Feb 6, 2017 11:48 PM
Inside the Goth Chicken: Black Bones, Black Meat, and a Black Heart
http://m.nautil.us/blog/inside-the-goth-...lack-heart
EXCERPT: [...] Almost 400 years after the Dutch tulip craze drove prices of some flowers to ridiculous heights, legions of U.S. poultry fanciers are now obsessing over another unusual breeding product: a chicken called the Ayam Cemani. The bird is inky black from the tip of its comb to the end of its claws, with blue-black skin, jet-black eyes, and a black tongue. It is covered in shimmering metallic black feathers, and even its internal organs are black. It is one Goth chicken.
[...] In his studies of domestic animal genetics, [Leif] Andersson has seen this quirk of human psychology again and again: People seek out and maintain genes that produce animals of amazing colors, even at great cost. A few years ago, his group determined that all white horses around the world share the same ancestral coat color variation. The mutation happened once in the history of horsedom, probably about 2,000 years ago, and it predisposes white horses to melanoma and a shortened life span. Nonetheless, humans maintained it and spread it around the globe.
Why We Hear Voices in Random Noise
http://m.nautil.us/blog/why-we-hear-voic...ndom-noise
EXCERPT: Pareidolia is not, however, confined to a single sensory modality. There is another form—auditory pareidolia. Concise definitions of the phenomenon remain elusive, but in clinical circles it’s usually defined relative to the more common visual form—the perception of patterns in randomness where none exist, but via an auditory mode. It’s often colloquially described byway of exemplary mishearings.
Some reported cases have stirred controversy. Take Fisher Price’s “Little Mommy Real Baby Cuddle’n Coo” doll. Presumably with no mischievous intentions, the toy company made the doll giggle, babble and coo, as babies do. But within weeks after its release in 2008, one parent misheard the doll’s babbling sound as saying “Islam is the light.” When a news network caught wind of this, a cascade of other reports ensued inciting more controversy and ultimately, the “Little Mommy Real Baby Cuddle’n Coo” was pulled from the shelves of major stores.
[...] The “reality” our minds impose on random noise, influenced by our idiosyncratic beliefs and predispositions, can also be harmful. David Smailes, currently a researcher at Sunderland University, studied cognitive and emotional aspects of psychotic-like behavior and then began research into auditory hallucinations, as part of a collective research group called Hearing the Voice. I asked Smailes about the distinction between perceiving voices while knowing they are not present, and believing they are present and real....
Science Is Not Constantly Being Proved Right
http://m.nautil.us/blog/science-is-not-c...oved-right
EXCERPT: It’s a subtle point, but the British comedian Ricky Gervais was not quite right when he told Stephen Colbert on The Late Show yesterday, “Science is constantly being proved all the time.”
Perhaps he misspoke. He was put on the defensive. Colbert, an idiosyncratic but sincere Catholic, was not really playing devil’s advocate when he challenged Gervais to an argument about the existence of God on his show. Gervais is outspoken about his disbelief and is fond of tweeting the reductio ad absurdum of various religious arguments, yet initially he seemed at a loss for how to deflect Colbert’s skepticism of the Big Bang.
When Gervais began to evoke the awe of the idea that the universe was once smaller than an atom, Colbert retorted, “But you don’t know that.”
Sigh. “Well, but…”
“You’re just believing Stephen Hawking, and that’s a matter of faith in his abilities. You don’t know it yourself—you’re just accepting that because someone told you.”
“Well but science is constantly being proved all the time,” Gervais said. “If we take something like any holy book and any other fiction, and destroyed it, okay, in a thousand years time it wouldn’t come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book, right, and every fact, and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they’d all be back, because all the same tests would be the same result.”
“That’s good. That’s really good.”
Yes, that is good. But it still isn’t quite right....
http://m.nautil.us/blog/inside-the-goth-...lack-heart
EXCERPT: [...] Almost 400 years after the Dutch tulip craze drove prices of some flowers to ridiculous heights, legions of U.S. poultry fanciers are now obsessing over another unusual breeding product: a chicken called the Ayam Cemani. The bird is inky black from the tip of its comb to the end of its claws, with blue-black skin, jet-black eyes, and a black tongue. It is covered in shimmering metallic black feathers, and even its internal organs are black. It is one Goth chicken.
[...] In his studies of domestic animal genetics, [Leif] Andersson has seen this quirk of human psychology again and again: People seek out and maintain genes that produce animals of amazing colors, even at great cost. A few years ago, his group determined that all white horses around the world share the same ancestral coat color variation. The mutation happened once in the history of horsedom, probably about 2,000 years ago, and it predisposes white horses to melanoma and a shortened life span. Nonetheless, humans maintained it and spread it around the globe.
Why We Hear Voices in Random Noise
http://m.nautil.us/blog/why-we-hear-voic...ndom-noise
EXCERPT: Pareidolia is not, however, confined to a single sensory modality. There is another form—auditory pareidolia. Concise definitions of the phenomenon remain elusive, but in clinical circles it’s usually defined relative to the more common visual form—the perception of patterns in randomness where none exist, but via an auditory mode. It’s often colloquially described byway of exemplary mishearings.
Some reported cases have stirred controversy. Take Fisher Price’s “Little Mommy Real Baby Cuddle’n Coo” doll. Presumably with no mischievous intentions, the toy company made the doll giggle, babble and coo, as babies do. But within weeks after its release in 2008, one parent misheard the doll’s babbling sound as saying “Islam is the light.” When a news network caught wind of this, a cascade of other reports ensued inciting more controversy and ultimately, the “Little Mommy Real Baby Cuddle’n Coo” was pulled from the shelves of major stores.
[...] The “reality” our minds impose on random noise, influenced by our idiosyncratic beliefs and predispositions, can also be harmful. David Smailes, currently a researcher at Sunderland University, studied cognitive and emotional aspects of psychotic-like behavior and then began research into auditory hallucinations, as part of a collective research group called Hearing the Voice. I asked Smailes about the distinction between perceiving voices while knowing they are not present, and believing they are present and real....
Science Is Not Constantly Being Proved Right
http://m.nautil.us/blog/science-is-not-c...oved-right
EXCERPT: It’s a subtle point, but the British comedian Ricky Gervais was not quite right when he told Stephen Colbert on The Late Show yesterday, “Science is constantly being proved all the time.”
Perhaps he misspoke. He was put on the defensive. Colbert, an idiosyncratic but sincere Catholic, was not really playing devil’s advocate when he challenged Gervais to an argument about the existence of God on his show. Gervais is outspoken about his disbelief and is fond of tweeting the reductio ad absurdum of various religious arguments, yet initially he seemed at a loss for how to deflect Colbert’s skepticism of the Big Bang.
When Gervais began to evoke the awe of the idea that the universe was once smaller than an atom, Colbert retorted, “But you don’t know that.”
Sigh. “Well, but…”
“You’re just believing Stephen Hawking, and that’s a matter of faith in his abilities. You don’t know it yourself—you’re just accepting that because someone told you.”
“Well but science is constantly being proved all the time,” Gervais said. “If we take something like any holy book and any other fiction, and destroyed it, okay, in a thousand years time it wouldn’t come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book, right, and every fact, and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they’d all be back, because all the same tests would be the same result.”
“That’s good. That’s really good.”
Yes, that is good. But it still isn’t quite right....
