Welcome to the Wednesday Walk Around the Web, where we weave & wind through weblinks weekly. Hopefully you will find the links on offer amusing, interesting, or, occasionally, profound. Do you have a link you want to see featured in next week’s Wednesday Walk? Email Glenn!
- Learn your sci-fi etymology. There will be a test later. You’ll never know where, and you’ll never know when. But it’s coming.
- Vacuum tubes may make a surprising comeback.
- The Harappan civilization, which thrived in the Indus River valley for two thousand years, seems to have done so without engaging in wars. Even at the end of their civilization, what archaeologists have discovered doesn’t point to anything more grandiose than gang violence.
- Diamonds, in the sky.
- Professor Steve Wille, dear friend of the Walk and my High Spot life partner, shared the story of a professional runner who competed while eight months pregnant. “I did all the things I normally do. I just happened to be pregnant.” Truly, an inspiration.
- Google Maps has run into trouble with disputed territories before. Now, depending on where you’re viewing the site, Google can show you what you want to see.
- This Week in Real Things in the World: The Met is home to a lyre made out of a human skull and antelope horns, which, sadly, is not currently being displayed. Is there a more metal instrument? I submit that there is not.
- The most definitive way of determining what ancient humans ate is to find some of their feces.
- Facebook is already shady as hell, but it keeps getting shadier.
- Jason Krowe wants you to keep your pants zipped, tightly. And maybe put your kid in a straight jacket? And so does Hulk Hogan??
- This Week in Video Games: imagine the calm, peaceful experience of being a rock.
- The fallout zone around Chernobyl has become a refuge for wildlife, because the radiation is less harmful to the animals than humans are.
- Here, have a gallery of Storm shutting Wolverine down. Use it for whatever purposes seem best.
- This Week in Things Considered Dangerous in History Times: chess.
- There are some updates in the world of suspended animation. Fun Fact: at the beginning of my middle-school health class, the teacher went around the roomand asked everyone what health-related subjects we wanted to talk about. I proposed a course on cryogenic suspension.
- The Red Cross received $300 million in donations following Sandy, but where & how it spent that money is still unclear.
- In our PTB Nation Links of the Week, the Movies of the Generation crew barreled on to 1984 and 1985, including some perennial favorites. And make sure to vote in the World Cup of TV Characters if you haven’t already.
