Interesting Links for 07-12-2015

[andrewducker]

• Why we need a new flu shot every year
  • flu disease genetics
• Carrie Fisher on the Slave Bikini
  • starwars slavery clothing
• Is Denmark Actually the Animal Sex Tourism Capital of the World? (Interesting interview, law changed this year)
  • law animals sex
• If WW1 was a bar brawl
  • history war wwi
• UK porn laws a year on: A porn actress and a dominatrix on

Comments

[gonzo21]

That's a slightly unfair Stonehenge story. The big bluestone uprights of the most impressive inner circle of Stonehenge came from Wales, but that's only the innermost and smallest part of the whole Stonehenge complex. It's a bit misleading to say 'all of Stonehenge came from wales and is a recycled monument'.

And given we don't actually know exactly when the stones were quarried, nor exactly when they were erected, it's a bit of a stretch to say there is a gap of 500 years during which time they were part of a monument in Wales. There's... too much wiggle room in these numbers. The +/- error on dates around 3400-2900BC give plenty space for overlap.

[andrewducker]

Thanks for the additional info!

[gonzo21]

I'd have to get some books out to check, but sites of that antiquity probably have around a +/- error margin of 100-200 years in the dating techniques available.

So if the date of the quarry is +200 and the stones being erected at Stonehenge is -200, then that just leaves a gap of 100 years, which is not an unreasonable length of time for purchase/transport/completion. The whole Stonehenge monument complex is one that was worked on for many hundreds of years, so the people who lived there were clearly very committed to the projects that their long distant ancestors began.

(Things like quarries are also notoriously difficult to date reliably. I'd want to see the excavation report to understand exactly how the date was determined.)

[gonzo21]

And those snowflakes are amazing.

I wonder how the left hand side of the snowflake knows to grow in the same shape as the right hand side.

[andrewducker]

I assume that the central bit it grows from is symmetrical, and everything grows out from there.

Hopefully an icologist will be along shortly to educate us :-)

[gonzo21]

Hopefully, yes.

It was some of those complex structures that form out on the edges of the flakes that had my mind boggling, I get the innermost sections being symmetrical, but to retain that symmetry way out on the edges of these complex flake structures just... well, it seems like magic to me. :)

[drdoug]

I think that perfectly symmetrical ones are not the most common but they do exist - certainly when I have looked at snowflakes under a microscope they didn't look as beautiful as the amazing photos.

The thing that keeps them similar (and the best ones perfectly symmetrical) is that the shape they grow depends on the precise conditions ... and a single snowflake is very small, and each of its limbs experiences more or less the same conditions since the whole thing moves together.

[kalimac]

Carrie Fisher's comments on the "slave bikini" are right on. Either the character, or the actress, or both, looked so completely uncomfortable and unhappy in that thing that I never saw anything sexually appealing in the image at all.

I did not think "Oracle" was a very good story, from my point of view as a C.S. Lewis reader. Lewis uses not his own arguments, but ones he borrows (most implausibly, if you know Lewis's thoughts and habits) from an unnamed character whom I'm told is supposed to be Roger Penrose.

[naath]

106 babies> the obvious problem here is that these children are likely to grow up with no real idea who their genetic father is, which is entirely fine until they get to an age where they want to start dating... having well over 100 half siblings is going to make that process somewhat "interesting".

[mummoth]

Oh, thank you for the inspiration! I've started working on a painted elephant design on a ukrainian egg.

[andrewducker]

Yay!