Andrew Crumey: ‘I would like to propose what I shall call the principle of eternal folly. It states that in nearly every era there arises, in some form, nearly every idea of which humans are capable. Certainly, there is the emergence of new ideas: technological ones are the most obvious, but there are others, too. I do think it fair to say that Jane Austen, Beethoven, and even the occasional entrepreneur have invented radically new things. However, the vast majority of ideas are recycled – and it is when we fail to recognise this, as we eternally do, that we commit folly.’ (Aeon).

‘As a new class-action lawsuit out of California’s infamous Pelican Bay State Prison that may definitively determine the future of solitary in that state moves forward, more people are taking the position that the practice amounts to inhumane punishment.’ (Pacific Standard)

‘In a 5-4 decision, the SCOTUS blocked a conservative effort to overturn a law that makes it illegal to buy a gun for someone else. While the ruling maintains the status quo by preserving long-standing legislation, it opens the door for stricter limits on gun ownership.’ (Pacific Standard)

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‘Cartographer Kenneth Field is making a series of maps inspired by song lyrics about geography. Taking a cue from U2’s song “Where the Streets Have No Name,” he created this visualization of the 15 million unnamed street segments in the U.S.’ (

io9)

‘Researchers have identified how a key molecular pathway in salamanders is different than in mammals, possibly revealing the amphibians’ secret for regrowing their body parts. The findings tell us more about the mechanisms behind regeneration, and maybe one day they could be useful for regenerating human cells.’ (IFLScience).

‘Open Wireless Movement, a joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Mozilla, Free Press and others, will reveal its sharing-friendly wifi router firmware at the HOPE X conference in NYC next month. The openwireless operating system allows you to portion out some of your bandwidth to share freely with your neighbors and passersby, while providing a high degree of security and privacy for your own communications.

The Open Wireless Movements goals are to both encourage the neighborliness that you get from sharing in your community, and undermining the idea that an IP address can be used to identify a person, establishing a global system of anonymous Internet connectivity. The project includes an excellent FAQ on the myths and facts about your legal liability for things that other people do with your network.’ (Boing Boing).

Especially for the anglophiles among us, this is utterly delightful.

‘Siobhan Thompson of Anglophenia gives a wonderful verbal tour of the British Isles, performing 17 of the regional accents found in the United Kingdom and Ireland.’ (Laughing Squid)

Loads of compelling material in io9 tonight:

‘In 79 AD, the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius covered Pompeii in ash, preserving the city for millennia. In 1969 AD, a fire broke out at the mansion of the famed Chosen Family commune north of San Francisco. Most of the possessions were left behind—providing archaeologists with a one-of-a-kind time capsule of hippie life.

If youre a Grateful Dead fan, youre already familiar with the commune, which was founded at Olompali State Park in 1967. The band—one of many musical legends who played there—used a photograph of the bucolic commune as the back cover for their album, Aoxomoxoa.’ (io9)

Can you dig it? [Sorry, couldn’t help myself.]

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Amen. (io9)

‘In what should be a surprise to nobody, a new report by the Institute for Economics and Peace shows that world peace is on the decline — a reversal of six decades of steady improvement. The annual report, called the Global Peace Index, cites militant attacks and growing crime as the primary culprits, particularly in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, and the Central African Republic. The number of people killed in militant attacks has risen in such areas as the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Murder rates are escalating in growing urban centers and more refugees are having to flee war zones. (io9)

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‘The amount of Arctic ice left has been steadily shrinking. But its now dwindled by so much that National Geographic has said their updated maps will feature a much smaller ice sheet, in what theyre calling the most visible change to the atlas since the break up of the U.S.S.R. National Geographic drew its current map of the Arctic in its 1989 edition of the Atlas. Since then, though, the decrease of not just the area, but the volume of Arctic sea ice as seen in the graphic below, charting sea ice volume from 1979 to the present has been sharp. The newest edition, which comes out in September, will redraw the lines into a significantly smaller area, based on NASA and the NSIDC data on the amount of remaining multiyear ice.’ (io9)

‘While we may call them sea slugs, these diverse and colorful gastropods look like theyve come from another planet, a place of brilliant oranges, greens, and blues, where even camouflage is beautiful.’ (io9)

 

Dick Cheney – Has a Heart

James Fallows: ‘A few hours ago I said sincerely that a number of prominent officials who had set the stage for todays disaster in Iraq deserved respect for their silence as their successors chose among the least-terrible of available options.I unwisely included Dick Cheney, former vice president and most ill-tempered figure to hold national office since Richard Nixon, on that list.If Id waited a little while, I would have seen a new op-ed by Cheney and his daughter Liz in where else! the WSJ denouncing the Obama administrations fecklessness about Iraq and much else. They say, unironically, about the current occupant of the White House:Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many. You want a specimen of being so wrong about so much at the expense of so many? Consider the thoughts of one Richard B. Cheney, in a major speech to the VFW in August 2002, in the run-up to the war…’ (The Atlantic).

‘Someone recorded two tornadoes touching down at the same time on US-275 near Pilger, Nebraska. The footage is absolutely nuts.’ (Gizmodo)

‘Many ideas have left the world of science and made their way into everyday language — and unfortunately, they are almost always used incorrectly. We asked a group of scientists to tell us which scientific terms they believe are the most widely misunderstood. Here are ten of them.’ (io9)

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The frontispiece of the book Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes 

‘Encouraging research points to a way to decouple loyalty to one’s own tribe with disdain for outsiders…

The results suggest a strong sense of moral identity could temper “some of the less-desirable effects of the binding foundations,” Smith and his colleagues conclude. They add that this could potentially be achieved by “creating environments that increase the salience of people’s moral self-concepts.” ‘ (Pacific Standard)

‘AJ Jacobs’ TED talk on the far-flung branches of family trees is one of the more entertaining takes on genealogy I’ve watched in some time. Join him at the worlds largest family reunion, and find out how you’re related to… well… everyone.’ (Boing Boing)

‘…no joke. [A team of roboticists at Ryerson University in Canada is] going to put their cute little bot on the side of the road in Halifax and hope that somehow the robot can talk its way to Victoria.

“This is both an artwork and social robotics experiment,” Zeller and Harris told me in an email. “Usually, we are concerned whether we can trust robots, e.g. as helpers in our homes. But this project takes it the other way around and asks: can robots trust human beings?” ‘ (The Atlantic).

‘The Anti-Defamation League has published an online catalog of the symbols, flags, and slogans used by hate groups. Is this an educational tool or a portal for perverse curiosity?’ (The Atlantic).

‘In very bad news, a superbug resistant to last-resort antibiotics was found in imported squid, according to a report this week. This is a scary development in antibiotic resistance—even if you dont eat squid. Here is why one small finding has frightening implications.’ (Gizmodo)

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‘The history of the professional executioner is a chronicle of perfecting the choreography of death. It’s a story of exacting skill and the never-ending search for a more efficient means to enact and contain the spectacle of death. The professionalization of death—a chilling business—was cultivated for centuries by a profane tribe of men who were denied civil status and ostracized from nearly every aspect of daily life. Forced to live at the margins, the executioner was defined by ambiguities: a pivotal actor in the multipart drama of public killing, an extension of the crown, and yet morally hazy and universally despised.’ (The Appendix).

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‘Welcome to the consumer opt out page for the Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising. Our participating companies are committed to transparency and choice.Some of the ads you receive on Web pages are customized based on predictions about your interests generated from your visits over time and across different Web sites. This type of ad customization — sometimes called “online behavioral” or “interest-based” advertising — is enabled through your computer browser and browser cookies. Such online advertising helps support the free content, products and services you get online.Using the tools on this page, you can opt out from receiving interest-based advertising from some or all of our participating companies.’ (AboutAds)

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‘We already knew that Facebook is tracking our every move on the web, just like everyone else is, but now the social network says it’s going to use data from the other sites we visit and the apps we use to deliver more relevant ads. If you want to opt out of this enhanced behavioral targeting, there’s a form for that…’ (Lifehacker)

Michael Pollen: “When I was talking to historians of barbecue, and we now have historians of barbecue, they said that even during the tensest periods of racial strife, during the civil rights movement, if the good barbecue place in town was black, whites wanted to eat there and they would,” he says. “Barbecue is something that blacks and whites in the South share.” (Big Think).

‘When do you need to tell a prospective buyer your house is haunted? Where do you need a license to practice necromancy or to be reincarnated? And where can you file a lawsuit against a supernatural being? These real-life laws will tell you all that and more.’ (io9).

 

‘Choosing a restaurant can be somewhat serious business if you’re anything like me, that is. Many animals can have a favorite food, but what if they choose something that isn’t what they wanted? New research from scientists at the University of Minnesota suggests that rats can actually experience regret after making the “wrong” food choice. The study was conducted by David Redish and Adam Steiner, and the paper was published in Nature Neuroscience.’ (IFLScience).

‘Researchers in the US have studied the skulls of ancient human ancestors and concluded that fist-fighting may have played a role in shaping the male face.The new study is published in Biological Reviews, and it isnt the first time scientists have suggested the idea. As George Dvorsky reports for io9, back in 2012 researchers controversially made the claim that fists had changed the course of our evolution. Now the new theory, based on the study of the skulls of distant hominid relatives known as australopiths, is likely to stir up similar debate over the role violence has played in human evolution.’ (Science Alert).

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‘Washington Post piece suggests a presidents ability to “get things done” and “competency” are analogous. Nope! We’re not going to argue that Obama is the most “competent” president in history and George W. Bush is the least. Neither really seems to make the Presidential All-Star team in that respect. But the question about a president’s ability to “get things done” seems more an issue of how well Washington is working and the state of gridlock at any given time than about an individual president’s competency.’ (Salon.com).

‘Mississippi used its new voter-identification law for the first time Tuesday — requiring voters to show a driver’s license or other government-issued photo ID at the polls.The official reason given for the new law is alleged voter fraud, although the state hasn’t been able to provide any evidence that voter fraud is a problem.The real reason for the law is to suppress the votes of the poor, especially African-Americans, some of whom won’t be able to afford the cost of a photo ID.It’s a tragic irony that this law became effective almost exactly fifty years after three young civil rights workers — Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman – were tortured and murdered in Mississippi for trying to register African-Americans to vote.’ (Salon.com).

The hypocrisy of “humane executions” –  ‘ As a new proposal gets traction, it raises a fact no charade can obscure: killing people is bloody business!’ (Salon.com)

 

GOP hypocrites forget their hero negotiated with terrorists. He was just really bad at it – ‘It’s been said that if President Obama were to walk on water, the headline news would be “President Can’t Swim.”

That can explain why what would normally be a cause for celebration — the return of America’s only prisoner of war in Iraq or Afghanistan — quickly became a controversy, with talk of it being a crime. Reactions to the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, in exchange for five Taliban members being held at Guantanamo, have been so severe that even the hometown joy at his release has been dampened.GOP criticism — picked up by the media — initially focused on two lines of attack on Obama, the first claiming that “negotiating with terrorists” sets a bad precedent, and the second claiming that Obama broke the law by failing to consult with Congress 30 days in advance of releasing the Taliban detainees.

There were calls for “investigations,” the GOP’s favorite word in Obama’s second term. But the consultation requirement in a bill passed by Congress was countered by a presidential signing statement — and acting on such signing statements was never a problem for the GOP when Bush was president.As for “setting a bad precedent” by “negotiating with terrorists,” the GOP’s very serious concern comes three decades too late: Their hallowed icon, Ronald Reagan, firmly established that precedent in a still-murky tangle of secret dealings with Iran, only some of which came to light in the Iran-contra scandal….’ (Salon.com).

‘Scientists in Australia tagged a healthy 9-foot great white shark as part of program to track these animals. Four months later they found the tracking device washed up on a beach.Something—something really big—had eaten this apex predator. But what creature could dine on such ferocious prey?

The recovered tracking device showed a rapid temperature rise and a sudden 1,900-foot-deep plunge. It stayed there for many days, moving around and occasionally ascending to go down again until it finally reached the shore. That’s all the information that scientists gathered from the tracking device.

The researchers believe the data shows that a super-predator gobbled the shark, then swam down at high speed, and kept going on with his life. The recorded temperature indicates that the tracking device was inside the mysterious monster’s digestive system until it got out.

UPDATE: Mystery solved! Find out who ate the great white shark here.‘ (io9)

I praise those ancient Chinamen

Who left me a few words,

Usually a pointless joke or a silly question

A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled on the margin of a quick

splashed picture—bug, leaf,

caricature of Teacher

on paper held together now by little more than ink

& their own strength brushed momentarily over it

Their world & several others since

Gone to hell in a handbasket, they knew it—

Cheered as it whizzed by—

& conked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars

Happy to have saved us all.

— Philip Whalen (Shambhala Sun)

Xeni Jardin: ‘Most interesting infographic of the day, via the Washington Post, which also published an even more detailed breakdown by county… Larger size here.’ (Boing Boing).

Westernmost Wolf in Lower 48 States Is a Dad: ‘In what may herald a new era of wolf expansion into the West Coast, a lone male wolf that gained fame by wandering hundreds of miles west of any known wolf pack in the lower 48 states has become a father.The so-called westernmost wolf, which wears a collar transmitting his GPS coordinates and is known as OR7, recently settled down on the western slope of the Cascade Mountains in southwestern Oregon to what was expected to be a life of solitude.But in early May, biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who study the wolf were stunned to see photos of what looked like a dark black female caught by the same motion-triggered cameras that capture images of OR7. It looked very much as if the lone wolf of the West had found a mate. How she got there remains a mystery.On June 2, government biologists visited the site, in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, and saw and photographed two pups. There may well be more, as most wolf litters include between four and six pups. Biologist John Stephenson says he thinks he heard more pups.The pups are the first known wolf reproduction in the Oregon Cascades since the mid-1940s, according to the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife.’ (National Geographic)

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Headquarters of the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland.

‘It’s been one year since the Guardian first published the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order, leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, that demonstrated that the NSA was conducting dragnet surveillance on millions of innocent people. Since then, the onslaught of disturbing revelations, from disclosures, admissions from government officials, Freedom of Information Act requests, and lawsuits, has been nonstop. On the anniversary of that first leak , here are 65 things we know about NSA spying that we did not know a year ago…

There’s no question that the international relationships Obama pledged to repair, as well as the confidence of the American people in their privacy and constitutional rights, have been damaged by the NSAs dragnet surveillance. But one year later, both the United States and international governments have not taken the steps necessary to ensure that this surveillance ends. That’s why everyone must take action— contact your elected representative, join Reset the Net, and learn about how international law applies to U.S. surveillance today.’ (Gizmodo)

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‘John McCain says the released Gitmo prisoners are historically dangerous. Records tell a slightly different story…’ (Salon).

Also includes a discussion on what for me is the more interesting question, of the circumstances of Bergdahl’s capture:

By all accounts, Bergdahl was a troubled young man, with naive and very unrealistic views on his service in Afghanistan. He thought he was joining “the Peace Corps with guns,” going over to help Afghans. What he found instead was an ugly, brutal war.

Rolling Stone quoted emails he sent to his parents:

“We don’t even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armored trucks … We make fun of them in front of their faces, and laugh at them for not understanding we are insulting them.”

Bergdahl called the US Army “the biggest joke the world has to laugh at … the army of liars, backstabbers, fools and bullies.” He said he was ashamed to be an American.

Disappointment in America’s flawed efforts in Afghanistan is not a sign of mental illness. But, as journalist Matthieu Aikins, who reports regularly from Afghanistan, tweeted: “Does running unarmed into Taliban terrain seem sane to you? Maybe Bergdahl’s act should be seen through PTSD/mental health prism.”

‘As Arctic temperatures rise and the ice melts, animals that once had separate migration patterns are suddenly encountering each other — and that could lead to some new animal hybrids.Tim McDonnell over at Nautilus has written a piece about just what the increased interaction between Arctic species could mean. Sometimes it’s as simple as increased competition for food or for space, but it can also mean the possibility of new hybrid animals. Incidences of “grolar” — or polar/grizzly hybrid — bears are already pretty well documented, and scientists are also looking into the possibility that a bowhead/right whale hybrid has recently been spotted.’ (i09)

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The Beloved Poet Sings William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence & Experience”: ‘In December of 1969, Allen Ginsberg June 3, 1926–April 5, 1997, one of the most beloved and influential poets of the twentieth century, recorded a strange and wonderful LP, setting William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience to song. Accompanied by an eclectic orchestra — Cyril Caster on trumpet, Janet Zeitz on flute, Bob Dorough on piano, Don Cherry on bass trombone, beaded gourd, sleigh bells and finger cymbals — Ginsberg gives Blake’s binary battery of innocence and experience a whole new dimension of enchanting duality.

Blake’s poetry was a particularly poignant choice for Ginsberg at a time when his own spiritual journey had taken him into the depths of Buddhism — at once a curious contrast with Blake’s heavy Christian influence and a sensical parallel to the ambivalence about the human soul, coupled with social and religious ambivalence, at the heart of Blake’s message.

Thanks to the remarkable PennSound archive… these rare recordings endure in digital form. Here are three of them for our shared delight.’ (Brain Pickings).

‘In a groundbreaking new study, researchers at the University of California, San Diego erased and then reactivated memories by stimulating neurons in the brains of genetically engineered rats with a series of light pulses that have been previously shown to strengthen or weaken the connections between brain cells. This is the first study to be able to directly show that the strengthening or weakening of these connections, called synapses, is the underlying basis for memory. The study has been published in Nature.’ (IFLScience)

‘Despite being visually creepy, Slenderman highlights the strength and weaknesses of the Internet simultaneously. In fact, I think Slenderman is a subversive masterpiece in terms of monster creation. Of course when Victor Surge first created him, he was just a creepy picture with minimal back story. Now he is a cultural phenomenon and terrorises the dreams and thoughts of many.  What makes Slenderman a fascinating study is that he is the the personification of how modern myths work. At the core of Slenderman, most of us know he is created. You can trace back his history to specific posts and websites. The internet ruins the myth but at the same time, the Internet gives it an authenticity and connectivity that continually builds upon it.’ (Whatculture.com)

In the news this evening was the story of two 12 year olds in Waukesha, Wisconsin who held down a friend and stabbed her 19 times, apparently motivated by a desire to prove they were worthy of becoming disciples of Slenderman. Need to believe, indeed!

…and already concluded that there is no intelligent life on Earth. (CNET).

‘The way we’re working isn’t working. Even if you’re lucky enough to have a job, you’re probably not very excited to get to the office in the morning, you don’t feel much appreciated while you’re there, you find it difficult to get your most important work accomplished, amid all the distractions, and you don’t believe that what you’re doing makes much of a difference anyway. By the time you get home, you’re pretty much running on empty, and yet still answering emails until you fall asleep…’ (NYTimes).

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Brian Levinson: ‘Anyone can find plenty to hate in the 141-page manifesto by Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who killed six people and wounded 13 more last week in Isla Vista, California. The manifesto’s blend of misogyny, racism, self-pity, entitlement, and violent fantasy would make Patrick Bateman blanch.

Of course, I’ve got my own reason to hate the manifesto: Elliot Rodger could have been me.I could’ve written an identical screed as a teenager or college student…

Rodger and I fit the profile of a handful of other lonely psychos: John Hinckley, who shot Reagan in a bid to impress Jodie Foster; Dylan Klebold, the lovelorn, less-psychopathic half of the Columbine shooters; Seung-Hui Cho, whose morbid short stories foreshadowed the Virginia Tech massacre. Let me explain…’ (Slate)

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Make your own Toy Story: ‘Aspiring animators, listen up! Pixar’s working on a brand new version of Renderman, the in-house software they use to render duh all their awesome digital creations. There are a slew of improvements coming, but the big news is that there’s a version you can download for free.That’s a pretty amazing giveaway — Renderman is a $500 piece of software…’ (Geek.com).

‘Those of us who managed sky-high SAT scores at 13 were 20 times as likely as the average American to get a doctorate; lets say, being charitable, that were 100 times as likely to make a significant scientific advance. Since were only 1 in 10,000 of the U.S. population, that still leaves 99% of scientific advances to be made by all those other kids who didnt get an early ticket to the genius club. We geniuses arent going to solve all the riddles. Most child prodigies are highly successful—but most highly successful people werent child prodigies.

This can be a hard lesson for the prodigies themselves. It is natural to believe that the just-pubescent children on the mathletic podium next to you are the best, the ones who really matter. And for the most part, my fellow child stars and I have done very well. But the older I get, the more I see how many brilliant people in the world werent Doogie Howser-like prodigies; didnt shine in Math Olympiad; didnt go to the inner circle of elite colleges. Im embarrassed that I didnt understand at 13 that it would be this way. But when they keep telling you youre the best, you start to believe youre the best.

One of the most painful aspects of teaching mathematics is seeing my students damaged by the cult of the genius. That cult tells students that its not worth doing math unless youre the best at math—because those special few are the only ones whose contributions really count. We dont treat any other subject that way. Ive never heard a student say, “I like Hamlet, but I dont really belong in AP English—that child who sits in the front row knows half the plays by heart, and he started reading Shakespeare when he was 7!” Basketball players dont quit just because one of their teammates outshines them. But I see promising young mathematicians quit every year because someone in their range of vision is “ahead” of them.’ (WSJ).

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‘One of the wealthiest spiritual leaders in India has either been dead or in a transcendental meditative state since January. The Telegraph’s Dean Nelson reports from New Delhi that a court has now been asked to settle the matter.

Ashutosh Maharaj is presently in a commercial freezer in his ashram, guarded by elders within the multinational sect or, self-described “socio-spiritual-cultural, not-for profit organization” that he created. His followers insist that Maharaj is in a state of transcendent bliss called samadhi, a central tenet of traditional yoga in which a yogi becomes one with the universe. Upon moving all of your prana currents of energy up your spine and into your head, according to the seminal yoga manual Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a yogi can become “as if dead.”

This would seem to be at odds with the assessment of a team of local physicians who examined Maharaj in February. After performing an ECG that showed no heartbeats, noting that he had no respiratory movements, and seeing that his pupils were fixed and dilated, the physicians declared him “clinically dead.”

The sect’s website states, “His Holiness Shri Ashutosh Maharaj Ji has been in a deep meditative state (samadhi) since January 29, 2014.” Though, a representative from the sect did say on February 3, “About 4:00 PM yesterday, some changes were noticed in his skin (it became greenish). The body was then shifted to a freezer,” which may or may not be part of the traditional protocol for transcendent bliss.

The guru’s son and wife corroborate that he died of a heart attack in January, and that his followers are keeping his body in order to retain control of his financial empire, including the ten billion rupee ($170 million) estate where the corpse resides.’ (The Atlantic).

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‘Here’s a small collection of bizarre animals that we hope some of you may have never heard of. The animal kingdom does love variety…’ (I Fucking Love Science).

 

New antibody blocks pain and itchiness: ‘Scientists may have developed an antibody that dulls chronic pain and blocks the itch pathway.Image: Promotive/ShutterstockIf it’s proven successful, the antibody could replace side-effect laden pain medications such as opioids.Developed by researchers at Duke University, the highly specialised antibody inhibits the function of a sodium channel called Nav1.7, which is found on neurons and is known to be involved in generation pain and itchiness.’ (Science Alert).

‘…[A]stronomers suspect it could have been one of the most violent events in the Universe – a gamma ray-burst that, in just a few seconds, could have released as much energy as our Sun in its entire lifetime.If confirmed, this will be the closest gamma-ray burst we’ve ever detected, and will help scientists find out more about these mysterious pulses of energy.Gamma-ray pulses are so powerful, that if one occurred within our galaxy, they could potentially trigger mass extinctions on Earth, explains Dr Alan Duffy, an astronomer at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.’ (Science Alert).

Addendum (thanks to abby): Possibly not.

“We have re-analysed the prompt XRT data on Swift trigger 600114 (GCN Circ.
16332), taking advantage of the event data.

The initial count rate given in GCN Circ. 16332 was based on raw data from
the full field of view, without X-ray event detection, and therefore may
have been affected by other sources in M31, as well as background hot
pixels. Analysis of the event data (not fully available at the time of the
initial circular) shows the count rate of the X-ray source identified in
GCN Circ. 16332 to have been 0.065 +/- 0.012 count s^-1, consistent with
the previous observations of this source [see the 1SXPS catalogue (Evans
et al. 2014): http://www.swift.ac.uk/1SXPS/1SXPS%20J004143.1%2B413420.

We therefore do not believe this source to be in outburst. Instead, it was
a serendipitous constant source in the field of view of a BAT subthreshold
trigger.”

‘New legislation would increase CDC funding for gun violence research from zero dollars to $10 million. The NRA calls the push “unethical” and an “abuse of taxpayer funds.” ‘ (Pacific Standard).

‘Nearly all amputees feel their missing limb as if it still existed, and many experience chronic phantom limb pain. The going theory is that this pain is triggered by the brain. But scientists have now located and blocked these sensations in the body itself — a finding that upends conventional thinking.’ (io9).

US death penalty methods

‘Writing in the Boston Globe, Leon Neyfakh profiles activists across the country who have come to the conclusion that execution by the state is an affront to the core principles that conservatives claim to espouse.’ (io9).

‘Vogue Magazine is the latest high-profile name to join a boycott luxury hotels owned by the Dorchester Collection. Why? Dorchester properties include The Beverly Hills Hotel, Londons Dorchester, and Le Meurice in Paris, and they’re now owned by the investment agency of the Sultan of Brunei.The Sultan plans to implement Sharia law in Brunei, under which being gay is punishable with death by stoning. Businesses, fashion designers, and celebrities including Stephen Fry, Ellen DeGeneres and Richard Branson are among the bold-faced names publicly shaming the hotel group.’ (Boing Boing).

‘With traumatic injuries, timing in treatment can be the difference between life and death. What if surgeons could hit the pause button, giving them precious additional time to treat the wounds? Suspended animation has been featured in a wide array of fictional films, but could it actually work on humans? The FDA has approved a small study that will allow surgeons at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh to try to suspend human life later this month.’ (I Fucking Love Science).

Xeni Jardin: “The Darvaza gas crater, known to locals as “Door to Hell” or “Gates of Hell” is located in the Karakum Desert of central Turkmenistan (about 150 miles from the nation’s capital).

Also known as Derweze, the pit lures tourists and unsuspecting desert critters: “reportedly, from time to time local spiders are seen plunging into the pit by the thousands, lured to their deaths by the glowing flames.” Smithsonian Magazine has an awesome photo gallery.

As with much on our planet, turns out this site is a man-made hell, as Wikipedia explains:

‘The Derweze area is rich in natural gas. While drilling in 1971, Soviet geologists tapped into a cavern filled with natural gas. The ground beneath the drilling rig collapsed, leaving a large hole with a diameter of 70 metres (230 ft) at 40°15′10″N 58°26′22″E. To avoid poisonous gas discharge, it was decided the best solution was to burn it off. Geologists had hoped the fire would use all the fuel in a matter of days, but the gas is still burning today.’  ” (Boing Boing).

Xeni Jardin: ‘More than 100 Americans die each day from prescription drug overdoses, mostly painkillers. That’s more daily deaths than from car accidents, gunshot wounds, or suicides. In California, two county District Attorneys are suing five of the biggest drug companies in the world, and the lawsuits include the same kind of arguments once used against big tobacco industry, demanding “public protection.”  ‘ (Boing Boing).

Since it is not April 1, and it appears to be a legitimate post on their site rather than a troll, is it possible that Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz didn’t deliberately want to be seen as imbeciles? (National Report,  America’s #1 Independent News Team)

Update: I’ve been had. As John Gordon writes in the comments:

“It’s a spoof site. Kind of weirdly done, but obvious from the main page (see disclaimer).”

.

A recent Cambridge University analysis of 76 studies involving more than 650,000 people concluded, “The current evidence does not clearly support guidelines that [recommend]… low consumption of total saturated fats.”

Yet the American Heart Association (AHA), in its most recent dietary guidelines, held fast to the idea that we must all eat low-fat diets for optimal heart health. It’s a stance that—at the very best—is controversial, and at worst is dead wrong. As a practicing cardiologist for more than three decades, I agree with the latter—it’s dead wrong.

Why does the AHA cling to recommendations that fly in the face of scientific evidence?

What I discovered was both eye-opening and disturbing. The AHA not only ignored all the other risk factors for heart disease, but it appointed someone with ties to Big Food and bizarre scientific beliefs to lead the guideline-writing panel—just the type of thing that undermines the public’s confidence in the medical community.’ (The Daily Beast via abby).

‘In 1994, machines took the checkers crown, when a program called Chinook beat the top human. Then, three years later, they topped the chess world, IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer besting world champion Garry Kasparov. Now, computers match or surpass top humans in a wide variety of games: Othello, Scrabble, backgammon, poker, even Jeopardy. But not Go. It’s the one classic game where wetware still dominates hardware.

Invented over 2500 years ago in China, Go is a pastime beloved by emperors and generals, intellectuals and child prodigies. Like chess, it’s a deterministic perfect information game — a game where no information is hidden from either player, and there are no built-in elements of chance, such as dice.1 And like chess, it’s a two-person war game. Play begins with an empty board, where players alternate the placement of black and white stones, attempting to surround territory while avoiding capture by the enemy. That may seem simpler than chess, but it’s not. When Deep Blue was busy beating Kasparov, the best Go programs couldn’t even challenge a decent amateur. And despite huge computing advances in the years since — Kasparov would probably lose to your home computer — the automation of expert-level Go remains one of AI’s greatest unsolved riddles.’ (WIRED).

I have always been a Go fan, but not a very good player. Not very many people to play with these days…

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‘Three victims in shooting have been identified. And one distraught parent has issued a heart-wrenching statement.’ Salon.com).

Titled Archaeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication and edited by SETI Director of Interstellar Message Composition Douglas Vakoch, the document draws on “issues at the core of contemporary archaeology and anthropology” to prepare us “for contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, should that day ever come.” (io9)

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Regions of the brain affected by PTSD and stress.

Psychiatrist Lynne Jones argues, and I agree, that current notions of PTSD trivialize trauma, undermine healthy coping skills and pathologies normal stress responses. (Aeon).

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‘Today is the centenary of a bandleader whose artistic legacy, within and beyond jazz, is as deep and as strong as that of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, a musician who took a name that bespeaks similarly grand ambitions and visions: Sun Ra. Ra was a crucial creator of what’s commonly called free jazz, and, unlike his swing-era predecessors, he found himself in the position of many modernists, both musical and otherwise: his work has eluded popularity. His influence and authority, even now, twenty-one years after his death, far outshine his name recognition, but his music remains among the essential experiences and representations of his times.

A musical prodigy in his home town of Birmingham, Alabama, Ra, who was born Herman Blount, had a firm footing in traditional jazz. He moved to Chicago in 1946 and worked as a pianist and arranger with the Fletcher Henderson band, but by that time he was already pursuing advanced musical and philosophical ideas. Fascinated with outer space, he changed his name—legally, to Le Son’y Ra—and worked out a literary vision of a quasi-scientific utopia based on a mythic past, which he ultimately realized in music.’ (New Yorker).

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This episode of the Wisconsin Public Radio podcast ‘To the Best of Our Knowledge‘ may have you feeling very differently the next time you take a walk in the woods  or a dig in your garden. (“The Secret Language of Plants”).

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‘Almost all airport designs are governed by regulations established by the International Civil Aviation Organization to ensure pilots circling Toledo or Timbuktu remain properly oriented and deliver passengers and cargo safely.

Lauren O’Neil turns those strictures into art, with the help of Google Earth. The Brooklyn-based designer has made a meticulous study of airport runways and logged the results on a Tumblr called Holding Pattern. These views reveal beautiful compositions at airports that are nothing special at ground level…’ (WIRED).

‘One reason Americans have trouble maintaing a healthy diet: They’re suffering from “food information overload” ‘ (Salon.com).

‘Although there is an estimated 10 million to 12 million living species in the world, we know surprisingly little about them. According to Quentin Wheeler, founding director of the International Institute for Species Exploration, we have only identified around two million — and species are going extinct faster than they are being identified.

That said, on average 18,000 new species are discovered every year; and, every year since 2008, the IISE and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry announce a list of the top 10 species discovered the previous year, in order to draw attention to those discoveries. This occurs on 23 May — the birthday of Carolus Linnaeus, the 18th-century Swedish botanist who devised the modern system of scientific names and classifications.

“The majority of people are unaware of the dimensions of the biodiversity crisis,” Dr Wheeler said. “The top 10 is designed to bring attention to the unsung heroes addressing the biodiversity crisis by working to complete an inventory of earth’s plants, animals and microbes. Each year a small, dedicated community of taxonomists and curators substantively improve our understanding of the diversity of life and the wondrous ways in which species have adapted for survival.” ‘ (CNET).

‘A few weeks ago, Paranormal 2 actress Natasha Blasick made news for claiming to have had sex (two times, actually) with a ghost. Blasick first shared her story on This Morning, a popular British daytime talk show with a real verve for oddball guests and overwrought set design. Speaking remotely with hosts Phillip Schofield and Christine Bleakley, and accompanied by psychic Patti Negri, Blasick says, “I could feel the weight of a body on top of me, and I couldn’t see anybody, but … I could feel the energy, I could feel the warmth … and at first I was very confused with all that, but then I just decided to relax and, um, it was really, really pleasurable.”

As she speaks, a hashtag appears on the screen: #SexWithGhosts.’ (Pacific Standard)

‘Once upon a time, a friend of mine accidentally took over thousands of computers. He had found a vulnerability in a piece of software and started playing with it. In the process, he figured out how to get total administration access over a network. He put it in a script, and ran it to see what would happen, then went to bed for about four hours. Next morning on the way to work he checked on it, and discovered he was now lord and master of about 50,000 computers. After nearly vomiting in fear he killed the whole thing and deleted all the files associated with it. In the end he said he threw the hard drive into a bonfire. I can’t tell you who he is because he doesn’t want to go to Federal prison, which is what could have happened if he’d told anyone that could do anything about the bug he’d found. Did that bug get fixed? Probably eventually, but not by my friend. This story isn’t extraordinary at all. Spend much time in the hacker and security scene, you’ll hear stories like this and worse.

It’s hard to explain to regular people how much technology barely works, how much the infrastructure of our lives is held together by the IT equivalent of baling wire.

Computers, and computing, are broken.’ (Medium).

Film & Audio From The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, Devo & Talking Heads: ‘You know the old joke: “if you don’t like the neighborhood, wait ten minutes.” New Yorkers know it the other way around, too. If you like the neighborhood, wait ten minutes; your local haunts will disappear. But while the physical markers of my own New York era shutter one by one, during said era all I ever wanted was for it to be the late 70s again, when you could catch such upstarts as the Talking Heads, Devo, the Ramones, Television, or Patti Smith at Max’s Kansas City. Or even earlier in the decade, when Max’s served as the NYC home base for David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and even a young Bruce Springsteen.’ (Open Culture).

‘Though Kerouac was best known for his novels… he also wrote poetry. His poems read like distilled versions of his prose – freeform, flowing and musical, laced with themes of death, drinking and Buddhism. He once wrote that he wanted his poetry “to be considered as a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jazz session on Sunday.” ‘ (Open Culture).

Sarah Scoles:  ‘We can point to our home on a globe, and find Earth in a model of the solar system, but where are we in the Milky Way?’ (Aeon).

Lynne Jones: ‘PTSD has come to signify the moral, social and political suffering of war. But not all suffering is a mental illness…’ (Aeon).

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

— Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer
The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself
I have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped
or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight

— Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

‘Two proposed pieces of legislation—including one that would have required school districts to allow parents to have their children excused from learning about evolution—were left to die in committee when the Missouri state legislature adjourned. The news comes as a relief to educators who said the legislation would have “eviscerated the teaching of biology” in Missouri…’ (io9).

‘How an anti-government militia grew on a U.S. Army base.’ — Nadya Labi (The New Yorker)

An Interview With Thierry Cruvellier: You’re the only journalist who has attended all the post-Cold War international tribunals. You’ve spent years watching these trials. What drew you to them? What kept you going back? How has your view of them evolved?

‘I was drawn to war-crimes justice because of Rwanda. The 1994 genocide was a defining event for our generation. I began working in Rwanda in the immediate aftermath, so covering the trials seemed like a logical way to keep working on this event. And I quickly realized how fascinating these trials could be, at so many different levels: historical, political, diplomatic, legal, psychological, philosophical. My great interest in the trials was as a window, on the one hand, into our human condition in extreme circumstances, and the choices individuals make (or lack) in such situations; and, on the other hand, into the historical complexity of the dynamic of genocide at the central level.’ (The New Yorker).

Neutron

‘Despite decades of taking measurements, scientists cannot agree on how long neutrons live. Neutrons are stable inside atoms, but on their own they decay in about 15 minutes, more or less, into a few other particles. Exactly how much more or less is the sticking point. Each experiment seems to yield a different answer.

The lack of resolution is frustrating. Understanding the lifetime of the neutron is important not only for knowledge’s sake but also to answer other more fundamental questions about new physics beyond the known particles and processes in the universe… “We can’t leave this disagreement just hanging out there.” ‘ (Nature News & Comment).

‘The presence of a wormhole would actually solve a major problem of galaxy formation. In recent years, astronomers have observed what appear to be supermassive black holes at the centre of many galaxies. Indeed, many believe that supermassive black holes are necessary for galaxies to form in the first place— they provide the gravitational pull to hold galaxies together in their early stages.

But if that’s true, how do supermassive black holes become so massive so quickly? After all, the one at the centre of our galaxy must have been in place about 100 million years after the Big Bang. That doesn’t leave much time to grow.

A wormhole, on the other hand, is a primordial object formed in the blink of an eye after creation. So if wormholes did form in this way, they would be present in the early universe to trigger the formation of the first galaxies.’ (The Physics arXiv Blog — Medium).

‘Many of us believe that we can tell when someone else is lying, and, over the years, a folklore has developed around the facial and physical cues that can give someone away. Liars don’t look you straight in the eye. When someone is lying, he looks up and to the side, as if searching for something. A liar fidgets and seems somehow nervous. Sometimes, he’ll scratch or pull his ear. He’ll hesitate, as if he’s not sure he wants to tell you something. These, however, are all “old wives’ tales,” Leanne ten Brinke, a psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley whose work focusses on detecting deception, told me. “The empirical literature just doesn’t bear that out.” ‘ (The New Yorker).

‘There are many things that make the octopus a strange creature, but one of them is that each of its eight arms has an essentially infinite number of positions, and yet each arm operates independently. How does an octopus keep from tying itself in knots?

A group of Israeli and American researchers think they’ve discovered how the octopus keeps its arms in order. The problem is that octopus arms behave as if they have a “mind of their own.” ‘ (io9)

‘A controversial test for self-awareness is dividing the animal kingdom.’ (Nautilus).

‘…[D]o epileptics hallucinate or are their sensory abilities augmented to sharper, more intuitive levels?’ (Big Think).

The content of tweets on Twitter, based on the data gathered by Pear Analytics in 2009.

Adrienne LaFrance and Robinson Meyer: ‘Something is wrong on Twitter. And people are noticing.

Or, at least, the kind of people we hang around with on Twitter are noticing. And it’s maybe not a very important demographic, this very weird and specific kind of user: audience-obsessed, curious, newsy. Twitter’s earnings last quarter, after all, were an improvement on the period before, and it added 14 million new users for a total of 255 million. The thing is: Its users are less active than they once were. Twitter says these changes reflect a more streamlined experience, but we have a different theory: Twitter is entering its twilight.’ (The Atlantic).

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‘…[S]ightings since the 1930s have shown the spot shrinking. A recent Hubble photo (seen above) observes the Great Red Spot at its smallest size yet —- just over 10,000 miles across, barely big enough for 1.3 Earths to fit inside. Scientists are studying small eddies at the edge of the storm that may somehow be sapping it of its strength. Will this monstrous cyclone continue to downsize? Researchers can’t say for sure.’ (WIRED).

Colette Shade: ‘Pinterest is best known as a destination where people can share affordable wedding ideas, dip recipes, and inspirational quotes pasted over photos of white sand beaches. But a small number of Pinterest users also swap how-tos on building bomb shelters, storing food, and emergency medical care—for “when there are no doctors.”

Meet the preppers of Pinterest.’ (The Atlantic).

“For the past ten years, Greg Mahle has driven 40,000 miles a year rescuing dogs from overpopulated “high volume kill shelters.” He and fellow volunteers run Rescue Road Trips, LLC, based in Ohio. Operating primarily in the deep South, they pick up rescued dogs and take them to other areas of the country for adoption. The organization is said to help save about 2,000 dogs each year. From The Newark Advocate:

‘Every other week, Mahle leaves his wife and stepson, traveling from their home in Zanesville to Houston, Texas, where he starts to pick up dogs destined for their new homes. Moving on from Texas, he stops in nine Southern states, picking up an average of 80 dogs on the second leg of his 4,200-mile journey.

“Some of them are scared,” Mahle said. “They don’t know what’s happening. Some have come from really bad situations, but a little love and reassurance is just what they need.”

Once secured in their crates on the truck, Mahle said the dogs perk up as if they know they’re off to a better life.

“It’s like being in a truck full of lottery winners,” he said with a laugh. “You can see it in their eyes and their disposition. They know something good is going to happen to them.” ‘ ” (Boing Boing).

‘We’ve previously featured some of Ginsberg’s Naropa lectures here at Open Culture, including his 1980 short course on Shakespeare’s The Tempest and his lecture on “Expansive Poetics” from 1981. Today, we bring you several selections from his lengthy series of lectures on the “History of Poetry,” which he delivered in 1975. Currently, thirteen of Ginsberg’s lectures in the series are available online through the Internet Archive, and they are each well worth an attentive listen.’ (Open Culture). I am going to sit down with these when I have a chance.

‘The majority of Americans – depending on which survey you look at, between 60 and 75 percent – cannot name which political party controls the House of Representatives, which party controls the Senate, or either.

Because most Americans don’t know who controls Congress, when Congress misbehaves, as they have been doing for six years, most Americans aren’t sure who to blame.

Enter the Republican Chaos Strategy, based entirely on this statistical and political reality.

And common sense suggests that well over 90 percent of Americans know that Barack Obama is the president and that he is a Democrat.

The Republicans know this, too, and it’s the other half of their strategy.

Therefore, what the Republicans know, is that if they can cause damage to the American economy and to American working people, the average voter, not realizing it was exclusively the Republicans who did it, are going to assume that the president – and the Democratic Party he is a member of – must bear some or maybe even all of the responsibility.

It’s a brilliant strategy: Damage the country and you damage the Democratic Party.’ (Salon.com).

Statuette of ancient Egyptian physician Imhotep, the first physician from antiquity known by name. 

‘Over the past two decades it has become apparent that the knowledge base for clinical medicine has been corrupted by publication bias, positive result bias, the increasingly strained competition for funding and tenure, and a non-trivial amount of outright fraud.

Perhaps as a result of these problems we see a very high level of research result contradiction and retraction. Sometimes it seems everything we believed in 1999 was reversed by 2014. Retrospective studies of the sustainability of medical research has taught us that the wise physician is better to read textbooks and ignore anything that doesn’t get to the front page of the New York Times…

We can’t change the past, but what do we do with the medical literature we’ve inherited? It is vast, but we know the quality is mediocre. Can we salvage the best of it?’ (Gordon’s Notes)

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‘The man who gave us the incandescent light bulb thought we should never turn out the lights at all.’ (The Atlantic).

Why it helps to put pain into words: ‘Did we lose our sense of sympathy when we lost the shared experience of pain?’ (Aeon).

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‘CalTech astronomer Fritz Zwicky was the first to conceive of dark matter, supernovas and neutron stars. He also had a theory about colonizing the solar system using nuclear bombs. We could terraform other planets, he argued, by pulverizing them and then moving them closer or further from the sun.

If you’ve never heard of Zwicky, you’re not alone. Virtually the entire public was unaware of his accomplishments, largely due to his abrasive personality and unique gift for alienating himself from the scientific establishment. “Astronomers are spherical bastards,” he once said. “No matter how you look at them they are just bastards.”

And, while many of his theories were proven right, Zwicky also advocated what could be charitably described as “eccentric” ideas—most notably, his proposals for using nuclear explosives to reconstruct the solar system.’ (io9)

‘For decades, scientists have feared the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet—a vast swath of ice that could unleash a slow but unstoppable 10-foot rise in sea levels if it melted. So here is today’s terrible news: we now know the ice sheet is melting. And there’s pretty much nothing we can do about it.’ (Gizmodo)