Month: April 2023

Every year for the past decade or so (with the exception of the COVID years of course), Becky and I have travelled to Italy for the delightful International Journalism Festival, which is held in the ancient city of Perugia, about two hours north of Rome in the hills of Umbria. It is a fantastic conference that takes place over five days and involves more than 350 speakers, hundreds of volunteers, and about a dozen amazing venues in the Centro Storico. Even more amazing, attendance is free and open to anyone. The photo below is just one of the beautiful venues, the Sala dei Notari or Gallery of Notables, which was built sometime in the 13th century — about two hundred years before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press.

Another one of the festival’s venues, which was new last year, is the incredible Church of San Francesco, which was partially destroyed in World War II and has been restored to become a modern entertainment venue — with plexiglas filling in the hole at the top of the nave, and a modern sound system. It was quite spectacular to be on stage there.

Every year we have been to Italy, we have taken advantage of the trip by booking a few days to go somewhere else for a short vacation. Last year it was Puglia, in the south, and we also made a side visit to Matera, the ancient city of caves, one of the oldest continuously-inhabited towns in the world. The year before that it was Florence and Pisa, and we’ve also seen most of Rome (of course) as well as Venice, Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast, and Cinque Terre. This year we met up with our Italian friend Anna Masera, who used to teach journalism at the university in Turin, and spent some time touring Sicily, including a somewhat terrifying trip up a very windy Mount Etna.

Continue reading “A trip to Perugia and then to Sicily”

Manon Bischoff from Scientific American writes: “Geologically, Sardinia is one of the quietest places in Europe. The island, along with its neighbor Corsica, is located on a particularly secure block of Earth’s crust that is among the most stable areas of the Mediterranean, with very few earthquakes in its entire recorded history and only one (offshore) event that ever reached the relatively mild category of magnitude 5. Physicists chose this geologically uneventful place because the Archimedes experiment requires extreme isolation from the outside environment. It involves a high-precision experimental setup designed to investigate the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics—the amount of energy in the empty space that fills the universe. Scientists are hauling a two-meter-tall cylindrical vacuum chamber and other equipment down into an old Sardinian mine where they will attempt to create their own vacuum and weigh the nothing inside.”

The great European house cat migration

From Frank Jacobs at Big Think: “Domestic cat bones around 8,000 years old have recently been found in both Serbia and Poland. This pushes back the arrival in Europe of one of humanity’s earliest companion animals by several thousands of years. Until recently, the thinking was that cats arrived in Europe only in Late Antiquity (roughly the 3rd to 7th century AD). That still holds true for many parts of the continent, but an earlier influx via Asia Minor into the Balkans, and further north, seems to have preceded it. Because the five known varieties of wildcat (Near Eastern, Chinese, Central Asian, Southern African, and European) are quite similar and can interbreed, scientists until recently had a hard time pinning down in which part of the world cat domestication first occurred. Some even suggested that it had happened at multiple times and places.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “How much does nothing weigh? A new experiment will find out”

Manon Bischoff from Scientific American writes: “Geologically, Sardinia is one of the quietest places in Europe. The island, along with its neighbor Corsica, is located on a particularly secure block of Earth’s crust that is among the most stable areas of the Mediterranean, with very few earthquakes in its entire recorded history and only one (offshore) event that ever reached the relatively mild category of magnitude 5. Physicists chose this geologically uneventful place because the Archimedes experiment requires extreme isolation from the outside environment. It involves a high-precision experimental setup designed to investigate the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics—the amount of energy in the empty space that fills the universe. Scientists are hauling a two-meter-tall cylindrical vacuum chamber and other equipment down into an old Sardinian mine where they will attempt to create their own vacuum and weigh the nothing inside.”

The great European house cat migration

From Frank Jacobs at Big Think: “Domestic cat bones around 8,000 years old have recently been found in both Serbia and Poland. This pushes back the arrival in Europe of one of humanity’s earliest companion animals by several thousands of years. Until recently, the thinking was that cats arrived in Europe only in Late Antiquity (roughly the 3rd to 7th century AD). That still holds true for many parts of the continent, but an earlier influx via Asia Minor into the Balkans, and further north, seems to have preceded it. Because the five known varieties of wildcat (Near Eastern, Chinese, Central Asian, Southern African, and European) are quite similar and can interbreed, scientists until recently had a hard time pinning down in which part of the world cat domestication first occurred. Some even suggested that it had happened at multiple times and places.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “How much does nothing weigh? A new experiment will find out”

From David Gauvey Herbert in NY Mag: “In January 2010, a team of detectives and a prosecutor flew to Philadelphia to present a case to a league of elite investigators called the Vidocq Society, which met once a month to listen to the facts of cold cases. The group’s co-founder, Richard Walter, was billed as one of America’s preeminent criminal profilers. But that quickly unravelled: Since at least 1982, he has touted phony credentials and a bogus work history. He claims to have helped solve murder cases that, in reality, he had limited or no involvement with — and even one murder that may not have occurred at all. These lies did not prevent him from serving as an expert witness in trials across the country. His specialty was providing criminal profiles that neatly implicated defendants, imputing motives to them that could support harsher charges and win over juries. Convictions in at least three murder cases in which he testified have since been overturned. In 2003, a federal judge declared him a “charlatan.”

This school has no classes, no teachers and lots of freedom

Christopher Spata writes for the Tampa Bay Times: “At the Spring Valley School, three dozen students ages 5 to 18 are trusted to do what they want. There are no classes, grades or homework. There are no “teachers,” only “staff.” Students decide when it’s time to graduate. Democracy rules, and students’ voting power far outweighs that of the school’s four adults. The kids at Spring Valley can fire or hire staff, admit or expel students and spend its budget. If you call, it’s likely a 15-year-old will answer the phone. When a Tampa Bay Times reporter asked to observe a day inside the tiny private school, the students considered the request and voted to allow it. Spring Valley has doubled tours for prospective families to twice a week, and an expansion of the 2,500-square-foot schoolhouse begins this summer. Students and staff voted recently to increase tuition from $4,850 to $6,717, the first significant increase in over a decade.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “The fake criminal profiler who wanted to be Sherlock Holmes”

The outbreak began in July 1518 when a woman began to dance fervently in a street in Strasbourg. By early September, the outbreak began to subside. Historical documents, including “physician notes, cathedral sermons, local and regional chronicles, and even notes issued by the Strasbourg city council” are clear that the victims danced; it is not known why. Historical sources agree that there was an outbreak of dancing after a single woman started dancing. It lasted for such a long time that it even attracted the attention of the Strasbourg magistrate and bishop, and some number of doctors ultimately intervened, putting the afflicted in a hospital. Events similar to this are said to have occurred throughout the medieval age including 11th century in Kölbigk, Saxony, where it was believed to be the result of demonic possession or divine judgment. In 15th century Apulia, Italy a woman was bitten by a tarantula, and the venom made her dance convulsively. The only way to cure the bite was to “shimmy” and to have the right sort of music available, which came to be an accepted remedy.

Mark Twain fought for the South in the Civil War, and lasted two weeks

Claire Barrett writes for History.net: “In the summer of 1861, a former riverboat pilot named Sam Clemens went to war, according to the St. Louis Magazine, on a small yellow mule carrying a valise, a carpetbag, two gray blankets, a homemade quilt, a squirrel rifle, 20 yards of rope, a frying pan and, perhaps most importantly of all, an umbrella. The 25-year-old Missourian, alongside 14 other idealistic young men, answered Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson’s call of 50,000 militia to defend their home state. They called themselves the Marion Rangers, with Twain entering their ranks as a second lieutenant. Clemens had grown up amid slavery in the South. His father had owned slaves. So had his neighbors. In 1860 Twain had voted for John Bell in the presidential election, who, although a Tennessee slaveholder, had opposed secession. Twain’s vote was seemingly a vote for the status quo he had grown up around. But as the war approached Missouri, Twain decided to take a stand — albeit a brief one. In all, the famed author’s stint lasted two weeks.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “The infamous “dancing plague” in Europe in the 16th century”

Ashawnta Jackson writes for JSTOR Daily: “Elizabeth Wilkinson had a score to settle. Writing to the London Journal in 1722, she informs its readers that she and Hannah Highfield ‘had some words.’ And though words might have started it, they weren’t going to end it. Wilkinson challenged Highfield to a fight: “I do invite her to meet me on the stage and box with me for three guineas,” she wrote, “each woman holding half-a-crown in each hand, and the first woman that drops her money to lose the battle.” Highfield accepted that invitation, promising “that she will not fail…to give her more blows than words, desiring home blows, and of her no favor. She may expect a good thrumping.” Though calling out your enemy in a newspaper ad might be unusual, the fight certainly wasn’t. Randy Roberts writes, “female pugilism was so popular that the women crowned their first champion at approximately the same time as the males.”

This mom didn’t know she was in a $250K Candy Crush tournament, but she’s winning

From Sisi Jiang at Kotaku: “Erryn Rhoden is an ordinary person who works at her family’s roofing company in Columbus, Ohio. She’s also the top-ranked player in her semifinal bracket for the Candy Crush Saga All Stars Tournament, the biggest Candy Crush tournament in history, which she entered by accident. That makes her one of the most successful esports athletes in the entire country right now. Candy Crush is the most popular match-3 game of all time. Players eliminate blocks by matching three or more candies by swapping their positions until they’re next to each other. Overall Candy Crush progress is measured by the number of levels that you’ve completed. You complete levels by fulfilling their level’s objectives, such as breaking particularly sturdy blocks or accumulating a certain number of special candies that you can create by matching regular candy tiles in a certain way. If you finish a level with time remaining on the timer or in fewer moves, you get bonus points at the end.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Women have been fist-fighting since the early 1700’s”

Trung Phan writes: “Hello Kitty has been around since 1974 and, as recently as 2013, was selling $8 billion worth of merchandise annually. Hello Kitty merchandise has made $89B in lifetime sales, which is roughly equal to the combined all-time sales for Batman, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and James Bond. The company behind Hello Kitty is a Japanese firm called Sanrio, which has a very interesting story. Its founder Shintaro Tsuji was obsessed with Walt Disney. And he built a merchandise and licensing machine in an attempt to match the global influence of his idol. Hello Kitty entered the picture in 1974. Sanrio designer Yuko Shimizu dreamed up a cat-like character that would become Sanrio’s answer to Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse (one of Tsuji’s main inspirations).

Alabama kidnapping is stranger than fiction

Charles Gaines writes about a case involving a wealthy Birmingham businessman who is awoken from his sleep by an audacious pair of criminals — and their two kids — who claim to have acquired the house he is sleeping in, and he subsequently gets taken for the most terrifying and bewildering ride of his life. “Every night when he goes to bed, Elton B. Stephens Jr. pulls up an app on his phone called SnoreLab that records his snoring and breathing overnight, along with any other sounds made nearby—such as those of the Kafkaesque nightmare he finds himself waking to this morning, a nightmare for which nothing in his blithe seventy-five years has prepared him. (Note: Despite the fact that it seems like someone had to have made it up, the dialogue in this article, up to when Elton leaves the house, is taken directly from the SnoreLab recording, though some of it has been edited for clarity and/or reordered.)”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Hello Kitty is one of the most profitable franchises of all time”

If you’re driving through Britain, you might see giant concrete blocks with concave openings. What are they? Acoustic mirrors. More than 100 years ago, these mirrors were built along the coast of England, with the intention of using them to detect the sound of approaching German zeppelins. Invented by William Sansome Tucker, and operated at differing scales between around 1915 and 1935, the acoustic mirrors were able to signal an aircraft from up to 24 kilometers away, giving enough time to allow British defence to prepare for counterattack. The concave structures responded to sound by focusing the waves to a single point, where a microphone was positioned. Not only were they able to announce the arrival of an aircraft, but they could also determine the direction of attack of the plane to an accuracy of 1.5 degrees. Their development continued until the mid-1930s, when the invention of radar made them obsolete.

This internet service provider’s security keys are generated by a wall of lava lamps

You might think that the best security keys would be generated by computers, but in the case of CloudFlare, which caches and distributes data for thousands of large companies, you would only be half right. Computers, being logical devices, struggle with generating randomness, so CloudFlare uses real objects to generate “entropy,” which in cryptography means unpredictability. Encryption keys need to be unpredictable, or else an attacker can try to detect patterns. That’s where lava lamps come in, because they’re an inherently random variable. CloudFlare has two other randomness generators that are being built: The first, in the company’s London office, is known as the “Chaotic Pendulums,” and features giant grandfather-clock style pendulums, and the second, under construction in the company’s Austin office, is called “Suspended Rainbows.” Entropy is generated via patterns of light that are projected on walls, the ceiling, and the floor.

Continue reading “The giant “acoustic mirrors” that once protected Britain”

Xuehu Wei, who is a doctoral student in the research team around Alfred Anwander and Angela Friederici, compared the brain scans of 94 native speakers of two very different languages and showed that the language we grow up with modulates the wiring in the brain. Two groups of native speakers of German and Arabic respectively were scanned in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine. The high-resolution images not only show the anatomy of the brain, but also allow us to derive the connectivity between the brain areas using a technique called diffusion-weighted imaging. The data showed that the axonal white matter connections of the language network adapt to the processing demands and difficulties of the mother tongue. “Arabic native speakers showed a stronger connectivity between the left and right hemispheres than German native speakers,” explained Alfred Anwander, last author of the study.

Scientists discover RNA component buried in the dust of an asteroid

A sample extracted from an asteroid far from Earth has confirmed that RNA nucleobases can be found in space rocks. Analysis of dust ferried home from asteroid Ryugu has been found to contain uracil – one of the four nucleobases that make up RNA – in addition to niacin, a form of the vitamin B3, which plays an important role in metabolism. This adds to a growing body of evidence that the building blocks for life form in space, and may have been at least partially delivered to Earth by asteroid bombardment early in our planet’s history. “Scientists have previously found nucleobases and vitamins in certain carbon-rich meteorites, but there was always the question of contamination by exposure to the Earth’s environment,” says astrochemist Yasuhiro Oba of Hokkaido University in Japan. “Since the Hayabusa2 spacecraft collected two samples directly from asteroid Ryugu and delivered them to Earth in sealed capsules, contamination can be ruled out.”

Continue reading “The language we speak shapes the connectivity in our brains”