In Part 6 of "Books & Brainfood", Marc Salazaar takes his pick of the best, brightest and most quirkily interesting stuff on the web- from gemstone chemistry to the computer industry.
Welcome (back) to Books and Brainfood: this time the links are about Geology, High Tech industries throughout the world and Digging Tunnels right through the world: minecrafters eat-your-hearts(-of-the-sea-) out...
Artistic Brainfood...
These posts usually start with some, "visual inspiration" and this time is no different- just a single image, though- this glorious steampunk train by Ignis Ferroque-
https://boyofbow13.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/passage_by_ignisferroque.jpg
General Brainfood...
Perhaps somewhat more literally this time than usual is this tabloid article on the search for a cure for Alzheimer's disease-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5664591/Daffodils-grown-51-year-old-sheep-farmer-Wales-help-225-000-Alzheimers-patients.html
Scientific Brainfood...
1) First-up, this rather cool webtool asnswers the question "if you dug all the way through the Earth from any location and came out the otherside", where (charred and suffocated) would you come out? Apart from China and South America, which are diametrical opposites (geographically, as well as in most other regards), for most locations a rule-of-thumb is "if you are on land now, you'd come out underwater....and vice versa"). Still rather a fun little gadget, though...
https://www.antipodesmap.com/
2) A bit over a year ago, the Harvard Business Review published a piece by Bhaskar Chakravorti, Ajay Bhalla and Ravi Shankar Chaturvedi that ranked countries by their digital competitiveness. Now, I am not someone to argue that the future is entirely digital and that all that matters is NASDAQ ... or that everyone should learn to "code", (whoever they are and whether or not they have a computer or a local power-grid to sustain it), but a total lack of digital competitiveness, is clearly a bad portent, so it is interesting to see how the digital age is taking shape before our eyes. -
https://hbr.org/2017/07/60-countries-digital-competitiveness-indexed
3) Finally, talking of riches, if you have ever wondered how synthetic rubies are made, look no further, as this little "gem" of an article (groan) explains all-
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Synthetic-Ruby.html
That's all from me...more next time.
-M. Salazaar