On a Curiosity Blender

Today's post is courtesy of my new favorite podcast, RadioLab

If you've never heard of RadioLab before, thank goodness you are reading this blog!!! This podcast/radio show will undoubtedly change your LIFE! Ok, maybe not that extreme, but it will definitely blow your mind.

This week at RadioLab, they've rebroadcast an amazing show about Time. Time is difficult to grasp when you really think about it, and RadioLab does a VERY good job of thinking about it. It is sure to be a mind-blower. I guarantee it!!!

However, if you don't have an hour to spare to listen to the whole show, I have another suggestion.



This video was a follow-up to the show in which RadioLab investigated Words. What are words and what would our world be like without them? Without words, would there be no communication? no speech? no thought? Is it possible to think without words? Did you notice that each clip represents a word and the is linked to the following clip?

Anywho, hope you enjoy the video! You can find the full broadcast of Words here! This episode was definitely the most mind-blowing episode I have ever heard. And I've heard them all. They talk about this dude who lived for 27 years without LANGUAGE! I mean, he's deaf, doesn't know that he's deaf, and doesn't know that every single thing in the entire world has a name -- a word. And then someone explains it all to him for the first time...WHOA!!!! CRAZY! I am NOT exaggerating.

Absorb it! It will enlighten your life.

Random Thought of the Day

Death from above!

How did these things even get off the ground?!

Don't worry, I'm taking a class where I'll learn all about it this year! I'll be sure to inform you once we finish our section on Pterosaurs.

Twitterology? Yes. Twitterology.

If it exists, there are people studying it. Twitter is now the subject of some potently puzzling psychological ponderables. Although I am not a twitter user and have absolutely no desire to become one, this research is very interesting.
Check it out:

"5. Men are Twitter leaders: Some suggestions of sex differences come from Heil & Piskorski (2009). They found that there were slightly more women than men on Twitter (55% women), but that, on average, men had 15% more followers than women, with men twice as likely to follow another man as they were a woman, and women 25% more likely to follow men. Both men and women, however, were found to tweet at the same rate. This finding is unusual given that it's normally women who are the focus of attention on social networks, from both other men and other women."

 Interesting, no?

Here's another good one: "10% of twitter users contribute 90% of the tweets." That means that the vast majority of twitter users are actually just following, not tweeting. Muy interesante, verdad?

Ok, one more: "Alan Mislove and colleagues collected 300 million tweets from the US, analysed their emotional content, and produced a 'mood of the nation' video. It shows how the emotional content of people's tweets changes over the day (red is negative and green positive)." Using this form of analysis, Mislove has also determined that Monday is not the most depressing day of the week! Crazy, right?

Here's the video:


Anyway, you can read the whole story here at this super interesting psychology blog!

Whoa! Why didn't I know this?!?!

As a short follow-up to my last random daily thought...

the Nicoya Peninsula in north-western Costa Rica was named a Blue Zone in 2007!!!

A Blue Zone, by the way, is an area with a high rate of active centenarians. Remember centenarians from my last post? Well, check out their web page and really cute videos of old people.

Anyway, I have visited this area of Costa Rica! Kinda. Actually, I've been to the areas around the peninsula. I didn't really get to spend much time on the peninsula. But it still counts.

The Guanacaste region of Costa Rica was definitely my favorite place we visited. I especially miss those huge Guanacaste trees, Enterolobium cyclocarpum. (The picture below isn't actually an E. cyclocarpum, but that one off in the distance might be. The umbrella shaped one. I just like this picture.)

So, not only is Costa Rica the happiest country in the world, it also has the highest life expectancy among 60-year-olds in the entire WORLD (meaning, if you make it to 60, it is very likely that you'll also make it to 100). I guess I'll just have to move back there soon!

Live Longer. Live Better.

Random Thought of the Day

How to live to be 100+

Apparently, there is a great deal of research surrounding centenarians.
P.S. A centenarian is an individual who has lived for 100 years or more. Now you know!

Most of this centenarian research is in regards to diet, exercise and general lifestyle habits.

However...

That's not all that scientists are researching. Apparently love has a lot to do with it. Human contact and interaction play an important role in whether you'll reach 60 or 100.

Check it out. Here's a TED Talk on this very same subject!



In addition to this TED Talk, I also started thinking about longevity when a friend told me he was on a paleo diet. What is a paleo diet, you ask? Well, basically, it means eating, exercising and living like...a caveman.

Yup. The caveman diet. It actually sounds very appealing and I'm halfway there anyway. Learn more about it HERE. I would recommend muting the sound, FYI. Silly music.

Random Thought of the Day

Ducks and dog masks...

More of a big bad wolf mask...but STILL! I can only see dog masks now! Crazy!

This post courtesy of the blog, ubersuper.com

In my spare time today...

I bought a new camera with high speed capabilities for my project on wing-sounds in pigeons. Naturally, I had to try it out!

Of course, I also took video of pigeons in flight like a good little researcher...

Random Thought of the Day

Have you ever examined the jaws of an alien from the movie Alien? No?
Well, have you ever seen the jaws of a Moray eel? No?

Ok, you're worthless.

Here's a picture of the Alien

Note the little inner set of jaws hidden within the alien's mouth.

Now check out this picture of a Moray eel's jaw

That extra jaw with extra teeth is called a pharyngeal jaw (in both the Alien and the eel). When the eel bites its prey, the pharyngeal jaws jump out and pull the prey down into the gullet! Yikes!

And that's what I was thinking about in my spare time today.

Why have I never done this before?

Ok, who was the science teacher that neglected to do this little project with my 3rd grade class? I mean really?
This is SO FREAKING COOL!!!
Did you hear that gasp of awe and the resounding "Whoooooa!"s. I did the same thing just now in the dining room as I watched this video for the first time. No joke.

I LOVE science!



Ι am such a nerd.

Fruit Flies: An update - The Sequel!!!

So... I appear to have run out of test subjects.

My kitchen is now fruit fly free...but for the sake of science, I wish there were more!

Here's how it happened:
After the first day of the experiment, both the red wine and the balsamic vinegar were attracting plenty of fruit flies. However, none had died. I attempted to kill a fly by blowing it into the liquid, but found that they just bounced right off the surface of the liquid. This is because of surface tension. Both red wine and balsamic vinegar are water-based liquids that have plenty of happy hydrogen bonding which creates surface tension.

What the heck is hydrogen bonding, you ask?
Well, my dear reader, I will gladly tell you!

In all water and water-based liquids, there are tons of teensy-tiny atoms of hydrogen. Two atoms of hydrogen for every atom of oxygen, to be exact. This makes H2O a.k.a. water. Now, there's something here about unequal sharing of electrons and dipoles, but that's kinda boring, so just know that these hydrogens start making weak bonds between other water molecules. These hydrogen bonds are what create surface tension. This is the same surface tension that allows water-striders to stride on water. These are also the hydrogen bonds that facilitate transpiration in plants, form raindrops, and allow all life on Earth to continue existing, but that's another matter entirely.

At this point, I have recognized a problem in my experimental set-up. Flies are attracted to the vinegar, but they just won't drown! Too much surface tension!

Then I received a lovely recommendation from my good friend Jesse. He says that his friend's mom swears by a cup of apple cider vinegar with a drop of dish soap to kill fruit flies.

Eureka! DISH SOAP! That will solve my surface tension problem!

Unlike water, dish soap does not like hydrogen bonds. In fact, it breaks hydrogen bonds! You can see a great demo of this here! (Just substitute fruit flies for the paper clips.)

So, now that I have added dish soap to each of the cups, here is the final tally:
Balsamic - 18
Red wine - 9 (including one very large fly of a genus other than the Drosophila I was expecting)
Honey - 0
Water - 0

And just after I poured out the last of the Balsamic vinegar, another fly flew in, so...
Vinegar - 19
 Honey - Epic Fail.

You actually catch more flies with vinegar than you do with honey.

Huh.

And that's the end of that.

Myth Busted!

(Adam and Jamie would be proud)

Fruit Flies: An update.

Whoa. Just checked in on my experiment and check it out:

Balsamic - 8 lured, 0 drowned
Red wine - 3 lured, 0 drowned
Honey - 0 lured, 0 drowned
Water - 0 lured, 0 drowned

Science Rules!

Lady Gaga

She's really effing crazy.

For example:
Lady Gaga - Poker Face Acoustic
Watch out at 2:11

Absolute insanity.

Fruit Flies

I hate fruit flies. Well, at least when they're in my kitchen terrorizing my fresh fruit.

I have heard many a story about how best to get rid of said fruit fly problems. Since I currently have a bit of spare time, I thought I'd test them out.

I hear that vinegar will lure flies and drown them.
I also have heard that red wine will drown flies.
But then there's always the saying that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

So that's the plan. Test each of these three substances. Vinegar (balsamic), red wine, and honey.

The fourth cup just has water. As a "control" of course.

So far, the tally is:
Balsalmic - 2 lured, 0 drowned
Red wine - 4 lured, 0 drowned
Honey - 0 lured, 0 drowned
Water - 0 lured, 0 drowned

I'll keep you posted.

Two words:

Tegenaria duellica

I may have found one of these in my bathroom today...
Did you know that Tegenaria duellica currently holds the land-speed record for scurrying spiders? It can run at a whopping 1.73 ft/s, slightly faster than a moderate human stroll.

Now you know!

Wait...when exactly were those photos taken?

Bet you've never heard of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. So I would also wager that you have never seen the photographs he took of Russia from 1909 to 1915. Therefore, it seems safe for me to assume that you didn't know that, way back in 1909, Sergei was taking photos in COLOR!!!

Wait a second. That's more than 100 years ago! People were taking color photographs 100 years ago? I had no idea!

I thought about why this seems so strange to me. I have come to this conclusion:
When I look at my old family photographs, it is easy to notice that Grandpa bought a color camera sometime in the early 60s. Before that, all our photos are in black-and-white. Photos of Grandpa as a child - black-and-white. Photos of Grandpa with his grandpa - black-and-white. All the people in these B&W photos can only be seen in these B&W photos now. They are so old, that the occupants of these fragile frames are no longer alive. Those in the color photographs are still alive, although their color might be fading. So it seems strange to me to see color photographs of people who lived in a generation that has long since disappeared.

So, yeah. 100-year-old color photographs. Strangely enough, it's blowing my mind. You can find more of these photos here. Enjoy!

Things would be so much more interesting...

Life would certainly be more interesting. And more exciting.











Learn more about Phorusrhacids (a.k.a. Terror Birds)!

The title of my blog is too long, therefore Blogger shortens it to "Things Robert Thinks About in his Spa..."

I would think of many glorious things if I were thinking them in a spa. I am quite certain of that. I am also quite certain that a spa would be a very nice place to think. Sadly, I do not own a spa, and therefore, I do very little thinking there. If this blog were indeed a blog about the Things I Think About in my Spa, I think the Things would be few and the blog would be short.

Fortunately for you, dear reader, this blog is not about the Things I Think About in my Spa, and should therefore be filled with much more for you to dearly read. In fact, the title of my blog normally reads Things Robert Thinks About in his Spare Time. That Robert is me, the spare time is mine, and those thoughts and things are now yours. Well, mine originally, dear reader, but as you read dearly, they will become yours. Or perhaps ours. For they are still mine, but I am giving them to you, making them yours. Or do we share them making them ours? I cannot decide which.

Which brings me to my first thought, which I think of often. Ideas. I do a lot of thinking about ideas. Ideas are new thoughts. I could think about them for hours, but for now I will just share this thought; an Idea is the only product valuable to man that increases in quality and quantity when it is shared.

This thought was shared with me by Paul Rommer who spoke at a TED conference and mentioned the sharing of ideas as a way to create growth in a city or a nation. TED's motto is, in fact, "Ideas Worth Spreading." I really like this idea. I want to share it with you!

TED Talks: Ideas worth spreading.

Share TED with a friend today!