Link of the Day

I was looking for some ideas for work stuff and found this.

You might find find something interesting.

https://www.creativebloq.com/tag/art

How I Halloween | #3 - LibravoxGhost Story Collections

Ghost Story Collections

There's nothing like a creepy story on a cool autumn evening. Personally I like to listen while walking. Preferably around dusk and with one ear bud out, so I can also hear the rustle of the leaves as the red and orange drain from the sky and I'm enveloped in . . . I'd like to say darkness, but usually it's the glow of streetlights. At least there's darkness and shadows between the houses and sometime even between the streetlights. It's not that the darkness itself is scary, or that something might jump out of the darkness, the thing about the darkness is that you see less & listen more. The story becomes more absorbing if your not looking at a hundred things all the time. Once you've begun concentrating on the story and are paying less attention to your surroundings, that's when the shadows can start to become just a little bit ominous, adding to the story in a whole new way.
 

For the 3rd post you have a selection of downloads from librivox.org.  As mentioned in the 1st post librivox is a project that provides reading of public domain materials for free. The books are read by volunteers and sometimes several volunteers will contribute part to one book. Due to the variety of readers there can be variety in the finished product. This can range from volume to pronunciation and rhythm. They are all 'up to the task' as they say, but some really do a great job.

One of the things I like is how they create "Collections". Like the 'coffee break collections' that are shorter snippets of stories & poems that (I suppose) are supposed to be long enough (or short enough)  for your coffee break. Another example is the series of ghost story collections we will be looking at today.

Everyone's taste is different but I've made a few suggestions for each collection. I wouldn't say these are the 'best' or even all of my favourites. The suggestions are a product of my strange taste with an allowance for variety. There are tragedies and comedies. There are tales that are creepy and sinister as well ones that are amusing. There's  a tale or two of insanity and a morality play. There is even a few straight forward ghost stories.

The suggestions are there for you to take or leave as you wish. 

There is a link to each of the collections.  You can download a zip with the whole collection or skim through the titles and download the individual stories that catch your eye.


1) Ghost Story Collection 001
Suggestions: Man Size in Marble - The Empty House - Uncle Abrahams Romance

2) Ghost Story Collection 002
Suggestions: The Ebony Frame - A Psychical Prank - The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall

3) Ghost Story Collection 003
Suggestions: An Astral Onion - The Chromatic Ghosts of Thomas -  The withered Arm

4) Ghost Story Collection 004
Suggestions: The 9:30 Up train - Green Tea - The Haunted Orchard - The Signalman

5) Ghost Story Collection 005
Suggestions: The Yellow Wallpaper - The Ring of Thoth - The Phantom Coach

6) Ghost Story Collection 006
Suggestions: Children of the Moon - The Man who was not on the Passenger List - Rattle of Bones

Death of the missing Link

With  the new discovery of Homo naledi a while back, I started to think a bit about human origins.

There used to be an idea of the missing link between humans and ... pre-humans.
Now its' more a case of  'what came when and how did our multiple groups of ancestors  come together to create 'us'. As opposed to the old idea of  one fossil that shows evolution caught in the middle of it's work.  What would that even look like?

There are still new ancestors out there to be found (see above). Some that we aren't even looking for & some that we have genetic evidence for , but do not have confirmed physical remains for.
Like inferring a planet by the dimming &/ wobbling of a star, we can infer a branch on the family tree by having knowledge of predecessors and and antecedents?

If we are still finding preserved remains that we never expected,  how many may still be out there that we simply haven't found yet? 

Families, like the individuals they are made up of, can be messy affairs. They are rarely simple and straight forward, they are rarely one dimensional cliche's and they certainly don't do what you want, when you want.

If our modern day families are messy,& complicated and sometimes unpredictable, why would we expect our ancestors (and our ancestry) to be any different.

Sometimes when looking into your family history,  learning the unexpected can be the best part of genealogy. 'Cool, my great grandmother was native or my great great grandfather was a horse thief'.

The genealogy of our species is likely the same way.  We are made up of this group and have a branch like that, COOL!'

Link of The Day - New pics

I found some Photos from a few years ago I had intended to post  but they never made it anywhere.

So I put them up, there might be some more going up in the next week.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/66888488@N02/