Here we go with this month’s collection of links to items you’ll wish you’d not missed.
Science, Technology, Natural World
First off, wasps … apparently hornets are able to hold their alcohol amazingly well. [££££]
Birds listen to their songs in a totally different way than we do. [££££}
Scientists have found a surprisingly intact sabre-toothed tiger kitten frozen in Siberian ice, and it’s revealing unknown details about the species.
In 2023 researchers sent a dummy alien signal to Earth, without telling anyone, and it has now been decoded although not understood!
Jupiter is large enough to swallow at least 1000 Earths, and yet it has no surface.
NASA has a large number of satellites studying the sun, and they’re providing some surprising discoveries unrelated to the sun.
Look deeper and you find that comets have sinkholes, which generate jets of material.
In another piece of work from NASA, they’ve discovered two galaxies, looking like bloodshot eyes, which seem to be in the process of merging.
And finally in this section, astronomers have rediscovered a “dandelion-like” supernova first spotted in 12th-century China and Japan. [££££]
Health, Medicine
H5N1 bird flu has been detected in pigs, which is a big cause for concern as they are a well-known “mixing vessel”. And a teenager hospitalised in Canada has H5N1 with mutation(s) which may make it more transmissible between people.
It turns out that humans evolved to share beds, and not only with their romantic partner.
Synaesthesia is strange (especially for those of us who don’t have it) but ticker-tape synaesthesia, where real life comes with subtitles, is really bizarre.
Sexuality
Girls, is it that you just don’t like sex, or is it that you don’t like patriarchal sex? [LONG READ]
So how do you like your dirty talk during sex? [££££]
Is using lube really that much of a taboo for straight couples? Seems it is. [££££]
Environment
OK, so let’s change track …
Apparently British cities are taking on the Japanese concept of “tiny forests“.
And in a similar vein, relatively small patches of wildflowers in cities are as good as natural meadows for insect biodiversity.
History, Archaeology, Anthropology
An amateur archaeologist has discovered another two stone circles on Dartmoor, and believes they add to the theory of a sacred arc of stone circles.
So who was Gunhild? And was she a victim of medieval ethnic cleansing?
On the other side of the world, a postgraduate student has serendipitously found a lost city in the Mexico jungle.
In Leicester they’ve found an 800-year-old burial pit containing 123 bodies, and it’s a complete mystery.
In the mid-13th-century, in what is now Turkey, a kingdom changed hands in exchange for a hat.
In order to make sense of the world as best they could medieval people had lots of supernatural beliefs: elves and fairies; abductions and the undead.
On which subject, here’s a look at some medieval animal ghost stories.
When you’re a peasant economy and don’t have the resources to feed lots of livestock through the winter, November becomes Blotmonath, the month of animal sacrifice and trying to store the meat.
The British Library currently has an exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words. Here’s a review.
Food, Drink
Our drinking water contains many “forever chemicals”, but practically and personally what can we do to ameliorate this?
Wow! Ha ha!
So it’s that time of year, the season of Winter Vagina.
So once more, somehow, another month passes and we come around again to this month’s selection of links to items you didn’t know you didn’t want to miss!
Science, Technology, Natural World
Starting here, it’s all downhill, because it seems that a lot of science is actually faked.
Fly brains may be tiny in size but they’re still stuffed with very complex inter-weavings of thousands of neurons, so it’s amazing that researchers have managed to map every neuron. Two reports, first from BBC, and second from Scientific American [££££].
At a different level, scientists have analysed ancient DNA to unravel how the endangered Iberian Lynx avoided extinction.
Some fish in the sea are so bizarre … here’s one that walks on six legs, and those legs can smell its prey in the sand. [££££]
Still at sea, but now above the water, research has found that the windless doldrums around the equator are caused in a completely different way than previously thought.
Staying with things geographical, apparently Mount Everest is still getting taller and not quite in the way we might expect.
It’s no great surprise that scientists have found that the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs was not a one-off.
And talking of meteorites, there was a mega meteorite about 3 billion years ago which was at least the size of Greater London which boiled the ocean and created a 500km wide crater.
NASA has shut down one of Voyager 2’s five remaining instruments to save power.
And finally in this section, did the early universe balloon in size with “cosmic inflation“, or is there a much simpler explanation?
Health, Medicine
This month’s medical matters are all to do with reproduction, in one way or another …
There are many genetic changes that link puberty to other aspects of physiology and affect its timing.
Prof. Christina Pagel highlights why we need to stop ignoring period pain and heavy bleeding!
Why is it that many doctors don’t believe women about the menopause? [££££]
At which point the Guardian asks if wearing a bra makes breasts more perky.
Let’s segue away from “women only” … in a move labelled “bonkers” by many, an NHS hospital in Norfolk has instructed staff that they must not describe babies as “born” male or female [££££]
And finally to the morgue where pathologists have found, during an autopsy, that the deceased 78-year-old man had not two, but three penises – and it is only the second ever such report and the first in an adult. Two reports, from Popular Science and Gizmodo. And the published academic papers make interesting reading!
Environment
In the hope of re-establishing colonies right across Britain, a number of pine martens have been released at a secret locations in Devon.
Social Sciences, Business, Law, Politics
It is being alleged that companies will no longer want to force people to change passwords every few weeks to counteract cyber attacks. I’ll believe it when it happens.
Art, Literature, Language, Music
An illustrator talks about how she went about a big commission.
Brits are forever complaining about the relentless invasion of English by Americanisms, but British English regularly invades the US.
History, Archaeology, Anthropology
What?! So little history this month?!
Archaeologists have found a very rare Bronze Age wooden spade in southern England.
Archaeologists have found another tiny house in Pompeii which is decorated with erotic frescoes.
Going Medieval finds that medieval people were just as much into side hustles as their modern counterparts.
Food, Drink
White mulled wine seems set to be a thing in UK this Christmas, with Marks & Spencer taking the lead.
Why did European cuisine become so bland? Apparently because snobbery decreed the removal of all the spices and contrasting flavours from the cuisine.
Is it possible to make a commercial, ethically responsible, and tasty fish finger?
Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs
We should put down our mobile phones and get back into the habit of reading
So just why shouldn’t women propose marriage to men?
And last, but by no means least …
On discovering something wonderful when skint and posing as a nude model. [££££]
Here’s our next instalment of things that happened in ..24 years of yore.
Notable Events in 1824
8 January. After much controversy, Michael Faraday (below) is finally elected as a member of the Royal Society.
8 January. Birth of Wilkie Collins, British novelist (d.1889)
21 January. Birth of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, American Confederate general (d.1863)
10 February. Simón Bolívar is proclaimed dictator of Peru.
4 March. Founding of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI)in Britain.
19 April. Lord Byron, the British poet, dies at the age of 36 in the Greek city of Missolonghi, where he had taken ill while making plans to liberate the Greeks from Ottoman rule.
7 May. Premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna.
16 June. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) is established in Great Britain.
4 September. Birth of Anton Bruckner, Austrian composer (d.1896)
10 October. The Edinburgh Town Council founds the Edinburgh Fire Engine Establishment, the first municipal fire brigade in Britain (and probably the world). [Pictured below an 1824 Edinburgh Fire Engine.]
21 October. Joseph Aspdin patents Portland cement.
Unknown Date. The Colorado potato beetle is first described, by Thomas Say.
Here are the answers to this month’s five quiz questions. If in doubt, all should be able to be easily verified online.
Classical & Ancient World
Answers were correct when questions were compiled in late 2023.
Each month we’re posing five pub quiz style questions, with a different subject each month. As before, they’re not difficult, but it is unlikely everyone will know all the answers – so hopefully you’ll learn something new, as well as having a bit of fun.
Classical & Ancient World
Answers will be posted in 2 weeks time.
Our packed monthly round-up of links to items you may have missed …
Science, Technology, Natural World
First up we have to highlight this years Ig Nobel prizes.
Palaeontologists have discovered several new species of extinct bone-crushing Tasmanian Tigers.
At the other end of the size scale, researchers looking in a Tibetan glacier have found over 1700 different frozen viruses.
Still with research reported in Popular Science magazine, the social white-browed sparrow weavers varying nest shapes demonstrate that birds have “culture”. Mind I thought we already knew that from the dialects of Meso-American parrots.
And while with “culture” apparently marmosets have individual “names” for each other.
Grief is well documented emotion in humans, and it seems some other species, but do cats grieve?
Scientists continue to unravel the meaning of our dreams.
So how do you know what that smell is? How does our sense of smell work? [LONG READ]
Leaving the animal world for the geological, in September 2023 something made Earth ring like a bell for nine days. [LONG READ]
Back in the early life of the solar system, it seems that Jupiter’s moon Ganymede was struck by an asteroid bigger than the one which wiped out the dinosaurs.
The asteroid Apophis is due to fly by very close to Earth in 2029, and now an astrophysicist is predicting a very slightly higher chance it may hit us.
Meanwhile, way out in the universe, researchers have discovered the largest jets ever from a black hole – and they make our galaxy look miniscule.
Health, Medicine
So how much proper risk assessment was done around Covid? And by whom? [LOMG READ]
OB/GYN Dr Jen Gunter shares some takeaways from the recent (American) Menopause Society Meeting.
Our bodies are full of nerves, but the longest one orchestrates the connection between brain and body.
While on brains, within the billions of neurons they contain there are trillions of typos – some good, some bad. [LONG READ]
And still on brains, it’s being suggested that many older people don’t just maintain, but actually increase, their cognitive skills. [££££]
And finally with things mental, a Stanford-led research group has identified six different types of depression each of which is likely to respond differently to various treatments. [LONG READ]
Sexuality
Sex historian Dr Kate Lister tries to explain exactly why women masturbate. [££££]
Environment
Nature is like art in many ways as for many humans both are subjective.
Art, Literature, Language, Music
Loughborough has installed a new memorial bell as a tribute to those who died from Covid, and a thank you to NHS and other key workers. And unusually for the UK, it’s a campanile. We need more campaniles.
In which David Hockney stimulates an academic epidemiologist and mathematician to think about four dimensional chairs.
Philip Curtis, the director of The Map House in London, talks about mapping Antarctica.
History, Archaeology, Anthropology
We reported previously that Stonehenge’s altar stone had been identified as originating in NE Scotland. Now it seems that the front runner locations, Orkney, has been ruled out.
Further up into the cold lands, archaeologists are shedding light on a little known ancient culture in northern Greenland. [££££]
In Britain we are generally pretty ignorant about the way in which ancient India shaped science and mathematics.
Archaeologists in Spain have used DNA to uncover some of the secrets of a Christian cave-dwelling medieval community.
Meanwhile in Poland archaeologists have found the burial of two children suspected of being vampires.
Henry VIII did many notable things including accidentally changing the way we write history.
London
Our favourite London blogger, Diamond Geezer, visits Theobalds Grove (one stop outside Greater London). This is my home town; I was brought up just three minutes walk from this station! Needless to say it’s changed quite a bit since I last lived there in late 1970s.
Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs
So just why do men bother with depilation?
Emma Beddington set out to see what it’s like to spend a day as a dog, and finds it impossible.
People
A German mathematician who lived in France as a hermit, left thousands of pages of work. Now there’s a debate over whether he was a mathematical genius or just a lonely madman. [LONG READ]
Shock, Horror, Humour, Wow!
And finally some pictures of the first UK Hobby Horse Championships.
Here’s our next instalment of things that happened in ..24 years of yore.
Notable Events in 1724
7 April. The premiere performance, of Bach’s St John Passion (BWV 245) at St Nicholas Church, Leipzig.
22 April. Birth of Immanuel Kant, German philosopher (d.1804)
25 August. Birth of George Stubbs, English painter (d.1806)
24 September. The Paris Bourse, the stock exchange for France, is created by order of King Louis XV on the advice of Nicolas Ravot d’Ombreval, four years after a financial panic had shut down trading.
Unknown Date. Construction of Blenheim Palace (below) is completed. It is presented as a gift from the nation to the Duke of Marlborough, for his involvement in the Battle of Blenheim in 1704.
Unknown Date. Founding of Longman, the oldest surviving publishing house in England.
