Inner Solace

Oh no! The cable of Foucault’s pendulum snapped last month and caused the brass bob to be damaged beyond repair!

Sure they can recreate it, but won’t be the same. :(

One of the bits of info that saddens me the most in the original article by Times Higher Education:

The museum regularly hosts cocktail parties in the chapel that houses the pendulum, and Mr Lalande admitted that several alarming incidents had occurred over the past year. In May 2009, for example, a partygoer grabbed the 28kg instrument and swung it into a security barrier.

Seriously? No respect at all. :(

People with Williams Syndrome lack 26 genes found in a typical human genome. As a result they are inordinately friendly, and experience no social anxiety. Now a new study reveals that they may also be free of racial bias.

(via Eric)

Things have progressed since the state of eel cultivation was mentioned in The Story of Sushi.  Back then, they made it sound like the birds and bees of eels was kinda black magic. And farmers weren’t truly farming eels, but catching them in an early part of their life-cycle and raising them in captivity.

Now it looks like farmed unagi is going to be the way of the future.  And the future looks full of NOM.

The colours red and green, and yellow and blue cannot be viewed simultaneously. The human eye will swap back and forth to see each, but won’t actually be able to see them at the same time. This phenomenon is called visual opponency.

Some scientists have been working out a way to make people see these colours at the same. Something to do with following eye movements and stopping the eye from trying to cut away to the other colour. Sounds cruel, but I want to see what reen or blullow looks like.

science:

NY Times:

In the middle of a terrifying desert north of Tibet, Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary cemetery. Its inhabitants died almost 4,000 years ago, yet their bodies have been well preserved by the dry air.

The cemetery lies in what is now China’s northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang, yet the people have European features, with brown hair and long noses. Their remains, though lying in one of the world’s largest deserts, are buried in upside-down boats. And where tombstones might stand, declaring pious hope for some god’s mercy in the afterlife, their cemetery sports instead a vigorous forest of phallic symbols, signaling an intense interest in the pleasures or utility of procreation.

Natural mummies! Mixed ancestry! Phallic symbolism! Tocharian! Awesome.

It has been determined that drinking booze with oxygen bubbles helps you sober up 20-30 minutes faster and have fewer hangovers than booze with no bubbles.  And that’s with 20% alcohol content drinks like fortified wine or soju. None of that lolly water rubbish.

So why does adding O2 to booze lessen the nasty after effects? When you drink ethanol, you body needs to oxidize it to water and carbon dioxide in order to process it. This occurs via hepatic oxidation, where the liver does its thing to counteract the liquor you’ve just poured down your gullet. The enzymes that process alcohol require oxygen to function, and it’s thought that by storing the oxygen in the alcohol itself, the system functions more quickly and efficiently.

So, oxygenated alcohol? Sound fun and functional!