via An Awfully Big Blog Adventure by David Thorpe
I’ve been retelling old fables I read as a child. For some reason I've been thinking recently about the one about The Magic Money Tree and thought the time might be right to retell it here.
You have to read this through to the end
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Of dogs, apes, and humans
via OUP Blog by Anne Reboul
Featured image credit: “Woman, dog, pacsi” by YamaBSM. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.
It’s the late afternoon and you are in the kitchen, idly beginning to think about dinner, at the end of a long day at work. Suddenly the peace is shattered by the noisy entrance of your dog and your son. Your dog sits by his empty bowl and looks at you with beseeching eyes. If he thinks that you’re not reacting quickly enough, he may produce a single attention-grabbing bark. Your son says: “When do we eat?” On the face of it, your dog and your son have done the same thing: they both, each in his own way, have communicated the same content, that is, “Feed me, I’m hungry!” Admittedly, your son has done so in a rather more articulated way, but that could be a detail.
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Is Free Will an Illusion?
via Big Think by Philip Perry
Whether or not we act out a predetermined role in life or set our own course has been argued for time immemorial by philosophers, scholars, and theologians alike. Traditionally, there was an East-West dichotomy. In Eastern philosophies, generally speaking, one was the subject of fate.
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Trippy fractal of classical architecture set to classical music
via Boing Boing by Andrea James
Depths of Antiquity is Julius Horsthuis’ hypnotic slow-motion dive into fractals generated from images of churches, castles and other imposing edifices of yesteryear. It’s perfectly complemented by Beethoven.
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10 Old Viral Videos That You Absolutely Need in Your Life
via MakeUseOf by Anya Zhukova
YouTube is an absolute abyss of weirdness. When you’re looking for something funny, slightly disturbing (in an entertaining way), or just plain strange, you know exactly where to go.
But YouTube wasn’t the first place to find viral videos. In the early 2000s, before YouTube was around, Newgrounds and Albino Blacksheep were havens for strange videos that got to be extremely popular. Forums, humor websites, and even email sharing were popular ways of spreading weird videos.
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Science Busts The Biggest Myth Ever About Why Bridges Collapse
via 3 Quarks Daily: Ethan Siegel in Forbes
The collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on the morning of November 7, 1940, is the most iconic example of a spectacular bridge failure in modern times. As the third largest suspension bridge in the world, behind only the George Washington and Golden Gate bridges, it connected Tacoma to the entire Kitsap Peninsula in Puget Sound, and opened to the public on July 1st, 1940. Just four months later, under the right wind conditions, the bridge was driven at its resonant frequency, causing it to oscillate and twist uncontrollably. After undulating for over an hour, the middle section collapsed, and the bridge was destroyed. It was a testimony to the power of resonance, and has been used as a classic example in physics and engineering classes across the country ever since. Unfortunately, the story is a complete myth.
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George Washington: the great mind behind early America
via OUP Blog by Kevin J. Hayes
“Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States” by Howard Chandler Christy, circa 1940. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Throughout history, George Washington has been highly regarded for his common sense and military fortitude. When it comes to the Founding Fathers, his intellectual pursuits have been overshadowed by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton – who are conventionally considered the great minds of early America.
Despite his relative lack of formal education, Washington remained an avid reader throughout his life. Through comprehensive research, historian Kevin J. Hayes has identified Washington’s devotion to self-education. In the following excerpt from George Washington: A Life in Books, Hayes examines the evidence behind Washington’s overlooked intellectual life.
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A Summary and Analysis of ‘Hansel and Gretel’
via Interesting Literature
The meaning of a classic fairy tale
Child abandonment, poverty, gingerbread houses, and an enterprising hero: the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel has it all. It arguably has one of the most satisfying plot structures of all the fairy tales. Yet as with the other fairy tales we’ve discussed in previous posts, such as the 4,000-year-old tale of Rumpelstiltskin, a number of the plot features of ‘Hansel and Gretel’, and the evolution of the fairy tale, are more complicated than we might remember from the nursery. And a summary and analysis of ‘Hansel and Gretel’ throws up some interesting details concerning the story’s plot and meaning.
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We Aren't Built to Live in the Moment
via 3 Quarks Daily: Martin E. P. Seligman and John Tierney in The New York Times
Maxwell Holyoke-Hirsch
We are misnamed. We call ourselves Homo sapiens, the “wise man”, but that’s more of a boast than a description. What makes us wise? What sets us apart from other animals? Various answers have been proposed – language, tools, cooperation, culture, tasting bad to predators – but none is unique to humans. What best distinguishes our species is an ability that scientists are just beginning to appreciate: We contemplate the future. Our singular foresight created civilization and sustains society. It usually lifts our spirits, but it’s also the source of most depression and anxiety, whether we’re evaluating our own lives or worrying about the nation. Other animals have springtime rituals for educating the young, but only we subject them to “commencement” speeches grandly informing them that today is the first day of the rest of their lives. A more apt name for our species would be Homo prospectus, because we thrive by considering our prospects. The power of prospection is what makes us wise. Looking into the future, consciously and unconsciously, is a central function of our large brain, as psychologists and neuroscientists have discovered – rather belatedly, because for the past century most researchers have assumed that we’re prisoners of the past and the present.
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Super-slow-mo video reveals how ladybug wings unfold
via Boing Boing by Andrea James
Because ladybug hindwings are covered by an opaque outer shell called an elytra, scientists were not sure how the wings' folding mechanism worked until Kazuya Saito created a clear replacement shell that allowed them to film the process in super slow-motion.
Continue reading I didn’t want to spoil this by copying the images! Fascinating.
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