The City of Hope is a shelter in Dubai for abused women and children of all nationalities – and one of the few shelters in the Middle East. Run by Sharla Musabih, an American married to a UAE national, the safe haven has come under increasing criticism and attack. Sharla sets the record straight.

An ancient theatre filters out low-frequency background noise. The wonderful acoustics for which the ancient Greek theatre of Epidaurus is renowned may come from exploiting complex acoustic physics, new research shows. The theatre, discovered under a layer of earth on the Peloponnese peninsula in 1881 and excavated, has the classic semicircular shape of a Greek amphitheatre, with 34 rows of stone seats (to which the Romans added a further 21). Its acoustics are extraordinary: a performer standing on the open-air stage can be heard in the back rows almost 60 metres away. Architects and archaeologists have long speculated about what makes the sound transmit so well. more inside

Celaphopodfilter: More Giant Killer Squid "On deck, a fisherman lurches forward as his rod dips seaward. Another fisherman is jerked against the rail, then another. It can only be the same bizarre denizen that has been turning up in large numbers throughout Southland waters: Dosidicus gigas, a.k.a. Humboldt, or jumbo, squid. It is a colossal cephalopod that reaches 7 feet long, can weigh more than 100 pounds, and jets through the water at speeds up to 25 mph." LA Times Article, registration required.

Seattle Meetup Anyone here in the Emerald City area want to meet up? more inside

CyberBullied Off Line Kathy Sierra, blogger of Creating Passionate Users, has been harassed and stalked online via posts to her and others' blogs to the point that she is too afraid to leave her house and attend the workshops she normally leads, much less lead her daily life.

Recycled tintype images - strange and lovely rearrangements of bits of very old photos. Seen at Ample Sanity more inside