Tag: Grand Blueprint
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Why is music unique?
In Gioia’s latest interview he spends a lot of time discussing Romanticism, which is the parallel to my Foy Rebellion. He also uses Taylor Swift vs AI as an example of opposite trends. AI is removing the human element from the ‘low end’ of music, Swift is returning the human element to the top-dollar end.…
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Makes sense
Pointed by Denyse as usual, a preliminary look at a major revision in our understanding of memory and intelligence. = = = = = START QUOTE: Typically, the cytoskeleton network provides mechanical support for the cell and is responsible for cell shape and movement. However, the Moffitt researchers noted that proteins from the cytoskeleton are…
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Metaphor misses
Growth is the Wall Street mantra. Go big or go home. The crime market insists on growth of cash flow, with a negative correlation to profit. In real life you don’t want endless growth. Endless growth is CANCER. In real life you ALSO don’t want to survive by merging into a larger body. Merging into…
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Gelatin and polarization
This gadget shown in a book by Silvanus Thompson grabbed my attention. It was an attempt to polarize electromagnetic waves using mirrors. There isn’t much info on it, and it doesn’t appear to have proved anything. It sounds like a dead end, but with more persistence it could have led to a momentous discovery. Augusto…
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Earth Hour!
Might as well keep up this tradition, which I started in 2011. Repeating the 2017 piece, tributing the previous association of electric power with beauty. Electric Parks and Luna Parks were beautiful and ENTERTAINING places, built to provide a terminus for streetcar lines. The streetcars then brought electricity from the hydro dam or coal-powered plant…
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Not complicated
“Independents” are seeing Deepstate involvement in the Baltimore bridge collapse, which turned an ironic national anthem into a melting iron sculpture by Dali. Impressive piece of installation art. Jimi Hendrix, eat your guitar strings! Nah. Unnecessary complexity. The event isn’t being portrayed as an attack. If media was treating it as an attack, then we…
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Reprint on Glial Equipoise
I was reminded of this by something semi-relevant. It’s utterly amazing and worth remembering. = = = = = START REPRINT: While looking for more ancient stuff to animate, found an interesting 1915 book of questions and factoids. The Book of Wonders is something like Ripley or Hix, but more oriented toward serious descriptions of…
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Reprint on analog/digital
Linked in previous, definitely worth a reprint. = = = = = START 2013 REPRINT: Noticed an interesting article on an unfathomable and completely pointless dispute among mathies. The ‘foundational’ types seem to be puzzled about the distinction between countable infinities and the continuum. This leads to some kind of irreconcilable thingamajig which must be…
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Wot? No beats?
An experiment shows fungi don’t like silence. But the choice of sounds is peculiar. = = = = = START QUOTE: To investigate the impacts of sounds on fungi, Jake Robinson at Flinders University in Australia and his colleagues buried green and rooibos teabags in soil inside a soundproof box. Inside the box, they played…
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In the groove, Japan style
New research from Japan via Eurekalert. As usual, the Japanese academic setup with fungible annual funding PER LAB gives more flexible and creative results than the US system of funding PER PROJECT APPROVED BY DEEPSTATE. We used to have a more Japanese style in our industrial labs like Bell, but they’re gone now, LBOd by…
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Nature’s electrotyping
Pointed by Denyse as always, an interesting speculation about horizontal gene transfer. The researchers are NOT saying this process happens in Nature, only that an experiment shows it CAN happen. = = = = = START QUOTE: Electroporation uses an electric field to create temporary pores in the cell membrane. This lets molecules, like DNA…
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Is it prosody or epigenes?
This is interesting. Newborns respond preferentially to stories in the ‘mother tongue’ before they’ve had a chance to hear much talking through air conduction. Were they picking up intonations and prosody through the liquids in the womb? Or is the familiarity imparted through epigenes? The former possibility could be checked by using different languages with…
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Wise woman
In this clip Yasuko is showing a ‘hand reflexology’ trick for slowing down anger. Those indirect pressure points don’t work for me, but her basic advice about anger is deeply and eternally wise, and also good science. = = = = = START YASUKO QUOTE: It looks and feels like people are getting snappier as…
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Ionopus
Pointed by Denyse as usual, this is the first EKG of an octopus. The researchers are trying to figure out how the eight arm-brains and one center-brain of an octopus communicate. Each arm-brain can operate independently, talking to the other arms without involving the center-brain. This isn’t entirely alien; our kinesthetic sensors in arms and…
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