Tools For Learning ⓢ

by Christopher Paul on January 22, 2013

Patrick Rhone has recently decided he wants to focus on writing for his site full time. I’m glad he did because I’ve always enjoyed the his less frequent posts and have been very pleased with the quality even though he writes everyday.

Recently, he listed some of the tools and resources he uses to learn new things. Most of them are pretty standard like the dictionary and Wikipedia. But it’s use of Wikipedia that I liked the most. I’m more of a “did you know” or “on this day in history” kind of guy. But reading a randomly selected article has a nice way to get you to read something you otherwise wouldn’t have clicked on yourself. Even with great curation, not everyone is going to care that today marks the anniversary of the deadliest earthquake ever.

By using the random article link, I learned that Winkles is a town in Germany) that dates back to 1237.

NYPD Releases Crowdsourced Crime Reporting App ⓢ

by Christopher Paul on January 22, 2013

Police in New York are using an iOS app to help tackle an already low crime rate. With this app, people can locate their nearest precinct, read the latest bulletins, and report a crime or suspicious activity.

via Explore

WikiCancel ⓢ

by Christopher Paul on January 22, 2013

Now here is a great use of a Wiki: WikiCancel which offers step by step guides on how to cancel your account on dozens of services.

via Swissmiss

The 20, er, 40 Most Influential Beers of All Time ⓢ

by Christopher Paul on January 19, 2013

Kottke links to two different most influential 20 beers lists. The first one comes from First We Feast and the second is a rebuttal from Martyn Cornell.

It’s hard to argue with Cornell on this. There are great beers on FwF’s list but you have to go further back in time – before the microbrew craze became legal in the US to get a sense of the truly influential brews. Technically, Matryn does agree with a few of FwF’s choices so it’s not exactly 40 but it’s close enough for me.

via Kottke

Utensils Gave Humans Overbites ⓢ

by Christopher Paul on January 17, 2013

The Atlantic profiles Bee Wilson who wrote a book on eating and cooking technolgies. He believes use of utensils gave us overbites:

Until around 250 years ago in the West, archaeological evidence suggests that most human beings had an edge-to-edge bite, similar to apes. In other words, our teeth were aligned liked a guillotine, with the top layer clashing against the bottom layer. Then, quite suddenly, this alignment of the jaw changed: We developed an overbite, which is still normal today. The top layer of teeth fits over the bottom layer like a lid on a box.

This change is far too recent for any evolutionary explanation. Rather, it seems to be a question of usage. An American anthropologist, C. Loring Brace, put forward the thesis that the overbite results from the way we use cutlery, from childhood onwards.

What changed 250 years ago was the adoption of the knife and fork, which meant that we were cutting chewy food into small morsels before eating it. Previously, when eating something chewy such as meat, crusty bread or hard cheese, it would have been clamped between the jaws, then sliced with a knife or ripped with a hand – a style of eating Professor Brace has called “stuff-and-cut.”

The clincher is that the change is seen 900 years earlier in China, the reason being chopsticks.

via Boing Boing

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