Instahoglets, the "I'm Sick" Edition

By Steve Hynd

I've got a Summer cold, as has my five year old. So I've been up half the night coughing or trying to keep him happy and I'm in no condition to blog anything serious today. So I thought I'd share some of the more unusual links from my bookmarks with you.

-- There is always The Daily Grail when you need a shot of weird to brighten your day. It's where I started blogging and where our researcher Kat provides one of the daily news roundups. It's everything X-Files from the paranormal to cutting edge science, discussed by amateurs, experts, sceptics and true believers in a spirit of general bonhomie. A great site.

-- Strange Maps is one of the most fascinating blogs going. It's exactly what it says it is - a series of well-written posts featuring unusual maps, like the one showing the ever-evolving line following “the point at which an imaginary, flat, weightless and rigid map of the US would balance perfectly if weights of identical value were placed on it so that each weight represented the location of one person on the date of the census”, or the "best beer map of America".

-- For those who love digital art - especially science fiction, fantasy or horror art - CGTalk's forum galleries are the place to look. Over 2,000 pieces of artwork, many of them simply astoundingly good.

-- Scots Online, Pittin the Mither Tongue oan the Wab. The Scots language is not just a dialect of English, it is a seperate entity related to English in much the same way as Spanish is to Italian. This website provides articles on the Scots language, its evolution into its present form and even an English-Scots dictionary. I've been interested in Scots and the preservation of the language since my high school days over twenty years ago. We think in language and so when we lose a language we lose a way of thinking which is an integral part of a culture.

Comments

[Peter G.]

My sympathies to you and your child. Hope you're both better soon.