That's Interesting
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Lowy Institute Live: In Conversation with General James Mattis and Sir Angus Houston
18th October, 2020On Thursday 15 October 2020, the Lowy Institute’s Executive Director Dr Michael Fullilove hosted an in conversation event via live video stream with General James Mattis, one of America’s most experienced and influential military leaders. They were joined by Sir Angus Houston, former Chief of the Australian Defence Force.
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Taxicab Geometry as a Vehicle for the Journey Toward Enlightenment
15th September, 2020In casual conversation, many (perhaps most) individuals are impatient with what they regard as slight distinctions of meaning. This impatience with fine-grained semantic sensitivity is reflected in the popularity of such pejorative expressions as “splitting hairs” and “just semantics.” The reigning attitude is that individuals who pay attention to apparently small differences in the definitions of words are pedantic and tedious. But slight differences in meaning can be surprisingly meaningful.
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Can Western universities survive without China?
03rd September, 2020Some universities fear they have become too financially dependent on fee-paying Chinese students – and thanks to Covid-19, many of them are staying away this year. Salvatore Babones, an associate professor at the University of Sydney, says Australia is particularly vulnerable to this, while Vivienne Stern of Universities UK says it’s just one of a number of serious concerns for UK and US universities.
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The Strange Costumes of the Plague Doctors Who Treated 17th Century Victims of the Bubonic Plague
11th August, 2020In the 17th and 18th centuries,with the bubonic plague sweeping Europe, plague doctors wandered towns and countryside in a “fanciful-looking costume [that] typically consisted of a head-to-toe leather or wax-canvas garment,” writes the Public Domain Review, “large crystal glasses; and a long snout or bird beak, containing aromatic spices (such as camphor, mint, cloves, and myrrh), dried flowers (such as roses or carnations), or a vinegar sponge.”
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The Symmetry and Chaos of the World’s Megacities
22nd June, 2020Architectural photographer Ryan Koopmans spent the past decade shooting hi-res photographs of the world’s biggest cities. The results are mind-blowing.
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An Illustrated Guide to Mean Things People Say About National Parks
13th March, 2020Artist Amber Share trawls disgruntled reviews on such platforms as Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google, and Facebook to mine for complaints about National Parks in USA.
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The village that undergoes a mass exodus every autumn – Arslanbob
05th December, 2019“Every year during the autumn months, a village in Kyrgyzstan undergoes a mass exodus. Around 3,000 families move into the forest for over two months to undertake the world’s most unique harvest.”
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Life on China’s low-speed trains
05th December, 2019An interesting photo gallery of what life is like on China’s slow trains.
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A Map of How the Word “Tea” Spread Across the World
13th November, 2019A look at the spread of the word for “tea” around the globe.
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Carting Lane Sewer Lamp
08th October, 2019“By the end of the 19th century, London was trying to shed its reputation as a stinky cesspool.”
“Patented by British engineer Joseph Edmund Webb in the 1890s, the so-called “sewer gas destructor lamps” were designed to extract gases from the pipes and burn them off at high heat.”
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