Another link from Boing Boing, this time about increased biofuel efficiency in vegetarians and vegans. But I hardly eat meat, and it’s not helping me much…
Category: ASIDES
Why Sing We?
Music gives biologists fits. Its ubiquity in human cultures, and strong evidence that the brain comes preloaded with musical circuits, suggest that music is as much a product of human evolution as, say, thumbs. But that raises the question of what music is for. Back in 1871, Darwin speculated that human music, like bird songs, attracts mates. Or, as he put it, prelinguistic human ancestors tried “to charm each other with musical notes and rhythm.” But more recent work by scientists suggests that music might have played a much different role than this — bonding groups of early humans together …
Viruses and Your Passport
A warning from the Netherlands about how using RFID in passports may just be a bad idea at this point.
Cockroaches Cooperate?
Apparently so. Via Weird is Relative, I think.
You Gotta Give Respect To This Outfit
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I mean, someone has to fight these ID-fantasists.
Zohar Studios
Stephen Berkman is a very weird man. But, you know, in a cool way. Wacky camera obscura/photographic oddity. My friend Jack would probably love some of this, though you’d never know it from his pictures. Via Boing Boing.
The emptiness suddenly disappears
When Bruce Sterling reads this Guardian article on brain implants used for treating depression, what comes to his mind is how people it could be misused by governments to induce depression instead. Whereas the first thing that pops into my mind is how it’d be nice to be watching the Olympics and seeing these modified athletes who are all operating with stimulated brains, you know, the bit that goees wild when your kid’s under a bus, and you lift it with one arm? Show me a sprinter with an implant there, baby. Oh, and the other thing I imagine is …
Me Want :: Roll-Up Keyboard
Maybe I’m just a hopeless gadgetgeek, but I want this Roll-Up Keyboard. From the list of weird keyboards Bruce Sterling linked to recently here.
ㅋㅋㅋ, k-k-k, kekeke: leet mutation?
In the Boing Boing post linking to this wikipedia article on the origins of leetspeak, I saw something I thought was unusual: it was claimed that “kekeke” was a Korean equivalent of “hahaha”. What’s weird about it is that the root of the expression is actually ㅋㅋㅋ, which is to say, kkk, without any vowels… and that, usually, when I catch students trying to render ㅋㅋㅋ in English writing, they use a simple “kkk” or k-k-k instead of kekeke. I have to wonder where the vowels got added in, or why this variant in any case arose among Korean gamers….
This Spartan Life
If you haven’t heard of This Spartan Life, well, it’s a Late-Show styled interview show that’s conducted from… inside a video game. Via this article in Wired.