Congratulations, you've made it through the week!

Have a Happy Thought:     Imagine the rolly-polly-est, happiest bear you can think of. Then go visit https://explore.org/livecams/brown-bears/brown-bear-salmon-cam-brooks-falls ' to watch a live-cam of the bears in Katmai National Park in Alaska.   And if you want, you can vote for the fattest bear of 2023 during Fat Bear week , from October 4-10, where the bears show off how good they’ve been at putting on that salmon (and salmonberry) induced weight over the summer.   In the midst of all the chubbiness, two really fascinating things have come out of this year’s preparation for fat bear week. A lost hiker was rescued thanks to people watching the live-cams The bears’ weight is not monitored by the bears stepping on scales – it’s done from afar by lasers (yes you have to say that in a Dr Evil voice)   But let’s be honest, you’re just here for the pictures. I don’t want to prejudice anyone’s votes for this year, so I’ll jus...

  Have a Happy Thought:   We all know that Ctrl + z is the most important keyboard shortcut. So important, that it would be good to have in real life. (For those that haven't learned this yet - congratulations, your life is now easier! Ctrl + z is "undo". It undoes whatever it is you last did, including accidentally deleting everything you've been working on for the last 3 hours. The one thing it can't 'undo' is if you've closed your document without saving. So you should also become very familiar with Ctrl + s, which will save your document.) (for those that really don't know, if you see commands with the + sign, this means that you press and hold the first key in the sequence, then you press the second, so you end up holding both of them down together. You don’t have to hold them for long - I do my faves like "ctrl + z" within a fraction of a second. )          I have recently learned two other shortcuts that work on Windows comp...

Have a Happy Thought:      This is the 6th (!!) year in a row I get to bring you the highlights of science that makes you laugh, and then makes you think.   We’ve previously talked through scientific studies proving that knives made from frozen (human) faeces do not work , the fact that human saliva is actually a good cleaning agent , and that staring at fluffy ducklings is a great way to study physics .   This year, the ig-Nobel prizes seemed to try to normalise some behaviours that maybe in the past we all thought were just a bit too odd.   Like when geologists lick rocks , they’re doing it for good reason, not just because they’re still that kid eating dirt on the playground.   Or that some people are better than others at speaking backwards, but even those that are really good at speaking backwards do it differently from each other (at a brain-region level… or level noiger-niarb)   We seem to have coined a new term ...

Have a Happy Thought:     Close your eyes for a moment and think about opening an old hard-cover book. Like one from the early 20 th century. Remember how some of these had patterns almost like old wallpaper on the inside front and back cover?   TIL (Today I Learned) that there is a name for this: endpaper. (ok, not exciting, but satisfying).   The Bergen Public Library in Norway has scanned some of these and put them up online for the world’s enjoyment. Here’s a few, you can see the larger collection on the library’s Flickr page .   Let’s start off easy – a plan, relaxing solid. https://www.flickr.com/photos/bergen_public_library/8900331324/in/album-72157633827993925/   Soft shell-patterns can be quite relaxing. https://www.flickr.com/photos/bergen_public_library/9004700129/in/album-72157633827993925/   I find this one less relaxing, but maybe that’s because I read The Yellow Wall-Paper at an impressionable age.. http...

Have a Happy Thought:   Ok maybe more of a useful thought or Public Service Announcement this week. While many of us have a drawer or filing cabinet with old user guides and manuals, you likely have at least one appliance or gadget in your home for which you don’t know where the user manual is.   Never fear, the interwebs have you covered! This archival website has gathered together 3 million user manuals (and counting!) for all sorts of gear, appliances, even crafts! https://archive.org/details/manuals   Maybe you’ve always wondered what the inside of a vending machine is really like:   https://archive.org/details/necta_Smart_service_manual/page/n9/mode/2up   Or maybe you have an old Lego set, but have lost the instructions to put it together? https://archive.org/details/lego-6270-forbidden-island/page/13/mode/2up   Or maybe you’ve just bought a new-to-you camera and need to figure out all of the buttons (and bells and whistles): ...