At the University College of London, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore made use of MRI to discover why we can’t tickle ourselves. The cerebellum figures out the results of our movements and tells the brain to ignore the self-tickling. Test subjects also used a machine to tickle themselves with a slight delay. That did produce tickling. The Yahoo news article ends with this statement from Blakemore: “So it is possible to tickle yourself, but only by using robots.” Will someone file a patent?

The musical Cats finally ended its eighteen year Broadway run on Sunday. I am wondering what is going to go on next in the Winter Garden Theatre which was drastically altered for the production. They’ve probably made back the alteration costs many times over, with funds left over to put things back for whatever goes on there next. The theatre is owned by The Shubert Organization, a non-profit performing arts foundation. Cats continues to play in London.

The Historic American Engineering Record documents important engineering and industrial sites in the United States. It was formed by the National Park Service, the Library of Congress and the American Society of Civil Engineers. The results of their surveys are archived along with the Historic American Building Survey at the Library of Congress. There is a searchable catalog online. So much history is lost when knowledge dies out along with individuals, and it is almost impossible to know what we important information we are losing each day. Reverse-engineering historical places and equipment before they decay and preserving what knowledge we do have available is important.

It is too easy to get used to lots of bandwidth. In the past week I’ve been hogging up the line watching ads from AdCritic, trying to find the non-raunchy gems at iFilm, watching Space Shuttle Atlantis on Nasa-TV, and downloading software upgrades that never seemed to be worth the time before. It’s amazing what a tiny, little wire can bring you.

(Warning: scatological references ahead.) We’re all used to birds leaving us little presents on our cars. You’ve got to wonder sometimes if they are deliberately aiming. I figure most birds live in trees so maybe they’d rather hit non-plant matter instead of Aunt Tweety’s oak condo units. Yesterday I was in my car, waiting at a stop light. Both the driver and passenger side windows were open. I suddenly heard a loud “splat”. I looked to the right. Somehow, through some freak of physics, a bird had managed to land one inside the passenger window on the arm rest. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I didn’t get a chance to see who the culprit was. But I did start wondering about those poor people who drive convertibles.

I’m intimately acquainted with music as an art form, but I had not heard the term “audio art” until I read this Feed essay by David Grubbs. He visited an audio art exhibition at P.S. 1. Visitors recline on a giant futon and put on headphones to experience works by various “sound artists”. Although I am certain this is not the intent of most artists, recent legal events made me picture a world where certain composers (or, more correctly, record companies), afraid of the free digital proliferation of their works, only allow their music to be heard in protected audio museums. I’ll try to shake that frightening image out of my head.

Bach Digital has images of the original manuscripts of Johann Sebastian Bach and fascinating facts on period instruments and ink corrosion. Unfortunately, the site is designed for a huge browser window and uses the latest bandwidth hogging technologies. Very un-baroque of them. (from Yahoo’s Daily Picks)

My brain has been slowly frying from various job interviews, so I may be terse for a few days.

I decided it was time to revisit Project Gutenberg and see what they’ve been up to. Their noble goal of placing public domain works into “Plain Vanilla ASCII” is progressing well. 2820 eTexts are available online, including my favorite, Jane Eyre.

The Merck Manual is online and searchable. I did not realize that it was a not-for-profit publication. It is the most widely used medical text in the world. When I was a pre-teen I remember looking through my parents’ copy to figure out why everyone kept referring to mononucleosis as “the kissing disease”. Now, I would probably just do a web search.