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Modelling nuclear decay in atoms may tell us something about dating and relationships. One of the findings: people who date often are beneficial to the dating ecosystem “because they break up weak couples, forcing their victims to find better relationships”.
Scientists who have tried drugs have included Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, and Stephen Jay Gould. Like Sigmund Freud, fictional detective Sherlock Holmes was a fan of cocaine. (via cyc-c)
Carl Zimmer responds to the idea that Charles Darwin’s evolutionary ideas turned him (Darwin) away from religion (as stated in this Slate article).
Thanks to Napoleon Dynamite, ligers have a new-found popularity.
David Galbraith has “a new theory - Unintelligent Design, which is the same as Intelligent Design, except that the creator is either a moron or Satan”. Hee.
A company called Enologix uses spectroscopy and chromotography to predict wine scores with a high level of accuracy. Critic Robert Parker introduced wine scoring (here’s his perfect score list) but some say that his dominance is not such a good thing.
Making sense of the appendix, the one in your body, not the one in books. “Perhaps the appendix lifted the odds that our ancestors could resist childhood diseases and live to childbearing years.”
Suggestions for the name of our solar system’s tenth planet from New Scientist readers. Neither Matt Webb’s suggestion (Daes) nor this suggestion on LJ (America) are on the list.
Newly discovered example of convergent evolution: frogs in Madagascar and South America who independently developed poisonous defense systems.
Why do people laugh? It’s a way for humans to bond, a sign that the danger has passed, or to feel superior to others. New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff is also doing research on humor.
An account of the discovery of Einsteinium and Fermium, elements 99 and 100 on the periodic table. They were generated by the detonation of Mike, the first hydrogen bomb to be tested.
The Red Delicious apple has fallen out of favor. It’s been dumbed down too much for the market. For more on apples, see Michael Pollan’s excellent The Botany of Desire.
Hurricane Ivan generated what is thought to be the tallest wave ever observed. The wave was 91 feet high.
Advice from Dr. Michio Kaku on formulating a proposal for the Unified Field Theory. I can just imagine all the crackpot theories that prompted this list.
When I posted a link to Jared Diamond’s Discover magazine piece on agriculture being “the worst mistake in the history of the world”, two people wrote in suggesting that I read Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael. As I was between books, I did just that. Ishmael, nutshelled:
Ishmael’s paradigm of history is startlingly different from the one wired into our cultural consciousness. For Ishmael, our agricultural revolution was not a technological event but a moral one, a rebellion against an ethical structure inherent in the community of life since its foundation four billion years ago. Having escaped the restraints of this ethical structure, humankind made itself a global tyrant, wielding deadly force over all other species while lacking the wisdom to make its tyranny a beneficial one or even a sustainable one.
That tyranny is now hurtling us toward a planetary disaster of pollution and overpopulation. If we want to avoid that catastrophe, we need to work our way back to some fundamental truths: that we weren’t born a menace to the world and that no irresistible fate compels us to go on being a menace to the world.
It’s a work of philosophy, centering on technology, culture, religion, and ecology. The Platonic-dialogue-with-a-gorilla format seemed forced to me (Quinn wrote the novelized version of this story to win a $500,000 book prize)…I guess I would have preferred the shorter essay version. But Quinn’s main thesis is an interesting one and worth considering.
Las Vegas is in for some water troubles. Surprisingly, it’s residential use that’s the problem, not the showy water displays by the casinos.
The science of Lance Armstrong. Between 1992 and 1999, he increased his muscle efficiency by 8 percent, a gain previously thought to be impossible.
Butterfly team colors may discourage inter-species mating and pave the way for the development of separate species. “This process, called ‘reinforcement’, prevents closely related species from interbreeding thus driving them further apart genetically and promoting speciation.”
Robotics research suggests that Lucy walked upright like humans. Lucy, discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia, is a 3.2 million year old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton.
The importance of narrative in science. “Science and stories are not only compatible, they’re inseparable, as shown by Einstein’s classic 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect”.
Philip Stewart has constructed an alternate version of the periodic table of elements in the form of a “chemical galaxy”. “The intention is not to replace the familiar table, but to complement it and at the same time to stimulate the imagination and to evoke wonder at the order underlying the universe.”
Los Alamos From Below: Reminiscences 1943-1945, by Richard Feynman. Today marks the 60th anniversary of the first atomic bomb test which bomb Feynman helped build.
Molecular gastronomist Ferran Adria of El Bulli has his own Lay’s potato chips in Spain. “Having eaten the entire bag, we can now report that they were noticably better than your average potato chips; the crispiness was just a little grainier than usual, if that makes sense, and the flavor more pleasant.”
Television documentaries are slow, repetetive, and information-poor. The Brian Greene series on string theory had the same problem.
Male and female fire ants maintain their own independent gene pools. “The sperm of the male ant appears to be able to destroy the female DNA within a fertilized egg, giving birth to a male that is a clone of its father. Meanwhile the female queens make clones of themselves to carry on the royal female line.”
How to be more charismatic. “Don’t despair if you haven’t got these qualities because you can learn them. Professor Wiseman estimates charisma is 50% innate and 50% trained.”
Regular readers know that I love me some showering** so this news comes as a bit of a shock:
Taking regular showers could pose a health risk and even result in permanent brain damage, it has been claimed. Scientists believe that breathing in small amounts of manganese dissolved in the water may harm the nervous system. The damage may occur even at levels of the naturally occurring metal normally considered safe, say the US researchers. Although manganese levels in public water supplies are monitored, regulators have not considered the long-term effects of inhaling vaporised manganese while showering, they claim.
Inhalation of vaporised manganese…maybe that’s why I’ve been feeling off my game lately.
** Further reading on kottke.org about showers & showering:
Thinking in the shower
Short pieces on my shower
Improving the shower
40,000 year-old human footprints found in Mexico. Humans are thought to have come to the Americas only 11,000 years ago.
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