Saturday 14 January 2012

10 stories and links I think are educative, informative, entertaining, or weird

The Color of 47-Million-Year-Old Moths via Britannica Blog by Kara Rogers


A Peleides blue morpho butterfly. Credit: © Vera Kailova/Fotolia
The color of a fossil species is often its greatest secret, its pigmented tissues having decayed and returned to the earth long before its discovery. An anomaly in this pattern was the recent reconstruction of wing coloration from color-producing structures discovered in the wing scales of 47-million-year-old fossil lepidopterans (moths and butterflies) recovered from the Grube Messel oil shales in Germany.
You can read the rest of this incredible article here.

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Though reluctant to work with the U.S. military, anthropologists have a lot to say about the war in Afghanistan. Alex Star listens... more

Why Mozart Rocks So Hard. Artistic Genius Explained. via Big Think by Megan Erickson
What’s the difference between a Jackson Pollock painting and a finger-painting? Why is The Magic Flute so enduring, while other classical compositions have been forgotten? Is “I know it when I see it” as close as we’ll get to defining what we mean by “great art”?
Read More

The most dangerous place to be a park ranger via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
Lots of links to more photos, how you can support the work etc are here



This photo was taken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Virunga National Park, where the Nyamulagira volcano is currently erupting. The man in the photo is named Romeo. No last name given, and I can’t help but wonder if that's for the same reason that he carries a rather large gun.
Romeo is a park ranger in Virunga. It’s a very dangerous job. Virunga has lost more park rangers than any other protected site on Earth. That’s due to several factors. For one thing, men like Romeo are in charge of protecting the Park’s gorillas and other endangered wildlife from poachers. For another, political instability leaks into Virunga on a relatively regular basis. Back in January, three rangers and five Congolese soldiers were killed by members of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Virunga borders Rwanda and members of this militia try to use the park as a hideout. In the process, they clear-cut the forest for charcoal. The January attack was thought to be in retaliation for rangers destroying a couple of FDLR camps and cracking down on illegal forest destruction.
In fact, the job is dangerous enough that one of the fundraising campaigns the park is promoting is a program to care for the widows of dead rangers. You can donate online.
Who are the guys that put their lives on the line for a national park and a bunch of great apes? The park website also has some short statements by several of the rangers. Romeo isn’t among them. But you can get an idea of who these guys are, and why they chose this job.
Surprisingly, despite all that, large parts of Virunga are safe enough for tourists. According to Wikipedia, the park gets 3,000 visitors a year.
Via Brendan Maher

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Stephen Hawking included just one equation in A Brief History of Time. Others followed suit. But can physics be explained without math?... more

Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, Holland, 1928 via HOW TO BE A RETRONAUT by Chris


Pictures are provided here with no explanation as to why a seemingly pseudo Roman/Egyptian theme was chosen. Can I find out?
NO. But I did find out some information about sprinter Percy Williams here
Anyone else got any ideas?

Why some birds of prey become transvestites via 3quarksdaily by Azra Raza

From MSNBC:
Birds of prey may be thought of as fierce foes, but scientists find that some males disguise themselves as peaceful females. These males belong to a species of raptor known as the marsh harrier. Using plastic decoys, French researchers learned that the transvestites among these predators are less aggressive than other males. Some animals will use the tactic known as sexual mimicry in the cutthroat battle to survive. For instance, young male birds often have female plumage that helps camouflage them; they will acquire more striking plumage only after reaching sexual maturity, to help them attract mates. However, permanent lifelong female mimicry, in which males look like females throughout life, is extraordinarily rare in birds. Until now, it had been studied in only one species, the ruff (Philomachus pugnax), a shorebird in which some males engage in female behavior to sneakily get sex.
More here

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Retractions in scholarly journals are on the rise. Why? Let’s ask an editor. “It's none of your damn business!”... more


 

“Airlines of the United States” Ads, WWII, by James Bingham
via HOW TO BE A RETRONAUT by Chris
Thank you to American Art Archive where you can see the rest of the images.









The real Hurt Locker via 3quarksdaily by Morgan Meis
Captain Nawa Salah Ahmed was not thinking of Hollywood when he signed up for the bomb-disposal unit in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk. It was 2004, and the young policeman was burnt out. He had enlisted in the force when the American military invaded his homeland, taking a job in the local criminal-investigations unit. And as a lawless chaos had come crashing down upon the country, business, so to speak, was booming. Cases flooded in—Ahmed dealt daily with thefts, murders, and worse. But the pressure, he says, was unrelenting.
more from Neil Arun at Vanity Fair here.


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