Month: March 2018

Smart glasses, blindness, and shopping

Smart glasses, blindness, and shopping

Yesterday, I got email from the relevant companies. The smart glasses I ordered are on the way, actually shipped this time. This marks the end of a long, and quite Ludacris saga. I wondered just how long it really has been, so I took a look in the journal where I keep track of this mission. It’s taken more than five years, almost six.

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Ep 157: Fossil casts and molds

Ep 157: Fossil casts and molds

Fossil casts and molds

When a creature dies and becomes buried, sometimes its remains can completely rot and dissolve away, leaving a hollow space within the rock called a mold. If that mold becomes filled with sediment and water, it can harden into rock, becoming a cast. Every so often, the same sort of process can happen within the body of an animal, providing a stone cast of some of its internal arrangements. If that happens within the brain case of a skull, it’s called a brain cast. In 1924, a brain cast found in South Africa caught the attention of British anatomist Raymond Dart. After removing the fossil from the rock with his wife’s knitting needles, he was left with the first few skull fragments of Australopithecus africanus, or “southern ape of Africa,” to be discovered.

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Making it simple isn’t simple

Making it simple isn’t simple

Let’s get started.

Putting together the nodes and handlers is going to be somewhat painful, and slow. It might be a bit more fun, along with giving me a way to test the general concept and implementation, if I implement the handlers to help me do a particular experiment or two. There will be no getting away from days of going through, method by method, bit by bit, but this should be a much more interesting way to get started.

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Ep 156: Doctor Frankenstein’s favorite beer

Ep 156: Doctor Frankenstein’s favorite beer

Doctor Frankenstein’s favorite beer

The semiprecious stone amber is fossilized tree resin. Sometimes, insects and other small critters are trapped by sticky tree sap, and become encased in amber. Sometimes, microorganisms are found inside amber. Sometimes, they’re yeast that can be revived and used to brew beer.

Here’s an article about the yeast, revived and used to brew beer.

Amber Ale: Brewing Beer From 45-Million-Year-Old Yeast

Here’s the homepage of the folks who used ancient yeast to make beer.

FOSSIL FUELS BREWING CO.

Ep 155: A walk through other dating methods

Ep 155: A walk through other dating methods

A walk through other dating methods

There are different candidates for the oldest preserved human footprints in North America. The older sight has a less certain date than the younger one. Today we look at ways of dating fossils, other than using carbon 14.

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Ep 154: Mystery solve, and dating fossils

Ep 154: Mystery solve, and dating fossils

Mystery solve, and dating fossils

It took a bit of digging, but I found out why the domestic dog fossil found with the remains of the La Brea woman didn’t cause more of a sensation. Using carbon 14 dating, the dog fossil turned out to be around seven-thousand years younger than the fossil of the woman. What is carbon 14 dating, and how does it work?

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Ep 153: Wait… she had a dog?

Ep 153: Wait… she had a dog?

Wait… she had a dog?

The La Brea Woman was found in close association with the remains of a domesticated dog. Her remains have been dated to between 9,000 and 10,000 years ago. Were there dogs that early in North America? How long ago were dogs domesticated?

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Ep 152: Footprints in the sand, stone, and on the moon

Ep 152: Footprints in the sand, stone, and on the moon

Footprints in the sand, stone, and on the moon

Fossils aren’t just remains of animals. Some of them are materials and marks left by organisms as they went about their lives. Called “trace fossils,” they are, instead of a snapshot of death, a snapshot of life.

Here are some articles about the traces humans left on our moon.

On the Moon, Flags & Footprints of Apollo Astronauts Won’t Last Forever

New Images Offer Sharper View of Apollo Sites

Here are some articles about some 190,000,000-year old dinosaur footprints.

Visit This Massachusetts Park With Dinosaur Footprints

Dinosaur Footprints

And here are some articles about some 3.7-millean-year old footprints, left by some of our early ancestors.

Laetoli Footprint Trails

Evolution: Library: Laetoli Footprints

Ep 151: The tar pit tar pits

Ep 151: The tar pit tar pits

The tar pit tar pits

In the previous episode we talked about where the oil that formed them came from. Today, we talk about the fossils found in them. Located in the middle of a major city, the La Brea Tar Pits have given up fossils as much as 55-thousand years old.

Here’s a link to a 5-minute video that shows how material is processed from the tarpits, including the large bones and microfossils.

Behind the Scenes at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum

Here’s a link to the Page museum, where fossils and reconstructions from the tarpits are on display.

La Brea Tar Pits and Museum

The next bit

The next bit

Between technical difficulties, research and recording, I’ve just barely managed to squeeze in some time to do some little chores with the code for my artificial life experiment software. I call my subleq based digital organisms “figures.”

The very next thing is to implement save and restore functions, so I can keep a population and play with it later. I hope to take care of that by the end of the weekend, but no promises.

Once that last little chore is done, I’ll zip up and archive figures0.3. Closing in on the end of this round, my thoughts have been drifting toward the next.

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