Please Help Keep Kuriositas Online

You may or may not know this but Kuriositas is curated by just one person – and that person would be me! There are a number of expenses that the site incurs each month and so, with my cap in my hand, I’m going to beg a favour.

If you enjoy Kuriositas, please consider helping out with the cost of running the site.  As you can guess, it takes a lot of time and effort, too!

Below this post you will see a button which will enable you to make a contribution safely and securely. You can give as little or as much as you like – I’m not going to limit your choices! Anything will be gratefully received and will help to ensure that I can carry on bringing you all the great science, art and interesting things in-between that makes the site what it is.

So, if you read or watch something that you have really enjoyed, please think about sending us a small donation. Thanks!

Best regards

Robert-John

PS: The donation page is set to US dollars as that is where we get most of our traffic from. So, if you are outside the USA please remember to calculate the amount from your currency first!

Look What This University Did for its Online Military Students

Southern New Hampshire University has recently done something very special for some of its students.

If you were lucky enough to have studied education at a higher level then your graduation ceremony probably meant a lot to you.  It was, after all, the culmination of years of hard work and a way of announcing to the world that you had succeeded in gaining a diploma in your subject area despite any difficulties you may have encountered along the way.

Yet for some people, making it to that significant ceremony is not possible as they are doing something even more important. They are serving their country in its armed forces.  For many of the military students studying online courses at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) it meant that attending their graduation ceremony simply wasn’t going to happen.

So, the university did something rather special for them.  SNHU sent representatives around the world to deliver diplomas to members of the US military community who could not attend their graduation – and it was done as a surprise! Those in receipt of the diploma deliveries had no idea this was going to happen.

When you watch the video above you will see just what a joyful occasions this turned out to be for the lucky four who were visited. They included a sailor on active-duty in Singapore.  He had been provided with a military academic adviser while he had been studying, who offered support and understanding (having been in the forces too). Yet he didn’t bet on SNHU paying him a visit with his diploma.

Ranked 12th on Fast Company’s list of The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies (the only university thereon), SMHU also offers traditional college courses for veterans and service personnel.  However, for these online students, at the apex of their studies, this visit must have been a graduation dream which came true.

If you are on Twitter, like this post and want to show your appreciation of  US military personnel, simply tweet with the hashtag #SNHUsalute

Brett Neal Store Launched

Brett Neal, whose brand is epitomized by his highly collectable oil painted and stainless steel 'Beagle in Boots' and 'Luvbuloon' pieces, has taken steps to make his work more accessible by developing an online store; brettnealstore.com.

Brett is a British artist who has been creating a diverse body of work for over 30 years.  Notably his achievements over the years include a host of portraits of the great and good.  Overwhelmingly Brett is known for his love of perfection and simplicity.

Lucy And James

We thought we would give you the heads up about a new online comedy which will premier later in the year, created by Kuriositas reader Dave Thomas.  Dave was made redundant last year and so decided to do something about it for himself – Lucy and James is the result.

In a nutshell it is about the eponymous couple who, unfortunately, find themselves both made redundant at the same time.  What they decide to do about it is what you will see previewed here. It should put a smile on your face and as a teaser for the upcoming series promises a lot.

Anyone who has had the experience of getting the old heave ho from the world of employment recently will know that it can put a lot of strain on a relationship.  When it happens to both partners in a couple, the result can be, well, traumatic – and very funny too (but probably only if you’re in a sitcom!).  

Lucy and James will premiere later in the year – we will tell you when and where as we know.  We do not often feature trailers on Kuriositas, so please don’t overwhelm us with them!  However, this particularly took our fancy! If you would like to find out about more, including how it is being made on a zero budget, click the pic or here.

Squawking About Hawking: Theoretical Physicist Gets Hate 'Mail'

Image Credit Flickr User alex_lee2001

Can you judge a newspaper by the people who write in to its letter pages? Possibly, but what about the ones who make comments underneath the online articles the paper publishes at its site?  The Daily Mail, that famous voice of reason and calm, recently published an article about Stephen Hawking's views on the future of our species.

They spotted his opinion about our inability to get on with each each other and prediliction toward anniilation on the website Big Think.  Hawking reasoned that we had better high tail it off Sol 3 within the next two hundred years or so or face extinction.  In that way, by spreading the gene pool throughout the known Milky Way, then if Earth just happened to go kaput it wouldn't be the worst thing ever as there would be people on other planets who could carry on the species (just wondering, tho, if he has read The Martian Chronicles. Hmmm).

OK, that's the background covered.  So, this being The Daily Mail, one could have expected, one should have expected the response to be as calm and measured as the usual copy to be found within its august pages (online or otherwise).  Yup.  You know what happened.  Here is one reader's response below.

If only Stephen Hawking wasn't crippled up in that wheelchair perhaps he could live a life without the sort of comment above, methinks.  If he was just another astrophysicist (note - he isn't really, he is a theoretical physicist with a sideline in cosmology) then he wouldn't get listened to nearly as much.  I can only wonder how many scientists, astrophysicist or otherwise that -R, CBD in Melbourne is aware of or has listened to lately.  Ho hum.

So, back to the original question - can you judge a newspaper by the comments left under their articles.  In this case, yeah.  As for CBD in Australia, we'll see you On The Beach.

The Owl and the Pussycat - Animated

It is rare that one finds something on the internet that can immediately and unequivocally be described as charming, such is the preponderance of sites featuring naked drunk people or blown up body parts or horrific accidents or silly place names.... OK, rant over.  However, when I came across this lovely animation of The Owl and the Pussycat, possibly Edward Lear's most famous poem, that was the word that came immediately to mind - and I hope you will agree.

The film is the work of the Adam Walker Studio and Adam Walker himself takes the voice credit for the Owl (with the voice for the Pussycat provided by Sarah Mae Brown and the poem narrated by Philip Lowe).  The studio has been operating since 2000 and their aim is to produce visual content that tells a story - which they most certainly have done here.  One of the cooler points of the animation is the little transparent guys running around after each scene in their hurry to get the next one off the ground.  With that sort of team, what can go wrong?

The studio is based in Tasmania, Australia - and their website is well worth a visit to check out their other features and projects.  In the meantime, do enjoy The Owl and the Pussycat. If you would like to check out some background to the project, visit the studio blog...

Exitinct!

Over at the brilliant Darwin Today website they have created a wonderful game to see if you can survive the slings and arrows that being a plant can throw at you.  The game takes no longer than ten minutes (but once we had played it once, we had to play it several times again, believe us!) and is a lot of ever so lightly nerdy fun (which we like).

Your task is to be the plant and to decide what you grow - leaves, roots, flowers and so on.  You are given a six month time scale in order to go from seed to mature plant and the object of the game is to pass on your genes to another generation.  That may sound easy but nature pits you against all sorts of obstacles, not least other plants growing around you determined to get the goodness from the soil and the light from the sun for themselves - to your detriment!

Here at Kurioistas our team of seed makers did not get  very far - in fact we have been pronounced extinct on each and every attempt.  Looks like the gene pool stops here!

This is a simple but thoroughly engaging game - to play it, click here.