December 14, 2020
The Antikythera Mechanism: Evidence of a Lunar Calendar
A new examination of some old evidence shows that the 2000 year old astronomical computer uses a 354-day lunar calendar, rather than the previously suspected 365-day Egyptian civil calendar. [more inside]
Seth Rogen's Pottery and How the World Wants You to Monetize Your Hobby
Interview with Seth Rogen on his ceramic vases Seth Rogen started a pottery habit early on in the pandemic so he could make his own ashtrays. [more inside]
What kind of evidence is portraiture?
How Scientists Use and Abuse Portraiture (Hyperallergic). Many scientific studies assume that painted faces are factual representations of flesh-and-blood countenances. Yael Rice and Sonja Drimmer explain why this isn’t just false - it’s preposterous.
Nonjustice System: a tool that may help reduce gun violence
James Kimmel and his colleagues at the Yale Collaborative for Motive Control Studies have developed the NonJustice System or "Miracle Court," a role-play exercise to help people manage their desires for revenge. A pilot study [...] showed that the Nonjustice System was effective in decreasing revenge desires among study subjects and increasing benevolence toward their transgressors—outcomes that could help prevent violence. Importantly, the findings held up weeks after the intervention. Kimmel and his colleagues hope that the project can be used to reduce grievance-focused gun violence. Kimmel speaks to Erin Schumacher about the childhood bullying that started him on this research path [warning, mention of pet death]. [more inside]
"Blended Learning" with the Yes Men
Igor Vamos of the Yes Men (previously: 1 2 3 4 5) and his students share a video of their blended learning classroom at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It gets weird. (19 minutes)
Exposed: the longest exposure found
promises and cautionary tales of vaccination
Joel Gunter and Vikas Pandey from the BBC find lessons on vaccination from the life of Waldemar Haffkine, a Ukranian Jewish microbiologist who developed cholera and plague vaccines in British-governed India in the 1890s: "Years of top-down medical programmes by the British government had sowed distrust among the population, and to many the very concept of vaccination was still alien. Haffkine's solution was to work with a team of Indian doctors and assistants, rather than the British - Drs Chowdry, Ghose, Chatterjee, and Dutt, among others. And he had a new trick up his sleeve in the world of vaccinology: publicly injecting himself to prove he thought his preparation was safe."
“Stick that gorgeous vaccine in my eyes and up my arse...”
[Contains frequent British profanity] In which Flo and Joan return for their tribute to the year 2020. Previously: the 2016 song. Also, a song for anti-vaxxers.
Our entire economy is only a "click to share" away from exposure
This morning, several Google services, including Gmail, YouTube, and Google Docs, went down for about an hour. A good reminder that, as Vicki Boykis has put it, Google Drive is production: it’s wormed its way into the operational systems of companies where it now lives like a very dangerous Swiss army knife, used for anything and everything without thought given to the implications.
“there’s nothing more human than handmade pornography”
America’s hidden world of handmade pornography (The Conversation): But one type that has been largely hidden and forgotten is the pornography people make for themselves. Unlike pornography for profit, handmade pornography is crude and funny and subtle. It, too, contains multitudes. The Pleasure Crafts: A new history of pornography before it became commercial (NY Review of Books paywall): “These objects—in all their incoherent, libidinal, confusing strangeness—remain acts of individual testimony that can and should be entered into the historical record,” she writes. “They tell us about how people understood sexuality through what they could visualize.” Poking Fun (History Today): An archive of handmade erotic objects made over two centuries of American history tells a story of hidden desire that has often been overlooked.
Rowing across the interstellar sea
BLOARD GRAMES
BLABRECS is like SCRABBLE, except that every word must resemble an English word (according to a simple Markov-based AI) without actually being one.
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