This is so freakin' cool.

https://giza.mused.org/en/guided/266/inside-the-great-pyramid

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Echo of a Trilobite

This is one of my most prized possessions. It's not the most expensive, but that's different.

I bought this when I was desperately poor. (Again, I guess, qualifiers. I knew I was going to be able to eat. I knew that, if I couldn't support myself, I had a place to go. I'm well aware that other people have endured hardship that makes my "desperation" look like living in my own private mansion. The point, though, is that I was scared.) 

I had just gotten my tax return and, because the business in which I was a partner was constantly hemorrhaging dollars, it was pretty generous. Like a lot of people low on cash, I wanted to enjoy some of this before I squirrelled away the rest. 

This was my indulgence. This thing speaks to me. These creatures used to be everywhere. I mean, I don't even know which species this is, and the trilobites were an entire order. (If you never had to memorize the steps in that classification system, google it. The answer is readily available.) 

. . . I started this the day before the move from Cleveland kicked into rush mode. It's been a few weeks and I've kinda lost the train of thought, so I guess I'm just gonna post what I have and move on.

Stare at the Sun

This is amazing.

Nazi Buddha

Okay, it's not really a Nazi Buddha. I just thought that was a funny title. Like the worst superhero ever, or something.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19735959

Anyway, I'm trying to think of an artifact that could be more awesome than an ancient Tibetan statue carved from a meteorite.

...

Still nothing.

...

Okay, I'm going to stop trying now. If I come up with something before I post, it'll ruin the whole setup.

A Universe From Nothing

Here's another one I just finished. Pretty informative and a very easy read, although it seemed a little short for the subject. It was fun to read something by a scientist who doesn't like string theory after the last one, which was very string theory-heavy.

The only drawback is that it seems like the guy spends a little bit of time in every chapter trying to reason with professional philosophers and theologians, a masochistic exercise I'd rather not witness. I suppose it's understandable that he feels some obligation to defend the title at least a little bit, although, even if you're convinced that "nothing" is the wrong word, it doesn't really affect anything important.

The Hidden Reality

I finished this book a couple of weeks ago and it's pretty cool. I was thinking about writing a review, but that doesn't sound like much fun, so here's a picture of the cover instead.

Parasite

I wrote something along these lines once, but this is better:

There’s a parasite that eats crabs from the inside. It enters the crab by penetrating a weak spot, then spreads long rootlike tendrils through the crab’s interior... The crab’s immune system fails completely to recognize it, and it soon takes over the hapless crustacean, body and brain... It looks like a crab. It moves like a crab. For all I know, it tastes like a crab. But it isn’t a crab. Not anymore...

Read the rest. There's more to it.

Click Here for the Rest

Killer Bees with Leprosy!

Desperate to not be working, I wandered off to this list of dangerous home-invading wild animals.  It starts off as you might expect: snakes, scorpions, alligators... Wait.  Alligators will go into your house?  Okay, I guess there's no reason they wouldn't, and I'm sure it would be a pretty bad thing if one did, once it woke up. 

Between four and five is a John Deere ad.  That makes sense.  Don't want one of those monsters getting inside.  Moving on, we have our traditional black widow warning, and a rabid bat.  Rabid bats seem to be stretching the theme a bit, but I know it's a legitimate threat and something a lot of people don't think about, so okay.  Next, mice infected with hantavirus.  What?  When did this turn into a Michael Crichton novel?  I half expected to click the "next" button and be confronted with a picture of a dinosaur labeled, "genetic engineering." 

But no, the next entry is just some kind of ceiling mold that will sneak in and eat your baby if you somehow fail to notice that all your plaster has turned black.  Then - you knew it was coming - we have the brown bear.  "Never intentionally feed a bear," we are warned.  I'm actually more worried about unintentionally feeding a bear. 

And finally... KILLER BEES!  This is cool because it has a picture of some honeybees, which are about the most beautiful animals I can think of.  No sarcasm there; I really love bees.  And jellyfish.  Trilobites are pretty darn cool too but, despite my childhood attempt to re-create them by selectively breeding some roly-poly-looking things I found living in a stream, they're extinct.

Number eleven appears to be a man with a mummified thumb.  Or Santa Claus with a broken hip. I guess I should get back to work now.

The New Time Travelers

Just finished The New Time Travelers, by David Toomey.  Time travel is a fun subject,  the ultimate rule-breaker's fantasy.  Overcome cause and effect, and surely you can do anything.  Consequently, it would be really easy to go wild with a book about time travel.  While the author of this book allows us to indulge in that fun on many occasions, he keeps the narrative grounded in the work of real physicists.

Not being a physicist, of course, I can't really say how well the author captured the meaning of all that esoteric math, but I can say that the book was engaging and accessible.  I really felt like I was learning something and it was full of inspirations for the science fiction writer, including some trippy speculations about how time travel could explain the origins of the universe.  In addition to describing several interesting theories of time travel, Toomey fills us in on the personal background of the physicists who came up with them and walks us through the development of their ideas.

So... there it is.  Good book.  Go read now.
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Dreaming and the Brain

Really cool article here. Abstract below:

Dreams are a remarkable experiment in psychology and neuroscience, conducted every night in every sleeping person. They show that the human brain, disconnected from the environment, can generate an entire world of conscious experiences by itself. Content analysis and developmental studies have promoted understanding of dream phenomenology. In parallel, brain lesion studies, functional imaging and neurophysiology have advanced current knowledge of the neural basis of dreaming. It is now possible to start integrating these two strands of research to address fundamental questions that dreams pose for cognitive neuroscience: how conscious experiences in sleep relate to underlying brain activity; why the dreamer is largely disconnected from the environment; and whether dreaming is more closely related to mental imagery or to perception.

(quoted from Trends in Cognitive Sciences)

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Fantastic Astronomy

I stumbled across a couple of articles today that really fired my sense of wonder.

As you read this article about early galaxies, think about what these people are doing.  Compare the number of years ago to the number of years after the Big Bang.  They're looking back at galaxies that existed before anything that even seems real to us existed, and they're telling us what those galaxies are made of.  Then they go on to talk about some of the many things we still don't know.  I'm reminded of some of the other early-universe cosmology stuff I've read, descriptions of an unbelievably alien reality.  It's thrilling stuff.

Earliest Known Galaxies Spied in Deep Hubble Picture
Anne Minard for National Geographic News, January 5, 2010

Compact, ultra-blue galaxies spied for the first time in the deep universe are the most distant—and therefore the youngest—galaxies anyone has ever seen, astronomers announced today...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100105-earliest-galaxies-hubble-deep-universe.html

On this next one, check out some of the anomalies they found.  My mind runs to wildly fantastic explanations, like maybe the "styrofoam" planet is a living thing with a complex cell structure circulating hot, light gasses like blood throughout its enormous body.  Somewhere out there, though, is the real answer, which I expect to be less rich in comic-booky fun, but just as interesting.  In any case, it's awesome that there are so many planets out there, and that so many other solar systems are so different from our own.

Five New Planets Found; Hotter Than Molten Lava
Victoria Jaggard in Washington, D.C., National Geographic News, January 4, 2010

Five new planets have been found orbiting distant stars—the first confirmed new worlds from NASA's recently launched Kepler space telescope mission, astronomers announced today...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100104-new-planets-kepler-nasa.html

The universe is fantastic.  It burns my brain trying to put even the watered-down details into one imaginary construct but, I have to say, I love the runner's high that the effort brings.

Asimov on Wrongness

Here's a great response to the all-too-familiar "scientists used to say ___[insert superseded theory here]___ so science don't know nothin" argument.

http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

You really should read the whole article, but this paragraph sums it up beautifully:

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

Not that I have any illusions here.  This essay is not exactly breaking news, and yet we're still hearing the "science don't know nothin" argument echoed on a regular basis.  If anything, it's more virulent now than ever.  These people are not going to abandon a favored quip just because it's dishonest.

Braaaiiinnsss

Freezing brains!  Now that's my kind of science!

What they really need to do is remove the brains first, then keep them floating at various levels in one giant vat with a big glass wall so you can see them all.  I'm thinking supercooled liquid, maybe pale green, although that's awfully traditional.  I suppose they could go with something more daring like yellow or sky blue.  It also depends on what kind of lights you have flashing on your gigantic instrument panels.  And the uniforms your henchmen wear, of course.

Once they've got the color scheme down, all these brains need to be wired together so they can be turned into processor components for a super-computer that tells the future.  Or at least one that can beat that damn chicken at checkers.

Darpa: Freeze Soldiers to Save Injured Brains
By Katie Drummond, November 13, 2009

The Pentagon's mad science division has a new way to deal with the 70,000+ troops diagnosed with traumatic brain injury: freeze 'em.

Darpa, the military's far-out research arm, is looking for research projects that would create a "therapeutic hypothermia device" to prevent traumatic brain injuries from causing permanent molecular damage to the brain. The idea is based on successful studies that used cortical cooling to treat survivors of strokes and cardiac arrest. According to Darpa's solicitation, cooling down the brain after trauma can offer "dramatic neuroprotection" that will prevent long-term harm to cognition and motor skills...

Click here for the rest of the article.

The Cool But Fishy History of Cleveland

A friend introduced me to this blog with some great pictures from old postcards and information about Cleveland's history.  What frustrates me, however, is that there is not a word about the war with the fish people that established Cleveland's independence from the decadent Under-Erie Empire.  I know the pictures exist.  You can even see the crumbled remains of some of the war memorials, and anyone who has driven in town knows that the original city planners were not human.  Remnants of fish people architecture are everywhere, even showing up a few times in this suppressionist blog, although of course they are never named for what they really are.

Anyway, here's the link:  http://coolhistoryofcleveland.blog.com/

It's a neat site, despite the conspiracy.

Dog Meat?

Dogs First Tamed in China -- To Be Food?
John Roach for National Geographic News, September 4, 2009
Wolves were domesticated no more than 16,300 years ago in southern China, a new genetic analysis suggests—and it's possible the canines were tamed to be livestock, not pets, the study author speculates...

Click here for the whole article.

Interesting article, but that one bit of speculation doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Cows and goats, for example, take in things we can't eat and turn them into something we can. Dogs, on the other hand, eat meat. It's kind of inefficient to breed something specifically as a food supply when you're going to have to share your own meals with it. Sure, people did and do eat dogs, but it's quite a leap from there to say that this was the primary reason for domesticating them.

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Brain Mapping of Tools

I'm sure most people can think of anecdotes of the "extension of your arm" experience, but it's cool to see some real evidence behind it.  Seeing this kind of adaptability gives me hope that the human brain might grow up some day, after all.

Tools are 'temporary body parts'
BBC News

The brain represents tools as extensions to the body, according to researchers writing in Current Biology. After the use of a grasping tool, participants asked to grasp an object with their own hands did so more slowly and sluggishly. Blindfolded participants also overestimated the length of their tool-using arm after the exercise. The research seems to confirm a century-old hypothesis that the brain models tools as parts of the body...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8112873.stm

Too Too Solid Flesh?

Maybe we're not so solid after all:

... there's a growing consensus among scientists that the relationship between us and our microbes is much more of a two-way street. With new technologies that allow scientists to better identify and study the organisms that live in and on us, we've become aware that bacteria, though tiny, are powerful chemical factories that fundamentally affect how the human body functions. They are not simply random squatters, but organized communities that evolve with us and are passed down from generation to generation. Through research that has blurred the boundary between medical and environmental microbiology, we're beginning to understand that because the human body constitutes their environment, these microbial communities have been forced to adapt to changes in our diets, health, and lifestyle choices. Yet they, in turn, are also part of our environments, and our bodies have adapted to them. Our dinner guests, it seems, have shaped the very path of human evolution...

Equally challenging, though in a different respect, will be changing long-held ideas about ourselves as independent individuals. How do we make sense of this suddenly crowded self? David Relman suggests that how well you come to terms with symbiosis "depends on how comfortable you are with not being alone." A body that is a habitat and a continuously evolving system is not something most of us consider; the sense of a singular, continuous self is a prerequisite for sanity, at least in Western psychology. A symbiotic perspective depends on a willingness to see yourself as the product of evolutionary timescales. After all, our cells carry an ancient stamp of symbiosis in the form of mitochondria. These energy-producing organelles are the vestiges of symbiotic bacteria that migrated into cells long ago. Even those parts of us we consider human are part bacterial. "In some ways, we're an amalgam and a continuously evolving collective," Relman says...

The rest of the article:
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_body_politic/

Read the whole thing.  It's a good one.

Lovecraftian Monster Invades Aquarium

Check out this four-foot polychaete worm, found skulking about in an aquarium, killing coral and fish when nobody was looking. Remind anybody of the fungi from Yuggoth? Or, better yet, the tingler?

Some more tidbits:

Matt Slater, the aquarium's curator, said: 'Something was guzzling our reef but we had no idea what, we also found an injured Tang Fish so we laid traps but they got ripped apart in the night.

'That worm must have obliterated the traps. The bait was full of hooks which he must have just digested.'

'We also discovered that he is covered with thousands of bristles which are capable of inflicting a sting resulting in permanent numbness.'

For the original story, go to:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1165930/Barry-giant-sea-worm-discovered-aquarium-staff-mysterious-attacks-coral-reef.html

Moral Outrage

A bad taste in your mouth - moral outrage has origins in physical disgust
Category: Psychology
Posted on: February 27, 2009 8:30 AM, by Ed Yong

Both objects and behaviour can be described as disgusting. The term could equally apply to someone who cheats other people out of money as it could to the sight of rancid food or the taste of sour milk. That's not just a linguistic quirk. Some scientists believe that the revulsion we feel towards immoral behaviour isn't based on our vaunted mental abilities, but on ancient impulses that evolved to put us off toxic or infectious foods...

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/02/a_bad_taste_in_your_mouth_-_moral_outrage_has_origins_in_phy.php