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. Views expressed in the Wednesday Walk do not necessarily reflect those of anyone but the writer.
- You’ve heard of breakfast for dinner — now try breakfast for fine art.
- Much ballyhoo is made about the way the effects from Jurassic Park still stand up…but most people don’t realize the true potential of putting the dinosaurs from Dinosaurs right in there..
- Independent artists in St. Petersburg, Florida are painting three-buttcheeked butts on buildings all over the city. A three-cheeked ass…that’s what they had in the Total Recall remake instead of the three-breasted lady, right?
- The long, long life of Roman concrete has long been a bit of a mystery. In some cases, it seems to have been due to a reaction between seawater and ingredients in the concrete, allowing it to flex a little rather than shattering.
- Watching a parent slowly die is the most distinctly terrifying thing that’s happened in my life. Going through that experience as a family member or especially as the person dying without insurance is even more hideous. I absolutely think that more people need to be more aware of, think seriously about, and plan for end-of-life care, but no human being deserves to have it rubbed in their face so blatantly and cruelly.
- The Walk has mentioned John Deere’s tractor DRM a couple times; now GM is insisting on similar copyright control over cars.
- Can I get my office desk moved to the quietest place on the planet? Oh, they need that for calibrating electronic equipment, and besides I’d quickly be driven mad by the suddenly-audible sound of blood moving through my veins and my eyes sloshing around in their native goop? Oh. Oh, well then.
- Evolutionary psychology has always seemed a little suspect, not least because it feels a little too easy to jump from learned behavior to evolutionary adaptation.
- This Week in Disaster Preparedness: A well-prepared child is a safe child.
- I used to be a lot more concerned about other people’s grammar than I am these days. (In my younger and more foolish years I spent far too much time arguing in the comments of a Word of the Day blog every time they featured a phrase rather than a word. I know.) This post sums up pretty much how I transitioned out of that mindset.
- Dudes taking up space in office lactation rooms is quintessentially depressing and stereotypical.
- It’s amazing to consider that Uganda, home of the obscene Kill the Gays bill, was driven to that point by an influx of radical Christians from the US.
- This Week in Responsible Gun Owners: Jordan Duncan brings word of a very unfortunate turn of events for Florida Man.
- There’s a lot of wisdom in 17th-century dream interpretation. Have you dreamed of a new girdle recently?
- It might not come as a surprise that you can’t actually use a “get out of jail free card” in real life.
- The Cranberries’ “Zombie” has inspired people affected by sectarian conflict all over the world.
- As part of its paid service, Tinder will show you everyone who swiped right on you. Personally, I’m happy to have gotten out of the dating scene before Tinder’s popularity exploded; the last dating/”dating” app I used seems to have done the job pretty well.
- McMansion Hell, recently featured on the ol’ Walk, was also recently accosted by Zillow and threatened with lawsuits and such for using photos of houses. Thanks to help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Zillow backed down and MMH goes on.
- Skulls found at ancient monuments are always attributed to skull cults and the like as opposed to, say, ancient decorators’ particular tastes in decor.
- This Week in Prestige Podcasts: LeVar Burton started a podcast dedicated to reading short stories; I’d wager that we could all use a little bit of LeVar Burton’s voice in our day.
- Arizona seems to be melting. I mean, that’s how I feel whenever the temperature goes over 70, but it’s fairly alarming for physical objects to do it too, and doubly alarming when you think about how the homeless population must fare in weather like this. (You could say that plastic mailboxes and fences and such are asking for something like this, but highway signs are supposedly made to last.)
- Yoga in a kilt may be one of the best kinds.
- Flyting is a practice, going back to the 5th century CE, of trading insults in verse. It’s recorded in Norse, Celtic, and other cultures’ literature…and is known today as the rap battle.
