Mirabilis.ca

Pour me a glass of wine, darling, will you? It’s good for me. And besides, the BBC says that women who drink wine are less likely to gain weight.

It’s a happy news day.

Tags: wine

From The Telegraph: Ostrich egg patterns oldest form of art and communication.

Engraved patterns on the side of ostrich eggs dating back to the Stone Age could be the oldest form of written communication known to man, claims a new study.

The etchings, thought to be 60,000 years old, were used to mark the eggs which had been turned into water flasks by hunter gatherers in Africa.

It was so early it was before humans – or homo sapiens – left Africa to populate the rest of the world.

The four different patterns and markings are repeated and believed to convey ownership or purpose and to differentiate the eggs from each other. [continue, see photo]

From the BBC: Lost Jewish tribe ‘found in Zimbabwe’.

In many ways, the Lemba tribe of Zimbabwe and South Africa are just like their neighbours.

But in other ways their customs are remarkably similar to Jewish ones.

They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.

Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.

It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which confirm their Semitic origin. [continue]

From Science Daily: Water Practically Flies Off ‘Near Perfect’ Hydrophobic Surface That Refuses to Get Wet.

Engineering researchers have crafted a flat surface that refuses to get wet. Water droplets skitter across it like ball bearings tossed on ice.

Cool, hmm? The design is inspired by spiders. Spiders!

Spiders use their water-repelling hairs to stay dry or avoid drowning, with water spiders capturing air bubbles and toting them underwater to breathe. Potential applications for UF’s ultra-water-repellent surfaces are many, Sigmund said. When water scampers off the surface, it picks up and carries dirt with it, in effect making the surface self-cleaning. As such, it is ideal for some food packaging, or windows, or solar cells that must stay clean to gather sunlight, he said. Boat designers might coat hulls with it, making boats faster and more efficient.

Sigmund said he began working on the project about five years ago after picking up on the work of a colleague. Sigmund was experimenting with microscopic fibers when he turned to spiders, noted by biologists for at least a century for their water-repelling hairs. [continue]

From The Independent: The Virgin Queen, the serpent and the doctored portrait.

When this painting of Queen Elizabeth I was last displayed to the country in 1921, curators at the National Portrait Gallery noticed spots of discolouration which cast a spiralling shadow across the Tudor posy the monarch held in her right hand. The gallery put the discrepancy down to wear and tear, and removed the work – created by an unknown artist in the 1580s or early 1590s – from permanent display.

Ironically, it is that very deterioration which has now led specialists to make a startling discovery: the anonymous artist who painted the Virgin Queen had originally depicted her clasping a snake, coiled suggestively around her right hand.

However, the artist appeared to have panicked at the last minute about depicting the Queen holding a serpent – associated with evil and original sin in Christian iconography – and hastily replaced it with an anodyne image of Tudor roses. [continue]

From Scott Adams’ blog at dilbert.com: Crazy or disciplined?

My wife and I often have very different recollections of events. And not just the little details. Sometimes our shared memories don’t even feature the same mammals, themes, or points. The scary part is that we don’t realize these differences until we have some reason to compare memories, which doesn’t come up that often. Every now and then there will some independent way to verify whose memory is accurate, and it is sobering to discover how many of the problems are on my end. A lot of my so-called life is apparently a patchwork of delusions.

Tags: Dilbert, Scott Adams

From the BBC: Lasers lift dirt of ages from artworks.

Physicists have applied the same laser techniques commonly used for tattoo removal to clean several famous works of art, including wall paintings.

Laser cleaning is well established for stone and metal artefacts already.

It has now been successfully applied to the wall paintings of the Sagrestia Vecchia and the Cappella del Manto in Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, Italy. [continue]

From the New York Times: What Could You Live Without?.

Kevin Salwen, a writer and entrepreneur in Atlanta, was driving his 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, back from a sleepover in 2006. While waiting at a traffic light, they saw a black Mercedes coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other.

Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal, Hannah protested. The light changed and they drove on, but Hannah was too young to be reasonable. She pestered her parents about inequity, insisting that she wanted to do something.

What do you want to do? her mom responded. Sell our house?

Warning! Never suggest a grand gesture to an idealistic teenager. Hannah seized upon the idea of selling the luxurious family home and donating half the proceeds to charity, while using the other half to buy a more modest replacement home.

Eventually, that’s what the family did. The project — crazy, impetuous and utterly inspiring — is chronicled in a book by father and daughter scheduled to be published next month: The Power of Half. It’s a book that, frankly, I’d be nervous about leaving around where my own teenage kids might find it. [continue]

From Miller-McCune.com: Triumph of the Cyborg Composer: David Cope’s software creates beautiful, original music. Why are people so angry about that?

From the University of Toronto Magazine: At a Loss for Words.

Agatha Christie, English literature’s Queen of Crime, may have succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease in her later years. It was never diagnosed by doctors, but now two U of T professors say that a trail of evidence left in her published work leads suspiciously in that direction.

One of the most important writers in the mystery genre, Christie wrote some 80 detective novels during her 53-year career. She is, according to Guinness World Records, the bestselling fiction author of all time; only Shakespeare and the Bible have outsold her.

But was something amiss toward the end? Avid Christie fans had the unsettling feeling that there might have been: the plot wasn’t as tight, the mystery not as carefully conceived. In 2004, the English academic Peter Garrard argued that evidence of Iris Murdoch’s Alzheimer’s disease appeared in her written work even before her doctor diagnosed it. So Ian Lancashire, an English professor at the University of Toronto, decided to analyze a selection of Christie’s novels. [continue]

Oh, look what the Guardian has today! Archaeologists pinpoint long-disputed site of Battle of Bosworth.

Archaeologists announced today that they have located not just the site of the Battle of Bosworth, but the spot where – on 22 August 1485 – Richard III became the last English king to die in battle when he was cut down by Tudor swords.

Nearby Henry Tudor was crowned Henry VII, with the crown which had tumbled from the dying Richard’s head.

The crucial evidence, including badges of the supporters of both kings, sword mounts, coins and 28 cannonballs, was found in fields straddling Fen Lane in the Leicestershire parish of Upton, where no historian had looked before. [continue]

There’s something about the visitors’ centre being in the wrong place that really delights me. In other news, I should have become a military historian, because I’d love the sort of job that would let me ride around England in Tudor costume.

From the Telegraph: Chocolate ‘can help prevent stroke’.

A study of nearly 50,000 people found that those eating chocolate were 22 per cent less likely to suffer a stroke than those that didn’t.

And those who did suffer a stroke but had indulged in chocolate were 46 per cent less likely to die as a result. [continue]

This is just the kind of news that makes me happy.

From the Guardian: Founders of British obstetrics ‘were callous murderers’.

They are giants of medicine, pioneers of the care that women receive during childbirth and were the founding fathers of obstetrics. The names of William Hunter and William Smellie still inspire respect among today’s doctors, more than 250 years since they made their contributions to healthcare. Such were the duo’s reputations as outstanding physicians that the clienteles of their private practices included the rich and famous of mid-18th-century London.

But were they also serial killers? New research published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (JRSM) claims that they were. A detailed historical study accuses the doctors of soliciting the killing of dozens of women, many in the latter stages of pregnancy, to dissect their corpses. [continue]

Tags: William Hunter, William Smellie

I’ll tell you what depresses me about blogging (and the internet) these days. It’s the group of people who call themselves social media consultants. They present themselves as technical mavens, able to make a product famous and popular on the internet. They brand themselves nicely, pass around their cutting edge business cards, and say that they are experienced professionals who have access to influential outlets on the web. One such company says that its activities

…build and nurture relationships with online influencers—frequently bloggers, editors, forum moderators and fan site creators—to write about our clients’ products and services. We provide these industry influencers with new, differentiated content to target niche audiences. These online influencers then write about the topic and spread the message to their readers.

Let me translate that into English for you. Clients pay the social media consultant to get the word out on the web about, oh, a movie or some other big-budget thing. The consultant spams me about it, taking care to sound friendly and personable. I’m supposed to publish her drivel on my blog so that she can get paid.

I don’t get paid, and I’m not even supposed to realize that I’m the free part of a commercial transaction. I just get used. And spammed again, and again, and again. My readers get used, too, if I’m stupid enough to take the bait. They’re supposed to be obedient consumers, and toddle off to see the movie, buy the book, or whatever. It’s unconscionable.

I’ve been blogging since 2002, and have had nonsense mail about a lot of crap for years. All kinds of people want me to promote their products on my blog, it seems. So at the top of my contact form, I’ve said things like I will not promote your product or event. Do not send press releases. You’d think that would stop these marketing types, wouldn’t you? But no. Each single one thinks she’s the special exception. Surely this promotion is the one I really do want to receive.

Um, no. After eight years of responding politely to these selfish morons (please take me off this list; please don’t send me any more of this…) I finally snapped at one of them last month. What is so hard to understand about no press releases or promotional email? What is so very hard about that?

I want to blog, and I want to be left in peace to do that without being bothered by social media marketers whose behaviour I despise. I want to hear from real readers about real things, not these social media consultants who want to use me, and my blog, for their own profit.

Hey, social media consultants, social marketing agencies, emerging media marketing services, and whatever the hell else you call yourselves: please take this blog off your list forever. I think you’re worse than spammers, and I hate the duplicity you use to get your clients’ products onto blogs. I will never help you. You will never have results you like as a result of sending me promotional materials.

Dear Mirabilis.ca readers: for many years I’ve enjoyed the comments you’ve sent me through the contact form on this site. I’ve had to take down the contact form for now, though, because I can’t figure out a way to keep social media marketers from mis-using it. It’s either that or give up blogging altogether.

Sigh.

So, yeah. Social media marketers are what depress me about blogging and the internet. They make me feel like giving up altogether.

Tags: scoundrels, search engine marketing, SEO, social media consultant

From the Telegraph: Vatican reveals Secret Archives.

A 13th-century letter from Genghis Khan’s grandson demanding homage from the pope is among a collection of documents from the Vatican’s Secret Archives that has been published for the first time.

The Holy See’s archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years.

High-quality reproductions of 105 documents, 19 of which have never been seen before in public, have now been published in a book. The Vatican Secret Archives features a papal letter to Hitler, an entreaty to Rome written on birch bark by a tribe of North American Indians, and a plea from Mary Queen of Scots. [continue]

This makes me feel like a Luddite. Here I am running around with a plain old digital camera (yeah, yeah, I know Luddites don’t use digital cameras… but still!) and this guy’s taking photos by framing what he wants with his fingers.

I might as well go join the old-order Amish.

Continue Reading »

Tags: Pranav Mistry

From Hurriyet Daily NewsAncient seed sprouts plant from the past.

A 4,000-year-old lentil seed found during an archeological excavation has germinated, exciting scientists as the event might lead to invaluable data for comparisons between the organic and genetically engineered plants of today. It would be the first seed from very old times whose genes were never modified, say the scientists. [continue]

From Canada.com: Soup can yields details on doomed 19th-century Arctic expedition.

Scientists studying a 160-year-old can of soup found in the Canadian Arctic have detected lead levels in its broth and sealant that are off the scale — further evidence, they say, of the lead poisoning believed to have doomed the 19th-century Franklin Expedition during its quest to transit the Northwest Passage.

Researchers from McMaster University in Hamilton and Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum — which had the historic tin of ox-cheek soup in its collection — performed tests on the can and its contents to try to confirm a controversial theory about the ill-fated polar voyage of the British ships Terror and Erebus in the late 1840s. [continue]

From the Guardian: Bones find from abandoned village ’show tough life of medieval women’.

The fearsome northern woman of legend and cliche, broadchested and with a frying pan poised to whack sense into her man, has proved to have genuine historic origins.

Analysis of bones from Britain’s biggest medieval excavation has unearthed a race of real-life Nora Battys, ruling a Yorkshire roost nearly 1,000 years ago.

Skeletons from Wharram Percy, a village on the Yorkshire Wolds abandoned after the 14th century Black Death, have much larger bones than those of contemporaries elsewhere. [continue]

From New Scientist article by Melanie Bayley: Alice’s adventures in algebra: Wonderland solved.

What would Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland be without the Cheshire Cat, the trial, the Duchess’s baby or the Mad Hatter’s tea party? Look at the original story that the author told Alice Liddell and her two sisters one day during a boat trip near Oxford, though, and you’ll find that these famous characters and scenes are missing from the text.

As I embarked on my DPhil investigating Victorian literature, I wanted to know what inspired these later additions. The critical literature focused mainly on Freudian interpretations of the book as a wild descent into the dark world of the subconscious. There was no detailed analysis of the added scenes, but from the mass of literary papers, one stood out: in 1984 Helena Pycior of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee had linked the trial of the Knave of Hearts with a Victorian book on algebra. Given the author’s day job, it was somewhat surprising to find few other reviews of his work from a mathematical perspective. Carroll was a pseudonym: his real name was Charles Dodgson, and he was a mathematician at Christ Church College, Oxford. [continue]

Tags: algebra, Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

From the BBC: Octopus snatches coconut and runs.

Underwater footage reveals that the creatures scoop up halved coconut shells before scampering away with them so they can later use them as shelters.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, the team says it is the first example of tool use in octopuses.

One of the researchers, Dr Julian Finn from Australia’s Museum Victoria, told BBC News: I almost drowned laughing when I saw this the first time. [continue, see video!]

From New Scientist: Ancient Amazon civilisation laid bare by felled forest.

Signs of what could be a previously unknown ancient civilisation are emerging from beneath the felled trees of the Amazon. Some 260 giant avenues, ditches and enclosures have been spotted from the air in a region straddling Brazil’s border with Bolivia.

The traditional view is that before the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th century there were no complex societies in the Amazon basin – in contrast to the Andes further west where the Incas built their cities. Now deforestation, increased air travel and satellite imagery are telling a different story. [continue]

From the New York Times: Boom! Hok! A Monkey Language Is Deciphered.

Krak krak! (Watch out, a leopard!)

Hok hok hok! (Hey, crowned eagle!)

Very good — you have already mastered half the basic vocabulary of the Campbell’s monkey, a fellow primate that lives in the forests of the Tai National Park in Ivory Coast. The adult males have six types of call, each with a specific meaning, but they can string two or more calls together into a message with a different meaning. [continue]

In Montana a Hassidic rabbi helps police speak Hebrew — and it’s all for the benefit of a police dog. From the New York Times:

Miky, pronounced Mikey, is in a Diaspora of his own. He was born in an animal shelter in Holland and shipped as a puppy to Israel, where he was trained by the Israeli Defense Forces to sniff out explosives. Then one day, Miky got a plane ticket to America. Rather than spend the standard $20,000 on a bomb dog, the Helena Police Department had shopped around and discovered that it could import a surplus bomb dog from the Israeli forces for the price of the flight. So Miky came to his new home in Helena, to join the police force.

The problem, the officer explained, was that Miky had been trained entirely in Hebrew. [continue]

From the BBC: Crofter finds a ‘Viking’ anchor on the Isle of Skye.

A crofter has uncovered what is believed to be a Viking anchor while digging a drain on the Isle of Skye.[continue, see photo]