Things of Interest: April

lol This was too awesome not to post.

I've come across quite a few really interesting things this month. I hope you enjoy too :)

• This woman makes a fantastic point about how you should stop trying to make your kid's childhood magical. I have to say I 100% agree with her and I love this quote: "When we make life a grand production, our children become audience members and their appetite for entertainment grows. Are we creating a generation of people who cannot find the beauty in the mundane?"
• The world's oldest message in a bottle was found on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Too bad the message can't be made out, but how cool would it be to be that man's relative now?
• This Thai Insurance Commercial restores my faith in what commercials can be. What a great message.
• Keeping with my total obsession with baby names, this article on the rise of boy names ending in -n- is pretty interesting. 
• A Ukrainian photographer has released an awesome photo series called Magical World of Snails. It's so cool and adorable. Definitely check it out.
• Since I'm a complete audio book addict nowadays, I'm constantly looking for new sources (I'm getting a little bored with the local library selection). This lead me to Librivox.org - a public website where people from all over the world read classic books and put the audio up for anyone to use! I will say these are a far cry from the professional quality books I've been listening to, but the amount of books is fantastic. All of the books were published before 1923 (this means they are no longer copyrighted so they are legal to offer like this), and I confess most of them I have never even heard of which I find absolutely fascinating. 
• While searching through the Librivox book selection, I came across this recipe book called Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes by Miss Parloa and Homemade Candy Recipes by Mrs. Janet McKenzie Hill. This is an incredibly old book - published in 1909! - and all of the recipes are the ones used at America's oldest chocolate producer, Walter Baker & Co which was established in Dorchester, Mass in 1780. How cool is that?! Once I found the audio book, I searched for the actual written recipes and found Project Gutenberg has the entire text available for free :) How cool would it be to use some of these recipes!
• Who would have guessed that 3D printing would help you recover from fractures faster? I bet every kid around is going to be thrilled about breaking a bone with one of those on their arms, lol.
• This collection of amazing antique photographs was both funny and educational :)