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POPSHeartbreaking Nature Story We know that whales are intelligent. Whether they are self aware is another matter. Yet, there is something very poignant about this story.
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POPSGIANT Crystals! Uh, yeah, I know, it's a stupid title and I normally have something more cerebral to say, but this is just plain cool. I wonder what could possibly explain my fascination with these crystals?
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POPSThe Mathematical Lives of Plants The seeds of a sunflower, the spines of a cactus, and the bracts of a pine cone all grow in whirling spiral patterns. Remarkable for their complexity and beauty, they also show consistent mathematical patterns that scientists have been striving to understand. ... Scientists have puzzled over this pattern of plant growth for hundreds of years. Why would plants prefer the golden angle to any other? And how can plants possibly "know" anything about Fibonacci numbers? For the first time, scientists have found convincing biochemical mechanisms responsible for the interlocking spiral growth patterns seen in many plants. (The Romanesco broccoli plant is a striking example.) The video of the experiment with magnetized liquid iron droplets demonstrates how the geometry of such growth could occur in nature.
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POPSOh yeah, and don't trust yourself either! The Chinese philosopher Xun Zi said that human nature is not particularly good, but he went on to argue that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to make it better. Too many people resign themselves to say "that's just the way things are" because that's easier than challenging their own beliefs. Before we can be an agent for change, our ideas must be relentlessly refined in the furnace of critical introspection. Follow the link to read all these cognitive hazards, and see where you find them in your life!
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POPSMath Behind Ancient Islamic Tile Patterns Decoded When Peter J. Lu traveled to Uzbekistan, he had no idea of the mathematical journey that he was about to embark on as well. See the full research article as published in Science . It's a wonderful example of original, multidisciplinary academic research bridging history and mathematics that happens to force us to re-think the sophistication of ancient geometrical knowledge. When Lu looked at photographs of Islamic buildings, he found that he could break the patterns on their surfaces up into the same shapes, even though the shapes often weren't immediately visible. "I couldn't sleep for days," he said. "I skipped Christmas break to work on it."
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POPSSEXY (Totaly hot naked picture of a Mono-monostatic object: perfect geometric equilibrium) Now that I have your attention, allow me to introduce the Gomboc! It's an object of absolutely perfect geometric equilbrium. There is only one position in which it can rest, and it will always return to the exact same posture, because the balance of its proportions all pull it to a single incredibly narrow center of gravity. And, it is TOTALLY NAKED! I mean, just check out the curves on this one! How did we get this Gombloc? Well, there were a few Russian mathematicians sitting around (probably stoned) who thought it would be cool. So they just sat down and did the math "for a few years" and then tested thousands of pebles (once again, STONED!) until they just decided to make one themselves. I am so not worthy!
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POPSThe Physics of Dance Notes from a presentation by physics professor George Gollin on the physical laws which every ballet dancer must eventually master, whether explicitly aware of them or not. It must be noted that professor Kenneth Laws has written three books on the physics of dance and just had an interesting interview with Studio 360 on the subject.
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POPSHow Do You Psyche Yourself? Up? Or Out? The moral of the story? No matter how high you jump, how fast you run or swim, how powerfully you row, you can do better. But sometimes your mind gets in the way. “All maximum performances are actually pseudo-maximum performances,” Dr. Morgan said. “You are always capable of doing more than you are doing.” From an article on how athletes trick their brains into letting them achieve what their bodies are capable of. I think this anecdote perfectly encapsulates what makes pushing one's personal boundaries so maddening yet rewarding. If I had more time, I would come up with some witty, insightful comments right about here, but I'm afraid I need to run (for work, unfortunately, not for pleasure). Anyone else have some thoughts? :)
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POPSSocial Networking for Zebras Ecologists have turned to computer scientists to develop dynamic graphs of social behavior among Zebra populations, revealing why some are thriving while others are endangered: The difference showed that the Grevy's zebras tended to hang out in cliques, whereas the onagers spent time with different buddies on different days. The methods developed turn out to applicable to human networks, too: In the meantime, Berger-Wolf is testing her methods on other datasets, including the records of e-mails exchanged at Enron that became available after they were subpoenaed. She has found some surprising connections between the two kinds of networks. "We can see that our method to detect when a lion was in the area of zebras detects very well when the subpoena was issued at Enron," she says. When faced with a lion, the zebras flee and follow one lead zebra. Similarly, after the subpoena was issued, e-mail traffic to the lawyers increased dramatically.
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POPSWhy Are Pygmies Short? Because of their short life expectancies, the researchers speculate that pygmies have had to shift their reproductive years forward. The average life expectancy at birth for different pygmy populations ranges from just 16 years to 24 years. Very few pygmy women reach the end of their reproductive period, as only a small percentage survive past age 40.
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POPSRubens was right? Overweight People Live Longer? Not dying today basically just means you'll die later. (Citation: The Onion, Our Dumb Century: US Mortality Rate Holding Steady at 100%) So I would be really interested in seeing how they crunch the numbers on "Death Rates." How they account for things like age and inevitability. For instance, aren't most really old people under-weight? As life goes on, most of the people I've seen either bloat up (Marlon Brando) or wither away (George Burns) so it would seem unlikely that the people who are at the time in their life where dying is a reality might be merely overweight. What we need is statistics tracking death rates based on a person's weight at a give age, such as 15, 25 or 45, that way we can see how life-long weight may affect a person's life expectancy. Seems like this is more skewing of the numbers to try to convince Americans they can have their cake and eat a lot of it too. On the other hand, it can't hurt to be jolly!
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POPSWetland thrives beneath the Antarctic Ice This is actually an entire new world, possibly preserving ancient life. The complex system that has apparently existed unseen beneath the Antarctic ice sheet is another great example of truth being much more exciting than fiction.
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POPSWhat Dinosaurs Really Looked Like - sort of... Most dinosaurs are known only from their bones, which are seldom found joined together as they would be in real life. Growing up I often lamented the problem of knowing how dinosaurs looked. After all, we find their bones fossilized and fragmented. Although it is easy enough to accurately reconstruct the individual bones, but since they are often found in jumbled dumps, it is virtually impossible to accurately reconstruct how they all fit together without a lot of subjective guesswork. A lot of times they can't even tell which bones come from which dinosaurs. Now, I know that lately the National Geographic Society has been pulling Discovery-Chanel-league stunts of leaping ahead of the facts to promote splashy and unverified history, but this is still a major leap forward. We may not know what color they were, but we are one step closer!
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POPSGiagantic Canibalistic Mongolian Trout! The best news is that conservation efforts now center on catch-and-release fly fishing! The Chinese utter lack of comprehension when it comes to conservation means I still haven't been able to find any good fishing around Beijing, but Mongolia, that ain't so far away! So that settles it, I'm headed to Mongolia! But first I have to learn to tie a fly that looks like a dead marmot... (Any tips?)
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POPSEternalism, Nihilism: new forms, old superstition <<<Throughout the Buddha's long period of teaching the Dhamma to His followers, He actively discouraged speculative arguments. During the 5th century B.C. India was a veritable hive of intellectual activity where scholars, yogis, philosophers, kings and even ordinary householders were constantly engaged in the philosophical arguments pertaining to human existence. Some of these were either ridiculously trivial or totally irrelevant. Some people wasted valuable time arguing at great length about all manner of subjects. They were far more concerned about proving their powers in mental gymnastics than seeking genuine solutions to the problems that beset humanity.>>>
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POPSMarvelous Mysteries of Cartography As a huge fan of Martin Waldseemuller, I'm glad to see his work in the news. Cartography used to be a really cool job, requiering research and interviews, and a healthy dose of speculation. The great thing is that history is so much more complex than the writing of it, and this map is a perfect example of that. Maps were very cloak and dagger stuff back in their day. Although the story comes down that Columbus discovered America and Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean. But a clever sleuth could have figured out that there must have been something dividing the eastern coast of China from the eastern coast of the new continent. Also, there is the very sexy possibility that other unknown explorers had already made forays into the Pacific before Balboa got the credit. I think its great when history starts to sound like an Arturo Perez Reverte novel!
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POPSNew Math For Analyzing Evolutionary Trees "What this tells me is that you don't know what kind of mathematics is going to be useful to biology," Billera says. "It wasn't clear before this that geometry and topology would be useful to biology. Who would think they had anything to do with each other?" Ernst Haeckel's classic hand-drawn diagram is just for fun—it's one of those wonderful diagrams that functions as both science and art.
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POPSBeijing's breath-taking new library (Pictures by yours truly) So "Phase II" of the National Library of China just opened down the block from my apartment, and it is absolutely amazing. Filled with open space and natural light, it is gigantic yet personal, with the feeling of a pavilion. Long lines of sight that stretch uninterrupted out into the city blur the division between indoor and outdoor. Their website is also pretty cool - in English, and with lots of digitized collections, making it worthwhile for anyone wanting to learn more about China.
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POPSUnique Spanish-Creole Language Surviving in South America The only surviving Spanish-Creole language persists in a small town in the jungles of Columbia. Palenquero shows a unique history of interaction between societies, coming together across language barriers and blending together to create a vibrant culture combining the new world with the old, black and white, The Indians of the Caribbean with the cultures of Africa and Europe. A language is the story of the people who speak it. We can learn much to help our society by understanding the pluralism of Creole languages and communities.
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POPSAll our thinking is based on Feelings John Hellevig's website is rich and thick with good stuff. It includes a copy of his exciting book about how we are creatures who feel first and foremost. For me, it has been one of the best finds of 2007, and if I came upon it by reference from another Clipper, yo her or him my love!
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