How to Travel Back in Time to Deliver a Dire Warning to your Former Self (rerun): “

The safety of saccharine: “In the LA Times, Elena Conis has a really interesting story about food safety and saccharine—the artificial sweetener that’s long been suspected of toxicity, despite multiple studies suggesting that it’s safe in the low doses humans actually consume. The piece does a really good job of explaining why it’s so hard to gauge the long-term health impacts of something like saccharine. If you’ve ever wondered how people can have wildly different positions on the safety of a given chemical, this will help make sense of the confusion.

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The underwater sculpture of Jason de Caires Taylor: “

“The Silent Evolution,” by British artist Jason de Caires Taylor, lies between Cancun and Isla Mujeres off the coast of Mexico. Taylor used ‘life casts’ made from materials that encourage coral growth to build the installation on the sea bed, forming a new home for aquatic creatures. — REUTERS/Jorge Silva

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HOWTO grow your own snowflakes: “

Caltech physicist Ken Libbrecht wrote the book on snowflakes. Actually, several of them. The author of the Field Guide to Snwoflakes and The Secret Life of a Snowflake posted a HOWTO guide for growing your own snow crystals. (No, they probably won’t look like the ‘hollow column snowflake’ or ‘triangular crystal snowflake’ above that Libbrecht photographed with a custom snowflake photomicroscope. For more of those incredible natural flakes, see this gallery at New Scientist.) From Libbrecht’s Web site:

The parts list for this experiment is as follows:

>One used 20-oz plastic Coke bottle

>Three large-diameter styrofoam cups (or something similar; see below)

>A small kitchen sponge (1/2 inch thick)

>A short length of nylon fishing line (thinner is better; 1-pound test is good)

>A strong sewing needle

>Four straight pins

>One paper clip

>Some paper towels

‘Grow Your Own Snowflakes‘ (via Science Friday)

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Hunter Stabler, exquisite papercutting artist: “

Papercutting artist Hunter Stabler is an absolute X-Acto master. Above left, ‘Baba Yaga Misquotes the Face to Steeleye Span,’ W24′ x H36,’ Hand Cut Paper. Above right (and detail at left), ‘Magick Kruller Alefbet Lamen of the Golden Dawn,’ W27′ x H35,’ ink and graphite on hand-cut paper and Color-aid mounted on Plexiglass. Hunter Stabler (via Phantasmaphile)

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My Blackberry is not working: “

Video Link. Ronnie Corbett and Harry Enfield star in a sketch from The One Ronnie. (Thanks, Simon!)

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People who touch your junk: “

This helpful Venn diagram was created by Chartporn. [via Laughing Squid.]

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Indecision Points: “

The London Review of Books checks out President G.W. Bush’s memoir, Decision Points:

Occasionally, someone on Team DP will insert a lyrical phrase – the tears on the begrimed faces of the 9/11 relief workers ‘cutting a path through the soot like rivulets through a desert’ – but most of the prose sounds like this:

‘I told Margaret and Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Bolten that I considered this a far-reaching decision. I laid out a process for making it. I would clarify my guiding principles, listen to experts on all sides of the debate, reach a tentative conclusion, and run it past knowledgeable people. After finalising a decision, I would explain it to the American people. Finally, I would set up a process to ensure that my policy was implemented.’

There are nearly 500 pages of this…

A spot of Foucauldian analysis follows of Team DP, that being the authorial voice in both print and presidency: ‘There are no decision points in Decision Points… [instead] a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears.’

‘Damn right,’ I said [LRB via Metafilter]

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The past year’s 12 editions of Vogue covers, overlaid: “

This is the shroud of Vogue, made from the last 12 editions of the magazine, overlaid.

(Via Book of Joe)

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• Fiction – Reality A and Reality B – NYTimes.com
  HARUKI MURAKAMI: “The moment our minds crossed the threshold of the new century, we also crossed the threshold of reality once and for all. We had no choice but to make the crossing, finally, and, as we do so, our stories are being forced to change their structures. The novels and stories we write will surely become increasingly different in character and feel from those that have come before, just as 20th-century fiction is sharply and clearly differentiated from 19th-century fiction.”
  (tags:writing )