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A pyramid of tools per square km in Africa?
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
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"Researchers used the new survey of the Messak Settafet to estimate that enough stone tools were discarded over the course of human evolution in Africa to build more than one Great Pyramid for every square kilometer of land on the continent."
Link: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/saharan-carpet-of-tools-is-the-earliest-known-man-made-landscape
And I get discouraged because I can't find a single Arrowhead. No wonder.
Gladstone's Color Theory
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 3941
An interesting idea I stumbled upon first while listening to Radiolab, Gladstone's Color Theory, which suggests that language is directly correlated to our ability to experience certain stimuli...
For example, we've all heard the lie that the first nations who watched Columbus's ships break the horizon before arriving at the New World did not perceive them because they had no concept or understanding of ship. And Centaurs seem clearly to be a misreading of early accounts of people witnessing others on horseback, a concept they didn't have and so communicated through this hybridization of truth.
Gladstone analyzes the colors used in Homer's "The Odyssey" to argue that as the ancients didn't have a word for the color blue, to them it didn't exist. And there is surprising anthropological evidence to support his theory...
Read more here: (Daily Mail, Popular easy to read content): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2976405/Could-ancestors-blue-Ancient-civilisations-didn-t-perceive-colour-didn-t-word-say-scientists.html
And listen to the original Radiolab Podcast here: http://www.radiolab.org/story/211213-sky-isnt-blue/
And, for the more literate and involved in this, try the Wikipedia article (*Warning: Lots of Jargon): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate
In essence, how language both describes and limits our experience of the world, curious...
The Locker
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2963
With the new apt, I'm finding myself making more and more trips to the locker, looking to free up various of my possessions & ornaments, while the flat may only last 6 months, I want it to be a comfortable 6 months.
The locker, Stygian, boxes piled high and falling on my head, stereos, boxes of cuff-links raining down, watches in chests, a surprising number of chests, trunks and suitcases for somebody with no discernible organizational skills. It's like, in a way, attending the best garage sale ever, in every box a forgotten treasure or surprise, but inaccessibly packed beneath, behind another, art supplies - paints, easels, mixed media Starbucks cards, buttons, postage stamps, postcards, boxes of vintage neckties, buckets of rocks, prospecting equipment, stray pots and pans, working my way to the back where - if I can reach it - I can free up a few paintings to ornament my walls.
I'm within 5 feet, but it's a towering 5 feet, dozens of boxes will have to be moved to the apartment, reorganized, repacked, and the last 3 lean years, with no more possessions than I could fit in my car, well, they've made me question the necessity of storage, this endless acquisition of momentarily useless clutter, my thoughts are broken by the distant tinkle of glass as another box shifts, ...
It's Aladdin's cave, in a way, and in another less subtle way it's become the metaphor for my subconscious, the unending work of organization, editing, cleaning and purging, and it scares me almost as much as 2 hits of acid at clown and puppet festival, but I'll get it done...
Desk & Armchair
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2554
And my first find, a chair at thrift shop, $15.00. Perfect, comfortable, not too fine, not too shabby.
And, upon loading it up and getting it into the place, a drive around the block turns up a perfectly fixable antique oak desk:
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We're off to a good start...
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