More history news today than you could shake a stick at. Stick not included…
- Did the ancient Greeks and Native Americans swap starcharts? A follow-up to the recent story about the depiction of an ancient supernova.
- Archaeologists believe they have found an ancient Indian port which connected it with the Roman Empire.
- Discovery of new drawing by Da Vinci. Bandwagon jumper…
- Is the truth about Masada less romantic than the accepted story?
- Accelerating development in Ireland leaves Irish archaeology near crisis point.
- What is it with Stonehenge and the Druids (would make a good band name wouldn’t it…).
- The battle to save the treasures of Lascaux Cave.
- A profile of Jim B. Tucker, a psychiatrist who investigates past-life memories of children. Tucker is also the author of the well-regarded book, Life Before Life (Amazon US and UK).
- Rare counting ability temporarily induced by switching off brain region.
- South America’s Aymara people see time in the opposite way to us – the future is behind us, and the past ahead.
- Avert your eyes Shadows. Village plans to cash in on their annual tourist attraction: mass bird suicide.
- The man who helped crack the human genome says the work allowed him to “glimpse at the workings of God.”
- A review of George Basalla’s Civilized Life in the Universe (Amazon US and UK), which voices criticisms of SETI.
- Playing those mind games…
- Did you know that Earth has a second moon? It’s a massive 20 metres across, and travels like a corkscrew.
- And did you know how flies walk on ceilings? Love that image.
- The ISS and the Moon take precedent, as NASA shelves its climate satellites.
- Scientists claim they’ve synthesized an anti-aging molecule that can even make cells younger.
- String theory debunked in Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics (Amazon US & UK).
- China’s controversial 3 Gorges Dam – by the numbers.
- New report says there’s as much wind power potential off US coasts as the current capacity of all US power plants combined.
- The Simpsons almost disproves Fermat’s last theorem.
- Using gravity to get off the ground, new plane will climb like a balloon and fly like a glider.
- Genes governing embryonic stem cell immortality discovered.
- Simply exhaling allows laser-based breath analyzer to diagnose disease.
- Alzheimer’s vaccine shows success in mice.
- Outsourcing war to the ‘bullet sponges‘ – discussing those ‘contractors’ that seem everywhere in Iraq (the happy new word for ‘mercenaries’ used by politicians and the media).
- Jesus loves a machine gun. He could have done with one when those crazy Romans decided to put him up on a cross. Now that would make for a readable Bible!
Thanks Kat and Heartsguy.
Quote of the Day:
I don’t believe anything, but I have many suspicions. I strongly suspect that a world “external to,” or at least independent of, my senses exists in some sense. I also suspect that this world shows signs of intelligent design, and I suspect that such intelligence acts via feedback from all parts to all parts and without centralized sovereignity, like Internet; and that it does not function hierarchically, in the style an Oriental despotism, an American corporation or Christian theology…I sometimes suspect that what Blake called Poetic Imagination expresses this exact thought in the language of his age, and that visits by”angels” and “gods” states it an even more archaic argot.
These suspicions have grown over 72 years, but as a rather slow and stupid fellow I do not have the chutzpah to proclaim any of them as certitudes. Give me another 72 years and maybe I’ll arrive at firmer conclusions.
Robert Anton Wilson