Love can lead to depression and even death. The latest issue of "New Scientist" searches for solutions: "Chemical cures for the lovesick".
The wedding of Slavoj Žižek and Analia Hounie, 2004.
Sequel to the Galileo Forgery.
On Friday, 14.02.2014, 6 p.m., Horst Bredekamp, Paul Needham, and others will present the new 3rd volume of their monumental series "Galileo's Sidereus nuncius" to the public:
Volume III: A Galileo Forgery. Unmasking the New York Siderius Nuncius.
This volume will be downloadable as a free (!) 'open access' eBook from DeGruyter and adds an interesting plot twist to the first two volumes:
Vol. I: Galileo's Sidereus nuncius: A comparison of the proof copy (New York) with other paradigmatic copies. (Ed. by Irene Brückle and Oliver Hahn)
Vol. II: Galileo makes a book: the first edition of Sidereus nuncius, Venice 1610 (Ed by Paul Needham)
(ISBN: 978-3-05-006240-2, November 2012, together 128 Euros)
Humboldt-Universität Berlin, Ernst-Reuter-Saal, Universitätsgebäude am Hegelplatz, Dorotheenstraße 24, 10117 Berlin. Admission free! Read More »
The Crisis in American Colleges:
Rising Tuition and Labor Degradation
Discovery of an ancient (?) bronze statue of Apollo in the Gaza Strip.
http://conflictantiquities.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/palestine-gaza-apollo-false-provenance-ebay-scam/
UPDATE 11.02.2014: Apollo of Gaza: Made in China?
Otis Pike, the first congressman to battle the NSA is dead.
No-one noticed, no-one cares.
Linda Spjut playing with Sandra Mujinga
tonight, 07.02.2014, SHOWROOM @föreningen Generatorn, Celsiusgatan 40, Malmö(SE) around 10pm
800,000-year-old human footprints discovered on British shores
First evidence of common brain code for space, time, distance
"A Common Cortical Metric for Spatial, Temporal, and Social Distance"
by Carolyn Parkinson, Shari Liu, and Thalia Wheatley (pic.)
The Journal of Neuroscience, 29 January 2014, 34(5):1979-1987; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2159-13.2014
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/34/5/1979
Abstract
Distance describes more than physical space: we speak of close friends and distant relatives, and of the near future and distant past. Did these ubiquitous spatial metaphors arise in language coincidentally or did they arise because they are rooted in a common neural computation? To address this question, we used statistical pattern recognition techniques to analyze human fMRI data. First, a machine learning algorithm was trained to discriminate patterns of fMRI responses based on relative egocentric distance within trials from one distance domain (e.g., photographs of objects relatively close to or far away from the viewer in spatial distance trials). Next, we tested whether the decision boundary generated from this training could distinguish brain responses according to relative egocentric distance within each of two separate distance domains (e.g., phrases referring to the immediate or more remote future within temporal distance trials; photographs of participants' friends or acquaintances within social distance trials). This procedure was repeated using all possible combinations of distance domains for training and testing the classifier. In all cases, above-chance decoding across distance domains was possible in the right inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Furthermore, the representational similarity structure within this brain area reflected participants' own judgments of spatial distance, temporal soon-ness, and social familiarity. Thus, the right IPL may contain a parsimonious encoding of proximity to self in spatial, temporal, and social frames of reference. Read More »
Present Ministers of Defence from Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, and Germany: Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide, Karin Enström, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, Ursula von der Leyen.
Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath
Neuroscientist James Fallon discovered through his work that he has the brain of a psychopath, and subsequently learned a lot about the role of genes in personality and how his brain affects his life.
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1591846005)
Tom Payne's verse translation of the recently discovered Sappho fragment
[Brothers poem]
Still, you keep on twittering that Charaxos
comes, his boat full. That kind of thing I reckon
Zeus and his fellow gods know; and you mustn’t
make the assumption;
rather, command me, let me be an envoy
praying intensely to the throne of Hera
who could lead him, he and his boat arriving
here, my Charaxos,
finding me safely; let us then divert all
other concerns on to the lesser spirits;
after all, after hurricanes the clear skies
rapidly follow;
and the ones whose fate the Olympian ruler
wants to transform from troubles into better –
they are much blessed, they go about rejoicing
in their good fortune.
As for me, if Larichos reaches manhood,
[if he could manage to be rich and leisured,]
he would give me, so heavy-hearted, such a Read More »
Archibald "Harry" Tuttle Action Figure
From Brazil (by Terry Gilliam, 1985): Robert DeNiro plays Harry Tuttle in a brief but very memorable role as a former government employee who now serves as a renegade air conditioning repairman free of the bureaucratic paper work taking part in covert unapproved repairs. Every detail of the figure was meticulously recreated; from the pouches, chains, phones, luger pistol, & tools that abound on his belt.
Van Cleef & Arpels has a new line of expensive toys for the
astronomically inclined rich...
Heliocentric mockup of an Antikythera wristwatch
... proving a dramatic decline in mechanical engineering skills since antiquity. For the original design of the Antikythera mechanism, see:
Tony Freeth and Alexander Jones: "The Cosmos in the Antikythera Mechanism" ISAW Papers 4, February 2012.
Tony Freeth: "Eclipse Prediction on the Ancient Greek Astronomical Calculating Machine Known as the Antikythera Mechanism", PLOSone, July 30, 2014.
