The Map of a Woman's Heart

Nineteenth-century ideals of womanhood and beauty expressed as much about women as they did about the society in which they were germinated. At a time of radical sociocultural and economic shifts — rapid urbanization, new modes of transportation and communication, increasing mechanization of industry — the expectations for women’s role in society shifted as well, with an idealized version of what was known as “True Womanhood” underpinning pop culture representations of women in everything from newspaper advice columns to art.

Map of the Open Country of a Woman’s Heart was a map created by D. W. Kellogg circa 1833–1842, in the tradition of these maps of the human condition you might recall, subtitled “Exhibiting its internal communications, and the facilities and dangers to Travellers therein.” Though it mostly depicts Woman as a sentimental, selfish, and superficial being driven by vanity, it places Love at the center of her heart, with Good Sense, Patience, and Prudence at its tip — or bottom, depending on the interpretation.

From the always delightful Maria Popova at BrainPickings

A Rare Albino Humpback Whale

has been spotted near Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

The whale's thought to be a few weeks old and was spotted by a local man.

He said: "I couldn't believe my eyes, and I just grabbed my camera. Then the white calf approached my boat, seeming to want to check us out."

White whales are rare - the reef's rep says there are only 10-15 among the 10,000-15,000 humpback whales living along Australia's east coast.

And it's even rarer for them to be completely white like this one.

From the BBC.

Ancient volcanic eruptions on Mercury would have covered most of the United States

Billions of years ago, Mercury was choked in unimaginable amounts of lava. About six percent of the entire planet was covered in the lava of a single volcanic maelstrom. Not bad considering we weren't even sure Mercury had volcanoes.

Technically speaking, all that lava didn't come from volcanoes, at least not the kind we're familiar with here on Earth. Instead, lava simply started pouring out of cracks in Mercury's surface somewhere between 3.5 and 4 billion years ago. The lava spread out throughout the north polar region, spewing out enough lava to cover 60% of the United States, or enough to bury Texas four miles deep in lava. (And no, that isn't a proposal.) It isn't just surface area we're talking about - the lava was a mile deep in places.

Astronomers have wondered about the presence of volcanic activity on Mercury for decades, but it's only now with the arrival of the MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around the planet that we can know for sure. The evidence for volcanoes on Mercury is subtle at best - there aren't any big mountain-like volcanoes on the planet, and the lava-covered regions don't look all that different from other areas, unlike the significant darker volcano-shaped highlands on the Moon.

Indeed, the massive outpouring of lava created hundreds of square miles of almost completely smooth plains, making it difficult to detect any clear physical features, let alone those that would prove past volcanic activity. To find proof, Brown University researchers had to look 125 miles outside the volcanic zone to find a fissure vent, which is just like the cracks that spewed out lava all those billions of years ago - only this vent isn't buried underneath thousands of feet of preserved lava.

Lead researcher James Head says this is the first confirmed evidence of volcanic activity on Mercury, but this single event was so gigantic that it's pretty much impossible that it was an isolated event. Now the hope is that MESSENGER can find even more evidence of Mercury's newfound chaotic past.

Via i09.com and Science

The Importance of the Oxford Comma

The serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma, and sometimes referred to as the series comma) is the comma used immediately before a coordinating conjunction (usually and or or, and sometimes nor) preceding the final item in a list of three or more items. For example, a list of three countries can be punctuated as either "Portugal, Spain, and France" (with the serial comma) or as "Portugal, Spain and France" (without the serial comma).

Above is one argument why it is an important punctual convention.

World's Shortest "Munchkin Cat"

PEI man has sent nearly 4,000 messages-in a-bottle out to sea over the years; has received 1,000's of letters from around the world

Video at the link. Incredibly touching story.

Tortoise Skeleton

I never really thought about the fact that turtles/tortoises have skeletons. A fascinating construction, really.

M&Ms in Water Drops (totally not photoshopped)

See how he did it?