Tag Archives: lists

Highlights from the Royal Society’s archive

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The Royal Society has recently made available 60,000 historical scientific papers from the past 350 years, sorted by date to 1887 here and thereafter divided into A (mathematics, physics, engineering) and B (biological and life sciences). If those pages are a little daunting, you can digest it all as a historical timeline here. Unfortunately I don’t have about five consecutive years to sit and read everything and the STEM papers definitely sail about six feet over my head, but I’ve spent a few hours reading through the scans of some of the older contributions. There’s a gruesome fascination in reading about experiments from the 1600s: descriptions of deformed animals, accounts of experimental blood transfusions in sheep and a rather useful paragraph on how to kill a rattlesnake.

Anyway, grotesque science aside I found some real treasures in the archives, and there are probably dozens more I skimmed over. Here are the highlights of my little adventure into historical science:

Dr. Harvey, “An Extract of the Anatomical Account, Written and Left by the Famous Dr. Harvey, Concerning Thomas Parre, Who Died in London at the Age of 152 Years and 9 Moneths“, 1668.

“An Extract of a Letter from a Learned French Gentleman, Concerning a Way of Making Sea-Water Sweet“, 1670.

Rob. Gourdon, “A Receipt to Cure Mad Dogs, or Men or Beasts Bitten by Mad Dogs“, 1686.

“Of the Posture-Master“, 1698.

J. Breintal, “A Letter from Mr. J. Breintal to Mr. Peter Collinson, F. R. S. Containing an Account of What He Felt after Being Bit by a Rattle-Snake“, 1746.

Peter Camper, “Account of the Organs of Speech of the Orang Outang“, 1779.

Also in the archives are Michael Faraday’s “Experimental Researches in Electricity” (which start in 1832 and are published in almost every edition until around 1839) and early work by  Charles Darwin.

See anything else interesting? Tell me in the comments!

Audiosurfin’

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I’ve been playing Audiosurf practically every day lately. Steam tells me I’ve racked up 31 hours since I bought the game a few weeks back, a fact both terrifying and utterly predictable to anyone who’s played it. I don’t want to write too much about the game itself (Brendan Keogh has already summed it up perfectly at Gameranx), but if you haven’t played it yet, try. It’s a cross between a puzzle and a futuristic driving game and best of all, the soundtrack is whatever you want.

After a week or so of playing favourite songs and albums, I burrowed into my music folder and picked out some songs I hadn’t yet listened to. Some were album filler, some had been languishing on my hard drive for up to a decade, a few were frankly embarrassing to own up to. Still, Audiosurfing them injected them with some fresh interest, forcing me to concentrate my attention on the unique shapes and textures of every track.

Better still, I started finding playlists by other people to explore. Brendan’s is featured in his Gameranx article and is also available in mp3 form here, while Mattie Brice has delivered the goods with her playlist “Meet Me At the Rendezvous”. So much goodness! In the spirit of sharing, here’s mine. All the tracks are linked to YouTube so you can see what you think. Play the mix all at once, or break it into two six-track sides.

1. Rodrigo Y Gabriela, “Hanuman”

2. Novadriver, “Rocket Superstar”

3. Gogol Bordello, “Start Wearing Purple”

4. The Cure, “Jumping Someone Else’s Train”

5. Joy Division, “Transmission”

6. Underworld, “Rez”

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7. Blaqk Audio, “Semiotic Love”

8. The Gossip, “Standing In the Way of Control”

9. The Duke Spirit, “Love Is An Unfamiliar Name”

10. Dinosaur Jr., “What Else Is New”

11. Tom Waits, “Alice”

12. John Murphy, “In the House, In a Heartbeat” [28 Days Later soundtrack]