Things you might not otherwise have known or seen

(1) There's a diplodocus for sale. Apparently, it came to England "by accident".

(2) Driverless cars are basically already here, says an interesting article in the New Yorker.

(3) "a surprisingly large chunk of our male population is now in the position where there is nothing that people can think of for them to do that is useful enough to cover the costs of making sure that they actually do it correctly, and don’t break the stuff and subtract value when they are supposed to be adding to it".That's from here. I would only query "surprisingly".

(4) Maps galore. I liked (or rather, was appalled by) the one showing the highest-paid US public employees.

(5) PMQs as seen by Simon Carr. First question: "The nightmare of my disbelief at the Opposition Leader’s gay-porn male prostitute front bench million pounds for hard working mums and dads against Ed Miliband’s Welfare party on amphetamines?”" Ed Miliband: "“Children’s lives are being destroyed by the Conservative cost of living crisis,” he said. “Heartbreak soldiers pride in British children with a fair wage, without VAT tax evading fraudsters pouring money into the Conservative party because their leader is a LOSER!”"

(6) Zadie Smith has read many books, some with pictures in them, but she's still going to die.

(7) "Herodotus’ famous discussion of the genitals of Indian camels was of course omitted" from an earlier translation of his Histories. But here's a good new one.

(8) You could call this the glass ceiling but why be so negative? Why not call it positive discrimination? There are 27 women and only 4 men. I understand that in order to be fair one's recruitment techniques should be reliable, valid, objective and transparent: I find it hard to criticise these four men on any of those grounds. They certainly don't recruit in their own image either. And yet something tells me that something has gone wrong somewhere ...

(9) You remember those 4 year olds who couldn't wait for the marshmallows? They were just being rational.

(10) PR could save the Conservatives: could this the central plank of the next coalition?

(11) This man, William Weaver, translated The Name of the Rose into English. "Weaver made a fortune from the translation and was able to build an extension to his Tuscan villa from the proceeds (the "Eco chamber" he called it)."