http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1569460.ece

EXCERPT: [...] Even now, after some seventy post-war years of attempts to simplify and rationalize the Japanese writing system, its “appalling” mixture of Chinese characters and two supplementary phonetic scripts remains the single greatest stumbling block to foreigners who wish to become literate users of the language (to become literate in a language, you have to know its literature).

[...] Of course, it should matter not at all to the Japanese that foreigners have trouble mastering their language. Imagine trying to fix the crazy spellings in English just to help foreign students. But many Japanese themselves have espoused radical reform of the traditional writing system or even wholesale abandonment of the language [...]

As [Minae] Mizumura [author of THE FALL OF LANGUAGE IN THE AGE OF ENGLISH] sees it, however, that is exactly what is happening to Japan even now. [...] The time and effort devoted to teaching the literary heritage in schools keeps dwindling, and the drive to correct “Japanese people’s hopelessly poor English” has reached the state of a “hysterical obsession”. Mizumura discusses the problem in a broad cosmopolitan context, warning the world not only of the impending fall of Japanese but the likely fall of all national languages in the age of English and the internet. Japanese is just the canary in the coal mine. The book is fascinating for readers who have no special interest in Japan or its language.

The most lamentable sign of the decline of the Japanese language, as Mizumura sees it, is the current state of Japanese literature, which is written by “brainless writers of crap”. [...] “Representative works of today’s Japanese literature often read like rehashes of American literature . . . . [W]orks of contemporary fiction tend to resemble global cultural goods, which, like Hollywood blockbuster films, do not require language – or translation – in the truest sense of the word. No wonder Japan’s best and brightest have turned their backs on literature.”

[...] The wonder of this book is that it exists at all. The author tells us of her native language: “What a bizarre and amusing language Japanese is . . . Fast and loose in its logic . . . ” and “As unbelievable as this may sound to the users of Western languages, Japanese sentences do not require a grammatical subject”. She says that having an “orderly brain” is “a trait common among American intellectuals but rare among speakers of Japanese, a language that doesn’t even require a clear distinction between ‘and’ and ‘but’”.

[...] There is so much nonsense circulating about the ineffable mysteries of the Japanese language that it’s hard to know what to believe. That old red herring Mizumura cites about Japanese sentences not having subjects, for example, is a myth. All Japanese sentences have subjects. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be sentences. And Mizumura’s use of the long-discredited term “ideogram” to refer to Chinese characters seems calculated to drive linguists crazy by preserving another myth – that you have to see Chinese and Japanese to understand them. (The translators of this volume, it should be noted, do an excellent job of Englishing Mizumura’s lucid Japanese original.)

Although she seems to buy into the myths concerning the shortcomings of Japanese, Mizumura still asserts that Japan (and only Japan?) possesses “a magical written language”, owing to which “the idiosyncratic and inventive style of Sōseki’s texts makes them nearly impossible to translate”....

I checked 'How to Clone a Mammoth' (by Beth Shapiro, 2015, Princeton U. Press) out from the library and have been slowly reading it the last few weeks. There's lots of interesting stuff in there. I'm going to use this thread to post about things that caught my eye.

The Species Concept (p. 28).

"A species tends to be defined as an evolutionary lineage that is reproductively isolated from all other evolutionary lineages... Individuals belonging to different species cannot mate. Or if they do, the offspring that are born either do not survive into adulthood or cannot have offspring themselves."

This definition is apparently fairly recent, originating with Ernst Mayr in 1942. It's found in most textbooks. But it doesn't always work that way in real life.

Shapiro points out that polar bears and brown bears are considered separate species, but they can mate and produce fertile offspring. Dogs, wolves and coyotes are considered separate species but they frequently interbreed. Cows, bison and yaks can all interbreed and produce fertile offspring.

Genome Dimensions (p. 41)

Quantities of DNA are typically measured in terms of base-pairs (the rungs on the DNA double-helix ladder). The human genome has about 3.2 billion base pairs, organized into 23 chromosomes.

Compare that to the loblolly pine genome, which has roughly 22.2 billion base pairs in 12 huge chromosomes. Or the carp genome which has 1.7 billion base pairs in 100 little chromosomes.

So my take-away is that the number of chromosomes isn't really an indicator of how much DNA is present, nor is the amount of DNA proportional to the complexity of the organism. (These pine trees have 7x as much DNA as a human? Why? What's it doing?)

Students of contemporary bigfoot research are familiar with the tendency of Bigfoot to steal apples stabbed into the branches high up on trees. Les Stroud recently featured an episode on Survivorman of a camera-recorded apple disappearing from high up on a pine tree. How do they do it? Psychokinetically? Well here's some interesting info on Bigfoot predilections for apples.

http://blog.pennlive.com/wildaboutpa/201...festi.html

I'm testing how easy it is to post from an android tablet at my local cafe.

It seems to be working, but I hate two-finger typing on an on-screen keyboard.

There's no way that 8 could make a long post thisway.

Lots of spelling errors to correct.

I'm sticking with a laptop with a real keyboard.

The Order of Chartreuse was more than 500 years old when, in 1605,

At a Chartreuse monastery in Vauvert, a small suburb of Paris, the monks received a gift from Francois Hannibal d’ Estrées, Marshal of King’s Henri IV artillery : an already ancient manuscript from an “Elixir” soon to be nicknamed “Elixir of Long Life”. This manuscript was probably the work of a 16th century alchemist with a great knowledge of herbs and with the skill to blend, infuse, macerate the 130 of them to form a perfect balanced tonic.

In the early 17th century, only a few monks and even fewer apothecaries understood the use of herbs and plants in the treatment of illness.
The manuscript’s recipe was so complex that only bits and pieces of it were understood and used at Vauvert.

At the beginning of the 18th century, the manuscript was sent to the Mother House of the Order – La Grande Chartreuse – in the mountains not far from Grenoble. Here an exhaustive study of the manuscript was undertaken.

The Monastery’s Apothecary, Frère Jerome Maubec, finally unravelled the mystery and, in 1737, drew up the practical formula for the preparation of the Elixir.

The distribution and sales of this new medicine were limited. One of the monks of La Grande Chartreuse, Frère Charles, would load his mule with the small bottles that he sold in Grenoble and other nearby villages.

Today, this “Elixir of Long Life” is still made only by the Chartreuse monks following that ancient recipe, and is called Elixir Vegetal de la Grande-Chartreuse.

This “liqueur of health” is all natural plants, herbs and other botanicals suspended in wine alcohol – 69% alcohol by volume, 138 proof.
histoire_moineSo tasty was this elixir that it was often used as a beverage rather than a medicine. Recognizing this, the monks, in 1764, adapted the elixir recipe to make a milder beverage which we know today as “Green Chartreuse» – 55% alcohol, 110 proof. The success of this liqueur was immediate and its fame was no longer restricted to the area around La Grande Chartreuse.

The French Revolution erupted in 1789. Members of all Religious Orders were ordered out of the country. The Chartreuse monks left France in 1793. They made a copy of the manuscript kept by one of them who remained in the Monastery.

Another Monk was in charge of the original. Shortly after leaving the “Grande Chartreuse” he was arrested and sent to prison in Bordeaux.
Fortunately, he was not searched and was able to secretly pass the original manuscript to one of his friends Dom Basile Nantas.
Dom Basile, convinced the Order would never come back to France and unable to make the Elixir himself, sold the recipe to Monsieur Liotard, a pharmacist in Grenoble.

Mr. Liotard never produced the Elixir.In 1810, when the Emperor Napoleon ordered all the “secret” recipes of medicines to be sent to the Ministry of the Interior, Monsieur Liotard duly followed the law and submitted the manuscript. It was returned to him marked “Refused”. Refused as not considered “secret”, already well known.

When Monsieur Liotard died, his heirs returned the manuscript to the Chartreuse Monks who had returned to their Monastery in 1816.
In 1838, the Chartreuse distillers developed a sweeter form of Chartreuse : “Yellow Chartreuse” (40% alcohol, 80 proof).

The Fourvoirie distillery,destroyed by a landslide in 1935In 1903, the French government nationalized the Chartreuse distillery. The monks were expelled. The distillers went to Spain where they built a new distillery in Tarragona. And, from 1921 to 1929, an additional one in Marseille (France).\

The liqueur from Tarragona was nicknamed “Une Tarragone”.

The one from Marseille was then officially called “Tarragone”.

Early in the years following the nationalization of the distillery and of the Monastery, the French government sold the trademark “Chartreuse” to a group of distillers who set up the “Compagnie Fermière de la Grande Chartreuse”.

It was in existence until 1929, the year when it went bankrupt. The shares were bought by friends of the Monks and offered to them. Thus, the Monks regained ownership of the Chartreuse trademark.

They returned to their distillery, which had been built in 1860 at Fourvoirie, not far from the Monastery, and resumed production of the true Chartreuse liqueurs.

Chartreuse cellar and distillery in VoironIn 1935, Fourvoirie was almost totally destroyed by a landslide; manufacturing was transferred to Voiron where it is today.

Once mixed the ingredients are taken to Voiron were they are first left to macerate in carefully selected alcohol, then distilled.

Finally, these liqueurs are aged for several years in huge oak casks and placed into the world’s longest liqueur cellar for maturation.

A small portion of the liqueur is selected for special treatment. This bit of liqueur is aged for an extra length of time and, after the chief distiller declares it ready for bottling, it is packaged and marketed as V.E.P. Chartreuse (“Viellissement Exceptionnellement Prolongé”). Each bottle of V.E.P. – a reproduction of the one used in 1840 – is individually numbered, sealed with wax and presented in its own carefully-fitted wooden boxSince 1970, a company named “Chartreuse Diffusion” is in charge of bottling, packaging, advertising and selling the products still prepared by two Carthusian Brothers entrusted with this mission by their Order. They work in the greatest secrecy and are the only ones who know the details of manufacturing. Even today the formula remains a mystery which modern investigation methods have not been able to penetrate."====http://www.chartreuse.fr/en/histoire/his...-liqueurs/

On Naked and Afraid last Sunday a man got the sap of a tree all over himself which proceeded to scab up and cause burning pain on his skin and joints. I've never heard of trees like this. Here's a rundown on the most dangerous plants in the world. Don't touch that tree!

http://www.planetdeadly.com/nature/most-...ous-plants

"He claimed he was standing on the balcony of his apartment on August 23 1974, with former girlfriend May Pang.

The pair claimed to have seen a flying saucer hovering silently over them.

In Lennon’s song Nobody Told Me he appears to refer to the incident with the lyric “There’s a UFO over New York and I ain’t too surprised.”

Mr Kellett, an avid collector of UFO material and a Beatles fan, said when he was the chance to acquire the sketch, he jumped at the opportunity.

He said: “A friend of mine told me it was becoming available from a private collector and I thought, this was a double dream for me.

“I am a massive collector of all things UFO and have a huge archive and am a collector of Beatles memorabilia.

“I have a leather jacket worn by John Lennon in 1969 up until 1974. So this was fantastic.

“It is one of a few he made he made of the incident.

“This one shows him on the balcony pointing into the sky at the object which says UFO on it.”.....=========http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wa...th-9490684

http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-can...ors-2015-6

EXCERPT: See that color? How would you describe it? Mauve? There's probably a word out there, but your brain isn't going to try to deal with it. A new study out of Johns Hopkins has found that people can't remember specific hues, as their brains convert them into roughly similar generic colors....

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When the Color We See Isn’t the Color We Remember

http://releases.jhu.edu/2015/06/02/when-...-remember/

RELEASE: Though people can distinguish between millions of colors, we have trouble remembering specific shades because our brains tend to store what we’ve seen as one of just a few basic hues, a Johns Hopkins University-led team discovered.

In a new paper published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, researchers led by cognitive psychologist Jonathan Flombaum dispute standard assumptions about memory, demonstrating for the first time that people’s memories for colors are biased in favor of “best” versions of basic colors over colors they actually saw.

For example, there’s azure, there’s navy, there’s cobalt and ultramarine. The human brain is sensitive to the differences between these hues —we can, after all, tell them apart. But when storing them in memory, people label all of these various colors as “blue,” the researchers found. The same thing goes for shades of green, pink, purple, etc. This is why, Flombaum said, someone would have trouble glancing at the color of his living room and then trying to match it at the paint store.

“Trying to pick out a color for touch-ups, I’d end up making a mistake,” he said. “This is because I’d mis-remember my wall as more prototypically blue. It could be a green as far as Sherwin-Williams is concerned, but I remember it as blue.”

Flombaum, working with cognitive scientists Gi-Yeul Bae of the University of California, Davis, Maria Olkkonen of the University of Pennsylvania and Sarah R. Allred of Rutgers University, demonstrated that what seems like a difference in the memorability of certain colors is actually the result of the brain’s tendency to categorize colors. People remember colors more accurately, they found, when the colors are good examples of their respective categories.

The team established this color bias and its consequences through a series of experiments. First the researchers asked subjects to look at a color wheel made up of 180 different hues, and to find the “best” examples of blue, pink, green, purple, orange and yellow. Next they conducted a memory experiment with a different group of participants. These participants were shown a colored square for one tenth of a second. They were asked to try to remember it, looking at a blank screen for a little less than one second, and then asked to find the color on the color wheel featuring the 180 hues.

When attempting to match hues, all subjects tended to err on the side of the basic, “best” colors, but the bias toward the archetypes amplified considerably when subjects had to remember the hue, even for less than a second.

“We can differentiate millions of colors, but to store this information, our brain has a trick,” Flombaum said. “We tag the color with a coarse label. That then makes our memories more biased, but still pretty useful.”

The findings have broad implications for the understanding of visual working memory. When faced with a multitude of something — colors, birds, faces — people tend to remember them later as more prototypical, Flombaum said. It’s not that the brain “doesn’t have enough space” to remember the millions of options, he said, it’s that the mind tries to reconcile those precise details with more limited, language-driven categories. So an object that’s teal might be remembered as more “blue” or more “green,” while a coral object might be remembered as more “pink” or more “orange.”

“We have very precise perception of color in the brain, but when we have to pick that color out in the world,” Flombaum said, “there’s a voice that says, “It’s blue,” and that affects what we end up thinking we saw.”