Sunny Saturday Afternoon Internet

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I post a lot of videos and links onto my facebook page. I don't really know how many people watch or follow those links but I just do it anyway. I post stuff partly so that I can remember the things I find and go back to them one day. It's like fancy bookmarking. I've figured maybe I could collect everything here as well for convenience, and maybe put down some thoughts while I'm at it. Maybe I'll make this a weekly thing!

  • Here is a fantastic link about direct observation of evolving species. Several generations of colonies of bacteria were growth in a 20 year ongoing experiment, observing how bacteria with any useful mutations win out against the others. These researchers found that after about 30,000 generations the bacteria evolved to eat an entirely new sort of food! As usual, there's a bit of technical debate about what the observations mean but I can't say I understand it. I also actually always wondered if this was a study that people did before learning about this one!
  • This is a YouTube video where an historian plays/talks over Shogun 2: Total War and shares their thoughts. It's actually a pretty fun to hear the speculation about choices of mechanics that might have been informed by historical considerations. It's also a good light way to learn more about the time period. I didn't get into Shogun so much myself and I'm pretty sure that's because I there's no amazing game manual full of historical nooks and crannies, but that's something for another post.
  • Here are this year's Wellcome Trust image awards. I adore the 3rd and 4rd images just because I'm pretty interested in patterns and symmetry at the moment (I need to pick up this book at some point when I am more on top of my finances..). That honeycomb structure with all its complexities is really beautiful in #3.
  • The newest Radiolab podcast. These guys are incredible. I love the density of information in their podcasts but also the music they play and their dramatics. This podcast especially gave me the chills when I listened to it. Funnily enough, phase transitions (the thing they are describing), fluctuations, and critical phenomenon are something I am reading about at the moment. They make it sound a million trillion trillion trillion times more interesting though. Do listen to this.

OK! Hopefully those are pretty interesting things to check out! Ciao 

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