Old Is The New New

Excerpt from Benjamin Nugent’s new book of the same name. If you date a writer/star of The Office are you still really a nerd?

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This article’s almost a parody of popular science journalism (the squirrel Kevin Bacon! the squirrel Facebook!) but how can you not love a study of networking squirrels?

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A hydraulic analog computer built in 1949 (from scrounged Lancaster bomber parts) that represents the British economy using gauges, sluices, colored water, and felt tip pens. (Thanks, Jere!)

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People keep calling him “the real Indiana Jones,” but Rahn sounds more like “the real Belloq” to me.

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I’m psyched for this weekend’s digital humanities conference but feel a bit the phony.

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Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives, online free from the Hoover Institution (who are eager to get the word out, I guess, that the Soviet Union was bad).

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Is this real? Bowie, Vonnegut, Pat Benatar, and Cicely Tyson shilling coffee in 1984? Really? For real? Is it? (Hat tip.)

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Wikipedia on the Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962. (Via the excellent and eclectic Meine Kleine Fabrik.)

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Just a cool little story about electrification from the early days of the USSR.

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You’ve got to admit, that’s a great title for a book about the economics of pirates.

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