Fascinating, The Oxford Project. Residents of a small US town in Iowa are photographed 21 years apart. In the spring and summer of 1984, Peter Feldstein used a red marker to make a sign announcing that he wanted to take free portraits of everyone in Oxford, Iowa (pop. 673). Twenty-one years later, Peter set up his camera again. Some of the original residents had died and some had moved ... Read full entry

Now here's one exhibition I would love to see, Byzantium 330-1453, which is on at London's Royal Academy of Arts until 22 March 2009, and features artifacts from across the Byzantine Empire's 1100 year span. In this era of shifting global power, it is impossible to visit "Byzantium 330-1453" and not ponder how empires spread and recede across centuries like the tide, leaving future generations to pick ... Read full entry

If plotting computer game strategy was considered a science, would more people take more interest in high-school science? One of the reasons kids get bored by science is that too many teachers present it as a fusty collection of facts for memorization. This is precisely wrong. Science isn't about facts. It's about the quest for facts - the scientific method, the process by which we hash through confusing thickets ... Read full entry

The incredible story of Hong Kong's Kowloon Walled City Park, and its history as a stateless outlaw enclave. Sunlight comes only rarely, with a sliver slicing down between the ramshackle towers. The light here is fluorescent and the people packed sardine tight amongst twisting corridors. Some of the lower levels are widely considered uninhabitable due to trash. Up the street (if it can be called that) there's a drug ... Read full entry

Wanderlust: explore some the great journeys of exploration including Marco Polo, Ferdinand Magellan, David Livingstone, Amelia Earhart, and the Orient Express.

Including, but not limited to, the creation of the Domain Name System on 23 June 1983. In perhaps, one of the greatest additions to IP addresses, DNS was created. Could you image typing 216.75.60.116 just to get to a website? One thing for sure is that the internet would not be what is today without DNS. No one would be fighting over three letter domains, or two letter for ... Read full entry

Awesome time line graphic from Good Magazine, with key dates in the history of our use of oil and petrol, going back to 10,000 BC. Brings to mind, for some reason, Daniel Plainview's (Daniel Day-Lewis) line from There Will Be Blood: "Drainage! Drainage, Eli, you boy. Drained dry. I'm so sorry. Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There ... Read full entry

Tomorrow, Saturday 7 June, marks the first anniversary of disassociated's migration to the WordPress CMS. It's been quite a ride, which incredibly, almost saw disassociated behave like a blog (though I still prefer to call it a website) for a time. Three posts made (thanks Kurt :) the front page of Digg (subsequently melting down disassociated's erstwhile web server), there was a ... Read full entry

While browsing Vanity Fair earlier, I spotted this fascinating article on the history of the web, from the time of its inception in 1958, interestingly part of the US response to the launch of Soviet satellite Sputnik, right on through to user-generated content and social networks. Needless to say a lot ground is covered, taking in the browser wars, the advent of Google, and the rise of the iPod ... Read full entry