Friday, February 11, 2022

Links 11 February 2022

Wilhelm Dreesen, In the Port, ca. 1900, heliogravure

The Spanish Catholic conquerors of Peru did not care for traditional Andean burial practices, especially the creation of mummies. So they destroyed thousands of graves and hacked up thousands of mummies. It looks like the people of one region might have gathered up the bones scattered in this way and strung them together along lengths of reed, leaving many bizarre collections of bones. (Smithsonian)

New study says Australia's aboriginal people were not cut off from the outside world, but made long trading voyages in seagoing canoes 5,000 years ago and continued doing so into the 1700s AD.

Whalers reported centuries ago that orcas sometimes killed and ate blue whales, but this was never confirmed by biologists until recently, when three cases were filmed off Australia. 

If everything is trauma, is anything really traumatic? "When we start to talk about ordinary adversities as ‘traumas’ there is a risk that we’ll see them as harder to overcome and see ourselves as more damaged by them." Amen to that. (NY Times)

David Brooks looks at the fragmentation within Evangelical churches, torn apart over politics, sexual abuse, and questions about power and obedience. (NY Times)

Bronze Age drinking straws, likely used for communal beer drinking from large pots. 

Article about and strange video of the synchronized swimming of the tiny nematodes known as vinegar eels.

MIT scientists create new polymer that forms 2-dimensional sheets rather than 1-D chains; they say these sheets can be stacked to create materials with the structural strength of steel but 1/6 the weight. They call it 2DPA-1. Another interesting feature is that these sheets are impermeable to water and to most gases.

The rise of Multicultural London English. (The New Yorker)

Worried about a tsunami that some geologists say is inevitable, one school district in coastal Washington wants to build "evacuation towers" tall and strong enough that its students could survive even a 20-foot wave. (NY Times; more on this topic here and here)

Michael Makowsky ponders why so many writers live in Brooklyn. His conclusion is that both fiction and journalism provide high status rewards but low pay, leading writers to live in areas where other people who value their status are concentrated.

And Makowsky on Pfumvudza, a kind of no-till, mulched farming ("conservation farming") spreading in Zimbabwe. 

The contemporary cooking scene is full of people who grew up watching cooking shows on the Food Network, dreaming about cooking but also about having their own cooking shows. (NY Times)

Good NPR article on that Tennessee pre-K study, including comments from one of the authors.

The family tree of Covid-19: the Omicron variant appeared pretty much out of nowhere, with no antecedents other than the original strain, and no relationship to other known variants. 

Words better known by men than women, and vice versa.

Long Covid: brief summary by Tyler Cowen of a long piece by Zvi, one of the core "rationalists."

Who are the Canadian "truckers" protesting vaccine mandates? NY Times summaryGuardian story on the leaders, long first-person narrative by someone who has been there. Makes me wonder why protests like this haven't happened more often.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

What I am wondering is why on earth you are still relying on gatekeepers with an interest in promoting an approved government narrative instead of watching the hours upon hours of live footage and interviews with the truckers on site? Is it just laziness or fear of having your own bias challenged?

Shadow said...

Regarding two-dimensional polymers, material science is the technology of the future. Those of college age should consider chemistry or chemical engineering. Probably non-biodegradable (neither is steel) but maybe recyclable (steel is).

G. Verloren said...

New study says Australia's aboriginal people were not cut off from the outside world, but made long trading voyages in seagoing canoes 5,000 years ago and continued doing so into the 1700s AD.

...I thought this was perfectly well established in the historical record already?

(Perhaps it's something to do with the broadness of the term "Australia's aboriginal people"? Who, exactly, are we talking about here? Because the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia weren't and aren't a monolith, anymore than Native Americans were and are a monolith. External contact was clearly prevalent in the northeast - have we perhaps discovered something about more far flung groups having contact outside the continent?)

>opens up linked article and browses

Oh. Okay.

So... this is just the first archaeological confirmation of what was already known through oral and written historical accounts. That's a very different sort of thing than your word choice and phrasing suggested. Could word things better next time.

David said...

@Shadow

Except for many of us (I think maybe most?), chemistry is really, really, REALLY hard. I'm not sure why, but it is. Every college campus I've studied or worked at, Organic Chem was considered the hardest course across all departments--except then I heard about Physical Chem, which was harder.

G. Verloren said...

MIT scientists create new polymer that forms 2-dimensional sheets rather than 1-D chains; they say these sheets can be stacked to create materials with the structural strength of steel but 1/6 the weight. They call it 2DPA-1. Another interesting feature is that these sheets are impermeable to water and to most gases.

Holy cow! Talk about burying the lede! This should be it's own entire post! This is HUGE!

The polymer in question is based on melamine (C₃H₆N₆), which means we have a super abundance of all the raw materials needed to make it. And it can be bulk produced in solution. This could very well revolutionize global construction and fabrication.

That said, there are some potential pitfalls. Melamine has a degree of both acute and chronic toxicity when ingested. It's not so toxic that we don't create dishware out of melamine and even intentionally include it in some foodstuffs at low levels, but it is still something to consider.

If we start making widespread usage of 2DPA-1 for structural purposes, we may have to contend with resultant dust and particulates from everyday wear and tear. A building with a superstructure made of or enhanced by 2DPA-1 (instead of ordinary structural steel) might create highly hazardous dust clouds if it collapses or gets demolished. Cars with bodies made of or enhanced by 2DPA-1 might cause health or environment problems as they degrade, given the sheer number of cars on the roads. And then there's the problem of fire - melamine is not combustible, but it does decompose and break down into toxic fumes in high temperatures.

...still... this is stunning news. We could really use this kind of material right now, all around the globe.

G. Verloren said...

Words better known by men than women, and vice versa.

So looking through the list is kind of depressing for confirming societal gender norms.

All the words better known by women revolve around fabrics, clothing, hairstyles, makeup, flowers, and reproduction. All the words better known by men revolve around science, technology, warfare, mathematics, astronomy, aeronautics, and computation (and a single sexual fetish term).