Pick of the Week Last Few Weeks

“The [Wankband] creates power when moved in an up and down motion, with a kinetic charger inside storing the clean (albeit slightly dirty) energy generated. It can then be connected via USB to smartphones, tablets and computers, powering them with 100% sustainable energy.”

“Many people, particularly politicians, fall into the trap of seeing sex work as inherently bad without actually asking sex workers what their experiences are and what challenges they face. This research challenges this perspective.”

“… ancient languages didn’t have a word for blue—not Greek, not Chinese, not Japanese, not Hebrew. And without a word for the color, there’s evidence that they may not have seen it at all.”

“Two Spanish con-men’s attempted sale of a forged Goya painting backfired spectacularly after their client, supposedly a rich Arab sheik, paid them in counterfeit bank-notes worth 1.7 million Swiss Francs. The middleman who had brokered the deal then vanished with the only genuine money in the affair—300,000 borrowed euros—and, finally, the two con-men themselves were arrested.”

“Nimoy himself was the opposite of the unfeeling, imperturbable Spock. Humorous and emotional, he wrote romantic poetry, and published several volumes of verse, including Will I Think of You? (1974), We Are All Children Searching for Love (1977) and Warmed by Love (1983). He was also an enthusiastic participant in 1960s ‘love-ins’, gatherings where hippies came to relax and, more often than not, make love. ‘It wasn’t quite group sex,’ he recalled, ‘but there was a lot of embracing.’”

“The Star Trek actor’s final tweet before he was hospitalised earlier this week has gone viral with hundreds of thousands of shares on the social networking site. He wrote ‘A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP’”

“Other childhood heroes made me want to be stronger, faster, or have superpowers. Spock made me want a bigger brain. He made me feel like it was good to be the weird kid.”

“Nimoy felt that such a brutal action would be undignified for a Vulcan. He therefore invented an alternative by suggesting that Vulcans have the ability to project telepathic energy from their fingertips (à la ‘the Vulcan Mind Meld’), which if applied to a nerve cluster correctly could render a human unconscious. Allegedly, the director of the episode didn’t understand the idea when Nimoy explained it to him, but William Shatner understood immediately and reacted in exactly the way Nimoy had hoped when they executed the move during filming, explaining that it would be similar to ‘feeling an electrical charge.’ From then on, the pinch was referred to as the FSNP, for Famous Spock Nerve Pinch in Star Trek’s scripts.” (Wikipedia)

“The world has lost one of its brightest, sharpest minds. In over 70 books, Terry enriched the planet like few before him. As all who read him know, Discworld was his vehicle to satirise this world; he did so brilliantly, with great skill, enormous humour and constant invention. Terry faced his Alzheimer’s disease (an ‘embuggerance’, as he called it) publicly and bravely. Over the last few years, it was his writing that sustained him. His legacy will endure for decades to come.”—Larry Finlay, managing director at Transworld Publishers

“He wrote more than 70 books, the last of which he completed last summer, but in recent years he was equally well known as a supporter of assisted suicide. He made a documentary on the subject for the BBC. ”

“Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.”

“Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes, Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn’t take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.”