Study Reveals ‘Oldest Jewellery’
I’m wondering: Who gets the rights to market reproductions?
The earliest known pieces of jewellery made by modern humans have been identified by scientists.
The three shell beads are between 90,000 and 100,000 years old, according to an international research team.
Two of the ancient beads come from Skhul Cave on the slopes of Mount Carmel in Israel. The other comes from the site of Oued Djebbana in Algeria.
The finds, which pre-date other ancient examples by 25,000 years, are described in the US journal Science.
An Interesting Question
Honstly now, if you were God, could you possibly dream up any more educational, contrasty, thrilling, beautiful, tantalizing world than Earth to develop spirit in? If you think you could, do you imagine you would be outdoing Earth if you designed a world free of germs, diseases, poisons, pains, malice, explosives and conflicts so its people could relax and enjoy it? Would you, in other words, try to make the world nice and safe–or would you let it be provocative, dangerous, and exciting? In actual fact, if it ever came to that, I’m sure you would find it impossible to make a better world than God has already created.
–Guy Murchie
from The Seven Mysteries of Life: An Exploration of Science and Philosophy
The History of the Universe
How did the Universe begin? Many scientists would regard this as one of the most profound questions of all. But to Stephen Hawking, who has perhaps come closer than anyone to answering it, the question doesn’t in fact even exist.
Black Sun
Jenny Boully’s [one love affair]*
Halfway through her new book, [one love affair]*, Jenny Boully informs us that the reading of a novel takes place outside of the novel, extending a motif she started in her first book, The Body (Slope Editions, 2002, now out of print) in which the writing of the book took place outside of that book (which consists entirely of footnotes to an otherwise blank body of text). In fact, the title of her newest book, which is not a novel but best classified as three interrelated prose poems or literary meditations, is borrowed from Thomas Bernhard’s The Voice Imitator and reflects the narrative struck by Boully upon reading and processing various books from the likes of Roberto Belaño, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras and Severo Sarduy. As in The Body, the subtextual footnotes and insider nods to other writers and poets are copious and rich, though this time we move from introspection to extroversion, with a narrative thread of sorts to attach ourselves to.
Read the rest of the review here.
More info on [one love affair]* here.
Enjoy
A Hacker’s Tale
The search for proof of the existence of UFOs landed Gary McKinnon in a world of trouble. After allegedly hacking into NASA websites — where he says he found images of what looked like extraterrestrial spaceships — the 40-year-old Briton faces extradition to the United States from his North London home. If convicted, McKinnon could receive a 70-year prison term and up to $2 million in fines.
In an exclusive phone interview with Wired News McKinnon tells what he found out about secrets held from the US public and discusses the motivation behind his online adventures.
Sex in Nature
Male big horn sheep live in what are often called “homosexual societies.” They bond through genital licking and anal intercourse, which often ends in ejaculation. If a male sheep chooses to not have gay sex, it becomes a social outcast. Ironically, scientists call such straight-laced males “effeminate.”
The 13th Floor Elevators
The issue is not song quality or even, given the times, relatively primitive recording technology. It’s the jug! Get rid of the jug! Can’t someone remix the songs and remove the jug?
I’ll Say
[T]he paradoxurus [is] a tree-dwelling animal that is part of the sibet family. Long regarded by the natives as pests, they climb among the coffee trees eating only the ripest, reddest coffee cherries. Who knows who first thought of it, or how or why, but what these animals eat they must also digest and eventually excrete. Some brazen or desparate — or simply lazy — local gathered the beans, which come through the digestion process fairly intact, still wrapped in layers of the cherries’ mucilage. The enzymes in the animals’ stomachs, though, appear to add something unique to the coffee’s flavor through fermentation.
The Generous Gender
In June of 1998 several newspapers in the United States and Great Britain announced the results of a study published in the Economic Journal–the official journal of the British Royal Economic Society. The headline in the London Independent summarized the findings somewhat sensationally: “Women Put Men to Shame in the Generosity Game.” The more restrained San Francisco Chronicle put it this way: “Study Says Women are More Generous than Men, After All.” The two researchers, Catherine Eckel and Philip Grossman, from Virginia Polytechnic and the University of Texas, respectively, found that “women, on average, donate twice as much as men to their anonymous partners.”
Consolation
The New Yorker didn’t like the piece I submitted for the Shouts & Murmurs pages. But they do like my jokes at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. I would have liked it if they’d written a $1,000 check to show me how much they like my jokes. Or liked.
Home Invasion
Last night I startled an intruder in my kitchen. As I chased him out onto the back porch and off into the woods, I actually heard myself utter these words: “SHOO!, you naughty coon!”
Borat, The Movie
Print Clock
Antique book collectors might want to read up on genetic mutations before determining the age of an undated find. A Penn State biology professor with a passion for old prints and maps says he has found a new way to date centuries-old books by using a technique similar to what scientists use to study mutations.
Abu Zubaydah
And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”
From the Pentagon
A Pentagon document classifies homosexuality as a mental disorder, decades after mental health experts abandoned that position.
The document outlines retirement or other discharge policies for service members with physical disabilities, and in a section on defects lists homosexuality alongside mental retardation and personality disorders.
Critics said the reference underscores the Pentagon’s failing policies on gays, and adds to a culture that has created uncertainty and insecurity around the treatment of homosexual service members, leading to anti-gay harassment.
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jeremy M. Martin said the policy document is under review.
A note to Mr. Jim Morrison
People are strange, sir, even if you’re not a stranger.
Arnold Newman
We didn’t hire Arnold Newman for the job; he was, of course, too expensive. I never spoke to him again. But in that one short — and needlessly polite — conversation, he taught me a lesson about humility, patience and elegance that I’ve never forgotten. He died last week at the age of 88.
Kafka & Typography
Global Seed Bank
Work began in the Arctic on Monday on building a global bank of crop seeds that scientists hope will prevent the extinction of unique species such as those lost in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The underground vault on a remote island will hold about 1.5 billion seeds and 3 million varieties in a reinforced concrete tunnel drilled 70 meters (230 feet) into a mountain, guarded by two steel doors and controlled remotely from Sweden.
“This seed bank is of global importance,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said at the ceremony to mark the start of construction on a windswept mountain on the Svalbard archipelago overlooking fjords and glaciers.
“It’s our final safety net. If seeds stored in a commercial gene bank are destroyed, and this has apparently happened about 40 times to date, the contents of this gene bank will make it possible to replace the seeds which have been lost,” he said.
Radiographer (The Tipper)
In getting into radioactive photography, I used to worry only about contracting radiation sickness. In class last week I learned of a different type of damage. Psychological damage. As in…
…administering a barium enema, aka a “tipper”.
Beauty Knows No Pain
I now have a small scar on my forehead, just like Harry Potter, though mine is right up around my hairline. I was standing before the bathroom mirror trying to style my hair so’s I might resemble Monica Vitti in Il deserto rosso. I’d propped a picture of Monica up on what I believe one calls the vanity, and I guess I was concentrating too hard on looking at Monica and not enough on where I was holding the hot styling iron. Anyway, I gave myself a good facial burn which I’m trying to treat with ointment. It may fade just a bit, but I think it’s mine till death us do part. Kind of like that tattoo I got back when I was 26.
Six Questions
According to a personality test developer on the Brian Lehrer show this morning, there are six questions that along with resumes, references, and other indices can show an employer where a potential employee should fit into their organization. According to the order read on the show, they are:
Answer True/False:
1. Before an important meeting I think carefully about what I will say
2. Most people think I am pretty laidback
3. When I was little people thought I was cute
4. When I am annoyed I let people know
5. Rules are made to be broken
6. I like foreign movies
Fatherhood
On my recent drive back to El Paso from Dallas, I picked up a radio program in which a Christian man was discoursing on the importance of fathers and the ways in which fathers bond with their children, and so forth. I actually agreed with parts of his message, but one section of his presentation set me to thinking. He asserted that, within the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, the paramount example of a father is Abraham. It’s a given, at least within the sorts of conservative Protestant circles in which I grew up, that the “fathers” of the Jewish people are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Protestant ministers like to pick up on the OT references to the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” as a manner of identifying YHWH/Jehovah and of emphasizing the importance of those three men in “sacred history”. But is this such a good idea?
