10 interesting items for today: dance styles via quantum consciousness to poems about night

The origins of dance styles
via OUP Blog by the Oxford Reference marketing team

‘Tango Street Art, Buenos Aires’ by Rod Waddington. CC-BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
There is an amazing variety of types, styles, and genres of dancing – from street to disco, to folk dancing and ballroom. Some are recent inventions, stemming from social and political changes, whilst others have origins as old as civilisation itself. Archaeological evidence for early dancing has been found in 9,000 year old Indian cave paintings, as well as Egyptian tombs with dancing figures decorating the walls, dated to around 3300 BC. Society’s love of dance has never waned, and it is just as popular now as ever. With the rise of dancing television shows, official competitions, and public events around the world, we thought we’d take a look at some of the most widespread types of dance and how they started.
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Europe’s Famed Bog Bodies Are Starting to Reveal Their Secrets
High-tech tools divulge new information about the mysterious and violent fates met by these corpses
via Arts & Letters Daily: Joshua Levine in Smithsonian

In 1950, Tollund Man’s discoverers “found a face so fresh they could only suppose they had stumbled on a recent murder.” (Christian Als)

If you’re looking for the middle of nowhere, the Bjaeldskovdal bog is a good place to start. It lies six miles outside the small town of Silkeborg in the middle of Denmark’s flat, sparse Jutland peninsula. The bog itself is little more than a spongy carpet of moss, with a few sad trees poking out. An ethereal stillness hangs over it. A child would put it more simply: This place is really spooky.
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Scientists ponder the possibility of quantum consciousness
via Boing Boing by Andrea James

As AI improves, the mystery of consciousness interests more programmers and physicists.
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Are the microbes in our gut affecting how fast we age?
via OUP Blog by Vincent Maffei
The collection of microbial life in the gut, known as the microbiota, may be considered an accessory organ of the gastrointestinal tract. It is a self-contained, multi-cellular, biochemically active mass with specialized functions. Some functions are important for life such as vitamin K synthesis, an essential molecule in blood clotting. Others are responsible for training and maintaining a healthy immune system or digesting indigestible food products such as insoluble fiber. Like other organs, the microbiota has physiologic reserve (i.e., the capacity to regenerate). It may be harvested from one host for transplant into another. It is thus no surprise that as our other organs age, such as our heart, brain, and kidneys, our gut microbiota ages, too.
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A simple, near perfect tv theme song
via Boing Boing by Jason Weisberger

You’ll laugh so hard,
your sides will ache…
Your heart will go pitter-pat!
Watching Felix! The wonderful cat! 

It is fun just to type that out.

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Where did Darwin go on the Beagle?
via OUP Blog by the Oxford Scholarly Editions Online marketing team

“Map of the world from 1565,” by Paolo Forlani. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
On 27 December 1831, Charles Darwin set off on a round-the-world survey expedition and adventure on the HMS Beagle. Captained by Robert FitzRoy, the trip (the second voyage of HMS Beagle) lasted until 2 October 1836 and saw the crew visit locations as varied as Brazil, Tierra del Fuego, South Africa, New Zealand, and the Azores. Aged just 22, Darwin was a young and promising naturalist, who dreamed of seeing wondrous tropical lands before heading home and joining the church. In his own words, Darwin’s notions of the inside of a ship “were about as indefinite as those of some men on the inside of a man, viz. a large cavity containing air, water, and food mingled in hopeless confusion.” By the time he returned to England however, he was a changed man; hardened to life on water as well as explorations on land, and celebrated as a preeminent geologist, naturalist, and fossil collector.
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Stubborn tree stump exacts revenge on would-be uprooter
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder

I thought maybe the trailer hitch was going to break off, but the tree had a sneakier form of payback in mind.

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Giant virus discovery sparks debate over tree of life
via 3 Quarks Daily: Sara Reardon in Nature

An illustration of what a Klosneuvirus might look like.
Evolutionary biologists have never known what to make of viruses, arguing over their origins for decades. But a newly discovered group of giant viruses, called Klosneuviruses, could be a ‘missing link’ that helps to settle the debate – or provoke even more discord.
Continue reading I do not understand the science but I enjoyed that illustration!

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Anatomy of a disaster: the Bombay Docks Explosion
via The National Archives Blog by Michael Mahoney
This narrative begins with a recollection of my father’s, a resident of a care home in October 2016. Dad recalled not only the name of the vessel on which he was a DEMS (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship) gunner, but also the name of British ammunition ship SS Fort Stikine, the vessel that caused a massive explosion on Friday 14 April 1944 in the docks of Mumbai (called Bombay at the time).
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10 of the Best Poems about Night
via Interesting Literature
What are the best poems about the night in all of English literature?
Below we offer ten suggestions for classic night poems from the last few centuries of English verse.