Finance and trade under Edward III: The London lay subsidy of 1332 "The reign of Edward the Third is one of the longest in history, and long reigns tend to possess an interest which is even more than proportionate to their length. It is, however, an interest that springs not so much from unity as from contrast and change, the beginning and the end of such a reign lie in different worlds. The three visitations of pestilence in 1349, 1361 and 1366 make this especially true of the reign of Edward III..."

Konane is an ancient Hawaiian board game. (Remove one central piece, take opponent's pieces by jumping orthogonally, last person to move wins.) Game-theoretic analysis.(PDF, PostScript, PowerPoint.) A downloadable version.

A Day in the Life of Africa - 100 photographers, 9 timezones. Flash slideshow. Big, beautiful and absorbing. Mouse to the flanks for more info. on each photo/country.

The original binary code. Morse code beats text messaging in speed test. A 93 year old former telegraph operator smoked a 13 year old text messaging opponent in a speed test. This reminds me of an old math teacher who delighted in beating us in speed tests of slide rule versus a calculator. Email still beats USPS though.

Curious George: iPodder Is there a way to use iPodder (or any other application) to automatically download mp3's, given an RSS feed of an ordinary mp3 blog? iPodder, as far as I can tell, will do this only if the blog entry is a podcast. I'm not sure what that means exactly, and after spending some time with google, I've decided that neither do most people on the internet. I hope some monkey is more enlightened than I.

Hayao Miyazaki's latest film trailer is now available for viewing. The film has been showing for six months in Japan and is finally due to reach American shores in June, and it looks to be worth the wait. Miyazaki came out of retirement yet again to make this one, so whether or not this will be the last is anybody's guess. via Nausicaä.net

Straight Outta Compton Nina Gordon from Veruca Salt covers NWA

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