Kickoff For October 14, 2019
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.
Greetings from Raleigh, NC. I’m at the 2019 edition of a conference called All Things Open. As you read this, I’ll be experiencing all manners of open source goodness in the forms of talks and demos. So, what are you doing this morning?
Let’s get this Monday started with these links:
Science
The Aesthetic Beauty of Math, wherein Karen Olssen ponders how mathematics, when done well, is a form of art to the right set of eyes and the right kind of mind.
Perhaps the best dinosaur fossil ever discovered. So why has hardly anyone seen it?, wherein we learn about an amazing find of dinosaur remains on a ranch in Montana, and about both the interest it sparked among paleontologist and the legal battles the discovery of those remains ignited.
How Space Technology is Revolutionizing Archaeology, wherein we’re introduced to astroarchaelogy and learn about its potential in helping us bring the answers to life, on Earth, looking down from outer space.
Travel
The Best Way to Tour a City Is Through Its Grocery Store, wherein we learn the joys of exploring foreign lands by popping into their grocery stores and discovering more than local foods, and the joys of doing that in our own countries.
The Invisible City Beneath Paris, wherein Robert Macfarlane introduces us to the world of urban explorers by taking us through his sometimes scary and claustrophobic journey below the streets of The City of Light.
The liberating experience of traveling without a smartphone, wherein we get the results of a study that show how travelling without technology can be frustrating and anxiety inducing, but also liberating and something that puts travellers more into the moment.
Odds and Ends
What Happens When Satanists Try to Build a Public Monument?, wherein we learn that in some parts, religious freedom is only free to those who practice the so-called “right” religions.
New Coke Didn’t Fail. It Was Murdered, wherein Tim Murphy chronicles what killed New Coke in 1985, and how that campaign against an update to a popular beverage stemmed from a sense of dispossession and an unwillingness to adapt to change.
Going Down the Pipes, wherein we revist the article that inspired the 1999 movie Pushing Tin, and learn about the sometimes wacky and always high-stress world of air traffic controllers in one of America’s busiest air travel corridors.
And that’s it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.