An eclectic assortment of stuff: food, archaeology, fun, books, history, geekery, etc.
Posted in technology on Dec 29th, 2009
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.
Posted in environment, food, history & archaeology on Dec 18th, 2009
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 [...]
Posted in Canada, history & archaeology on Dec 18th, 2009
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 [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Dec 18th, 2009
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 [...]
Posted in books & lit on Dec 17th, 2009
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 [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Dec 14th, 2009
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 [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Dec 10th, 2009
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 [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc, language on Dec 8th, 2009
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 [...]
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 [...]
Posted in history & archaeology on Dec 4th, 2009
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]
Posted in religion on Dec 2nd, 2009
What would you do if you were a Jewish rabbi threatened by the KKK? Ponder that for a moment, then go read about what Rabbi Michael Weisser did.
Posted in assorted on Dec 1st, 2009
From The Guardian: Indian villager takes 14 years to dig tunnel through mountain.
An Indian villager burrowed for 14 years with a hammer and chisel to cut a tunnel through a mountain so that his neighbours could reach nearby fields and he could park his truck outside his home.
Ramchandra Das, 53, who lives in eastern Bihar [...]