Thursday, May 11, 2006
Reality? Objectivity? WHERE?
Quantum physics shows us that the act of observation alters reality, and if the only way we can perceive reality is by observation, er... ??!!
We also hear from quantum physicists things like how something doesn't actually exist in a specific form until it's measured, that particles can be in 2 places at once, pop in and out of existence, and affect the spin of other particles miles away, and that light is both a wave AND a particle, but then again isn't a wave OR a particle until it's observed, but exists in an "undefined state"; the more you read on this topic, the more it sounds like the ravings from someone in a padded cell, but it's the closest to seeing the very fabric of reality that we've managed thus far... and the central message is that you can't pin anything down, that at its base reality is more like quicksand than bedrock.
So, what's the true nature of the things in the omniverse? Our sense of touch tells us that things are solid, but in reality they're almost entirely empty space. Our eyes are easily-fooled, primitive organs that perceive a minute fraction of the total electromagnetic spectrum; how much does what something "looks" like matter, REALLY? Our other senses are equally limited; creatures far down the food chain have better ones than we do... and much good it does them, as what they perceive is just enough of the nature of reality to function, NOT the full true nature of what is.
What can we be sure exists? Matter and energy? If string theorists are right, they might just be different manifestations of strings, rather than actual types of "stuff"; if string theory is wrong, that still doesn't help us, because we hear that matter is made of energy (type undefined), and that energy is carried by messenger particles (made of WHAT?)... you go round and round and never find out what it is that isn't made of something else, so you never know the nature of what you're looking at. All we can say is that there's vacuum and "stuff"... or is vacuum really the nothingness we think it is? If time doesn't exist, if it's just the result of an organic structure like a brain not being able to grasp everything happening at once, which seems likely, again thanks to our quantum physicist friends, no bit of space could ever be truly empty unless no matter or energy was ever there, because if it ever was there it's still there... in some way that's beyond my ability to grasp, but the point is that we probably don't have vacuum, all we have is "stuff" that appears to us to be matter and energy that exist in forms totally dependent on the way our brains, senses, and the mechanisms we've created to enhance them are capable of perceiving them.
Why do I care about the true nature of reality when within my own existence I have to continue acting as if there's time and matter and energy and so on? If I'm standing in the middle of the street and a car is bearing down on me, do I not have to act as if it's solid, as if it's what I perceive it to be, as if time exists because in a small amount of it I'll be roadkill if I don't move? Yes, BUT; my spirituality is based on trying to figure out how things really work, and how can I ever fully do that if I don't have any sort of grasp on what reality is?
I can't tell you how desperately I hope that string theory is proven in my lifetime, or even DISproven if that means that something else has been demonstrated to be the true foundation on which everything is built. But, let's say that we DO manage to see the very threads of which the fabric of reality is woven: How can we ever be SURE that we're seeing it all? How can we be sure that we're correctly interpreting what we see? How can we even objectively report what we see?
Objectivity; the more I try to find it, the more convinced I become that it doesn't exist in any meaningful sense. What's an objective truth? Where can we find one? People SAY they're objective about all sorts of things, but an observer who's not blinded by emotional attachment to them can point out glaring elements of SUBjectivity in anything they say beyond trivial cases like "there are 2 apples on that table"... hang onto the concept of those trivial cases, because they're about the only secure oases in this maelstrom.
How about science; isn't it supposed to be made up of objective truths? You'd be hard put to find much of anything that the scientists in any area of expertise ALL agree on, and whatever the prevailing "truths" are that most of them believe are constantly being overturned as new discoveries are made; where there's disagreement there's SUBjectivity, and where there's wrongness truth is lacking. Again, there are the trivial cases, of what they can observe, measure, and to a certain degree test... but subjectivity creeps in there too, because, being human, they're convinced they've got all the data when they don't, and often misinterpret what they see until something that contradicts their theories hits them in the face. Don't get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for scientists, but an awful lot of what they say beyond the trivial cases is neither objective nor the full truth... perhaps ALL of what they say is, at the deepest level.
Remember, science studies things that we don't know the nature of; matter, energy, time, all of it is beyond our ability to properly describe currently, and how can science possibly give us an explanation about anything (beyond the trivial cases) that's complete, much less complete and objective, when so much of it is guesswork?
Ok, how about math? There's plenty of disagreement between the experts about the upper levels of math, so there's clear subjectivity there... but how about basic math? Like basic science, it's obviously correct for most things most of the time, or none of our technology would work... heck, hardly anything in a modern person's life is without the imprint of math and science, when you think about it, so virtually NOTHING would work. Is it ALWAYS true, though, that, say, 1+1=2? In the trivial cases of apples and oranges and such being added together, of course; if you add 2 subatomic particles together, though, you MIGHT get 2... or 1 might vanish, leaving you with just 1 rather than 2... or they could both vanish, leaving you with 0... or another particle could pop into existence alongside them and you'd have 3. Basic math doesn't apply to everything, then, and the complex math that describes the quantum world is still far from complete, so... where's the objective truth from math?
What are we left with? Given the right circumstances, we can say that the often-mentioned trivial cases are true: Although there've been plenty of experiments that prove how unreliable eyewitness accounts are, for simple observations we can assume that statements like "there are 2 apples on the table" are objectively true. There are plenty of things that science has observed and measured so many times that, although their explanations as to WHY they are the way they are are likely to be flawed, thanks to that not knowing the true nature of reality thing, when they tell you how many protons are in a copper atom or what happens when you mix compound X with compound Y you can accept that as objective truth. And basic math applied to the non-quantum world is certainly reliable in producing results that are true and objective.
Is that IT? Isn't there anything other than what can be independently verified by every observer (with a minimum level of education in the case of some of the science and math) that can be considered objective?
When we analyze things outside of the realm of math and science, the normal result is value judgments; we all have countless things that we label good, bad, right, wrong, interesting, fun, boring... and they're all matters of opinion. Unless you have an outside agency, eg a deity, laying down rules for how those terms should be applied, they have no objective meaning; you can't "prove" that a thing is objectively good, bad, etc. You could of course create objective standards to judge some sorts of things by, such as that a "good book" would be one with between 50k and 100k words, but the choice of what you'll use as the standard is in itself subjective, and therefore so is your conclusion... ALWAYS. Are you thinking about things like murder, rape, and child abuse, telling yourself that those things are exceptions, that they're objectively wrong? There are cultures throughout the world, throughout history, that have disagreed with you, and their reasons for their views are as powerful to them as yours are to you; again, without the intervention of a deity, you can't "prove" which moral standards are "correct," and thus no judgments of this type can be considered objective... we can reasonably decide that the majority opinion is a fair way to decide what we're going to SEE as right, wrong, fun, whatever, but that's a long way from having an objective judgment.
What difference does this lack of true objectivity make to our lives? None, for the most part; to those of us who are spiritual without the assistance of religion to provide answers to the tough questions (Why? God. How? God.), however, who have to search for The Truth all by ourselves starting from scratch, trying to sort out the objective truths, and trying to learn to be ruthlessly objective ourselves, is crucial... otherwise, we might as well just create a pretty fantasy and believe THAT, and save ourselves the endless time and energy being a mystic uses up.
What do I want? To know all aspects of reality, and to see and understand them clearly and objectively. Can science ever explain reality to us? Maybe. ALL of reality, including the unknowns, from precognition to ghosts to synchronicity? Less likely, but possible; there's nothing magical about that stuff, it's just part of the universe like all the other forces, so if science gains the ability to perceive the rest of reality, they could answer all those other questions as well... as long as the culture of science changed sufficiently to allow serious scientists to pursue such things. If all this information IS collected, and I get to learn it, will I be able to summon total objectivity so that I can know what it all REALLY means?
I don't know... and it's like a knife in the heart. What I DO know is that I'll spend countless hours trying to prepare myself for The Truth in case it ever presents itself; I just hope I don't drive everyone nuts with the process in the meantime.
What sent me off on this latest tear? You knew there was something; this time, it was a very odd documentary movie I saw. Lemme ask you this; what would you think of a man who got a sexual thrill out of acts of extreme masochism, up to and including nailing his penis to a board? Even if you're relentlessly open-minded like me, you almost certainly thought, "That's SICK!!" Not coincidentally, the title of the documentary is "Sick"; there's more to it, though:
"Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist"
"This documentary profiles poet/performance artist Bob Flanagan, who was born with cystic fibrosis. Flanagan explains, with engaging humor, how his obsession with controlled, self-inflicted pain has helped him to deal with his uncontrollable suffering. His philosophy forces one to look at sado-masochism with fresh eyes."
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=109696&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Cast
So, he was "sick" physically, but, as far as I could determine, NOT sick mentally; if enduring all that pain inflicted from without helped him deal with his disease, and helped him to live to be the oldest person with cystic fibrosis, doesn't that change the things he did to himself, and had done to him, from hideous and possibly psychotic deviations into unusual but valid coping mechanisms? This got me thinking about how you could tell where the line is between extreme but rational behavior and sick behavior, and if there's really any such line or if there are just crazy people and sane ones, with each group doing all sorts of things, if objectively there's such a thing as "sane but sick"... and eventually I went right off the deep end with the concepts of objectivity and reality.
What does it mean when seeing a man nail his penis to a board (oh yes, they showed that in the movie, up close and personal) leads to this sort of philosophical contortionism? I probably don't want to know, lol. In any case, I highly recommend "Sick"; be aware that there are lots of genital closeups, scary things being done to Flanagan's body, blood, and blunt discussions of sexual matters and bodily functions... it's not for the squeamish.
IS there such a thing as "sane but sick," or does "sick" in that context just mean "significantly different than the cultural norm"? I see a future post on this topic coming soon; stay tuned.
We also hear from quantum physicists things like how something doesn't actually exist in a specific form until it's measured, that particles can be in 2 places at once, pop in and out of existence, and affect the spin of other particles miles away, and that light is both a wave AND a particle, but then again isn't a wave OR a particle until it's observed, but exists in an "undefined state"; the more you read on this topic, the more it sounds like the ravings from someone in a padded cell, but it's the closest to seeing the very fabric of reality that we've managed thus far... and the central message is that you can't pin anything down, that at its base reality is more like quicksand than bedrock.
So, what's the true nature of the things in the omniverse? Our sense of touch tells us that things are solid, but in reality they're almost entirely empty space. Our eyes are easily-fooled, primitive organs that perceive a minute fraction of the total electromagnetic spectrum; how much does what something "looks" like matter, REALLY? Our other senses are equally limited; creatures far down the food chain have better ones than we do... and much good it does them, as what they perceive is just enough of the nature of reality to function, NOT the full true nature of what is.
What can we be sure exists? Matter and energy? If string theorists are right, they might just be different manifestations of strings, rather than actual types of "stuff"; if string theory is wrong, that still doesn't help us, because we hear that matter is made of energy (type undefined), and that energy is carried by messenger particles (made of WHAT?)... you go round and round and never find out what it is that isn't made of something else, so you never know the nature of what you're looking at. All we can say is that there's vacuum and "stuff"... or is vacuum really the nothingness we think it is? If time doesn't exist, if it's just the result of an organic structure like a brain not being able to grasp everything happening at once, which seems likely, again thanks to our quantum physicist friends, no bit of space could ever be truly empty unless no matter or energy was ever there, because if it ever was there it's still there... in some way that's beyond my ability to grasp, but the point is that we probably don't have vacuum, all we have is "stuff" that appears to us to be matter and energy that exist in forms totally dependent on the way our brains, senses, and the mechanisms we've created to enhance them are capable of perceiving them.
Why do I care about the true nature of reality when within my own existence I have to continue acting as if there's time and matter and energy and so on? If I'm standing in the middle of the street and a car is bearing down on me, do I not have to act as if it's solid, as if it's what I perceive it to be, as if time exists because in a small amount of it I'll be roadkill if I don't move? Yes, BUT; my spirituality is based on trying to figure out how things really work, and how can I ever fully do that if I don't have any sort of grasp on what reality is?
I can't tell you how desperately I hope that string theory is proven in my lifetime, or even DISproven if that means that something else has been demonstrated to be the true foundation on which everything is built. But, let's say that we DO manage to see the very threads of which the fabric of reality is woven: How can we ever be SURE that we're seeing it all? How can we be sure that we're correctly interpreting what we see? How can we even objectively report what we see?
Objectivity; the more I try to find it, the more convinced I become that it doesn't exist in any meaningful sense. What's an objective truth? Where can we find one? People SAY they're objective about all sorts of things, but an observer who's not blinded by emotional attachment to them can point out glaring elements of SUBjectivity in anything they say beyond trivial cases like "there are 2 apples on that table"... hang onto the concept of those trivial cases, because they're about the only secure oases in this maelstrom.
How about science; isn't it supposed to be made up of objective truths? You'd be hard put to find much of anything that the scientists in any area of expertise ALL agree on, and whatever the prevailing "truths" are that most of them believe are constantly being overturned as new discoveries are made; where there's disagreement there's SUBjectivity, and where there's wrongness truth is lacking. Again, there are the trivial cases, of what they can observe, measure, and to a certain degree test... but subjectivity creeps in there too, because, being human, they're convinced they've got all the data when they don't, and often misinterpret what they see until something that contradicts their theories hits them in the face. Don't get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for scientists, but an awful lot of what they say beyond the trivial cases is neither objective nor the full truth... perhaps ALL of what they say is, at the deepest level.
Remember, science studies things that we don't know the nature of; matter, energy, time, all of it is beyond our ability to properly describe currently, and how can science possibly give us an explanation about anything (beyond the trivial cases) that's complete, much less complete and objective, when so much of it is guesswork?
Ok, how about math? There's plenty of disagreement between the experts about the upper levels of math, so there's clear subjectivity there... but how about basic math? Like basic science, it's obviously correct for most things most of the time, or none of our technology would work... heck, hardly anything in a modern person's life is without the imprint of math and science, when you think about it, so virtually NOTHING would work. Is it ALWAYS true, though, that, say, 1+1=2? In the trivial cases of apples and oranges and such being added together, of course; if you add 2 subatomic particles together, though, you MIGHT get 2... or 1 might vanish, leaving you with just 1 rather than 2... or they could both vanish, leaving you with 0... or another particle could pop into existence alongside them and you'd have 3. Basic math doesn't apply to everything, then, and the complex math that describes the quantum world is still far from complete, so... where's the objective truth from math?
What are we left with? Given the right circumstances, we can say that the often-mentioned trivial cases are true: Although there've been plenty of experiments that prove how unreliable eyewitness accounts are, for simple observations we can assume that statements like "there are 2 apples on the table" are objectively true. There are plenty of things that science has observed and measured so many times that, although their explanations as to WHY they are the way they are are likely to be flawed, thanks to that not knowing the true nature of reality thing, when they tell you how many protons are in a copper atom or what happens when you mix compound X with compound Y you can accept that as objective truth. And basic math applied to the non-quantum world is certainly reliable in producing results that are true and objective.
Is that IT? Isn't there anything other than what can be independently verified by every observer (with a minimum level of education in the case of some of the science and math) that can be considered objective?
When we analyze things outside of the realm of math and science, the normal result is value judgments; we all have countless things that we label good, bad, right, wrong, interesting, fun, boring... and they're all matters of opinion. Unless you have an outside agency, eg a deity, laying down rules for how those terms should be applied, they have no objective meaning; you can't "prove" that a thing is objectively good, bad, etc. You could of course create objective standards to judge some sorts of things by, such as that a "good book" would be one with between 50k and 100k words, but the choice of what you'll use as the standard is in itself subjective, and therefore so is your conclusion... ALWAYS. Are you thinking about things like murder, rape, and child abuse, telling yourself that those things are exceptions, that they're objectively wrong? There are cultures throughout the world, throughout history, that have disagreed with you, and their reasons for their views are as powerful to them as yours are to you; again, without the intervention of a deity, you can't "prove" which moral standards are "correct," and thus no judgments of this type can be considered objective... we can reasonably decide that the majority opinion is a fair way to decide what we're going to SEE as right, wrong, fun, whatever, but that's a long way from having an objective judgment.
What difference does this lack of true objectivity make to our lives? None, for the most part; to those of us who are spiritual without the assistance of religion to provide answers to the tough questions (Why? God. How? God.), however, who have to search for The Truth all by ourselves starting from scratch, trying to sort out the objective truths, and trying to learn to be ruthlessly objective ourselves, is crucial... otherwise, we might as well just create a pretty fantasy and believe THAT, and save ourselves the endless time and energy being a mystic uses up.
What do I want? To know all aspects of reality, and to see and understand them clearly and objectively. Can science ever explain reality to us? Maybe. ALL of reality, including the unknowns, from precognition to ghosts to synchronicity? Less likely, but possible; there's nothing magical about that stuff, it's just part of the universe like all the other forces, so if science gains the ability to perceive the rest of reality, they could answer all those other questions as well... as long as the culture of science changed sufficiently to allow serious scientists to pursue such things. If all this information IS collected, and I get to learn it, will I be able to summon total objectivity so that I can know what it all REALLY means?
I don't know... and it's like a knife in the heart. What I DO know is that I'll spend countless hours trying to prepare myself for The Truth in case it ever presents itself; I just hope I don't drive everyone nuts with the process in the meantime.
What sent me off on this latest tear? You knew there was something; this time, it was a very odd documentary movie I saw. Lemme ask you this; what would you think of a man who got a sexual thrill out of acts of extreme masochism, up to and including nailing his penis to a board? Even if you're relentlessly open-minded like me, you almost certainly thought, "That's SICK!!" Not coincidentally, the title of the documentary is "Sick"; there's more to it, though:
"Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist"
"This documentary profiles poet/performance artist Bob Flanagan, who was born with cystic fibrosis. Flanagan explains, with engaging humor, how his obsession with controlled, self-inflicted pain has helped him to deal with his uncontrollable suffering. His philosophy forces one to look at sado-masochism with fresh eyes."
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=109696&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Cast
So, he was "sick" physically, but, as far as I could determine, NOT sick mentally; if enduring all that pain inflicted from without helped him deal with his disease, and helped him to live to be the oldest person with cystic fibrosis, doesn't that change the things he did to himself, and had done to him, from hideous and possibly psychotic deviations into unusual but valid coping mechanisms? This got me thinking about how you could tell where the line is between extreme but rational behavior and sick behavior, and if there's really any such line or if there are just crazy people and sane ones, with each group doing all sorts of things, if objectively there's such a thing as "sane but sick"... and eventually I went right off the deep end with the concepts of objectivity and reality.
What does it mean when seeing a man nail his penis to a board (oh yes, they showed that in the movie, up close and personal) leads to this sort of philosophical contortionism? I probably don't want to know, lol. In any case, I highly recommend "Sick"; be aware that there are lots of genital closeups, scary things being done to Flanagan's body, blood, and blunt discussions of sexual matters and bodily functions... it's not for the squeamish.
IS there such a thing as "sane but sick," or does "sick" in that context just mean "significantly different than the cultural norm"? I see a future post on this topic coming soon; stay tuned.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Gross stuff
Bugs are gross (except for butterflies and ladybugs), although they can be fascinating in their alienness; nothing has made this more clear than the advances in photography that have allowed us to see all their creepy details. You've seen super-close-up pics of flies, I'm sure... but have you ever seen one where the fly had GLASSES?
"An entry in a German science-photo competition, this image shows a fly sporting a set of 'designer' lenses crafted and set in place with a cutting-edge laser technique. The glasses fit snuggly on the fly's 0.08-inch-wide (2-millimeter-wide) head."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0328_060328_fly_glasses.html
How did they get those glasses on the fly, and how did they make it hold still long enough to get a photo?
Can you imagine when someone stood up in a meeting and said, "I've got an idea-let's make a pair of really tiny glasses and photograph them on a FLY"? If German geeks are like their American brethren, the response was along the lines of "Wow, what a cool idea!! Let's do it!!"
The grossest all of bugs is the cockroach; if filth had legs, it'd be a roach. If you ever feel like they're outsmarting you, swarming everywhere EXCEPT where you've got traps and baits put out, you may be right; it appears that they're more intelligent than we give them credit for:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20060327/cockroach_ani.html
"Cockroaches govern themselves in a very simple democracy where each insect has equal standing and group consultations precede decisions that affect the entire group, indicates a new study."
This requires something closer to thinking and reasoning than I'd ever guessed they were capable of, but that's nothing compared to their MATH abilities:
"Halloy tested cockroach group behavior by placing the insects in a dish that contained three shelters. The test was to see how the cockroaches would divide themselves into the shelters.
After much 'consultation,' through antenna probing, touching and more, the cockroaches divided themselves up perfectly within the shelters. For example, if 50 insects were placed in a dish with three shelters, each with a capacity for 40 bugs, 25 roaches huddled together in the first shelter, 25 gathered in the second shelter, and the third was left vacant.
When the researchers altered this setup so that it had three shelters with a capacity for more than 50 insects, all of the cockroaches moved into the first 'house.'"
Could YOU tell by looking at a shelter, with no measuring devices, whether it could hold 50 people or just 40? More impressive than that is something you CAN do; how are the roaches able to divide themselves into 2 identical groups? At the very least, this would seem to require an understanding of what I've seen described in reference to chimps as "pre-mathematical concepts," in this case the ability to grasp the idea of more, less and equal; combined with how they're able to tell how many of them can fit into a given amount of space, it really does look like they're doing simple math... I HOPE there's some other explanation, though, because otherwise it's too much like something out of a horror movie.
This site has something gross in a totally different way:
http://www.shaveeverywhere.com/
It sounds like a porn site, but actually it's owned by Norelco, and exists to advertise a trimmer/shaver meant for a man to use to groom his body hair, called, unoriginally enough, Bodygroom; the guy in the Flash movie on the site discusses such topics as how grooming in the genital area can lead to, er, objects in the area appearing larger... and if you keep watching after the speech has been given, he does various odd things, including scratching his groin. Can you believe that a major company did something like this?
And now, for tales from the grossest thing of all; MARRIAGE.
We got some Chinese takeout, which included fried rice with peas and carrots; since I don't eat veggies, I tossed all of mine on my husband's plate. At one point in the meal, inspiration hit him; he ate one of the peas and announced, "I've got your pea in my mouth"... and I didn't need to hear the resultant snicker to know that he was in fact making the pea/pee pun. A little while later, I was on the floor working on my laptop, and he was half-heartedly wiping the table; as always, he was knocking more stuff onto the floor than he was picking up. When a pea went bouncing onto my keyboard, I returned it with a disgusted protest, to which he replied, "I'm pea-ing on you." He was SO proud.
Later, we were talking in his study, and he interrupted me to say, "You'd better wrap this up quickly... depending on how fast the air currents are flowing..." and I, having known him for over a decade, instantly grasped that a wave of flatulence strong enough to melt the paint off the walls was about to hit. I bolted from the room, slamming the door and yelling through it "You stay in there and breathe it all in!!"; his laughter followed me down the hall.
At least he WARNED me; that, single readers please take note, is what true married love is like.
"An entry in a German science-photo competition, this image shows a fly sporting a set of 'designer' lenses crafted and set in place with a cutting-edge laser technique. The glasses fit snuggly on the fly's 0.08-inch-wide (2-millimeter-wide) head."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0328_060328_fly_glasses.html
How did they get those glasses on the fly, and how did they make it hold still long enough to get a photo?
Can you imagine when someone stood up in a meeting and said, "I've got an idea-let's make a pair of really tiny glasses and photograph them on a FLY"? If German geeks are like their American brethren, the response was along the lines of "Wow, what a cool idea!! Let's do it!!"
The grossest all of bugs is the cockroach; if filth had legs, it'd be a roach. If you ever feel like they're outsmarting you, swarming everywhere EXCEPT where you've got traps and baits put out, you may be right; it appears that they're more intelligent than we give them credit for:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20060327/cockroach_ani.html
"Cockroaches govern themselves in a very simple democracy where each insect has equal standing and group consultations precede decisions that affect the entire group, indicates a new study."
This requires something closer to thinking and reasoning than I'd ever guessed they were capable of, but that's nothing compared to their MATH abilities:
"Halloy tested cockroach group behavior by placing the insects in a dish that contained three shelters. The test was to see how the cockroaches would divide themselves into the shelters.
After much 'consultation,' through antenna probing, touching and more, the cockroaches divided themselves up perfectly within the shelters. For example, if 50 insects were placed in a dish with three shelters, each with a capacity for 40 bugs, 25 roaches huddled together in the first shelter, 25 gathered in the second shelter, and the third was left vacant.
When the researchers altered this setup so that it had three shelters with a capacity for more than 50 insects, all of the cockroaches moved into the first 'house.'"
Could YOU tell by looking at a shelter, with no measuring devices, whether it could hold 50 people or just 40? More impressive than that is something you CAN do; how are the roaches able to divide themselves into 2 identical groups? At the very least, this would seem to require an understanding of what I've seen described in reference to chimps as "pre-mathematical concepts," in this case the ability to grasp the idea of more, less and equal; combined with how they're able to tell how many of them can fit into a given amount of space, it really does look like they're doing simple math... I HOPE there's some other explanation, though, because otherwise it's too much like something out of a horror movie.
This site has something gross in a totally different way:
http://www.shaveeverywhere.com/
It sounds like a porn site, but actually it's owned by Norelco, and exists to advertise a trimmer/shaver meant for a man to use to groom his body hair, called, unoriginally enough, Bodygroom; the guy in the Flash movie on the site discusses such topics as how grooming in the genital area can lead to, er, objects in the area appearing larger... and if you keep watching after the speech has been given, he does various odd things, including scratching his groin. Can you believe that a major company did something like this?
And now, for tales from the grossest thing of all; MARRIAGE.
We got some Chinese takeout, which included fried rice with peas and carrots; since I don't eat veggies, I tossed all of mine on my husband's plate. At one point in the meal, inspiration hit him; he ate one of the peas and announced, "I've got your pea in my mouth"... and I didn't need to hear the resultant snicker to know that he was in fact making the pea/pee pun. A little while later, I was on the floor working on my laptop, and he was half-heartedly wiping the table; as always, he was knocking more stuff onto the floor than he was picking up. When a pea went bouncing onto my keyboard, I returned it with a disgusted protest, to which he replied, "I'm pea-ing on you." He was SO proud.
Later, we were talking in his study, and he interrupted me to say, "You'd better wrap this up quickly... depending on how fast the air currents are flowing..." and I, having known him for over a decade, instantly grasped that a wave of flatulence strong enough to melt the paint off the walls was about to hit. I bolted from the room, slamming the door and yelling through it "You stay in there and breathe it all in!!"; his laughter followed me down the hall.
At least he WARNED me; that, single readers please take note, is what true married love is like.
