You Might Like… a Selection of Entertainments on Bangers, Crowds, Twitter, Ice, Engines, Owls and More

This is a post in a series appearing each Friday, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

The Guardian – An A-Z of winter food – Jenny McIvor, Bob Granleese, Matthew Fort, Hannah Booth – Just as it says: Twenty-six suggestions with recipes for the comfort food needed to take us through the coming months of cold, cold, cold. A marked absence of salads, I warn you.

Salon.com – Twitter takes sides on the Internet’s future – Nancy Scola – Everybody’s favourite internet sillyname buys software that can let users make encrypted voice calls. From tweets into full-throated warble—and garbled warble at that?

malcolmgladwellbookgenerator.com/ – The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator – Cory and Brett – Wicked and funny: hit the “Generate New Best Seller” button and see how everyday matters can be inflated to matter. (Under fairly heavy internet pressure, so it may be slow in loading.)

Statistics Canada – Average area covered by total (all) sea ice during summer from 1968 to 2010 for sea ice regions of Arctic Domain – EnviroStats – See how clear the trends are in all of Canada’s arctic regions: down, down, down at something like 7 or 8 percent a decade.

shirky.com – Institutions, Confidence, and the News Crisis – Clay Shirky – He critiques a piece in the Columbia Journalism Review by Dean Starkman that challenges what he calls the “future of news” movement and advocates “rebuilding or shoring up institutions.” Starky argues that it’s well past time for most news institutions to be working on Plan B.

Boing Boing – World’s Smallest V-12 Engine – Cory Doctorow – “In this video, Patelo hand-machines all the parts for ‘the world’s smallest’ V-12 engine, then assembles it and runs it. It’s a remarkable feat of machining and engineering…”

The New Yorker – Crush Point: When large crowds assemble, is there a way to keep them safe? – John Seabrook – The behaviour of crowds has been a subject of inquiry for well over a hundred years now, and still we read of people killed in stampedes of human animals. This article focuses on crowd expert Paul Wertheimer and his role in the Wal-Mart crowd death case.

UC Berkeley School of Information – Too Big to Know: How the New Dimensions of Information Are Transforming Business — and Life – David Weinberger – A lecture by the author and senior researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Center: “In the new knowledge ecology, knowledge takes on the properties of its new medium, the Net. That means knowledge has become huge, it’s connected, and it embraces disagreement and differences. The key is to think about knowledge not as a set of content but as a network: the smartest person in the room is now the room itself. Then the question is, how can you build, maintain, and nurture a smart network?”

Rands in Repose – A Bag of Holding – Michael Lopp – A geek sets out his requirements for the perfect bag and explores some options. The comments join in with some really decent suggestions.

hungoverowls.tumblr.com/ – Hungover Owls – J. Patrick Brown – Yes, well. Silly for sure, but why not. And there is something humanoid about owls—and silly about hangovers, come to think of it.