Thursday, May 15, 2008
Beer Magnet
A moment of small genius spotted at a friend’s house:
It’s a magnet from a disemboweled hard drive, mounted right underneath a bottle opener. Snags the bottle cap like a charm.
"Give Peace a Chance" Lyrics up for auction
5/9/2008
If you're eager for peace, it won't come cheap – expect to pay at least $500,000.
Actually, we imagine the real deal would cost a fair bit more than that. But on July 10th, a Montreal-born TV writer, Gail Renard, is auctioning off the handwritten lyrics to John Lennon's iconic anthem, Give Peace a Chance.
She managed to obtain the valuable lyrics sheet at the age of 16, when she snuck into Lennon and Yoko Ono's hotel suite during their famous bed-in for peace at Montreal's Queen Elizabeth hotel in 1969. Lennon handed her the lyrics himself as a parting gift – apparently he'd taken a liking to the young intruder.
Want to buy peace (or at least a great collectible) for yourself? Be at Christie's in London on July 10th for your chance to score
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Shrimp can see beyond the rainbow
Wed May 14, 6:31 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - A giant shrimp living on Australia's Great Barrier Reef can see a world beyond the rainbow that is invisible to other animals, scientists said on Wednesday.
Mantis shrimps, dubbed "thumb splitters" by divers because of their vicious claws, have the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom, capable of seeing colours from the ultraviolet to the infrared, as well as detecting other subtle variations in light.
They view the world in up to 12 primary colours -- four times as many as humans -- and can measure six different kinds of light polarisation, Swiss and Australian researchers reported.
Polarisation is the direction of oscillation in light waves.
Just why Gonodactylus smithii needs this level of rarefied vision is unclear, although the researchers suspect it is to do with food and sex.
"Some of the animals they like to eat are transparent and quite hard to see in sea-water, except they're packed full of polarising sugars. I suspect they light up like Christmas trees as far as these shrimp are concerned," said Andrew White of the University of Queensland.
And the shrimps probably use tiny changes in colour and polarisation to send sexual signals between males and females, the researchers believe.
Their findings were published online in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, at http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0002190
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The moment China's quake struck
At least 10,000 people are reported to have been killed by the 7.8-magnitude quake which struck at 1428 local time.
SEE ALSO
Chile Volcano Erupts With Ash and Lightning
Chile Volcano Erupts With Ash and Lightning
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1,000 Ancient Tombs, Unique Remains Found in Colombia
1,000 Ancient Tombs, Unique Remains Found in Colombia
May 9, 2008
Builders clearing land for a housing project in Colombia have uncovered an ancient burial site containing nearly a thousand tombs linked to two little-known civilizations. (See photos.)
The site covers some 12 acres (5 hectares) in the impoverished Usme district in southeast Bogotá (see map) and includes one set of remains that some researchers believe could be a victim of human sacrifice.
have been buried alive, said Ana Maria Groot, one of the lead anthropologists from the National University of Colombia working at the site.
"Her mouth is open as if in terror, and her hands seem contracted as if she had tried grabbing hold of something," Groot said.
Another tomb contains the remains of a man with a curved tibia, or shinbone, possible evidence that the man was a shaman, she added.
Spanish observers in the 1500s wrote of indigenous shamans spending long periods in caves with no exposure to sunlight. A lack of sunlight would produce a shortage of vitamin D, causing curving of the bones, explained Groot's colleague, Virgilio Becerra.
Two Mysterious Cultures
Aside from such unusual finds, the site is unique for its age and length of occupation, the anthropologists say.
The tombs range in date from around the first century to the 16th century A.D., based on analysis of pottery found with the remains.
The first 500 years of the site's use date to the so-called Herrera period, when several small, obscure groups thrived in this region of the Andean highlands during the development of agriculture.
"The agriculture became more intensive, more systematic at this time," Groot said.
"We have high expectations about finding what kinds of plants they cultivated."
From around A.D. 500 to 1500, the site seems to have been occupied by the Muisca, another
culture that is one of Colombia's most important but least understood civilizations, Groot said.
Rife with artifacts from both periods, the Usme site is a potential treasure trove of information, she added.
"A settlement like Usme offers the chance to research the settlement's development through different moments in a prolonged occupation," she said.
"We can identify those changes as expressed in their cultural practices."
Ongoing analysis should reveal more about life expectancy, diet, disease, and other aspects of daily life and social organization in the settlement, Groot added.
Temple Site and Other Discoveries
Anthropologists also found ruins of a human settlement next to the burial site, including what may be evidence of a temple. Holes for posts suggest a large circular structure, Groot said.
Pottery found with the remains mostly includes fragments of decorative and simple pitchers, cooking pots, and cups.
The decorative pitchers combine geometric designs with images of animals such as frogs, birds, and snakes.
Researchers also found stones for grating or cutting vegetables and for grinding grain, though no evidence of the settlers' diet has yet been determined.
Local authorities are considering making the site into a museum.
Excavation began in January and will continue while anthropologists await results from radiocarbon sampling of human bones and other objects to determine their ages.
"Invaluable" Find
Guillermo Cock is an archaeologist and Andean expert whose work has been partly funded by the National Geographic Society, which operates National Geographic News.
He cautioned that apparent evidence of human sacrifice seen at Usme likely has other origins.
In the case of the young woman who looks to have been buried alive, her contracted hands may be explained by early arthritis, he said.
Likewise, her opened jaw may be the result of the body having been moved before or after burial, he said.
Nonetheless, the Usme site should prove "invaluable" to science, said Cock, whose work has helped unearth burial sites with thousands of tombs in Peru.
(Read related story; "Dozens of Inca Mummies Discovered Buried in Peru" [March 11, 2004].)
"Conservation [of graves and other archaeological material] in Colombia and Venezuela tends to be poor because of the soil's humidity, which quickly destroys organic remains," Cock said.
"If the period that each tomb belongs to can be identified, even if they are in a poor state, it would be an invaluable amount of information about this Muisca population."
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