No...never heard of it. Neither Tim Minchin nor myself are being original (but at least I don't charge money for it).
I came across a video today of an elephant painting a self-portrait. I thought, no way! But I checked on Snopes and it is legitimate.
If you give a monkey (actually they were chimps) a crayon, and put a piece of paper in front of it with a square, rectangle, or probably any geometric shape on it, the chimp will tend to scribble mostly inside of the shape. Not at all sure I could find what I saw long ago, but it's something I took note of and remembered. In fact I used to do what I called Monkey Boxes as part of my regular warmups for a while before drawing.
And it's known that many species have the concept of the shape of their main predatory species born into them. I forget what species it was, but I saw a documentary or something showing small mammals or rodents at only a day or two of age scrambling for cover when shown a silhouette diagram of a certain kind of hawk, but silhouettes of other birds, even other kinds of hawks, had no effect.
A great deal of the 'circuitry' in our brains is to make us able to instantly recognize human faces and in particular the faces of people we know. If something disrupts that curcuitry people can lose the ability to recognize human faces, or those of familiar people they've known all their lives. We're also unique in the Animal kingdom because we have large eye whites that make it easy to tell instantly exactly where each other are looking. We can tell exactly what part of our own face someone is looking at from moment to moment, as well as other incredible feats. Apparently this is important to humans but not other animals because we're so complexly social, what with being able to talk and form complex thoughts and all. All of this helps us determine if someone is lying or not, among other sublte things. Dogs frequently look at their owner's eyse (and probably other peoples' as well), which not many other species do. It's thought they do it for much the same reasons we do, and picked it up form us as part of the domestication protocol. Sorry, I can't link to anything for these, they're just things I picked up somewhere long ago and don't remember where. Think of them as interesting starting points if anyone wants to look into them further. The speculation part of speculaitve science. Or rather the possibly poorly-remembered part. I must've picked most of it up during my deep dive into brain science many years ago.
All very interesting and fascinating. If you think about it, it's a wonder we can tell one face from the other. So, I went on a little search and found out some interesting things! Like, it's a brain region called the fusiform face area that allows us to identify and recognize faces. I guess this region is responsible for the pareidolia we experience when we see faces where there is not one!
A drone show at an event in the Netherlands. Click on the link for the brief video. https://packaged-media.redd.it/hi7m...=c5c6e4b2733448da2b60ffa3173249766bf8209c#t=0
It's life Jim, but not as we know it. Scientists using the JWST have found possible signs of life on planet K2-18b. The key discovery is the possible detection of biomarker dimethyl sulphide, which on Earth, is only produced by life. The other gases in the atmosphere suggest the presence of a water ocean. We have not discovered this particular combination on any other exoplanet. The findings have yet to be confirmed.
Wow, that is fascinating. Thanks so much for sharing this precedent-setting discovery. I liked the humility of the scientist putting himself second to science.
Not entirely precedent-setting. I recall hearing signs of microscopic life were found on the surface of Mars a few years ago. Something on the order of a virus or bacteria maybe.
It's precedent setting in the sense that this is an exoplanet. It being over 100 light years distant means we can largely rule out cross-contamination, so if (and it's still a big if) life is present there, it must have evolved independently.
Spectroscopic readings of a few kilometer thicknish of air from 100 light-years away? We might be waiting a minute on that. Still pretty cool. (I haven't watched the video, but I don't think there's any other way to analyze exo atmosphere)
I just watched it. Pretty cool but I'm skeptical on the conclusive leap. They might have detected a molecule, but that's a looooong way from having detected life. And the sample size of correlating life to this molecule's presence is, well, one. And nobody has yet been able to test distal spectroscopy readings against reality because of all the light-years. Hell, they can't even get spectroscopic distance ranging below a 40% margin for error.
I don't think the scientist is claiming to have actually discovered life, he's just saying there's a biomarker, which hasn't been confirmed yet. Even if it is confirmed, we don't know how the chemical was created - on Earth, it's produced by life but there might be other processes which create it elsewhere. And even if there is life, it's possibly microbial at best, although even that would be a huge leap forwards. We'll probably never know for certain though.
No, but the news dude frames it as such and the scientist, who knows better, doesn't refute it on camera. And I don't blame them, it's a very cool story/possibility. And Im not calling out anything nefarious. Buuuuut I'm a cynical mofo.
Well, it's a cool story. The news-person tries to bring in the "wow!" factor, but I like the fact that Prof. Nikku so cautious. For instance: a. he points out that the findings are only preliminary, and more tests need to be done, because there could be many "false positives". b. he points out that his findings of methane and CO2, but no ammonia, *could* mean "ocean". But more tests are needed. c. it took him a week to get the courage to even tell his own group of students. d. he also points out that a discovery like this is gradual and needs lots of tests. Yep! This is how science works. Yes, I realise a lot of people (mostly because the news-cycle is so fast) expect astronomic discovery to be immediate, ta-da, hooray, ring out the bells! Strike out the band!! etc. People are impatient. They want to see what's out there. But if any scientist spoke in those terms, he/she had better have lots and lots of data on his/her side, or else risk looking like ... well ... a bit of an idiot. </understatement>
A little bit of food science. A plant-based “cheese” - made not from the milk of cows or goats, but rather a blend of ingredients including pumpkin seeds, lima beans, hemp seeds, coconut fat and cocoa butter – was set to win a prestigious Good Foods award. Climax Blue — which is served in restaurants including Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park in New York – was in the running. Then, this week, the foundation quietly removed the Climax Blue from the list of finalists on its website but didn’t make public what had disqualified the cheese. Climax CEO Oliver Zahn accused the foundation of caving to pressure from dairy cheesemakers in revoking the award. Should a vegan cheese win a cheese award? A vegan cheese beat dairy in a big competition. Then the plot curdled.
No. It's not a cheese. It's a substitution. It doesn't meet the entry qualifications. It's cheating for lack of a better term by being allowed a massive range of options where the real competitors are limited in their ingredients. We make vegan cheese with tofu. It's very good, but it's not a cheese.
Yeah it makes sense why it wouldn't be allowed in the competition. But I was very happy to hear that they are making cheese alternatives good enough to be nominated for cheese awards! The meat alternatives are so good and delicious now, but for some reason it's pretty tough to make passable cheese substitutes. I've only found one tasty smoked provolone, and it's great, but it has little nutritional value (whereas Impossible and Beyond plant-based meats have great nutrition).
