Art Inspired by the Berlin Wall

This is pretty cool.

Bring out your dead

...because apparently, in France, you can marry them.

Just for Landsman

Enjoy Daniel "Time Goblin Hunter" Landsman's video essay on WWII:

Don't Hassel the Hoff

For all you Hasselhoff lovers out there: how much of a role did he play in the end of the Cold War?

Lessons to be learned from the Hapsburgs

There are many. One of the oft-overlooked ones is: don't marry your cousins. Thanks to Dr. Lavine for the link.






Charles II of Spain

Galileo's Telescope, On Tour

If you happen to be in Philadelphia anytime soon, be sure to check out one of Galileo's handmade telescopes, which is on tour outside Italy for the first time.


ps- that's not just a picture of my nostrils. It's me illegally taking a picture with Galileo's finger, which is in the reliquary on the shelf. Look closely.

Whaaa???!!!

The Roman Catholic Church is offering indulgences again. Yes, those indulgences. "The good news is," says the editor of the Catholic magazine America, "we're not selling them." Sorry, Tetzel.

French Revolutionary Time

A lot of you were having fun with Robespierre's (aka the Time Goblin*) support of "Decimal Time." Thought you'd like to see the conversions:

There are exactly 86,400 standard seconds in a standard day, but in the French decimal time system there are 100,000 decimal seconds in the day, so the decimal second is shorter than its counterpart.

Decimal to Standard:

-One decimal second is 86,400/100,000 = 0.864 standard seconds.
-One decimal minute is 1,440/1,000 = 1.44 standard minutes, or 1 standard minute and 26.4 standard seconds.
-One decimal hour is 24/10 = 2.4 standard hours, or 2 standard hours and 24 standard minutes.

Standard to Decimal:

-One standard second = 1.15740 decimal seconds
-One standard minute = 69.44 decimal seconds (or .69 decimal minutes)
-One standard hour = 4,166.67 decimal seconds (or 41 decimal minutes and 67 decimal seconds)

*All Time Goblins appear courtesy of Daniel Landsman.

Was Napoleon Poisoned?

Maybe so, maybe not. Either way, there was a lot of arsenic in his system...