Uncle Weed's Roundup

An Illustrated Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology

Cycle Chic®

Top 10 Unsolved Mysteries

6. Voynich manuscript [Wikipedia]

The Voynich Manuscript is a medieval document written in an unknown script and in an unknown language. For over one hundred years people have tried to break the code to not avail. The overall impression given by the surviving leaves of the manuscript suggests that it was meant to serve as a pharmacopoeia or to address topics in medieval or early modern medicine. However, the puzzling details of illustrations have fueled many theories about the book’s origins, the contents of its text, and the purpose for which it was intended.

The document contains illustrations that suggest the book is in six parts: Herbal, Astronomical, Biological, Cosmological, Pharmaceutical, and recipes.

Beer Label from Cascade beer

illustratedvancouver:

Cascade Beer - The Beer Without a Peer, from the back of Fruit Magazine (December 1909), seen on archive.org. The name “STAHR” appears in the bottom right hand corner of the image.

Cascade Beer was an early brand of the Vancouver Breweries Ltd, the Reifel family’s brewing empire. If you don’t already know the Reifels, take a look at a few of their contributions to our city: they built the Commodore Block, the Vogue Theatre and the Studio Theatre (the Studio was across the street from the Vogue, which later became the Eve Theatre (1972-78), the Lyric, the Towne Theatre, Tonic, and now Joe’s Apartment); they donated property for the original Vancouver Art Gallery on Georgia Street; they built the “Casa Mia” (recently under contention as the owners want to convert it to a seniors’ hospice) and the “Rio Vista”, two mansions on Southwest Marine Drive; they farmed sugar beets during WWII on Reifel Farms; and as I’ve mentioned before, they donated the land for the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Delta. Oh, and yes, they may have participated in sending alcohol into the US during prohibition. But more about that some other time.

Urbandig: SXSW is for Slackers

urbandig:

It’s time for SXSW again. Drones of poorly shaven “domain experts” looking to fascinate the SXSW international community will be bombarding the downtown streets of Austin from March 8 - 18. Oh the excitement, the memories, the swag!

Urbandig’s core philosophy revolves around being off…

RobQuig: SXSW: 'Crowdsourcing Community Projects Like Tom Sawyer'

robquig:

HootSuite’s Dave Olsen reading from Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer.”

In all the years I’ve gone to Interactive, I’ve never seen someone read out of a 140-year-old classic novel.

Dave Olsen, the vice president for community at HootSuite, read from Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer.”

He read about…

The Legend Of Cliff Young And The Overlooked Ingredient For Success In 2012 | RecessionSolution.com

All of the professional athletes knew something that Cliff didn’t.  They knew that it took about 5 days to finish the race and if you were going to compete, then you had to run 18 hours a day and find some sleep in the remaining 6 hours left each day.

Cliff Young had no idea about this tactic.

In fact, on the morning of the second day everyone was in for a big surprise.  Not only was Cliff still in the race, he had kept jogging all through the night!  People couldn’t believe it.  They asked Cliff what his tactic was for the rest of the race and they couldn’t believe his answer.  He told them calmly that he’d run all the way through to the finish without sleeping!

And guess what?  That’s what he did.  Cliff just kept running.  And the funny thing was that each night he came a little closer to the leading pack.

And as unbelievable as this sounds, on the last night, he had surpassed all the young, world-class, corporate-sponsored athletes.  To the amazement of everyone watching, Cliff was the first competitor to cross the finish line.  If that wasn’t shocking enough he set a new course record!  He cut the record by two days!

Our Campus: Dan Olson—Wandering entrepreneur, ex-Deadhead and EUS president | The Ubyssey

His respite from the academic grind wound up taking him him from pre-med to Deadhead. “For a few years, I travelled and followed the Grateful Dead,” said Olson.

“I lived out of my Volkswagen van most of the time, but there’d always be a pretty bustling parking lot scene. So I could sell grilled cheese sandwiches or beer out of a cooler. You’d actually make enough money that you could buy a ticket and get gas money to the next city.

“Then Jerry Garcia died, so I went and lived in Austria for a couple years,” said Olson. “I was involved in a lot of service projects…Building houses, and things like that.”

Next Olson returned to the United States, and was met with another stroke of luck.

“My brother and some of his friends went to Olympia, Washington and started an internet service provider,” said Olson.

“As part of the dot-com boom, we got bought out by a big [telecommunications] company out of California, so I kind of went into semi-retirement for three or four years with my stock options and severance pay.