Mark H

"A girl's quest into the depths of Tinder dating. The good, the bad, the pictures of men holding fish." - Mark H

Meanwhile, my wife was working with another woman in her office who recently took a couple of weeks holiday. Prior to the holiday she was supposed to give my wife some instructions on running certain elements of her job for cover but because this woman was taken ill for a fortnight before the holiday this didn't happen. Nevertheless, my wife battled on, made a few mistakes, but generally worked things out and picked up the slack and other workers from other departments who have to liaise with where my wife now works have remarked that things by-and-large are probably working more smoothly now and departmental cooperation has improved. - Mark H

This woman was supposed to return to work from her holiday yesterday but didn't show up and didn't call in. Today they discovered her dead in her home. - Mark H

I feel a little bit guilty that after the initial "damn!" reaction my next thought was "well, that should hopefully free up that budget." I'm a bad person. - Mark H

"In the 1970s arcade games were super. Most kids knew a friend of a friend who owned an actual stand-up video game in a big metal box. Others (let’s call them spoilt cousin Danny) had Intellivision. Others had an Atari, the most fabulous of all the home gaming machines. Children wanted one. But which one would mum and dad buy. Which one would your big brother crave? The game makers knew: the one that would get your laid. Sex, it seems, can sell anything." - Mark H

"The Art & words of Robert Steven Connett, established on the internet 12/12/1994" - Mark H

"Brandon Smith: 'As you (Energy & Environment Cabinet official) sit there in your chair with your data, we sit up here in ours with our data and our constituents and stuff behind us. I don’t want to get into the debate about climate change, but I will simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There are no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.'" - Mark H

"First of all, I did not make up that quote, it’s quite real. Secondly, while the average temperature on Earth is roughly 58 degrees Fahrenheit, the average temperature on Mars is approximately -80 degrees Fahrenheit. In Sen. Smith’s defense, he’s only off by about 138 degrees or so, which happens sometimes." - Mark H

It looks like the Daily Mail may have been trying to set up a group to stir up dissent. Why report the news when you can create it? - Mark H

Ooops. Any comments from the newspapers implied? - Eivind

Not that I've seen. Probably, though, and probably containing swear words. - Mark H

I guess that's three things you can really count on: death, taxes, and the perfidy of the Daily Mail. - Jennifer Dittrich

"My brother Sander and I both share a love for concept cars. Earlier this week he showed me this amazing 1980 Citroën Karin, which I’d never seen before. It’s totally Blade Runner meets French car styling. It would be great if this sort of design style were translated to a furniture collection?" - Mark H

That dashboard is wild. - Anika

I'll wait for the sunroof version - Barışnikov

Those buttons remind me if the function buttons on a Commodore 64. - Eric - Final Countdown

"In 1964, Disney began ‘quietly’ purchasing what would total to 27,000 acres of land in Orlando, Florida. By quietly, I mean Walt used his multiple lesser-known shell companies to buy up the land at very low prices from unknowing landowners that would eventually become part of the Disney prototype district." - Mark H

"Next, he wanted independence; unprecedented quasi-government control over the area. He succeeded and in 1967, convinced the State of Florida Legislature to sign over municipal jurisdiction over the land Disney had acquired, which he named “The Reedy Creek Improvement District”, after a natural waterway that crossed through it. This essentially meant Disney could do almost whatever he wanted on that land without government interference, like oh say, build a nuclear power plant. The idea was actually talked about in planning believe it or not, but instead they decided to go with a more traditional plant that would supplement power from outside the borders." - Mark H

A little bit of history describing how the various standard image aspect ratios came into use and how these have translated to the dimensions of modern sensors on DSLRs. - Mark H

Good video here on History of Aspect Ratio: http://vimeo.com/68830569 - Nils Sandin

"To survive, Life in our Local Group needs to emigrate to the Virgo Super-Cluster. Although our Milky Way is heading towards Virgo at ~200 km/s, cosmic acceleration, from Dark Energy, is presently pushing us away from Virgo at ~1,000 km/s. Thus we need to launch towards Virgo faster than the Dark Energy pushing us away. Yet the reward is 10 trillion trillion years of Habitable planetary environments, which may well be worth intergalactic migration." - Mark H

He is an Electronics Design Engineer at Bangor. No PhD from what I see, but I could be wrong about that. Dabbles in intergalactic space travel theory after work? - Joe

"Brody House is an eclectic boutique hotel located in Budapest, Hungary. It is housed in a building originally built in the nineteenth century, and was transformed to serve its present purpose in 2009." - Mark H

(*) Recipients must be 18 or over. Prize may not be transferred. Monetary value of prize: 0.0000001p. - Mark H

"My Dear Parents, I have been sentenced to death today, September 11 1917. Only myself and another comrade; the others have been let off with 15 years’ imprisonment. You will have heard why this has happened to me. I am a sacrifice of the longing for peace, others are going to follow. I cannot stop it now, it is six o’clock in the morning, I am being taken to Cologne at 6.30, and on Wednesday September 12 at nine o’clock in the morning I am going to be sacrificed to military justice. I would have liked to press your hands once more to say goodbye, but I will do it silently. Console Paula and my little Fritz. I don’t like dying so young, but I will die with a curse on the German militarist state. These are my last words. I hope that some day you and mother will be able to read them. Always Your Son, Albin Köbis" - Mark H

"The day after he wrote this letter, Köbis, a 25-year-old stoker aboard the German Imperial Navy’s battleship SMS Prinzregent Luitpold, and a fellow rebel, Max Reichpietsch, were marched before a 20-man firing-squad of sailors at the Wahr military firing range in Cologne. They were tied to posts, blindfolded and executed, in a brutal climax to a dispute that had been ignited by swedes: the large, yellow-fleshed, bland-tasting root vegetables normally used as pig fodder. Both had been found guilty of “treasonable incitement to rebellion”. But it was the swedes that began it." - Mark H

I want to locate Köbisstrasse the next time I'm in Berlin. - Eivind

rutabagas! interesting. - Meg VMeg

"This week, we take a look at another science-fiction film from the 1970s....The Black Hole, Walt Disney's foray into sci-fi adventure films. It focused on a team of explorers aboard the USS Palomino, who discover the USS Cygnus a long-thought-destroyed spacecraft hovering dangerously close to a black hole (hence the movie's title). Once aboard, they meet a mad doctor and his army of robot servants, and of course therein lies the meat of the story." - Mark H

oh yeah. - Big Joe Silenced

"The old Public library of Cincinnati was the sort of place you only see in a Harry Potter film; colossal cast-iron book alcoves and spiral staircases that went several stories high, checker board marble floors that shone beneath the skylight roof; a magnificent maze of books that is now lost forever." - Mark H

So sad ... stunning building!! - Sepi ⌘ سپی

a friend of mine lived in Cincinnati since his teens and moved away in his mid-20s. according to him, Cincinnati wants to end up like Detroit. - Big Joe Silenced

my grandmother grew up in Cincinnati. I can easily imagine her in this space - maʀtha

In the bleak blocks and grim lives of St Petersburg's suburbs, a young generation of Russian photographers has found its muse. - Mark H

"For 29-year-old Jonny Scaramanga, who attended Victory Christian School in Bath until he was 14, the experience was "horrendous". "At 8:15 I would arrive at my 'office' - a desk 2ft wide, with dividers 18 ins tall, designed to remove 'distractions'," he said. "Every morning we had an opening exercise: reciting pledges of allegiance to Jesus Christ, God and the Bible. Next, we recited that month's scripture passage; we had to memorise around 10-15 Bible-verses each month." He said the school adopted a "fundamentalist attitude" to religion, adding: "If you believed what they believed, you were Christian. If you believed anything else, you were not Christian."" - Mark H

We've had Jonny Scaramanga and James Williams (also mentioned in that article) down as speakers for our monthly skeptics talks in Portsmouth in the last year. - Mark H

I admit the CEE spokesperson managed to annoy me quite a bit with that statement. God must have placed him on this earth to test me. - Eivind

"No more pawing at your computer screen – now you can paw at a piece of paper and come as close to touching Colm Meaney as you probably ever will, with our new Chief O'Brien at Work print!" - Mark H

I love the Chief O'Brien At Work comic strips. - Mark H

"According to the 2010 Census, about 6% of Brazil's population live in favelas or shanty-towns - around 11.25 million people across the country, roughly the population of Portugal. However, there could be even more living in these communities. Rocinha is Brazil's largest favela and unofficial estimates say it has up to 180,000, compared to the census figure of just 70,000. The expansion of the favelas - and their irregular and unregulated nature - means that these areas often lack basic services and public investment. But even among favelas there can be big social contrasts." - Mark H

"Favelas with a privileged location like Rocinha have relatively better standards than other shanty towns further away from jobs and services; and even within Rocinha there are richer and much poorer communities. The poorer areas are usually higher on the hilltop, with many houses only accessible on foot. In Rio's favelas, most homes are made from brick and cement, a majority have running water and about 99% have electricity. Sanitation is often a big problem - in Rocinha sewage flows down a large channel in the middle of houses. Recent reports suggest 65% of favela residents are a part of Brazil's new middle classes. And despite these people's relatively low incomes, many of these communities are a long way from being "slums" as they are often portrayed." - Mark H

Adam Lallana on favela children: "To be around players like us may be a life-changing experience for them." Long form: "I didn't really know what to expect. People said there were 100,000 people living in the favelas. That's a lot of people. But looking at this backdrop, you can see exactly why ... They get on with their lives. It's probably normal for them. To be around players like us may be a life-changing experience for them." http://www.theguardian.com/footbal... - Eivind