Look, I just thought you should know. I barely know how to break news like this to you. But this is the kind of earth-shaking development that must be disseminated. Send small children out of the room, pour yourself a bracer, sit down, and know this: A swimmer has been inconvenienced!
It's Monday morning, and I know you're relying on Maggie's Farm to cover the globe like Sherwin Williams to get the stories that really matter. I'm trying to take my stint as the Farm's resident hooligan seriously. I felt an obligation to get up to speed on the most important stories on the planet, and report them here to you. I checked in with MSNBSBBclatcheyrudge, and I was shocked, shocked at what I discovered. I was expecting all sorts of bad things. Things like race riots, trouble in the Balkans, plagues of disease-carrying mosquitoes, fixed elections. I didn't see any of that mentioned, so I guess everything's OK on those fronts. But boy howdy, a swimmer has been inconvenienced.
I mean, when a swimmer can be inconvenienced by some ruffian, some footpad, some cad, some bounder, some slavering miscreant -- certainly the end times must be upon us. I forget which horseman of the apocalypse was sent to inconvenience a swimmer, but he's right up there, I bet.
On to the links.
Saving Canada's only desert
There was a time in the distant past when sane men felt an obligation to irrigate deserts.
How the Hunt Brothers Cornered the Silver Market and Then Lost it All
I'm so old I remember when this affected the price of film. I'm also so old I remember film.
A new type of electrical cell may displace the lithium-ion design
My chemistry education was elemental. and my metallurgy is a bit rusty, but that sounds to my ear like a very splodey combination.
Lawns are a soul-crushing timesuck and most of us would be better off without them
No, they're not, and no, we wouldn't.
Evidence Mounts that Rembrandt Used Optics to Paint Self-Portraits
I heard he cheated and used paint brushes, too.
Street food chef stunned after his hawker stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star
No Hong Kong-style soya sauce chicken noodles for you! Come back thirty days!
Seagate Introduces a 60TB SSD – Is a 3.6PB Storage Pod Next?
For those of you who don't speak (tech) jive, that's a sixty-terabyte flash drive. That's -- a lot.
World's Oldest Gold Object May Have Just Been Unearthed in Bulgaria
Must be some mistake. We all know the oldest gold object in the world is one of Keith Richard's fillings.
World Brain: The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopaedia
So, H.G. Wells invented the Internet in 1937. And then the Morlocks took it over and called it Twitter.
The U-9 and the Realm of the Unexpected
History is a ripping yarn, if you know how.
Well, that's it for today's links. Tune in tomorrow, and I promise I'll find out if any swimmers discover there isn't any toilet paper in their stall, or stub their toe on a coffee table, or are made to wait in line over-long at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, or are forced to fly economy.
Tracked: Aug 15, 13:01