthrough? IFLS.

A working hover board? Back to the future! IFLS.

The real cyborgs: where wearable technology is taking us. The Telegraph.

Lindsey Stirling does a steampunk western video for Roundtable Rival.

 

Sadness, now. Photographer says goodbye to her beloved pooch after sixteen years.

See you Saturday with more WWC 2014 reportage (I hope).

Thoughty Thursday

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, Oct 5-11, 2014

Psychology is back in the mix with a pile of interesting TED Talks.

What happened to #BringBackOurGirls? World Post.

How sleep patterns have changed over the years and why we might want to change back. Collective Evolution.

Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we all share. TED Talk.

JD Schramm on the silence surrounding suicide. TED Talk.

Eleanor Longden shares her journey from schizophrenia back to mental health. TED Talk.

Elyn Saks on her struggle with schizophrenia and what is taught her about seeing the mentally ill with compassion and clarity. TED Talk.

Vsauce answers the question, why are we morbidly curious? Three’s actually a fair amount of science and psychology backing this one up.

 

And as a follow up, here is Ask a Mortician, on the topic of necrophelia. It’s quite tastefully done, really.

 

Looks like climate change is escalating: 35,000 walrus gather in Alaska. National Geographic.

Remember Rikki Tikki Tavi? The Smithsonian Channel shared this video of the real thing:

 

i09 asks, are we over thinking the dangers of artificial intelligence?

David Brin on the spirit of exploration: comets, Pluto, Titan, and Mars. Contrary Brin.

Jackie Chan’s best story ever? Getting thrashed by Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon.

 

The Pentatonix cover Clean Bandit’s Rather Be:

 

Get thoughty with it, my friends 🙂

Thoughty Thursday

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, Aug 31-Sept 6, 2014

First, because 9/11.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum

The new head of the Ontario Bar Association goes on record about his struggle with depression. The Toronto Star.

Five supplements that may help with depression. IFLS. Please read the whole post, including the very important caution that you not begin any supplemental regimen without first consulting a medical health professional.

What happens when a therapist who’s counselled patients through loss faces the death of his father? Psychiatric Times.

Renewable energy sources now provide 22 percent of the world’s energy. IFLS. C’mon, people! We can do better than that, can’t we?

Fifteen thou a litre? Holy horseshoe crab blood, Batman! Mind you, I still feel sorry for the poor wee things. They really need to work on that whole synthetic thing a little harder, don’t you think? IFLS.

Deep sea life form that resembles a mushroom could mean a new branch on the tree of life. IFLS.

What makes the rocks of Death Valley “slither”? When one researcher decided to put cameras on the rocks, they found out . . . IFLS.

The silent line: photographer Pierre Folk captures images of a 160 year old Parisian rail line. This is Colossal.

What the fugu? Japanese puffer fish create lovely works of underwater art.

And here’s the video of one of the little guys at work:

 

What personal space? Dogs without boundaries from Pet Stuff Web.

30 little-known features of your favourite social media, by Kevan Lee for Buffer.

Isabel Allende’s TED Talk on how to live passionately:

 

Test your Highland IQ with the verra much harder Outlander quiz, from The Daily Record’s Scotland Now.

New Pentatonix video, La La Latch:

 

Kina Grannis, Tyler Ward, and Lindsey Stirling cover Coldplay’s The Scientist:

 

See you Saturday, with more WWC2014 🙂

Thoughty Thursday

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, Aug 24-30, 2014

Anita Sarkeesian is trying to change the way women are depicted in popular media. The trollish reaction to her efforts has driven her out of her home. Shameful. Maybe #NotAllMen but #YesAllWomen. Polygon.

The Huffington Post shares nine things that only depressed people can understand.

I’m pretty sure this is what sent my dad into the hospital. Psychotic depression: under recognized, under treated, and dangerous. Psychiatry Today.

Julian Treasure discusses five ways you can listen better in this TED talk.

Slate Science looks at the similarities between dogs and their humans. It’s all in the eyes.

Imagine what they can build with this kind of scaffold. Maybe a new spine? Skull? Hip? IFLS.

Ten persistent cancer myths debunked courtesy of IFLS.

A mammoth find in Texas, courtesy of CNN. I couldn’t resist. I had to have a little pun.

Meghalaya may be the wettest place in the world, but it’s also one of the most beautiful. In Focus – The Atlantic.

About Imogen Heap’s Entanglement:

Entanglement was originally written “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn,” but the song was rejected by the film makers who thought it was too raunchy for their teenage audience.

Undeterred, Imogen recorded the song for Sparks and filmed what is her most intimate video to date. #sparksfacts

Here’s what Imogen’s boyfriend, director Michael Lebor had to say about it:

“Andy Carne, the art director for the Sparks box set shot some beautiful stills for the front of the Entanglement single and so Imogen and I discussed shooting something that tied in with that.

The picture on the cover looked like a loving embrace, perhaps after a steamy moment and so I wanted to work back from that. The end frame in the video is as close as I could get to the angle and lighting of the still that Andy took.

Imogen has lovely, big floor to ceiling 10ft windows in the house and so I wanted to shoot just using the natural light that flooded in. I had recently been testing a camera (Sony FS700) that had excellent quality slow motion and because we didn’t have a huge amount of time, I thought this would be a great way of shooting a simple video in an emotional and beautiful way. Imogen has great bone structure, great skin and a model like figure so I knew that if we got the right light, the rest would fall into place.

It’s essentially a love story but I wanted it to be unclear as to whether it was imagined or not. The video starts with Imogen on her own and perhaps she is remembering a moment with her lover or waiting for him to arrive, either way, it’s ambiguous as to who this person is, if he is really there or if this happened in the past.

I wanted to build a narrative around the scene but because of time constraints and Imogen’s desire to keep it simple, we stayed within the confines of her bedroom and shot it in a few hours. It is difficult to sustain such a simple music video for five minutes, but that was the length of the song so we had to make it work.

It was a very intimate shoot and I didn’t want anyone else in the room, so it’s just me and Imogen. This of course created a challenge when I was needed for the scene. I used a tripod for those moments but an extra difficulty was that the camera only recorded 10 seconds of ‘super slow motion’ at a time. This meant that after every take I would have to jump up and run across the room to press ‘end record’ on the camera, not wearing very much…

One of my favourite moments in the video is when Imogen looks at the camera and she looks truly in love. It’s something that can’t be captured on a busy set, so it was a magical moment for me.”

And here’s the video (can you tell how much I love Imie?):

 

Open Culture on Patti Smith’s cover of Nirvana’s “Smells like Teen Spirit.”

Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn live blog from The Guardian.

Baby talks to dog. Too cute for words.

 

And now for something completely different, watch this kid’s reaction to the ALS bucket challenge. Jezebel.

Back-to-school fun with “Baby’s got class.”

 

Entertainment Weekly compiles their list of 55 movies your kids need to see before they turn 13. Do you agree?

The CBC’s Terry O’Reilly interviews George Takei about his new documentary. Listen to the podcast.

Diana Gabaldon gets a cameo in the series based on her books. Entertainment Weekly. See? All you have to do is write a mega million bestselling series of books . . .

BuzzFeed Geeky’s definitive ranking of “Firefly” episodes.

The San Diego ComiCon Game of Thrones panel.

 

What did you think of “Deep Breath,” the first episode of the new Doctor Who series? Well, here’s what Kyle Anderson of the Nerdist thought.

And last, but not least, a little back-to-school Whovian fun with Catherine Tate and David Tenant.

 

Hope you enjoyed this cornucopia of . . . stuff.

Thoughty Thursday

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, Aug 10-16, 2014

Of course, the big news of the week was the death of Robin Williams. I loved his work as a comedian and an actor. The circumstances of his death were tragic, but as a friend posted, so was his mental illness, the periodic substance abuse he engaged in throughout his life, and the effect that must have had on his family. The man touched me. He made me laugh. I’ll miss him. I’m just saying.

On that note, IFLS posted this on identifying and overcoming depression.

And my friend Kim wrote this lovely post. Seriously, one of the best I’d read on the subject.

The Globe and Mail’s offering: Thoughts on depression from an artistic mind, by Michael Redhill.


Shaking my head, not so briefly, to evict the maudlin.

This is verging on the Writerly Goodness, but I decided to put Justine Musk’s post, the art of being a heroine, in my Thoughty Thursday curation because it’s not so much about writing as about the intersection of myth and womanhood. Thoughty indeed.

Why we can’t catch our own typos, from Wired. Brain science explains why writers need editors.

Wired features Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win mathematics’ most prestigious prize.

A video love letter to Curiosity from Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

How wolves change rivers. This is amazing. IFLS.

What’s the smallest thing in the universe? IFLS features Talk Nerdy to Me.

The “super moon” of August 10th, as seen from space. IFLS.

The Atlantic featured more photos of the super moon on its In Focus page.

Imogen Heap has to be my favourite musical artist. Just lurve her to pieces. So when CBC music featured her new release Sparks as a “First Play” selection, I had to tune in. I listened to the whole thing in one night. The video is a great look behind the scenes too. Heaven. Of course, Ima buy it too, but I couldn’t resist the awesome.

A couple of great covers from Walk off the Earth. First, Rude, by Magic!

Next up, Say something, by A Great Big World.

Think I got carried away by music this week. Lindsey Stirling, Master of Tides.

And Beyond the Veil. This one caught me, because Fer spends a bit of time there . . . A candidate for the revision soundtrack?

This. Saturday. Can’t. Wait.

And this is fabulous: a fan made his own opening sequence for Doctor Who. Steven Moffatt saw it, and guess what happened? Space.

Thoughty Thursday

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, Aug 3-9, 2014

It appears to be I Fucking Love Science! (IFLS) week again.

This surfing seal is a cutie. Guess what? IFLS.

Remains of extinct giant penguin discovered. My question: how do they know its head looked like that? IFLS.

The headline could have used a little editorial assistance. 60 years after his death, Alan Turing’s morphogens help solve the mystery of how our digits developed. Yup. Moar IFLS.

Second super moon of the summer showed up on August 10. IFLS.

Theoretically, this means of interstellar propulsion could work. Thinking spacey thoughts yet? IFLS.

The Smithsonian answers the question, what happens to your body in space without a space suit?

 

Literary link here: Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander connection with newly discovered neolithic ruins in Scotland. National Geographic.

“Backroads” Bill Steer explores northern Ontario’s dolmen stones. CBC.

We had not one, but two earthquakes in Sudbury on August 5th. One was a 3.8 (!) They’re not frequent, but they’re freaky 🙂

This Shai Reshef guy has a really good idea: accessible, affordable education. TED.

LEGO for science geeks girls! Sure wish I had this kind of stuff when I was a kid. Barbie and her friends had to make do (I dressed them up in “costumes” and made them popsicle stick “swords”—maybe the LEGO ladies wouldn’t have attracted me, after all).

Feed your brain. It’ll give you ideas for teh stories 🙂

Thoughty Thursday

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, July 27-Aug 2, 2014

Science abounds this week.

Astronomers detect a signal 240 Million light years from Earth. IFLS.

More IFLS: Scientists have solved the mystery of the hole at the world’s end. Remember that article I posted a few weeks ago? Well, here’s the explanation.

ASAP science asks, how much sleep do you need?

 

NASA records ambient space music. That’s what ima call it anyway. I think it’s lovely.

 

Neil deGrasse Tyson refutes GMO fear mongering. Mr. Science says the same. Smart guy, my man 😉

 

Wired’s absurd creature of the week is the Satanic Leaf-Tailed Gecko. Personally, I think he’s beautiful.

Kathryn Schulz says a good life is not so much about regretting nothing, but about forgiving yourself for whatever it is you regret. TED.

Another TED talk, this time by Suzanne Talhouk. The Arabic language is in danger. Cultures around the world are trying to preserve their languages. Suzanne hopes to inspire the Middle East to do the same.

Vivek Wadwha predicts that automation will replace human workers more quickly than we’re prepared to handle. How will the world address this trend and what will we do?

Heading off to When Words Collide very early tomorrow morning. I’m still going to try to blog Saturday and Sunday, but you may have to forgive me if I get caught up in the panels, sessions, and workshops.

In other words, I’ll see you when I see you.

Hang tight, my writerly peeps 🙂

Thoughty Thursday