Well, many things, of course. You might find this of interest.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/shadows-two-failed-searches-loom-over-physics (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/shadows-two-failed-searches-loom-over-physics)
Monkeys aren't physically incapable of speech as has been posited. I learned their larynx is too far down or something like that, but that was based on dead apes rather than live ones.
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/12/09/504890630/say-what-monkey-mouths-and-throats-are-equipped-for-speech
William Tecumseh Fitch e.a., Monkey vocal tracts are speech-ready, Science Advances. 9 December 2016. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600723 (http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/12/e1600723)
We conclude that if a macaque monkey had a brain capable of vocal learning and combinatoric operations over speech sounds, its vocal tract would be able to produce clearly intelligible speech. Our data join those based on computer models of the human vocal tract, showing that the importance of human vocal anatomy for speech has been overestimated (24–26). Our data are also consistent with anatomical data from apes and monkeys, indicating that human vocal anatomy and the descended larynx are not as exceptional as widely thought (27, 28). These findings refute the widespread opinion that nonhuman primate vocal tracts are “unsuited to speaking” [(29), p. 59]. We conclude that the inability of macaques and other primates to speak is a reflection not of peripheral vocal tract limitations but of their lack of neural circuitry enabling sophisticated vocal control (30, 31). In short, primates have a speech-ready vocal tract but lack a speech-ready brain to take advantage of its latent operating range.
Any scientific news on unintelligible English language writings? :right:
We can learn a good deal of science from the Red State Rustler, a Twitter genius.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyxkuAwW8AAaGAe.jpg)
Sounds like a Glaswegian rather than an Edinburgh man.
Compare:
Monkeys aren't physically incapable of speech as has been posited.
...and...
William Tecumseh Fitch e.a., Monkey vocal tracts are speech-ready, Science Advances. 9 December 2016. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600723 (http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/12/e1600723)
In short, primates have a speech-ready vocal tract but lack a speech-ready brain to take advantage of its latent operating range.
Thus it's posited now that monkeys are
mentally incapable of speech.
What options follow from this? It would still mean that monkeys cannot speak, wouldn't it?
What if further research concluded something like that primates have a "speech-ready"
brain, what would follow? That they
could speak, but just don't for some reason? For what reason?
What else would follow in terms of the theory of evolution? That, without ever using speech, monkeys evolved speech-readiness? Why not rather that they
devolved from speech-readiness?
What is speech-readiness anyway and why is it more notable than, for example, fart-readiness, depression-readiness or readiness to assume someone's readiness for a behaviour that has never been observed?
What if further research concluded something like that primates have a "speech-ready" brain, what would follow? That they could speak, but just don't for some reason? For what reason?
What else would follow in terms of the theory of evolution? That, without ever using speech, monkeys evolved speech-readiness? Why not rather that they devolved from speech-readiness?
What is speech-readiness anyway and why is it more notable than, for example, fart-readiness, depression-readiness or readiness to assume someone's readiness for a behaviour that has never been observed?
The very existence of monkeys is a perturbing philosophical and teological problem.
The very existence of monkeys is a perturbing philosophical and teological problem.
And missing links between humans and other primates are a perturbing scientific problem. Darwin solved it by asserting common descent. Asserting, not demonstrating.
Obviously Descent of Man predated the unravelling of DNA by about 80 years, but even back in the 19th (and 18th) century the naturalists, and in particular Darwin, put up an impressive case.
For most theologies and theologians this shouldn't come up as that much of an issue, but those who take the two creation myths in Genesis as absolute literal truth may find it challenging to come up with an explanation.
This man explains it all.
https://www.netflix.com/watch/80117532?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2Cd53ad524aed9ae1505237ccfb6bdf743b24b3b67%3A5ea15047f2ee38af4fdcbc5dcf4aac713869b9f4 (https://www.netflix.com/watch/80117532?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2Cd53ad524aed9ae1505237ccfb6bdf743b24b3b67%3A5ea15047f2ee38af4fdcbc5dcf4aac713869b9f4)
What is speech-readiness anyway and why is it more notable than, for example, fart-readiness, depression-readiness or readiness to assume someone's readiness for a behaviour that has never been observed?
Perhaps I should've written some more commentary or quoted from the article itself rather than the abstract. What interested me here was the actual research on the phonological aspects and how it was performed ("Materials and Methods").
I'm not really sure what influence you see on evolution either way, except that in their abstract the authors seem to be grossly exaggerating the lack of evolution on our vocal tract: obviously our ancestors would've been able to talk already in some form even if perhaps they had slightly fewer phonemes. As I already indicated, we still evolved to choke (i.e., our larynx rose) so that we could communicate better.
That brains are the major limiting factor is no news either. Even if you forget about the inferior statistical capabilities of monkeys, human infants have all kinds of musculature in place while their brain isn't quite up to the task of fine motor control yet. Or viewed from a slightly different angle still, thanks to our larger brains we can use more complex tools than apes and monkeys even though our hands are rather similar.
Anyway, since the phrase "speech-ready" is apparently so offensive I suggest to mentally replace it with something like "a sufficiently distinct number of vocalizations that could theoretically be used for spoken language." Or to quote the authors of the paper (from a part I consider rather uninteresting because it is a tad self-evident):
There is no reason to believe that linguistic communication requires /i/ or any other particular vowel, because the role of extreme vowels (for example, for vocal tract normalization) could be played by whatever vowel does represent the extreme “corner” of the phonetic space available to that species. Thus, we do not claim that macaque speech would sound precisely like human speech. Rather, our results definitively show that the phonetic range inherent in a macaque vocal tract, based on actual observed vocal tract configurations, would itself pose no impediment to linguistic communication if macaques had human-like neural control systems.
I agree it sounds somewhat preposterous, a bit like saying monkeys have typing-ready hands. In spite of that, they still have 'em! ;)
What if further research concluded something like that primates have a "speech-ready" brain, what would follow? That they could speak, but just don't for some reason? For what reason?
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Humans are really good at picking out faces. Our brains are so good at this that we even see faces in places they don’t exist — like Jesus on toast. Flip a face upside down, though, and the brain needs an extra moment to determine that, yes, that’s a face.
This is known as the inversion effect. And a new study finds that we’re not the only species to demonstrate it: Chimps do, too. Only they do it with butts. And this says something about human evolution — but we’ll get to that in a bit.
In 2008, Frans de Waal and Jennifer Pokorny of Emory University in Atlanta showed in an Ig Nobel–winning experiment that chimpanzees could recognize each other from their behinds — or at least photographs of them. The chimp rear, it turns out, conveys important information about sex and, in females, ovulation status. Both males and females pay attention to those signals, which are important in mating and competition.
Given the evidence that chimps could use both face and behind for recognition, Mariska Kret of Leiden University in the Netherlands and Masaki Tomonaga of the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University in Japan wanted to know if, like us, chimpanzees display the inversion effect when it comes to these body parts — and how humans might compare.
They started by gathering a group of more than 100 university students and giving them a matching game. The student would be shown a picture of a human or chimp face, butt or foot. Then they would be shown two pictures of the same body part (from the same species) and have to choose the one that matched the first image. Some of those images were right side up and others were turned upside down. The researchers then repeated the experiment with images in black and white and then repeated both experiments again with a group of four female chimps and one male chimp living at the Primate Research Institute."
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/chimps-look-behinds-way-we-look-faces?tgt=nr (https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/chimps-look-behinds-way-we-look-faces?tgt=nr)
Obviously Descent of Man predated the unravelling of DNA by about 80 years, but even back in the 19th (and 18th) century the naturalists, and in particular Darwin, put up an impressive case.
What case was that? Can you quote it?
The one I know is this, "It may be worth while to illustrate this view of classification, by taking the case of languages. If we possessed a perfect pedigree of mankind, a genealogical arrangement of the races of man would afford the best classification of the various languages now spoken throughout the world; and if all extinct, and all intermediate and slowly changing dialects, were to be included, such an arrangement would be the only possible one. Yet it might be that some ancient languages had altered very little and had given rise to few new languages, whilst others had altered much owing to the spreading, isolation, and state of civilisation of the several co-descended races, and had thus given rise to many new dialects and languages. The various degrees of difference between the languages of the same stock, would have to be expressed by groups subordinate to groups; but the proper or even the only possible arrangement would still be genealogical; and this would be strictly natural, as it would connect together all languages, extinct and recent by the closest affinities, and would give the filiation and origin of each tongue."
Darwin, Origin of Species, page 459 https://archive.org/details/originofspecies00darwuoft
Here Darwin makes a case for common descent by parallel with linguistics. Unfortunately, the parallel is false even considering the linguistics of his own time. If we go by evidence, his point does not apply in linguistics and insofar as his case rests on this parallel, he simply has no case. And he had no genes in his time, so what impressive case did he have?
These days, given genetics, I'm not sure of a solid case for common descent either. What makes the case for it? If it's something like "All biological life forms are made up of genes, therefore common descent," it's as fallacious as "All languages are made up of sounds, therefore common descent." So, what is it?
...obviously our ancestors would've been able to talk already in some form even if perhaps they had slightly fewer phonemes.
Actually, if children are any guide, the development of sound system goes in the opposite direction. Children make all sorts of possible sounds, i.e. they have the entire range of "phonemes" except that they are not phonemes in the relevant sense. Children practise pronunciation of all sounds without having a sound system yet, i.e. they don't stay within the range required by the phonology of the language, they have no notion of phonotactics, vocabulary and syntax. They have all the material, but no system in the material. In this sense they are born "speech-ready" but it takes time, effort, and certain preconditions for the readiness to mature.
Anyway, since the phrase "speech-ready" is apparently so offensive I suggest to mentally replace it with something like "a sufficiently distinct number of vocalizations that could theoretically be used for spoken language." Or to quote the authors of the paper (from a part I consider rather uninteresting because it is a tad self-evident):
There is no reason to believe that linguistic communication requires /i/ or any other particular vowel, because the role of extreme vowels (for example, for vocal tract normalization) could be played by whatever vowel does represent the extreme “corner” of the phonetic space available to that species. Thus, we do not claim that macaque speech would sound precisely like human speech. Rather, our results definitively show that the phonetic range inherent in a macaque vocal tract, based on actual observed vocal tract configurations, would itself pose no impediment to linguistic communication if macaques had human-like neural control systems.
I agree it sounds somewhat preposterous, a bit like saying monkeys have typing-ready hands. In spite of that, they still have 'em! ;)
Actually, I agree that monkeys can be considered physically speech-ready. The point is how to actualise this readiness, how to make it mature, meaningful, and
self-instructive for those who use this readiness. Children learn from their parents, teachers and peers to use language and then be creative with it. Have humans been able to teach monkeys to speak on any level? They can teach parrots, so why not monkeys? Looks like physical readiness means nothing. Even mental readiness would mean hardly anything.
Parrots can "talk" but is it really talking? Looks like mechanical behaviour is radically distinct from conscious behaviour. Neuroscientists don't have the tools to comprehend and detect this important distinction. I have seen no signs that they are even looking for such tool.
For most theologies and theologians this shouldn't come up as that much of an issue,
No? why not?
but those who take the two creation myths in Genesis as absolute literal truth may find it challenging to come up with an explanation.
I don't kow what is worst, those protestants who take the Bible as a literal truth, or those atheists that take philosophical ignorance as a literal truth.
Actually, I agree that monkeys can be considered physically speech-ready. The point is how to actualise this readiness, how to make it mature, meaningful, and self-instructive for those who use this readiness. Children learn from their parents, teachers and peers to use language and then be creative with it. Have humans been able to teach monkeys to speak on any level? They can teach parrots, so why not monkeys? Looks like physical readiness means nothing. Even mental readiness would mean hardly anything.
Parrots can "talk" but is it really talking? Looks like mechanical behaviour is radically distinct from conscious behaviour. Neuroscientists don't have the tools to comprehend and detect this important distinction. I have seen no signs that they are even looking for such tool.
And that's just the beginning.
Much more problems arises with the existence of monkeys.
I never found any author adressing such enigma.
As far as I know, neither philosophical, religious or scientifical approaches gives a credible explanation.
Parkinson's Law is a purely scientific discovery, inapplicable except in theory to the politics of the day. It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate the weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow.
(source (http://www.economist.com/node/14116121))
While this is not the science that most interests me it is indeed interesting! (Well, to me…)
I fail to see why monkeys
shouldn't exist. The only answer I can imagine is
you don't like monkeys. I don't much like them either; but can't make the leap to "shouldn't exist"…
Sometimes I don't like
you (fill in the blank, including myself)! Still, I'd not like the responsibility of deciding what should exist or not — except in a self-defense situation.
I don't see how monkeys threaten humans. (Sure, that AIDS thing and Ebola were problematical; but people did stupid shit… Otherwise, they'd have been nothing-burgers.)
BTW: Parkinson held a post at university in Singapore for many years… A typical Englishman of accomplishment! :) The same can be said of Scotsmen… And Irishmen.
Oddly enough, Americans tend to stay in America — unless they want to dabble in the "arts" and diddle little girls. (Polanski's a typical American name, right? :) )
I don't see how monkeys threaten humans.
By the possibility. Their
possibility of being humans, unique at all the animal kingdom.
If they were humans, what would humans be?
I don't see how monkeys threaten humans.
By the possibility. Their possibility of being humans, unique at all the animal kingdom.
If they were humans, what would humans be?
Some people consider the possibility to be quite real. I've heard that orangutan means, in the original language where the word came from, something like "man of the forest" and the people who gave orangutans the name treated them like just another tribe of men.
Then again, it's not too unique. In far north aboriginal people commonly used to say something like, "Don't go beyond those hills. There be polar bears there. It's their land. If you go in a bigger gang, they will gather a bigger gang too and come to retaliate."
I personally don't see the threat. Many
humans are not humans in the relevant sense, so why worry about animals.
Many humans are not humans in the relevant sense
A typically European comment.
I don't consider monkeys a threat in the physical sense of the word, course they aren't, we, humans, are happily slaughtering them for fun and easy food, no threat at all.
I consider that if we were aware, fully aware, of their conscious capabilities we'll feel guilty after exterminating them. The threat is moral.
Mankind is not used to have more than one human race, like it happened at the times of Neanderthals, and monkeys are the sole possibility of that happening again. We should look at them differently than we do.
Many humans are not humans in the relevant sense
A typically European comment.
Okay, it's clear now that "European" is just a curse word for you and means as little as (or the same as!) when you say "racist", "Communist", "Fascist" etc.
I consider that if we were aware, fully aware, of their conscious capabilities we'll feel guilty after exterminating them. The threat is moral.
Being vegetarian is not too hard, you know. Jains and Buddhists can do it. Atheist animal rightists can do it. It's so common that you may even find it insufficient to alleviate your pangs of remorse, but you'll have to try it to find out for sure.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fforgifs.com%2Fgallery%2Fd%2F276468-2%2FDoge-watches-Youtube.gif&hash=9ccbe17c570d83896fef8292b0198247" rel="cached" data-hash="9ccbe17c570d83896fef8292b0198247" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://forgifs.com/gallery/d/276468-2/Doge-watches-Youtube.gif)
Being vegetarian is not too hard, you know. Jains and Buddhists can do it. Atheist animal rightists can do it. It's so common that you may even find it insufficient to alleviate your pangs of remorse, but you'll have to try it to find out for sure.
There's no connection between species diversity and vegetarianism. Man is biologically omnivorous as stated by the teeth and digestive system.
The problem is the relationship between Man and species diversity and I mantain that monkeys are a case apart amongst animal species and so they should be looked as that.
The doggy should be posting in DnD asking for being considered a monkey, not watching movies... :)
Seven temperate terrestrial planets around the nearby ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v542/n7642/full/nature21360.html)
Moreover, the seven planets have equilibrium temperatures low enough to make possible the presence of liquid water on their surfaces.
Here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Dwarfs#Names) one can choose a set of names for those seven planets.
How about Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy and Grumpy.
Are they dwarf planets? :P
They're too far away for us to know… But they're intriguing, aren't they? :)
BTW: Only three of the seven likely have liquid water… But Dems think that's a majority! :)
Oakdale managed to link the newly found planets to Dems. Next up should be krake tying them to Iraq war.
Don't worry ersi. I'd rather link you to a tragic product of the cold war. :D
Hundreds of North American bee species face extinction: study
"It's a quiet but staggering crisis unfolding right under our noses that illuminates the unacceptably high cost of our careless addiction to pesticides and monoculture farming," its author, Kelsey Kopec, said in a statement.
Habitat loss, along with heavy pesticide use, climate change and increasing urbanization are the main causes for declining bee populations, the study found.
Jax would of course say that bees can be kept in cities (https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=86&artikel=6445772) just fine, perhaps even better than in the countryside.
Jax would of course say that bees can be kept in cities (https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=86&artikel=6445772) just fine, perhaps even better than in the countryside.
If cities have less pesticide, that may potentially be less crazy than it sounds. :P
Sure. Or if city bees are effectively a different species with ferocious adaptive capacity like city pigeons and rats are.
Chinese solved the problem, miilions were turned into human bees polinizing trees.
Could fast radio bursts really be powering alien space ships? (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2124209-could-fast-radio-bursts-really-be-powering-alien-space-ships/)
Are alien radio beams causing one of the most mysterious signals from space (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26813-epic-cosmic-radio-burst-finally-seen-in-real-time/)? A new study by Manasvi Lingam and Avi Loeb at Harvard says that fast radio bursts (FRBs) could come from extraterrestrial radio beams being used as beacons or to power alien light sails.
UFOs? I prefer another explanation: that's how astrology works. Finally, Science's found out that astrologers were right all the time. Radio bursts. :left:
That's why "science" has faultered…
Where science intersects government policy, doesn't the science need to be robust?
Nah! In the real world, politics is the realm of discourse. Who thinks that's the sensible way to go?
The Earth is flat - according to Shaquille O'Neal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaquille_O%27Neal) at least.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKXCBlUPJqM[/video]
The Earth is flat for rich American idiot blacks, round for European idiot whites (so I'm not acused of discrimination) and the belly button of a God for a few others.
It's very interesting how the first Greek (I forget his name this moment) realized why the Earth is round. He just measured the different shade lenghts, at the same time, in different parts of the world.
How could he have such a mechanism to measure the same time at different places, never anyone asked about.
Eratosthenes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Measurement_of_the_Earth.27s_circumference)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/Eratosthenes_measure_of_Earth_circumference.svg/512px-Eratosthenes_measure_of_Earth_circumference.svg.png)
bah
my questions remains... theres' no way of knowing the same time 800km away back on those times.
That was a cruciall point to determine all the logics.
Noon and solstice is easy to determine, even in prehistorical time. The crucial element is that the sun is (practically speaking) at zenith, directly overhead, at Syene at this date. Wells are dug vertical for pretty obvious reasons. A deep well is thus a very useful tool to get a precise vertical normal to the surface. Like the article stated Alexandria isn't exactly to the north of Syrene, thus "noon" at Alexandria didn't happen at exactly the same time as "noon" at Syene. This would have been a source of error, but a relatively minor one. The biggest, to measure the curvature of the Earth, would be the distance between Syene and Alexandria. "5000 stadia" was fairly accurate, and that was the most impressive (or lucky) part of the experiment. Accurate measurement of distance wasn't easy with the available tools.
I was not clear, when the sun is vertical at Syrene is simple, when the sun is not vertical in Alexandria also simple but how two different observers, one at each place, knows that they were observing those phenomena exactly at the same time?
That's the key factor, both knowing that they are exactly at the same time without instantaneous ways of comunication between 800kms.
All the rest follows.
The only way I see to be possible is by an imaginary experiment. Let's imagine that, at exactly the same time, [...] than the Eartth would be round.
Formulating an hiphotesis that couldn't be veryfied at the time happened many times but it doesn't mean that a scientific discovery has been made. The same happened with Galileo.
Only later, by other people and with different instruments, these hiphotesis turned into scientific knowledge.
"Same day (summer solstice) at noon" is easy to achieve even with less civilized societies than 3rd century BC Greek Egypt. Now, noon in Alexandria would be about five minutes later than at Syene, as it is further to the west.
A better way to measure it would be that the distance to a point straight to the north of Syene at the same latitude as Alexandria would be something like 4715 stadia (given that the distance between the cities were precisely 5000 stadia), an undershoot of about 5% or in other word an estimate that would be about 5% too large.
As frequently happens, Motl has an interesting post (http://motls.blogspot.com/2017/07/venus-and-hawkings-scientific-illiteracy.html#more) on his blog... :)
Computers are getting better than humans at reading (http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/15/technology/reading-robot-alibaba-microsoft-stanford/)
Artificial intelligence programs built by Alibaba (BABA) and Microsoft (MSFT) have beaten humans on a Stanford University reading comprehension test.
"This is the first time that a machine has outperformed humans on such a test," Alibaba said in a statement Monday.
[...]
Alibaba has already put the technology to work on Singles Day, the world's biggest shopping bonanza, by using computers to answer a large number of customer service questions.
So, from what I can gather, the said "reading comprehension" involves locating numerical-tabular information as in a product description. Soon enough, if the computer does not understand you because you are asking something beyond a product description, it's your fault.
Be intelligible: Talk only data!
It's a little more than that, though it is wholly simplified into easily digestible chunks. The humans in question are low-paid drones working for Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.05250
All this was annoyingly difficult to find, but the same news item caught my eye this morning.
SELECT SYSDATE FROM DUAL;
My mother wouldn't tell its meaning. Pity her. :awww: