The Voynich Manuscript Part 9 : An Amateur's Work?

The other day I went to a talk about the fall and revival of metaphysics, given by Sebastian Kolodziejczyk at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Metaphysics these days has a bad reputation, even among philosophers, so I was aware of its 'fall' but I was rather curious about the possibility of a 'revival'.

I love it! As soon as I start whining about how humans are always exploiting resources without checking first for sustainability, along comes a story to prove me wrong.

The Giant Pacific Octopus or GPO, who lives throughout the Pacific Northwest (if terrestrial terms) or Northeast (in oceanic terms), has never been the target of a federally managed commercial fishery. But occasionally people murmur about it, and some clever folks have decided that we'd better know a bit more about octopus biology before such a fishery (octopussery?) comes on the scene.

(This continues a discussion of the topic I started here, in Spanish, and in §5.4 of this published paper, in English. Not necessary to read those first; this blog stands on its own.)

There are many definitions of sustainability.

What is your yardstick for climate change? Really, how do you relate climate response to human CO2 emissions?

A new yardstick is proposed by Damon Matthews, a professor in Concordia University’s Department of Geography, Planning and the Environment. With colleagues from Victoria and the U.K., Matthews used a combination of global climate models and historical climate data to derive a simple linear relationship between total cumulative emissions and global temperature change.

Male anglerfish are born with an innate desire to not exist. As soon as a male reaches maturity, he acquires an urge to find a female, sink his teeth into her, and grow into her. This evolved because anglerfish live in the dark ocean abyss with few mating opportunities.

By giving up his life to be part of the female, the male can reproduce more often.   It’s not clear he can appreciate all the sex he’s getting, however, because much of his body and brain atrophies and fuses with her body. Nevertheless, that’s where male anglerfish want to be – that’s a full male anglerfish life.

And you thought you had problems. At least you’re not partially absorbed in someone else’s abdomen. Let’s toast our fortune: We are not male anglerfish!

Or are we?

The slide below was shown yesterday at an invited talk that Antonio Masiero gave in the University of Bologna, during an open session of the CMS Physics week (see, I am careful to note I am not breaking any rules by showing material relevant to internal CMS business: the session was open!).

A group of archaeologists and paleobiologists say they have discovered flax fibers in a cave in the Republic of Georgia that are more than 34,000 years old, making them the oldest fibers known to have been used by humans.

The flax, which would have been collected from the wild and not farmed, could have been used to make linen and thread, they say. The cloth and thread could then have been used to fashion garments for warmth, sew leather pieces, make cloths, or tie together packs that might have aided the mobility of our ancient ancestors from one camp to another.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the discovery of DNA fingerprinting.   So has it done anything important, like given us a real understanding of how men and women communicate?

Well, no, but the University of Leicester Department of Genetics has revealed males and females at least communicate on the fundamental genetic level, an idea which counters scientific theory that the X and Y chromosomes - those that define the sexes - do not communicate at all. 

In research published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, Zoë Rosser and colleagues say they have shown that exchange of DNA does occur between the X and Y in the regions previously thought to be completely isolated.

If I could do it all over again, I would forget genomics and specialize in the chemistry of Scotch. You may scoff, dear reader, but there are employment opportunities out there (not to mention alcoholic fringe benefits), such as the Scotch Whisky Research Institute (SWRI). Few pleasures (note that it's few, not no pleasures - you know what I mean) are greater than the delicate, intricate taste and aroma of a good single malt Scotch, and the SWRI's mission is to scientifically understand the production and enjoyment of Scotch.


Here is the kind of excitement that you can find in a career in Scotch chemistry: