“Apparently, I am more of a slacker than I thought. Not only don’t I have a bucket list, “make a bucket list” isn’t even on my to-do list. Everyone else seems to have one these days, from Cameron Diaz and Bill Clinton to bloggers who document their progress in exquisite detail. There is even a social-media site called BucketList.org, with more than 194,000 members, that can help you make a list and share it with friends.”
“After a stray dog in Ecuador met a team of Swedish adventure athletes, he grew so attached to the squad that he ran for miles and swam along to keep up with them. Now Arthur the dog is world-famous — and it all started with a meatball.”
“Sweden’s Peak Performance team was in Ecuador this month to compete in the Adventure Racing World Championship, in which athletes hike, kayak, and bike during a 430-mile endurance race through the Amazonian rain forest. It’s the kind of race where athletes try to keep moving day and night (see an example).”
“Just before starting one stage, the team’s Mikael Lindnord made friends with a dog, sharing a meatball with him. Lindnord thought that would be the end of it — but then the dog followed him, and essentially forced his way onto the team.”
“Tallying up nearly two million views across Vimeo and YouTube in two weeks, my favorite thing on the internet today is still “Cymatics,” a music video from Nigel Stanford from his new album Solar Echoes. Stanford put together a series of science experiments that demonstrate how sound can move matter around and combined them into a pretty solid music track and a very awesome video. As explained in the making-of post, Stanford and director Shahir Daud filmed the demonstrations first and then took the sound that made them and created the track with it second — but don’t let that take away from the magic here. The magic is science, and also the magic is a dude wearing a full-body chain mail Faraday suit getting zapped with a Tesla coil while using a kick drum to turn a stream of water into a perfectly formed spiral. Science!”
“BLETCHLEY, England — When “Captain Ridley’s shooting party” gathered here in late August 1938 as weekend guests at Bletchley Park, a Buckinghamshire country house, they were accompanied by one of the finest chefs from the Savoy hotel. But the hunting that took place wasn’t the usual. The visitors were members of MI6 and the Government Code and Cypher School in Britain, scouting out a retreat for code breakers who would be needed in the coming war.”
“By now, of course, the estate’s cover is fully blown. This mock-Tudor, mock-Gothic, red brick mansion, framed by aged trees and with a picturesque pond, has become familiar from documentaries and television broadcasts and will soon become even more well known from the new film “The Imitation Game.” ”
“If you have been wanting to buy a particular app, but waiting for the price to drop, this might be the best weekend of the entire year. Many apps are on sale from today through Cyber Monday. You might even find some apps you weren’t aware of. Here’s a number of the more notable apps that are on sale, most of them at least 50% off, but there are tons more. You can always search “Black Friday Sale” or “Cyber Monday Sale” in the Google Play Store to find even more apps. Hit the break for our roundup.”
“When a dog hears his owner – whether it’s an affectionate call, a curt command, or an unpleasant reprimand – do the words merely go in one fuzzy ear and out the other, or are they really listening? And if they are listening, how much do they comprehend?”
“According to research published Wednesday in the journal Current Biology, the brain of man’s best friend is specialized to process multiple components of human speech, with some regions specializing in the verbal contents of speech and others specializing in the familiarity with and emotional tone of the speaker.”
