06.27.06
Weekly Odd Science Wrapup
King tut’s glass beetle came from outer space. The glass beetle is piece of yellow-green glass, carved in the shape of a scarabe beetle found in the tomb of King Tut, who died in 1323BC. Fish with asymmetric brains multitask better. They can hunt for food and avoid predators more efficiently than those with more symmetric brains. This matters because humans (and well as all vertebrates) have some degree of asymmetry in their brain, with males having a higher degree than females. This is of course why many men have a hard time combining connect logic (left) with emotions (right). If thats too much thinking for you, check out this link on the 10 strangest japanese gadgets. My favorites would be the sauce dispensing chopsticks (my guess would be that one does soy and the other does ponzu?), the shower cap (its up there on the WTF?!?), and the MP3 toilet. If your not much of an indoors person, check out how to makeFire from Ice. This is perfect for your next vacation in the Artic.
If you need something closer to home, read about how Immaturity Levels Rising. This is a good read, here is a teaser:
A “child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviors and knowledge†is probably adaptive to the increased instability of the modern world, Charlton believes. Formal education now extends well past physical maturity, leaving students with minds that are, he said, “unfinished.â€
and heres the ugly:
The faults of youth are retained along with the virtues, he believes. These include short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness.
elisa said,
July 18, 2006 at 5:42 am
yay! I have been able to access the articles you posted about. Interesting stuff. I really enjoyed reading the article on immaturity despite the dismaying consequences which such findings entail.