Clues to the Origin of Human Language
A male chimpanzee may beg for food from another chimpanzee by gesturing with an extended arm and open hand.
Under different circumstances, the same chimpanzee may use the same gesture to try to coax a female chimpanzee to have sex. And the same gesture may be used after two males fight as a signal of reconciliation.
In research published on Monday, scientists seeking clues to the origins of human language analyzed the way two types of apes genetically closely related to people — chimpanzees and bonobos — use such hand and limb gestures to communicate.
Nick Heidfeld Tackles the Nurburgring
Worst. Tattoo. Ever.
H2Gen
From an emissions standpoint, hydrogen is one of the cleanest fuels available. Unfortunately, our most abundant source is water, and with current technology, breaking those two H atoms away from that one O atom (electrolysis) uses more energy that it creates.
But water isn’t the only hydrogen source. A Virginia company, H2Gen, makes a hydrogen-extraction device that basically (very basically) sucks the hydrogen right out of nature. An Orlando Chevron station has acquired one of their units and is currently testing the viability of using it for producing hydrogen right at the point of purchase. If the test works out, one more stumbling block, transportation of hydrogen, would be removed.
Cheney Responsible for Niger Forgeries?
(tpm)
Ubi Sunt?
Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? (Villon)
Well, now, on the eve of May Day, it’s hard to tell. Jon popped a new set of rollers on the Z after I snapped this shot in February, so that makes it even harder to discern.
Subtraction by Subtraction
Aesthetic and social causes, seemingly reinforcing one another, animated modernist architecture as it developed in the 1920s and 30s. Victorian architecture was rich in expensive ornamentation; its public buildings arose as imitations of Greek and Roman structures. Aesthetically, architectural modernism, like modernism more generally, was a revolt against Victorian forms and their art-deco successors. The “symbols, icons and forms of that world,” modernists argued, had lost their meaning with the decline of religious belief; it was the modernists’ job to “make it new.” In an effort both to break with the past and to provide the working classes with better living conditions, Glazer explains, the modernists insisted that buildings should be relentlessly functional and rational, accommodating specific needs. Architects should make no concessions to public taste—the public would need to learn what to like.
Deadfalls & Snares
They’re out there.
Not only out there, but within.
Optimus Maximus
dogwood
Blossoms and shadows on a sunny day.
Also
The pain we put our mouths through feels pretty good.
Intoxicating
Red Bull and cabbage.
An Excerpt
The First Lady lies, knees tucked to her chest, masturbating in a luminous room filled with white rabbits. Her dark hair, pale skin, red nails contrast strongly with each other — the rabbits an undulating pattern of softness she lies within, slowly building toward her climax.
Halo and Horns Effects
Enjoying food is complex, involving not only taste and mouth-feel, but also aroma, vision and hearing.
“If you bite into an apple and it doesn’t crunch, it affects your perception of the way the apple tastes,” Lee said. “And if a beverage doesn’t feel right in your mouth, that affects your perception of the way the beverage tastes too.”
If a food attribute enhances the flavor “sense” that humans have of something eaten, sensory scientists call that a “halo effect.” If the attribute diminishes the flavor sense, scientists say it has a horns effect.
When color was added to lemon-lime beverages, panelists believed that the beverage had more body, meaning the color conferred a halo effect. But the color also led tasters to think the beverage had less carbonation, which it did not, meaning the color also conferred a horns effect, Lee said.
“We think the lemon-lime flavor, which is exciting to the mouth, helps mask the mouth-feel difference, and that’s why diet lemon-lime drinks were perceived as tasting more like their non-diet counterpoint than cola-flavored drinks,” Lee said.
Terror Attacks up Sharply
Terrorist attacks worldwide shot up 25 percent last year, particularly in Iraq where extremists used chemical weapons and suicide bombers to target crowds, according to a new State Department report.
Moth & Washer
Umm….
Jesus Camp is fucking terrifying.
Bush is her feed
In 2004, New York magazine reported on a DC dinner party, at which Condoleezza Rice was reportedly overheard saying, “As I was telling my husb–” and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, “As I was telling President Bush.” As the magazine explained it, those who heard her were quite surprised, though the slip seemed “more psychologically telling than incriminating.” In other words, no one seriously believes Bush and Rice are romantically involved.
Hubba-Bubba
Brain Wave Toys
Behind the mask is a sensor that touches the user’s forehead and reads the brain’s electrical signals, then sends them to a wireless receiver inside the saber, which lights up when the user is concentrating. The player maintains focus by channeling thoughts on any fixed mental image, or thinking specifically about keeping the light sword on. When the mind wanders, the wand goes dark.
Economist Vernon Smith and Asperger’s
Reversing Alzheimer’s
Mental stimulation and drug treatment may help people with brain ailments such as Alzheimer’s disease regain seemingly lost memories, according to research published on Sunday.
Scientists used two methods to reverse memory loss in mice with a condition like Alzheimer’s — placing them in sort of a rodent Disneyland to stimulate their brains, and also using a type of drug that encourages growth of brain nerve cells.
Cute.
Juked just rejected four of my poems because they were too “cute.”
Have people been saying this kind of thing behind my back? I need to know.
Club Fed
“It’s clean here,” she said, perched in a jail day room on the sort of couch found in a hospital emergency room. “It’s safe and everyone here is really nice. I haven’t had a problem with any of the other girls. They give me shampoo.”
Academic Anguish
Sometimes (just now and again) I wonder what my life might have been like if I’d gone hell-bent for academic leather instead of gaping at the scenery till I went to night school and earned my archivist’s union card.
Then I look at this year-old photo of myself on a panel at an academic conference. I’m waiting for the very earnest and very boring young scholar to my right (your left) to wind up a very earnest and very boring [yes, it was] reading of his very earnest and very boring paper. That blurry object you see (your left, my right) is my own fist, captured midway on its flight to my face.
Yes. I made . . . well, if not the right decision . . . . a decision I can live with.