Kickoff For November 27, 2023
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Monday Kickoff, a collection of what I’ve found interesting, informative, and insightful on the web over the last seven days.
Let’s get this Monday started with these links:
The gold jewellery made from old phones, wherein we learn about the Royal Mint’s efforts to recover gold from electronic circuit boards and about efforts to make e-waste recycling the social norm.
Mystery at the Oslo Plaza, wherein reporter Lars Christian Wegner re-examines the case of the 1995 murder in the Norwegian capital to try to finally discover the identity of the victim.
The Berkeley Hotel hostage, wherein we hear the story of how Douglas Adams’ editor literally locked him in a hotel room so the deadline-averse writer would finish the book So Long and Thanks for All the Fish on time.
The big idea: are memories fact or fiction?, wherein Sophie McBain explores the idea that personal memories are closer to fiction than fact, and how our memories morph and warp over the course of our lives.
What would signal life on another planet?, wherein we’re introduced to the ways in which astronomers hope to detect life on alien worlds, and how the James Webb Space Telescope might finally make doing that possible.
Is Homework Good for Kids?, wherein we learn that not only are the benefits of homework questionable but the practice also has clear detriments.
This Study Was Inspired by a “Doctor Who” Episode About Intelligent Pre-Human Reptiles, wherein we learn about the so-called Silurian hypothesis, a thought experiment around how we’d know if an advanced civilization preceded us.
A good conversation relaxes the mind and opens the heart, wherein Paula Marantz Cohen looks at what good conversation is (or, at least, what it can be) and why it’s important for us to regularly engage in it.
The Raw, the Cooked and the Hydrolysed, wherein Fred Warren examines the damage, both to us and the environment, caused by consuming the ultra-processed foods that fill shelves in supermarkets and homes.
And that’s it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.