Finally! Someone figures out how to levitate small animals.
No. Really.
“After the investigators got the ultrasound field going, they used tweezers to carefully place animals between the emitter and reflector. The scientists found they could float ants, beetles, spiders, ladybugs, bees, tadpoles and fish up to a little more than a third of an inch long in midair. When they levitated the fish and tadpole, the researchers added water to the ultrasound field every minute via syringe.”
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I cannot wait until they get to the larger animals.
Is it wrong
…that I almost beat the shit out of a Greenpeace proselytizer this afternoon? Because I don’t think it is.
It wasn’t about Greenpeace; it was about her pushiness. She tried to schmooze me, which got her the look. We all have our own version of the look. When she told me this pitch would only take 30 seconds I hissed “LIES!”
I don’t like being badgered. If I indicate to you politely, which I did initially, that I am really not interested, please take me at my word. Don’t keep talking to me; don’t keep harassing me; don’t offer to cross the street with me to continue our discussion. Don’t force me to be rude in order to get rid of you.
I imagined bludgeoning her in the crosswalk with the 12-pack of ginger ale I was carrying … or maybe pummeling her with my purse … or, perhaps, using her own sticker-covered binder to render her unconscious.
Yesssssssss. The binder. That’s what I should have done.
Antikythera Mechanism
“Using advanced imaging techniques, an Anglo-Greek team probed the remaining fragments of the complex geared device. The results, published in the journal Nature, show it could have been used to predict solar and lunar eclipses. The elaborate arrangement of bronze gears may also have displayed planetary information.”
Ah, interesting. They’re been speculating wildly about this thing for a good century now. But…
“…not all experts agree with the team’s interpretation of the mechanism.”
As they only have a portion of the mechanism, it has been assembled any number of ways to display all sort of data. It is a bit like this.
Still, there is no denying that it is “technically more complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterwards.”
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What’s going on here?
While looking through the Needless Markup Neiman Marcus catalog today, I spotted this perfume bottle. There’s something about it that is just a tiny bit …unnerving:
I can’t quite put my finger on it.
…
I don’t want to put my finger on it frankly.
Somewhere in there, more or less against your will, you would eat a hot dog.
“Furniture behemoth Ikea is to begin trials of an online service in Nottingham this week. If the experiment goes well – and there’s no reason to think it won’t – the service could go nationwide within a year. This is the beginning of the end of what has become known as the Ikea Experience, a form of legalised, pay-as-you-go looting which occasionally strays into actual rioting. What will the nation do with its Saturdays when they’ve no need of this exquisite retail torture?”
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This only applies to the UK thus far but it makes me slightly panicky. I don’t particularly like people or shopping or assembling furniture with a pointless and desperately inadequate bit of metal allen wrench but I kind of think I need the exquisite retail torture experience on occasion.
Related: There is no known treatment for IKEA addiction. The best you can do is learn to survive.
The ennobling nature of knowledge
“Missing from the report is a sensitivity to the ennobling nature of knowledge: to the inherent value, with consequences too far-reaching to enumerate, of understanding how the world works. For one thing, it is a remarkable fact that we have come to understand as much as we do about the natural world: the history of the universe and our planet, the forces that make it tick, the stuff we’re made of, the origin of living things, and the machinery of life, including our own mental life.
I believe we have a responsibility to nurture and perpetuate this knowledge for the same reason that we have a responsibility to perpetuate an appreciation of great accomplishments in the arts. A failure to do so would be a display of disrespect for our ancestors and heirs, and a philistine indifference to the magnificent achievements that the human mind is capable of.
Also, the picture of humanity’s place in nature that has emerged from scientific inquiry has profound consequences for people’s understanding of the human condition. The discoveries of science have cascading effects, many unforeseeable, on how we view ourselves and the world in which we live: for example, that our planet is an undistinguished speck in an inconceivably vast cosmos; that all the hope and ingenuity in the world can’t create energy or use it without loss; that our species has existed for a tiny fraction of the history of the earth; that humans are primates; that the mind is the activity of an organ that runs by physiological processes; that there are methods for ascertaining the truth that can force us to conclusions which violate common sense, sometimes radically so at scales very large and very small; that precious and widely held beliefs, when subjected to empirical tests, are often cruelly falsified.
I believe that a person for whom this understanding is not second-nature cannot be said to be educated. And I think that some acknowledgment of the intrinsic value of scientific knowledge should be a goal of the general education requirement and a stated value of a university.”
It should be noted that this opinion piece also expertly addresses faith and reason.
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A … something to uh, somewhere
This and this remind me of an experience I had with a book back in high school.
We had to read two books during each grading period above and beyond the regular reading requirements (this is one of the joys of being labeled “gifted” see) so I read A Passage to India. I read every word of it in order. I didn’t understand it. I was, to put it another way, completely bewildered by the book.
Naturally, when it cam time to have the informal formal discussion with the English teacher, I panicked. I was horrified, certain he’d cane me or something, even though he was not even a little bit like that. I also worried that I might not be so gifted after all.
Having considered all my options, I went with the beseeching honesty approach. I explained my problem, that I had read every word, and that I couldn’t sort it out. He never doubted my honesty or, it seems, my intelligence and, instead, presented me with a book that included a summary of the plot so I would understand what I had read.
It wasn’t until years later that I realized I had tackled an unbelievably dense book that was made even denser by the narrative structure, the central mystery in the book, and the deep and unguided immersion into a foreign culture.
No, I do not plan to try to read the book again.
Not quite so dimwitted after all
“Cetaceans, the group of marine mammals that includes whales and dolphins, have demonstrated remarkable auditory and communicative abilities, as well as complex social behaviors. A new study published online November 27, 2006 in The Anatomical Record, the official journal of the American Association of Anatomists, compared a humpback whale brain with brains from several other cetacean species and found the presence of a certain type of neuron cell that is also found in humans. This suggests that certain cetaceans and hominids may have evolved side by side.”
And this:
“Cetacean and primate brains may be considered as evolutionary alternatives in neurobiological complexity and as such, it would be compelling to investigate how many convergent cognitive and behavioral features result from largely dissimilar neocortical organization between the two orders. They also suggest that the current study provides a framework for further investigations into the brain and behavior of cetaceans, which are naturally elusive, poorly documented and often endangered.”
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Related: Dimwitted.
