Tuesday, July 6, 2021

Early summer, July 6th, 2021

Animals give each other names! 

Can It Be? Parrots Name Their Children, And Those Names, Like Ours, Stick For Life


For the data-loving dendrophiles, NYC Parks has mapped every streetside tree in the city

 New York City Street Tree Map

Brilliant song about a sociopath! Written in 2004 by the Mitguards. Pity the title is Born Without a Conscience because sociopaths are created, not born (unless they're psychopaths, but psychopaths too are almost always created, nature via nurture). Still, an excellent song and appropriate for many.


From Swarthmore University's History 41: The American Colonies the amazing journal entries by Christopher Columbus about his voyage West, intending to arrive in India.

Christopher Columbus, Journal (1492)

and Bartoleme de Las Casas, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies. (1542)


The world's oldest known water was found in an ancient pool below Canada in 2016, and is at least 2 billion years old.

Back in 2013 scientists found water dating back about 1.5 billion years at the Kidd Mine in Ontario, but in 2016, deeper investigation revealed an even older source buried underground.

The initial discovery of the ancient liquid in 2013 came at a depth of around 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles) in an underground tunnel in the mine. But the extreme depth of the mine – which at 3.1 kilometers (1.9 miles) is the deepest base metal mine in the world – gave researchers the opportunity to keep digging.

"[The 2013 find] really pushed back our understanding of how old flowing water could be and so it really drove us to explore further," geochemist Barbara Sherwood Lollar from the University of Toronto told Rebecca Morelle at the BBC back in 2016.

"And we took advantage of the fact that the mine is continuing to explore deeper and deeper into the earth."


Low doses of "laughing gas" could be fast, effective treatment for severe depression

In a phase 2 clinical trial, researchers found a one-hour inhalation session with 25% nitrous oxide gas improved depression symptoms for over two weeks


Oooh, a very cool car design history infographic webpage


The history of enameling

Enamelling is a technique which is closely associated with goldsmithing and jewellery art, as well as with precious metalwork of all types. Derived from the Latin word "smaltum", the Old French word "esmail", and the Anglo-Norman French word "enamailler", enamelling emerged during the era of Aegean art as one of the first and most spectacular methods of making metal more colourful, without the need for precious or semi-precious stones. In this technique of decorative art, vitreous enamel (in the form of a powder or paste) is applied to a metal surface and then subjected to intense heat, which melts the enamel turning it into a brilliant glass-like substance which also gives the metal a hard, long-lasting surface. By varying the ingredients, this glass-like coating can be made semi-transparent or opaque, while its colour is regulated by adding various metal oxides such as iron, cobalt, praseodymium and others. Enamelling is related to other types of art - especially mosaics and ceramics, as well as painting; moreover, in its reliance on metallurgy, it has affinities with glass production - see, Stained Glass Art: Materials & Methods - one reason why it flourished during the era of Romanesque architecture when the demand for stained glass soared. Modern enamelling is exemplified above all by the exquisite Fabergé Easter eggs supplied to the Romanovs in St Petersburg. Enamel has been used to embellish a wide range of metal items, including: weapons and equestrian trappings; domestic items like mirrors and vases, ecclesiastical objects, including reliquaries, altar-screens, caskets, chalices and crosiers; drawing room items, such as decorative items, snuffboxes, bottles, candlesticks, etuis and thimbles.


 The Order of the Good Death

Welcome to the Order. Welcome to Your Mortality.

The Order is about making death a part of your life. Staring down your death fears—whether it be your own death, the death of those you love, the pain of dying, the afterlife (or lack thereof), grief, corpses, bodily decomposition, or all of the above. Accepting that death itself is natural, but the death anxiety of modern culture is not.


What Covid-19's long tail is
 revealing about disease
COVID-19 “Long Hauler” SymptomsSurvey Report7/25/2020
More than 50 Long-term effects of COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis



















Friday, July 2, 2021

July 2nd, 2021

 An awesome story

Linda Zall is disclosing how she toiled anonymously within the intelligence agency to help scientists intensify their studies of a changing planet.

Linda Zall played a starring role in American science that led to decades of major advances. But she never described her breakthroughs on television, or had books written about her, or received high scientific honors. One database of scientific publications lists her contributions as consisting of just three papers, with a conspicuous gap running from 1980 to 2020.

The reason is that Dr. Zall’s decades of service to science were done in the secretive warrens of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Now, at 70, she’s telling her story — at least the parts she’s allowed to talk about — and admirers are praising her highly classified struggle to put the nation’s spy satellites onto a radical new job: environmental sleuthing.

“It was fun,” she said of her C.I.A. career. “It was really a lot of fun.”

Dr. Zall’s program, established in 1992, was a kind of wayback machine that looked to as long ago as 1960. In so doing, it provided a new baseline for assessing the pace and scope of planetary change. Ultimately, it led to hundreds of papers, studies and reports — some classified top secret, some public, some by the National Academy of Sciences, the premier scientific advisory group to the federal government. The accumulated riches included up to six decades of prime data on planetary shifts in snowfall and blizzards, sea ice and glaciers.

“None of this would have happened without her,” said Jeffrey K. Harris, who worked with Dr. Zall as director of the National Reconnaissance Office, which runs the nation’s fleet of orbital spies. “You have to decide if you’re going to break down the wall or climb over it, and she did a little bit of both.”