Mewes News #7: News from the Mewes Studio

London’s Big Ben to be renamed Elizabeth Tower (Toronto Sun) 

(It’s one of the most famous names in the world, up there with the Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty - but now London’s Big Ben clock tower is to be renamed Elizabeth Tower to mark the queen’s 60th year on the British throne. The announcement on Tuesday followed four days of celebrations earlier this month to mark 86-year-old Queen’s Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.)

Apes, monkeys are more social, smarter than previously thought (Baxter Bulletin) 

(The more we study animals, the less special we seem. Baboons can distinguish between written words and gibberish. Monkeys seem to be able to do multiplication. They plan. They make war and peace. They show empathy. They share. “It’s not a question of whether they think — it’s how they think,” said Duke University scientist Brian Hare. Now scientists wonder whether apes are capable of thinking about what other apes are thinking.)

Bullied grandma in N.Y. bus video stunned by generosity (CBC) 

(A Toronto man's online fundraising campaign for a 68-year-old upstate New York grandmother is nearing $450,000, after a video showing the woman being bullied to tears by children on a school bus went viral. The victim of the deluge of taunts, insults, slurs and threats of violence was Karen Klein, a school bus monitor in the Rochester, N.Y., suburb of Greece.)

This Is What iOS 6′s Passbook Will Look Like in Action (Gizmodo) 

(The next great iPhone software is still in beta right now, but we’re already excited about digitising some of the crap in our wallets via Passbook — and for frequent travelers, it’ll be a godsend. Check out the future: The video experiment above comes from PassK.it, a company that hopes to make money helping other companies create cards for your iPhone wallet — gift vouchers, airline passes, loyalty cards, sandwich of the month clubs, etc. Passkit’s lead developer (and his adorable daughter) gave the system a spin by replicating boarding passes for Thai Airways in the hopes that no old fashioned paper documentation would be needed to fly.)

Apple retina MacBook Pro: review (Guardian) 

(I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro with a "retina" display, and it's breaking my heart. Having used it as my main machine for the past fortnight, in a few hours' time I'll have to wipe the hard drive, find the cables, and send it back to Apple. The world is going to go fuzzy again. Is this what it's like for people who wear glasses when they lose them?)