Papabear2010 sez, “Based on Dr. Seuss’s final book before his death, this is a story about life’s ups and downs, told by the people of Burning Man 2011. Combining the stunning visuals of Burning Man and its population with the haunting, silly, thought-provoking words of Dr. Seuss.”
Dawww, this is just lovely.
Video link: Oh, the Places You'll Go at Burning Man!
Text of the book (unfortunately cyan on rather bright pink)
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Boyd Lee Dunlop used to play nightclubs. Now he works the cleanser-scented halls of a Buffalo nursing home. But man, can he rattle a piano... more
Sea Robots Farm Algae for Fuel via Big Think by Big Think Editors
A Pennsylvania-based energy start-up envisions fleets of tiny robots harvesting the sea for algae which could then be converted into biodiesel. The company, BEAR Oceanics, is currently crowd-funding to create self-sustaining robot farms which must be engineered to avoid boats or ships as they harvest.
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2012: The Alan Turing Year via Big Think by Daniel Honan
He helped win World War II by cracking the German ENIGMA code but was persecuted by Great Britain for being gay. Today, his name is synonymous with the test he invented in 1950 for determining a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. Read More
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“Loosen your tie, but keep your clothes on.” Airline safety cards are not so much instructional guides as works of fantastically imaginative literature... more
Pigeons are Good at Math, Alas via Big Think by Daniel Honan
It has been known for a while that birds can count. What researchers have just discovered is pigeons can learn abstract numerical rules, according to a study published in the journal Science. What is astonishing is that pigeons, who learned to peck numbers on a screen in order, performed just as well in tests as rhesus monkeys at numerical competence.
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Did Neanderthals speak with a high-pitched voice? via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
Neanderthals had different bodies than we do. In general, they were stockier and shorter, for instance. And there were other physical differences, as well. It’s hard to say what these differences meant in practice but it’s fun to speculate. You could build up a pretty good about how those short, study bodies might have helped Neanderthals be better adapted to cold. Or, you could look at the shape of a male Neanderthal’s voice box, and think about how that shape might affect the sounds that came out.
So that’s what this video is about. I have no idea how widely accepted “high pitched voice theory” is. I couldn’t find a lot of references to it outside of the BBC special this clip comes from. Here’s what the BBC says:
Professor Bob Franciscus, from Iowa University, is part of a multi-national group attempting to do just that. By making scans of modern humans, he saw how the soft tissue of the vocal tracts depends on the position of the hyoid bone and the anchoring sites on the skull. Computer predictions were then be made to determine the shape of the modern human vocal tract from bone data alone. The same equations were then used with data from a Neanderthal skull to predict the shape of a Neanderthal vocal tract.As long as you understand that context, that this isn’t necessarily a given that Neanderthals spoke in high-pitched voices, I think you should see this video. Because the results of this theory are damned hilarious.
The Neanderthal vocal tract seems to have been shorter and wider than a modern male human’s, closer to that found today in modern human females. It’s possible, then, that Neanderthal males had higher pitched voices than we might have expected. Together with a big chest, mouth, and huge nasal cavity, a big, harsh, high, sound might have resulted. But, crucially, the anatomy of the vocal tract is close enough to that of modern humans to indicate that anatomically there was no reason why Neanderthal could not have produced the complex range of sounds needed for speech.
Via misspepper on Submitterator!
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Philosophy and faith. Baghdad was the intellectual center of the early medieval world. Then free inquiry faded in Muslim countries. Why?... more
A Van Gogh for Our Times via Big Think by Bob Duggan
As the times go, so goes Van Gogh. Toiling in relative obscurity during his life, known by fellow painters but not by the public at large, Vincent Van Gogh’s greatest career move was dying in 1890. First Theo, his brother, then Jo, Theo’s widow, spread the gospel of Vincent and transformed strange man who made strange pictures into the embodiment of the tortured artist cruelly snubbed by a public unprepared to recognize his genius.
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Octopus walks on land via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
Perhaps you’ve heard the tale of the octopus that broke out of its tank at the aquarium and walked across the room to break into another tank where it proceeded to eat other forms of sea life.
That story is kind of an urban legend. It’s supposedly happened at every aquarium in the world, but can’t be confirmed. And experts have told me that the hard floors in an aquarium would likely seriously damage the suction pads of any octopus that tried it.
But the basic idea – that an octopus could pop out of the water and move across dry ground – is a very real thing.
Here [see link below], an octopus at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in California hauls itself out of the water, and scoots awkwardly around on land for a little bit (while some apparently Minnesotan tourists gawk), before sliding back into the water. It’s not the most graceful sort of travel. But it can be very handy. Octopuses do this in nature to escape predators, and also to find food of their own in tidal pools.
As an added bonus: Scientific American just started an all-octopuses, all-the-time blog called The Octopus Chronicles. Check it out!
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