Random links for 25 February 2010

Firefox has too many tabs open at the moment with articles and links that are worth a mention but perhaps not their own post, so here they are in no particular order.

A review of a new dictionary of Old English, which so far has been completed up to the letter G (out of a total of 22 letters) and expects to have between 33,000 and 35,000 headwords. There are a few interesting etymological notes there as well, such as the origin of the word baleful.

New Scientist on symbols on cave paintings that appear to be a real code or language, not just random scribblings. Apparently studies of cave paintings have been so distracted by the imagery itself for so long that nobody really thought to check the tiny scribblings next to the drawings. See here and here to take a look at the actual symbols and their frequency for yourself.

Also remember that simply tracing languages back to their source doesn't necessarily help us discover the origin of language, because for all we know there was, or were other languages that preceded the ancestor of all the ones we speak and simply died out. This talk mentions that a bit:



Washington Post has an article today on Kazakhstan and uranium. I mentioned back in 2008 that Kazakhstan was set to become the world's largest producer of uranium in a year, and now it is.

Times Online has a fascinating piece today on a British PoW who snuck into Auschwitz during WWII.

Miles O'Brien on why he supports the White House's new plans for NASA.

Phobos flyby season is beginning again, and the ESA's Mars Express will have a particularly close encounter (just 50 km above the surface) on the 5th of March.

An article here is on the partnership between the EU and Russia on space technology. The Russian Soyuz rocket will launch from Guiana for the first time this year.

Finally, here's an optical illusion along with instructions on how to make your own.

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How humans evolved to be exceptional long-distance runners but then turned into wimps

That's the theme painted by an article here in the New York Times from yesterday and another one here from about two weeks ago. The one from the New York Times discusses one of the more interesting features of the human race in which humans actually stand out from other land-based animals - their ability to go long distances without overheating as other animals do. When watching documentaries on TV it's easy to feel like humans are pitiful in comparison to some of the feats displayed by other animals, but the ability to go such distances without overheating is actually something that other animals don't have. It's also the reason why Romans would set up waystations along roads where messengers could jump off their tired horse and onto a fresh one in order to deliver a message as fast as possible, because over long distances a human is actually more efficient than a horse. The article from two weeks ago also makes the argument that tens of thousands of years ago humans were also just as impressive in terms of speed, with even average humans at the time being able to run as fast as our Olympic sprinters now.

On a related note, Iron Maiden has a song from 1986 about running - The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.



And on a related note to that, the hype back in the 1980s and early 1990s over Iron Maiden's supposed "Satanic" lyrics was always quite funny, as the majority of their songs are mostly intellectual pieces about history and literature. Alexander the Great, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, To Tame a Land (that one's about Dune), Quest for Fire (prehistoric humans again), and on and on. Hell, even the album The Number of the Beast has a song about trying to get a prostitute to quit working the streets and start living a normal life (22 Acacia Avenue, with lyrics such as Charlotte can't you get out from all this madness - Can't you see it only brings you sadness - When you entertain your men don't know the risk of getting disease).

In fact, often an Iron Maiden song is the best introduction to a topic.

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Neanderthal appears to have been killed by human with spear

Scientists have drawn a rough conclusion that a Neanderthal skeleton from some 50,000 - 75,000 years ago has been killed by a human spear. That conclusion is based on the premise that humans at the time had projectile weapons that Neanderthals didn't, although the article mentions near the bottom that Neanderthals developed projectile weapons as well. The Neanderthal that was stabbed with the spear didn't die right away but rather a few weeks later.

It's possible that this could be an example of interspecies violence, and it does feel a bit weird to think of our ancestors wiping out a whole other species that looked so similar to us, but for all we know this case could have been something else - perhaps the spear was thrown due to a mistake in thinking the Neanderthal to be something else, or it could have been a simple bad throw. For all we know the Neanderthal and the human could have been best friends.

After all, these two seem to be best friends too and they don't resemble each other at all.

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