Another in our series bringing you links to items of interest which you may have missed.
Let’s start with something close to most of our hearts … our pets.
Scientists have been investigating the origins of the domestic dog for a while and it is turning out that they are older than we thought. Two pieces, one from the Independent the other from the Scientist.
At the same time some are disputing the received wisdom of how wolves were first domesticated. They think the answer lies amongst our garbage.
Not to be left out, other scientists have looked at a number of myths about cats. One that turns out to be true is the way cats (and many other mammals) freeze when grabbed by the scruff of the neck, and they’re beginning to understand how/why. No this never was a myth; it’s always been perfectly obvious why it occurs.
Now for the more serious.
For the real nerds amongst you here is a piece on the science of radiation poisoning.
And this item helps to keep some of the environmental risks of radiation in perspective.
More perspective … If we know so little about the effect of diet on health (which we do) why is so much is written about it?
And while on spurious statistics … Did You Hear the One About Sex, Traffic Accidents and Acacia Trees?
It’s a good week for spurious statistics ‘cos here is another bunch around the numbers which rule our lives.
Now statistics are only a branch of maths, and so are logarithms. For those of you who struggled with logarithms at school here’s a nifty new way of thinking about arithmetic and thus logs.
Oh no, and now they’re telling me that ‘left-brained’ and ‘right-brained’ is a myth too? Yep ‘fraid so!
Meanwhile Rob Dunn’s team are about to reveal their belly buttons and their pets, a couple of paragraphs at a time.
This is the age of the keyboard, where QWERTY is King. And it’s all downhill from here as schools start to abandon cursive writing (well at least in the USA) which is bad news for historical research.
Those of you with girl bodies and/or girl children might be interested in these three posts about hormonal birth control. First, two old posts by Kate Clancy looking at birth control through the eyes of an anthropologist, here and here. Then something slightly more recent on birth control for young teenage girls.
Meanwhile Heresy Corner looks at myths about the porn industry and asks what UK PM David Cameron can learn from schoolgirls and soccer moms. Well he could learn a lot, but as he’s a politician it would seem the answer is he will learn naff all.
Will teens use it for sex? And answers to other obvious questions about any new technology through the eyes of XKCD.
An interesting and unexpectedly forthright interview article with Sir Bernard Ingham, formerly Margaret Thatcher’s Press Secretary.
And finally something historical. A snapshot of a collection of 19th & early 20th century photographs of shipwrecks around the SW coast of England.
