Long-tailed macaque monkeys are really good at finding food - be it finding fruits in the jungle or snatching one from an unsuspecting tourist - and now, scientists have discovered something new about the species: they can fish!
Groups of long-tailed macaques were observed four times over the past eight years scooping up small fish with their hands and eating them along rivers in East Kalimantan and North Sumatra provinces, according to researchers from The Nature Conservancy and the Great Ape Trust.
The species had been known to eat fruit and forage for crabs and insects, but never before fish from rivers.
"It's exciting that after such a long time you see new behavior," said Erik Meijaard, one of the authors of a study on fishing macaques that appeared in last month's International Journal of Primatology. "It's an indication of how little we know about the species."
In this art piece, artists Katja Kublitz and Ronnie Yarisal created a vending "Anger Release" machine where you plunk in some change, select the fine china you'd want destroyed and watch the object fall and shatter into a million little pieces. Now there, don't you feel better?
This week's collaboration with What is it? blog brings us this strange looking coin from the State of Illinois. It has a specific purpose - can you tell us what it is for?
Place your guess in the comment section - no prize this week, so you're playing for fun and bragging rights only.
Merchants had to pay sales tax to the state on the total amount of sales made by the merchant during each day's sales. You can imagine that if the sales tax rate is 3% and a child buys a 10c piece of candy there is no way to collect the three-tenths of one cent. If you rounded down that meant that the merchant could not collect anything for the tax. If you rounded up the state was gaining 7 tenths of a cent on every 10 cent sale. You can see that if the merchant sold 100 pieces of candy he was loosing 30 cents a day in tax revenues to the state, so the token was born. This allowed the merchant to take 11 cents for the first piece of candy and give change back in mills. The next time you wanted to buy a 10c candy you could present the merchant with the 10c and a token and complete the transaction. This allowed the merchant to collect the sales tax on each transaction.
Congrats to drewlambert02 who got it right - and I have to say that Randall's entry was one of the funniest I've read in a while!
How awesome is that? Our pal Adam "Ape Lad" Koford drew this envelope art of Kitteh and Pip of the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats running into Star Wars "hoboes" Jab-bo and R2-D2-bo!! (Love the Ackbar reference ...)
Scientists have known for a while that parasites can induce "behavioral modification" in its hosts - but this one is new: a parasite that turns its host into a bodyguard!
Inside the caterpillar host, a cruel drama takes place: the eggs of the parasitoid hatch and the larvae feed on the body fluids of the host. The caterpillar continues feeding, moving and growing like its unparasitized brothers and sisters. When the parasitoid larvae are full-grown, they emerge together through the host's skin, and start pupating nearby. Unlike many other combinations of host and parasitoid, the host remains alive but displays spectacular changes in its behaviour: it stops feeding and remains close to the parasitoid pupae. Moreover, it defends the parasitoid pupae against approaching predators with violent head-swings.
Jose Leonardo Castillo, chief shark investigator for Mexico's National Fishing Institute, proposed one theory for a recent spate of shark attacks in Mexico: the sharks have developed a taste for human flesh!
The beach at Zihuantanejo – near Acapulco and popular with British tourists – had not previously recorded a shark incident in more than 30 years.
And, with an annual average of only four fatal shark attacks globally, the fact that two people have died along the same stretch of coast within weeks has astonished international experts. [...]
They think the 10ft-long fish could have developed a taste for human flesh after devouring hundreds of corpses dumped into the sea by mobsters.
Bad idea: burgling a home Really bad idea: burgling a home with a dog Neatorama-worthy: the dog is a gigantic 300+ lb mastiff guard dog, a breed of dog used in ancient times to fight other large animals, such as lions!
Here's a story of Cromwell the mastiff:
Of all the gardens in all the world, the thief had the bad luck to break into the one where Cromwell was peacefully gnawing on his bone.
The three-year-old English mastiff is a gentle pet. But his breed are also born guard dogs - and big ones at that.
Only the thief and Cromwell know exactly what happened next. But it can't have been friendly, as the dog's owner heard a 'scream, a roar and a commotion' from the back garden.
Nicholas Carr started noticing the change in the way he thinks a few years ago, starting with his decreased ability to focus while reading books.
When he mentioned his problem to his friends - most of them literary types - many said they're having the same problem ... the InterWeb is making them stupid!
The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”
Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”
I would've told you more about it, but the article was waaay too long ;) Link
Left: Lily Pad Dress (2000); Right: Dandelion Dress (1999), photo by Trudi Entwistle
I am in awe of Robin Barcus' fashion/art. In her series called "State of Dress," Robin creates unusual dresses from natural ingredients: lily pad, dandelion (see above), corn husk, pinecones.
Here's a video clip on how she made the "Willow Creek Dress" (2006) at the Jentel Artist Residency in Banner, Wyoming (fun starts at: 1:15)
Our pal WebUrbanist (neat new blog layout!) has a really neat post about the 10 amazing monuments commemorating war heroes. This one to the left is the 38th (Welsh) Division Memorial, depicting the defiant Red Dragon of Wales:
It was the 38th (Welsh) Infantry Division that was charged with taking Mametz Wood during the bloody Battle of the Somme on July 7, 1916. After five long days they managed to clear the woods of Germans, which cost them 4,000 deaths and casualties. This is how the 38th (Welsh) Division Memorial erected, with a defiant dragon (the Red Dragon of Wales was the division’s insignia) standing on a 10 feet plinth, facing the woods with the regimental cap badge of the South Wales Borderers carved on one side of the base.
Ever seen a police car parked illegally? Well, no one is above the law according to this brave traffic warden in Liverpool, England:
With no thought for his own future safety, the attendant leapt into action to make his move on the vehicle.
After noting down the offence, he boldly slapped the penalty charge notice on the windscreen before making a calm getaway, showing that not even the long arm of the law is safe from the scourge of the hawk-eyed wardens.
If you're swept up to Heaven in the Rapture, who'll tell your loved ones left behind on Earth? For $40 a year, this new website will:
Users can also upload up to 150 megabytes of documents, which will be protected by an unidentified encryption algorithm until the Rapture, then released to up to 12 nonbelievers of your choice. The site recommends that you use that storage to house sensitive financial information.
"In the encrypted portion of your account you can give them access to your banking, brokerage, hidden valuables, and powers of attorneys," the site says. "There won't be any bodies, so probate court will take seven years to clear your assets to your next of kin. Seven years, of course, is all the time that will be left. So, basically the Government of the Antichrist gets your stuff, unless you make it available in another way."
After a legal battle, a Swedish couple have won the right to name their baby son ... Lego!
Couples in Sweden have previously run into trouble with officials over the names Ikea, Veranda, Metallica and the use of Elvis for a girl.
But the Swedish Administrative Court of Appeals has now overruled an earlier decision to stop a couple naming their child after the brightly coloured plastic building blocks.
It's hard to believe that there was a time before high-speed
Internet access, wi-fi, or even USB. Back then, the word "computer"
meant a big beige desktop box with a bulky CRT monitor - not a sleek notebook
- and being online means you're tying up the phone line to the consternation
of your mom.
Here's what I remember from the good ol' days of computing:
IBM PC Compatible
The original IBM PC (Model 5150)
My first computer was an IBM PC, except it wasn't made by IBM - it was
a Taiwanese clone, euphimistically called "IBM PC compatible"
or an "IBM clone". In the 1980s, IBM marketed the PC (or personal
computer) as a response to Apple's products - to grab market share, IBM
decided on the open architecture and many manufacturers rushed their own
computer brands to the market.
My old PC compatible computer looked similar to the original IBM PC (Model
5150) shown above. It had a green CRT monitor and ran MS-DOS the operating
system. Sometimes when I turned the computer on by flipping the switch
at the back, I'd get a mild electric shock.
The two black squares in the front are floppy disk drives (A: and B:,
respectively) - if you ever wonder why your hard disk is called C:, that's
because it comes after the two floppy drives. Even after the floppies
became obsolete, the hard disk is still called C: out of convention.
By the way, IBM PC was developed in a very short time by a "skunkworks"
project, called Project Chess, at IBM's Boca Raton Florida facility,
led by Don Estridge and Larry Potter. The team of 12 engineers was authorized
by the company to bypass the usual (and lengthy) IBM design process and
get something to the market quickly. Within one year, the team managed
to use off-the-shelf components to build the first IBM PC.
Sadly, once the IBM PC became a commercial success, the company put it
under the usual IBM management, which decided to restrict the performance
of the computer as not to "cannibalize" profits from higher-priced
models. As a result, competitors selling PC clones quickly took over the
market.
Mystery House
Mystery House is the first computer game I ever played - in fact, it's
the only thing I remember about our Apple II computer.
In the game, you are an uninvited guest locked inside a Victorian mansion
with no way out. Inside, there are seven guests and a note about a hidden
treasure. While exploring the house, you start finding dead bodies ...
and you have to discover the murderer before becoming the next victim.
Mystery House was created by Ken Williams and his wife Roberta. It was
the first computer game ever to contain graphics. Before it, computer
games depended entirely on text to tell their stories. Ken coded the game
in a few nights and Roberta drew the graphics. The game caught on quickly
and became the most popular game for the Apple II computer, selling over
10,000 copies. Shortly afterwards, the Williams founded a gaming company
called On-Line Systems which would later become Sierra On-Line and then
Sierra Entertainment.
I
didn't own a Mac until grad school, when I was forced to buy one to write
a thesis (blue iMac, btw) - but I did play mahjongg on my uncle's old
Macintosh Classic (128K? I don't remember...) when I was growing up.
It was so different than my PC at the time: the Macintosh had a graphical
interface and a mouse! I remember fondly the little mac icon that smiled
when you boot up the computer.
Floppy Disk
Before hard disks became affordable, we had floppy disks. They were called
floppy disks because, well, they were floppy... The 5.25 inch diskette
could hold - get this - 360 KB. Twice that if you punched a hole on the
left side of the disk and put it the drive in upside down. To protect
the disk from being re-written, all you have to do was put a sticker over
the notch and the disk drive wouldn't write on it.
When the 3.5 inch disk came out, we all thought that it was so cool that
you could store 1.44 MB worth of files on the things. So much space, what
would we do with it all?
LOGO
Ah,
Logo - now that was a fun computer programming language!
Logo was the first programming language I've ever learned, and to this
day, the only one I like and probably the only one I was ever proficient
at. Well, at least in making simple shapes :)
The language is all about the turtle, an on-screen cursor that you use
to draw simple line graphics. You can tell the turtle to go forward 100
units, then turn left or right, and so forth.
Dot Matrix Printer
Ah, the screeching sound of a dot matrix printer! There's nothing like
it ... One minute you're printing (noisily), and the next minute the darned
paper got off the reel and suddenly you're printing at an angle ... before
the stupid printer jammed. But if everything worked out, then there's
nothing as satisfying as ripping the little strips of "holey"
paper on the sides.
Never heard a dot matrix print before? Count your blessings, but if you're
curious, here's a YouTube clip:
If you remember dot matrix printer, you probably remember creating "Happy
Birthday" or some other silly banners with this iconic software that
had since gone the way of dinosaurs: Broderbund's Print
Shop.
Dot matrix printers are actually still around - they're now called "impact"
printers, and, surprisingly, are more expensive than ever!
Modem
Ever
heard a modem "handshake"? No? It's just like a fax machine.
My first modem was a 2400 baud (240 characters per second!), and over
the years I upgraded to 9600-baud, then to 14.4K, then 28.8K and so on.
With every upgrade, I felt that the speed improvement was incredible!
How fast is a 9600 baud modem? Consider this: after 1 minute of downloading
at 9600 baud, you'll get 72 KB. A cable modem can download that in less
than a second.
With modem comes connectivity, which brings us to to our next item:
Bulletin Board System (BBS)
Remember the Buggles' song "Video Killed the Radio Star"? Well,
Bulletin Board System was the Radio Star, and Internet was the Video.
For all of you who are too young to remember BBSes, they are computer
systems that you dial in (with a phone line, and yes, you get the phone
bill at the end of the month if it's not a local call) to connect. Once
you've connected to a BBS, you can do things like post messages, upload
and download software.
BBSes often have highly detailed ASCII art - some are black and white,
but others are in full color, like this one below:
This one is for an elite board (which traded in warez or pirated softwares)
with two nodes (2 phone lines) run on two Intel 80486 or simply "486"
computers with 8 MB of RAM and a (then unbelievably huge) storage of 1
GB. And no, I wasn't cool enough to be invited into an elite board ...
See Carsten's website roysac.com
for an amazing collection of ASCII art.
Oh, and this invariably happened at least once to those who have dialed
into a BBS: your mom picked up the phone while you're online and thus
disconnected you just seconds away from when the file was supposed to
finish downloading!
Prodigy
Before the web, there were Prodigy and CompuServe. They were premium
online services, much like a proto-Internet, except they provide proprietary
content (and were both heavily censored - more on that later). Of the
two, I subscribed to Prodigy, which was more kid-friendly (and cheaper
- CompuServe charged by the minute!).
I remember fondly perusing their message boards, which were very popular
at the time (what was I doing? Looking up NES cheat codes, actually!).
I cancelled the service because of heavy-handed censors who admonished
me for having the word "damn" in one of my posts. That was enough
to put me on their watch list and I got harrassed for innocent words like
"cockroach." When Prodigy went out of business because of the
Internet, I wasn't sad.
Doom
Doom took the computer gaming world by a storm in 1993: It wasn't the
first game in the FPS (or first person shooter) genre, but it was unique
that id Software, the creator of the game, marketed it by ... giving it
away! Doom was distributed as a shareware that you could download and
play for free (once you're hooked, you have to pay for subsequent versions).
Doom was so popular that during lunch times, computer networks in university
campuses sometime grind to a halt as people log on to play the game!
CompUSA
CompUSA store in Santa Clara, California. Photo: Coolcaesar [wikipedia]
You guys probably remember it as the retail chain that went out of business
a year ago, but I first remember them first as Soft Warehouse. I even
bought a 486 "Compudyne" computer (their house-brand) for college!
In an effort to restructure or rebrand or whatever, the company changed
its name to CompUSA but forgot to change their horrible customer service
... Their service was so bad that ultimately the once largest chain of
computer superstores in the world went out of business.
NCSA Mosaic
Before the Internet Explorer, and Firefox browsers, there was the NCSA
Mosaic. It was the first graphical web browser (which was an improvement
over the text-only Gopher and telnet protocols).
Mosaic was designed by Marc Andreessen (then an undergraduate) and Eric
Bina. Even though you may not be familiar with this browser, you're viewing
this webpage on a browser that is its legacy.
We haven't talked about many things - Amiga, MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons),
IRC (Internet Relay Chat), and countless other topics. And obviously,
your trip down computing memory lane may be different than mine (and if
you're young enough, none of these things above - perhaps with the exception
of CompUSA - are familiar). So, tell us what you remember - share your
computing memory lane!
