Via National Geographic:  ‘Dogs may forget an event less than two minutes after it happened, according to a new study.’

Via Gizmodo:  ‘It’s a historic day for the internet. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just passed the strongest net neutrality rules in this country’s history. This is great news! But let me repeat: The battle for net neutrality is still not over. In a sense, the real battle begins now.’

 

Via io9:  ‘When a crowd needs to pass through a small doorway – an emergency exit, for example – the opening can quickly become obstructed. Recently, researchers have been using sheep to understand how they might mitigate this potentially catastrophic bottleneck effect.’

Via IFLScience:  ‘The outlook used to be pretty bleak for those who had lost movement in their limbs due to severe nerve damage, but over the last year or so, some incredible advances have been made that are restoring shattered hope for many.

The amazing breakthroughs include spinal cord stimulation that allowed paralyzed men to regain some voluntary control of their legs, a brain implant that enabled a quadriplegic man to move his fingers, and a system that allowed a paralyzed woman to control a robotic arm using her thoughts. Science has definitely been on a roll, but this winning streak isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Now, the world’s first “bionic reconstructions” have been performed on three Austrian men to help them regain hand function. This technique enabled the newly amputated patients to control prosthetic hands using their minds, allowing them to perform various tasks that most people take for granted.’

 

Via io9:  ‘As recently as 1997, we discovered that another body, 3753 Cruithne, is a quasi-orbital satellite of Earth.

This simply means that Cruithne doesn’t loop around the Earth in a nice ellipse in the same way as the moon, or indeed the artificial satellites we loft into orbit. Instead, Cruithne scuttles around the inner solar system in what’s called a “horseshoe” orbit.’

 

Via io9: ‘A study published this week in Biology Letters showed rats remember who is nice to them and return the favor later. National Geographic calls it “the first evidence of direct reciprocation in nonhumans.” ‘

Via Gizmodo: ‘An Italian neuroscientist who has been advocating for head transplants now wants to make one actually happen. He’ll be announcing a project at a surgical conference later this year. Here’s how the proposed human head transplant will work—supposedly…’

 

Via The Verge:  ‘The worst policies from the war on terror are now in our backyard…’

 

Via io9:  ‘…it look(s) as if it could be in anyone’s garden. A closer picture shows it to be not quite garden friendly. The thing is covered in spikes, especially on the outer edge of those long, thin, dense leaves that crowd around its base. What do you suppose it does with those? Here’s a hint: Puya chilensis has been informally given the name “the sheep-eating plant.” It’s not unusual to find hairy mammals or small birds trapped in the plant’s leaves.

The plant doesn’t eat them directly. It’s not carnivorous. It just lets them die. Their corpses rot (perhaps attracting more animals with their scent) and fertilize the dirt around the plant. Puya chilensis can then absorb the nutrients from the animals it trapped and slowly starved to death, and go on with its happy life.’

 

Via Salon.com: ‘How Bernie Sanders just electrified Iowa — and what it means for ’16 . At an under-the-radar town hall in Des Moines, Sanders had the crowd begging for more. Here’s why it matters.’

 

Via Salon.com: The Oscars and awards-season devalue and pervert art: ‘ “Boyhood” or “Birdman”? Beck or Beyoncé? Who cares. We must stop turning creativity into another dumb competition…’

 

Via Salon.com: ‘ Islam, Christianity and our tolerance for ancient myths, harmful ideas: Our enduring deference to religion, despite its toxicity and phony explanations for the cosmos, lets it survive.’

 

Via CDC:  ‘What is Bourbon virus?

Bourbon virus belongs to a group of viruses called thogotoviruses. Viruses in this group are found all over the world. A few of these viruses can cause people to get sick.

How do people get infected with Bourbon virus?

We do not yet fully know how people become infected with Bourbon virus. However, based on what we know about similar viruses, it is likely that Bourbon virus is spread through tick or other insect bites.

Where have cases of Bourbon virus disease occurred?

As of February 12, 2015, only one case of Bourbon virus disease had been identified in eastern Kansas in late spring 2014. The man who was infected later died. At this time, we do not know if the virus might be found in other areas of the United States.

What are the symptoms of Bourbon virus?

Because there has been only one case identified thus far, scientists are still learning about possible symptoms caused by this new virus. In the one person who was diagnosed with Bourbon virus disease, symptoms included fever, tiredness, rash, headache, other body aches, nausea, and vomiting. The person also had low blood counts for cells that fight infection and help prevent bleeding.’

 

“My boyfriend of 7 years and I are both physicists. Heres how he proposed to me.”

 

(Imgur via Boing Boing)

I tend to agree with Sam. Big Brother was not merely a backing band for Janis, as clear in the extended back and forth riffing between him and her on numbers such as ‘Ball and Chain’ or ‘Combination of the Two,’ both captured well on Cheap Thrills. Sam, I’m cueing up the LP now. You will be missed.

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The Poetry of Richard Milhous Nixon, a slim volume compiled by Jack S. Margolis and published in 1974, stands as a seminal work in verse. Comprising direct excerpts from the Watergate tapes—arguably the most fecund stage of Nixon’s career—it fuses the rugged rhetoric of statesmanship to the lithe contours of song, all rendered in assured, supple, poignant free verse. Below, to celebrate Presidents’ Day, are four selections from this historic chapbook, which has, lamentably, slipped out of print.

 

 

THE POSITION

The position is

To withhold

Information

And to cover up

This is

Totally true.

You could say

This is

Totally untrue.

 

TOGETHER

We are all

In it

Together.

We take

A few shots

And

It will be over.

Don’t worry.

I wouldn’t

Want to be

On the other side

Right now.

 

IN THE END

In the end

We are going

To be bled

To death.

And in the end,

It is all going

To come out anyway.

Then you get the worst

Of both worlds.

(via Paris Review)

Via io9:  ‘Another debate popped again this week, one that’s been talked about and argued over for years now—whether we should be actively seeking out and sending messages to habitable planets in the search for life beyond Earth.

Known as Active Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), some researchers and scientists want to continually broadcast messages to known habitable planets in an effort to reach a new alien species. But many disagree. People like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk think a more measured and thought out approach makes more sense, and that historically, races of people who have happily greeted newcomers quickly found them to be conquerors.

The idea of Active Seti is to encode messages in powerful radio signals and send endlessly for centuries to solar systems with habitable planets. According to The Guardian, Seth Shostak, the director of the Seti Institute, wants to just beam the entire contents of the internet, porn and all, to other star systems.’

 

Join the Battle for Net Neutrality. The most important FCC vote of our lifetime is about to happen.On Feb 26 the FCC will vote to save net neutrality or let Comcast and other ISPs create Internet slow lanes. Some members of Congress, on behalf of their Cable donors, are trying to stop the FCC from protecting the Internet we love. There isn’t much time to stop them, contact them now.

 

via Aeon: ‘The stigma attached to cowardice has caused terrible harm, most obviously to those who have been made to pay for the alleged ‘crime’. Less obvious, but more pervasive, is the damage done by people who, fearing the shame of cowardice, have acted in reckless, often violent ways. Remembering this should make us less ready to use the label of ‘coward’, especially in the case of someone refusing to use violence…’  – Chris Walsh

Via Huffington Post: ‘When disaster strikes, the wildlife clinic at the Phillip Island Nature Park will be ready, equipped to deploy hundreds of tiny wool sweaters at a moment’s notice.

Not tiny sweaters for people, but penguins — knit by a group of volunteers that includes Alfred “Alfie” Date, who at 109 years of age is Australia’s oldest man.’

 

Via io9: ‘Wildlife photography is not without its perils. Case in point, this recent incident in which a 550-pound mountain gorilla “drunk” on bamboo shoots rushed a photographer with fists clenched.’

Via Motherboard:  ‘Starting this week, dozens of people will pull out $20 bills to find the White House on the back submerged in water: a striking image that comes as part of a new call to action over climate change.

The project is the last of three “currency interventions” by San Francisco-based artist Joseph DeLappe. In the past, he has call​ed attention to drone warfare and police brutality with similar projects.’

 

Via Salon.com:  ‘Former labor secretary Robert Reich on the dangers of on-demand jobs and our growing intolerance for labor unions’

 

Via Salon.com:  ‘…[W]hat has been largely missing so far from the whole Kayne vs. Beck conversation has been someone to call West out on his apparent need to take umbrage on Beyonce’s behalf. That, however, was taken care of Monday, when Garbage front woman posted an open letter on Facebook. “It is YOU who is so busy disrespecting artistry,” she wrote, adding, “You disrespect your own remarkable talents and more importantly you disrespect the talent, hard work and tenacity of all artists when you go so rudely and savagely after such an accomplished and humble artist like BECK. You make yourself look small and petty and spoilt. In attempting to reduce the importance of one great talent over another, you make a mockery of all musicians and music from every genre, including your own. Grow up and stop throwing your toys around. You are making yourself look like a complete twat.” But where she really nailed it was in her PS, when she observed, “I am pretty certain Beyonce doesn’t need you fighting any battles on her account. Seems like she’s got everything covered perfectly well on her own.”’

Amen.

 

Via io9:  ‘The ambition of NoFlyZone, a consortium of (small) drone manufacturers, is to create a nationwide database of homeowners and flight permissions. If you don’t want drones to be able to overfly your residence, the solution is simple: enter your house in the online database, and after the next round of firmware updates, drones will be incapable of overflying your property, in the same way that they’re currently banned from the airspace around airports and, uh, the White House.’

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Via Big Think:  ‘NPR’s Emily Schwing reports on some recent climate-change developments that are affecting Alaska’s Yukon Quest and Iditarod sled dog races. Officials and mushers are beginning to wonder how long the state sport will be able to survive these drastic changes with warm temperatures threatening food supplies and the landscape of the race.’

 

Via Salon.com:  ‘How deep-rooted cynicism about our national security state has made us enablers of U.S. foreign policy.’

 

Via Fast Company:  ‘To understand third-wave tea, it’s helpful to understand third wave coffee, which you could characterize as an obsession with tiny, granular details. First wave coffee meant Folgers. At a second-wave establishment like Starbucks, a patron might request non-coffee additives like soy milk, two pumps of sugar-free vanilla, and their name spelled correctly. Third-wave coffee drinkers are more concerned with process, and the coffee beans themselves: What’s the best extraction method? A pour-over? A vacuum pump? What’s the ideal water temperature? Oh! And if you aren’t using a conical Burr grinder, what are you even doing with your life?

If first-wave tea was Lipton coming to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century, and the second wave was the spread of mall emporiums like Teavana, third-wave tea in the U.S. is, like its coffee predecessor, a return to form, with an emphasis on purity and accessibility. It’s simply tea, unadulterated and directly sourced from farmers, usually from Asia.’

 

Via Boing Boing:  ‘Japanese beer culture has exploded over the past twenty years… But if we’ve entered the golden age of Japanese beer, we’ve missed the golden age of Japanese beer advertising. That came before the Second World War, a time when, if the advertising industry needed drawing, painting, or lettering, it was done by hand.

Asahi, Kirin, and Sapporo were not known for their richly flavorful product, but could command richly evocative imagery for the posters and postcards that promoted it.

A robust market now exists for these antique pieces of advertising and their suitable-for-framing reproductions. Spend enough time hunting for them, and you’ll start to notice that different brands often used the same pictures: what you’d thought of as “the Asahi girl” might well turn up on a Sapporo poster, and so on.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I seem to have developed a sudden thirst for an ice-cold beverage of some kind.’

 

Via Pacific Standard: ‘The retreat from religious affiliation is, essentially, a retreat from the political right.’

 

Via Pacific Standard: ‘Senator Charles Grassley has asked a Missouri non-profit hospital to explain why it seizes the wages of thousands of its patients.’

 

Via Salon.com: ‘Decapitation may be one of the least tor­turous ways to die, but nonetheless it is thought to be painful. Many scientists believe that, however swiftly it is performed, decapitation must cause acute pain for a second or two.

Decapitation in one single motion draws its cultural power from its sheer velocity, and the force of the physical feat challenges that elusive moment of death, because death is presented as instantaneous even though beheadings are still largely inscrutable to science…

Beheading is an extremely bloody business, which is one of the reasons it is no longer used for state executions in the West, even though it is one of the most humane techniques available. Decapitation is faster and more predictable than death by hanging, lethal injection, electric shock or gassing, but the spectacle is too grim for our sensibilities.’

 

Via Singularity HUB:  ‘By the late 2010s, glasses will beam images directly onto the retina. Ten terabytes of computing power (roughly the same as the human brain) will cost about $1,000.

By the 2020s, most diseases will go away as nanobots become smarter than current medical technology. Normal human eating can be replaced by nanosystems. The Turing test begins to be passable. Self-driving cars begin to take over the roads, and people won’t be allowed to drive on highways.

By the 2030s, virtual reality will begin to feel 100% real. We will be able to upload our mind/consciousness by the end of the decade.

By the 2040s, non-biological intelligence will be a billion times more capable than biological intelligence (a.k.a. us). Nanotech foglets will be able to make food out of thin air and create any object in physical world at a whim.

By 2045, we will multiply our intelligence a billionfold by linking wirelessly from our neocortex to a synthetic neocortex in the cloud.’