Our monthly collection of links to items you may have missed. It’s the usual miscellaneous collection.
Science, Technology, Natural World
That big explosive volcano in Tonga is still surprisngly intact although the caldera looks to be a huge hole.
On the curiosity of organ pipes apparently violating a rule of sound.
And now for something completely different, for which I see many new applications … Apparently female mice release banana-scented urine when pregnant to deter males. [£££]
You all know by now that wasps are one of my favourite subjects. Here are two articles from Seirian Sumner, who’s book on wasps Endless Forms is out this week. First a piece in the Observer Magazine, and then her take on five facts about the gruesomeness of solitary wasps. [Prof. Seirian Sumner is the academic who runs the Big Wasp Survey which I’ve contributed to over the last several years.]
Back to more mundane(?) animals, researchers have been looking at the domestication of the horse. [LONG READ]
Jackdaws are democratic and use noise to make decisions.
Health, Medicine
Medicine in particular, and all of us in general, need to reassess and update our knowledge and the history of the female body.
Having said which, here’s a piece on how sex affects our immune systems and our brains.
Sexuality
The UK’s Office for National Statistics has found that for the first time ever over 10% of young women identify as “lesbian, gay, bisexual or other”.
Social Sciences, Business, Law
On the issues around making conscious software, why we should an why we shouldn’t. [£££]
Art, Literature, Language, Music
Historian and mythographer Marina Warner visits the British Museum’s exhibition Feminine Power: The Divine to the Demonic, which explores the volcanic power of goddess cults.
History, Archaeology, Anthropology
New research on human coprolites reveals parasite eggs which suggest the builders of Stonehenge ate undercooked offal.
Workers at Osuna in southern Spain have uncovered an important, and hitherto unknown, Phoenician necropolis.
The Romans used silphium for just about everything: perfume, medicine, aphrodisiac and condiment. But in trying to cultivate it and increase yields they killed it.
Researchers have managed to successfully sequence the genome of a Pompeii victim. Turns out he was “Italian”!
Melting ice on an alpine pass in Norway has revealed a 1500-year-old shoe amongst many other artefacts.
The Amazon appears to be full of lost pre-Columbian settlements and urban sprawl.
A short item on Ragged Schools, and especially the one for girls in Hastings.
Modern purple dyes were invented in London in the 1850s and initially manufactured close to where I now live.
Two short articles on the eccentricity that is Winchelsea Beach in Sussex.
IanVisits goes to look at the de Haviland Aircraft Museum on the edge of North London.
Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs
Now here’s a real first world problem if ever there was one … should we embrace a cashless society? But one thing the author overlooks is that in a cashless society everything becomes electronic – which is fine until there’s a computer or power outage (accidental or sabotage).
Our favourite zen master, Brad Warner, is another one with a new book coming out.
And finally … they’re generally hated, but we should really like them: stinging nettles. Eat them, make fabric from them, or just let them be to grow butterflies.
