* The Folger Shakespeare Library has an exhibition News Before Newspapers – about the really early days of the press. And if you can’t see the actual thing, there’s a pretty good online exhibition – hat-tip to Wynken de Worde.
* “Third-hand smoke” is dangerous – now I know why I instinctively recoil into the back corner of the lift when the smokers come in from their break. (Well yes, they do smell awful too.)
* But something nicer: traditional, fortified homes in China, made out of a packed mix of sand, earth, mud and pebbles bound together with glutinous rice and brown sugar”, some up to 600 years old, “tulou”, have made the World Heritage List, and if not yet safe are at least in line for preservation.
* An “ingenious new parasite” was found last year. It “makes the abdomens of infected ants swell and turn bright red. Birds mistake the ants for berries, gobble them up and spread the parasite’s eggs in their droppings.” (No it isn’t April 1, I checked – it was published in Systematic parasitology – although I can’t help feeling someone missed a trick there – the journal Nature surely would have loved it.)
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