25 words that haven't changed since before the Ice Age: http://tinyurl.com/d63kwxl

25 "ultraconserved" words that have persisted across languages and millennia, almost unchanged:

"Thou, I, not, that, we, to give, who, this, what, man/male, ye, old, mother, to hear, hand, fire ,to pull, black, to flow, bark, ashes, to spit, worm."

Story, audio clips, more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/words-that-last/

What is going on up there? (Heavy metal bands per 100,000 population: http://tinyurl.com/79t82mp )

Tip o' the hate to: http://nowiknow.com/

Yes, it's a little silly, but I'm sending sent my name and message to Mars... http://tinyurl.com/cntzgvu

Send your name a message or a poem to Mars this fall. http://tinyurl.com/cntzgvu

NASA Invites Public to Send Names And Messages to Mars: NASA is inviting
members of the public to submit their names and a personal message
online for a DVD to be carried aboard a spacecraft that will study the
Martian upper atmosphere....

Press release: http://tinyurl.com/cntzgvu

Entry form: http://tinyurl.com/d2yq65a

Mission site: http://tinyurl.com/cfzbfxo

Canadian stairwell captured on camera! http://tinyurl.com/ctq3n9p

@TheOnion: Dick Cheney Vice Presidential Library Opens In Pitch-Dark, Sulfurous Underground Cave. http://onion.com/ZWtz6b

http://onion.com/ZWtz6b

Individual atoms, near absolute zero temperature, manipulated to make world's smallest stop-action movie: http://tinyurl.com/bwc8znn

"The star of this movie was ready for its close-up—so ready it was magnified 100 million times. A Boy And His Atom is officially the world's smallest film, created by IBM by manipulating thousands of carbon monoxide molecules into an animated stop-motion short, reports the Telegraph. The film, which features a boy playing with an atom, was shot under a two-ton scanning tunneling microscope at -450 degrees, using an extremely sharp needle to manually move each atom one by one for 250 frames..."

http://tinyurl.com/bwc8znn

Humble beginnings: The world’s first-ever public web page, posted 20 years ago: http://tinyurl.com/24ss9y8

20 years, but it seems a lot longer, considering how far the Web has come.

http://tinyurl.com/24ss9y8

The view from SpaceShipTwo's tail cam as SS2 broke the speed of sound for 1st time today. http://tinyurl.com/bmlljzv

http://tinyurl.com/bmlljzv

SpaceShipTwo lights up its rocket for first time and goes supersonic http://tinyurl.com/cglheyu

http://tinyurl.com/cglheyu

NASA Probe Gets Close-Up Views of Large Hurricane on Saturn http://tinyurl.com/czxcp57

"The world's most innovative personality test" http://www.visualdna.com/ It says I'm a "seeker." Hmmm.

http://www.visualdna.com/

What Happens When Siri And Google Voice Talk To Each Other? http://t.co/vovZ1qOb3Y

http://t.co/vovZ1qOb3Y

Chernobyl 27 years after: (pix) http://tinyurl.com/cbapfoe

http://tinyurl.com/cbapfoe

#BostonMarathon Aftermath: Pix from 11 days after the blasts --- http://tinyurl.com/c7oqron

BostonMarathon Aftermath

I finally completed the task I set out to to on the day of the Marathon --- to do some banking at a branch that happens to be almost precisely at the marathon's finish line.

Boylston Street was closed for a week. (See http://fredlanga.blogspot.com/2013/04/boston-morning-after.html ) It reopened for residents and business owners a few days ago, and is now almost fully open.

This is the site of the first blast. On the surface, it looks almost normal, except for the extra cops still stationed there.



Look a little closer and you can see that the worst damage still is unrepaired.



This is the site of the second blast; the one I was across the street from. (See the series of photos: http://fredlanga.blogspot.com/2013/04/bostonmarathon-pix-series-seconds-after.html )



Note the newly-planted tree. The original tree was damaged in the blast from the backpack bomb placed right next to it. You can see the still-smoking remains of the backpack next to the tree in this photo I took last week:



There's some fresh plywood at that blast site, too.



But life is almost back to normal for those not directly injured by the bombs. And today, the sun was out, the flowers were blooming and the birds were singing. Life goes on.