Turn-of-phrase inflation.

The etymology of “the whole nine yards” is a total mystery. Anybody who tells you that they know its origin is either lying or unknowingly parroting an urban legend. The number of feet of fabric required to make a suit? Number of cubic yards of soil removed to dig a grave? Number of cubic yards …

A big clue has been found in the mystery of the Lost Colony.

You’ll remember the story of the Lost Colony—Sir Walter Raleigh’s settlement in the late 1500s that just disappeared, leaving only the word “Croatoan” carved into the fort’s wall. (They’d arranged the signal of a Maltese cross to be carved into a tree to mean they’d been forcibly removed, and no such carving was found.) But …

The trajectories of life-bearing meteorites from Earth.

Some Japanese researchers did the math on the fate of the billions of tons of rocks and water that were tossed into space when Earth was hit by an asteroid 65M years ago. It turns out that much of that material probably bore life, and it wound up not just on the Moon, but also …

An archive of reports issued to the General Assembly.

The state legislature routinely puts together commissions that conclude by issuing a report about its assigned topic. Dozens of reports have been published this year, on topics as varied as “Management of State-owned Bottomlands on the Seaside of the Eastern Shore” and “Misclassification of Employees as Independent Contractors in Virginia.” Although most of the older …

Possible Neanderthal cave paintings have been discovered.

It’s been an open question whether one of the things separating Neanderthals from us is that we created art, and they did not. Now cave paintings have been found in Spain, and charcoal found by the paintings has been carbon dated to around 43,000 years ago. Neanderthals are thought to have been the sole humanoids …

Links for November 23rd

New York Times: Who’s on the Line? Increasingly, Caller ID Is DupedTelemarketers are faking Caller ID information with apparent impunity, so that people believe that the IRS or the FBI is calling. (Just like spam!) The FTC has just filed their first complaint against a company for doing that. The FCC wouldn't comment as to …

Links for October 24th

Big Think: What’s the Plural of Texas?When Texas joined the union, it was with the condition that they have the ability to form four additional states from their land, allowing a total of five Texases. That's a right that they've never given up, which has resulted in occasional movements in support of Texas divisionism. Kevin …

Links for October 19th

Frontline: The U.S. Immigration Detention BoomThis map of the growth of immigrant detention facilities is a great—and alarming—illustration of the rise of these ever-larger, often private facilities. Wikipedia: Northwest AngleInsufficient understanding of North American geography in the late 1700s resulted in the Treaty of Paris accidentally assigning a notch of land in Canada to the …

Links for October 14th

Science News: Columbus Blamed For Little Ice AgeHere's a fun theory of the origin of the Little Ice Age, lasting from around 1550–1850: that massive losses of New World population, as a result of disease spread by explorers, resulted in reforestation of huge swaths of the Americas, removing billions of tons of CO2 from the …