Updates 11 October

Surfing the standing wave [Vimeo 3:30 mins]  No more bobbing about in the sea waiting for the wave and you don't need to shell out folding money to surf.  Now you just need a wet-suit including neoprene gloves (because its cold out there ["groundhog"]) and surfboard and a river in spate conveniently close to a highway. While you're out off your sofa and allll wet you might go down Puerto Rico way for an arty Surfers vs Technologia film [Vimeo 6.25 mins] those dudes are carving some gnarly tubes.

Remember Primo Levi? And his brilliant book of sciency stories The Periodic Table? Well his Complete Works is out for a hefty price £56 / $63 until you reflect that it is >!3000!< pages in three volumes with a slip-case.  Clearly the Christmas present for those who spell Oświęcim with the correct accents. The review / retrospective in the New Yorker is also worth reading. It reflects sensibly and sensitively on his accidental/suicidal end. While you're about it, read a short story Quaestio de Centauris by the great man?

Remember Hans Rosling talking about life expectancy and coffee-cups?  This tells you to turn up on our mountainside for my burial shortly after 23rd July 2038. Obviously your mileage may vary but you're unlikely to do longer than me with a Granny who hung on till she was 108 and a Gt-granny on the other side who died at 103. And on the subject of death, I don't think I've posted about Years of Life Lost, YOLLs [3.15 min vox video] a sort of counter-QALY.

Alison Gopnik? What about a predictably radical critique of school-based education which Gonnik finds to be neither sufficiently persistent about practice-makes-perfect learning nor at all interested in real enquiry-based learning.

Remember the Royal Society and their recent desire to make videos about its connexions more widely available? I've just heard about a RS channel called Objectivity in which Numberphile filmista Brady Haran gets access to the Royal Society Library card catalogue. It's a channel so you'll have enough to keep you going while sporty people are watching Ireland and France play rugby this-arvo. What about hefting the standard yard and the standard pound? Super historic cool.

While I have your attention, I'll mention that, since 1988, 11 October has been designated National Coming Out Day. I guess that makes it LGBTQNCOD. Which is a bit of a mouthful. The Irish Examiner decided to interview Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan whose Canadian marriage was unrecognised by the Irish Supreme Court in 2006. And HuffPo has some more nuanced advice on the pro & con of out.