Sunday Things - Sunday edition
posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday July 15 2012
Sunday mornings are for reading the Sunday Papers, drinking tea and planning new photographic excursions.




Bonus Weird History corner:
- Quite Likely the Worst Job Ever - 19th century toshers, crawling through the rat-infested sewers of London to pick coins and other valuable items from the raw sewage.
- The Anatomical Machines of Cappella Sansevero - preserved corpses of murdered servants, with arteries, veins and organs 'marbilised' through some strange alchemical process - or something altogether less grisly?
Timelapse-o-Tron™ 9000, part 1a
posted in Photography by Cargo Cult on Tuesday July 10 2012
I'm still writing up parts two (and three) of my how-does-my-intervalometer-work series of articles, but in the meantime have a summery, Space Needle-y, Sunday Seattle sunset sequence that I shot the other day:
Apparently it's good enough to appear on the Cliff Mass Weather Blog - home of gloriously in-depth discussion and analysis of the weird weather we get in the Pacific Northwest.
I'm rather proud of it - and I've still got loads more to upload from Sunday. It was a particularly productive day of photography...



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Sunday Things - miscellaneous edition
posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday July 8 2012
First, we celebrate CERN's discovery of the Higgs boson and their gloriously inappropriate use of Comic Sans! At last, the world of physics has cast aside the dreadfully tedious Computer Modern and replaced it with the idiot's font of choice.



Bonus Horrifying Biology corner
- Symbion pandora - tiny parasite of Norway lobsters' mouthparts with a fantastically complex life-cycle. It even includes a Prometheus larva. Thought the xenomorphs were complicated? Think again! Also, New Scientist has an entire blog of similarly peculiar beasts.
- Facetotecta - crustacean known only by its common larval stage, nobody knows what the adult form is. "In 2008, a juvenile form was produced by treating y-larvae with the hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone, which stimulated ecdysis and the transition to the next life phase. The resulting animal, named the ypsigon, was slug-like, apparently unsegmented, and limbless." Possibly another parasite, similar to...
- Sacculina - a barnacle that foregoes the usual immobile, armoured lifestyle and instead lives as a parasitic castrator of crabs, growing as a tendril-like mass through the host crab's body. Extra: gratuitously high-resolution shots of a related barnacle's protruding gonad - 1, 2, 3 - via LOLRhizocephalans.
Now, has all that biology dislodged this particularly hideous parasite, that of Comic Sans? We can only hope so. ... Wait, we're free! At last! The agony is finally over! Oh crap.
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Antiquated Polish Explorations - Modlin
posted in Photography by Cargo Cult on Tuesday July 3 2012
Finally getting around to uploading photos I took nearly four years ago - here's a wider selection from the Modlin Fortress, a vast 19th century fortress north of Warsaw.
Hopefully coming within another four years - more from Gdańsk!
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Sunday Things - science and engineering edition
posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday July 1 2012
Almost a month of the blog-thing. How's it going? Plenty of people reading, not so many commenting. Like it or not, I'm going to continue! BWUAHAHAHA, etc.




Bonus Soviet Links From Non-Soviet Friends corner:
- More Soyuz survival training - including the triple-barreled Soyuz Space Gun, presumably for fending off Soviet Space-Bears in the wilderness. via isoma
- Underground communications centre - straight out of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and/or my list of holiday destinations. via locworks
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