A glorious smells-like-fall Monday to you, Ladies & Lady-lovers!
Here’s your internet interestingness to start the week with open and fascinated minds 🙂
1) IN INTERNATIONAL INTERESTINGNESS: SCOTLAND MIGHT LEAVE THE UK
Scotland may soon be fully independent – haggis and kilts for everyone! The link above explains what’s going on (note: according the the BBC…) and provides arguments for and against this historic vote.
2) THE GOVERNMENT WANTS YOU TO HELP HARNESS WAVE POWER
Got some innovative ideas and designs for wave power generators? Now’s your chance to change history! NASA and the DOE want to move us towards sustainable technology by cracking the code of wave power. One problem: they’re stuck. Much as the Arab Spring harnessed the power of the public via the internets, so, too is the government seeking new perspective by tapping ideas from any and everyone across the USA. They’ve provided open source software to measure the effectiveness of your designs, so if you’ve got a good idea, submit it! Some lovely open-source do-goodery for the environmental and Ladies everywhere.
3) E-BIKE CONVERSION KIT THAT PROVIDES ASSIST TUNED TO YOUR HEART-RATE (EXPLAINED TO OVERLY-DRAMATIC MUSIC)
Falco already provides some great and durable kits to convert your bike to a pedal-assisted e-bike, but their new design offers off-road capable, heart-rate controlled assist – new technology that sounds incredibly cool! Their kickstarter video explains the technology with the giggle-inducing bonus of background tunes appropriate for the lead-up to battle in LOTR or GOT. Seriously – who picked the music?
4) ADDING BIKE LANES REDUCES TRAFFIC DELAYS
Yep – building safer infrastructure for Ladies & Lady-lovers on two-wheels can actually IMPROVE congested roads, and now there are studies proving it. From the article:
Rather than increase delay for cars, the protected bike lanes on Columbus actually improved travel times in the corridor. According to city figures, the average car took about four-and-a-half minutes to go from 96th to 77th before the bike lanes were installed, and three minutes afterward—a 35 percent decrease in travel time. This was true even as total vehicle volume on the road remained pretty consistent. In simpler terms, everybody wins.
5) DNA TESTING MEANS WE MAY FINALLY KNOW WHO JACK THE RIPPER WAS
It only took 126 years, but huzzah for closure! The info and process appears to be legitimate – testing of a shawl with both the blood of The Ripper’s victim and semen from the attacker – and has led to a 100% mitochondrial DNA match to a known suspect: Aaron Kosminski. I’ll still hold out on official declarations until I see this news re-printed by a source other than The Daily Mail…
6) THE VALUE OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP
C.S. Lewis’s book The Four Loves examines the different intimate bonds we form with one another, including what he considers the “rarest, least jealous, and most profound relation” – friendship. From the book & post:
In a circle of true Friends each man is simply what he is: stands for nothing but himself. No one cares twopence about anyone else’s family, profession, class, income, race, or previous history. Of course you will get to know about most of these in the end. But casually. They will come out bit by bit, to furnish an illustration or an analogy, to serve as pegs for an anecdote; never for their own sake. That is the kingliness of Friendship. We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts. This love (essentially) ignores not only our physical bodies but that whole embodiment which consists of our family, job, past and connections. At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general character; husband or wife, brother or sister, chief, colleague, or subordinate. Not among our Friends. It is an affair of disentangled, or stripped, minds. Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.
Hence (if you will not misunderstand me) the exquisite arbitrariness and irresponsibility of this love. I have no duty to be anyone’s Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which gave value to survival.
Have a wondrous week, and as always, remember to enjoy the ride, Ladies 🙂
XOXO