We’re closed for vacations

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Sweet!

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Boy, I feel so useless…

I’ve never been good at Rubik’s cube solving but the guy on the left is a renowned champion.

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Nyrffnaqeb Znambav, Vy Pvadhr Znttvb

While the great man continues to rot, we just ROT13!

Rv sh. Fvppbzr vzzbovyr,
qngb vy zbegny fbfcveb,
fgrggr yn fcbtyvn vzzrzber
beon qv gnagb fcveb,
pbfì crepbffn, nggbavgn
yn green ny ahamvb fgn,
zhgn crafnaqb nyy’hygvzn
ben qryy’hbz sngnyr;
aé fn dhnaqb han fvzvyr
bezn qv cvr’ zbegnyr
yn fhn pehragn cbyirer
n pnycrfgne ireeà.

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My favourite pastime

Aahh, the delights of Mutual Assured Destruction!
I definitely recommend Defcon, by introversion software. A game where you inevitably escalate to good ol’ Global Thermonuclear War.

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Evolution graffiti in my hometown

The late Stephen J. Gould would puke in front of this masterpiece, it’s phylogenetically definitely wrong but it’s not bad at all! Click on the thumbnail to see the whole image (1.2 MB). The location is Prato, Italy, not far from Florence.

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Neoteny as a human sexual trait

ne·ot·e·ny   [nee-ot-n-ee] –noun Biology.
1. Also called pedogenesis. the production of offspring by an organism in its larval or juvenile form; the elimination of the adult phase of the life cycle. 2. a slowing of the rate of development with the consequent retention in adulthood of a feature or features that appeared in an earlier phase [...]

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Cephalopods, give ‘em a million years

Octopi are smart guys, they evolved, over millions of years, a sort of brain, a fusion of the small ganglia present in other mollusks into a specialized neural mass. Octopi (and to a certain extent cuttlefish) exhibit spatial learning and, for someone, even observational learning. But some Cephalopods, like the Caribbean [...]

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Morris, Congo, chimera ethics and bonobo telegraphs

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Big soup post. Zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter Desmond Morris trained a chimp, Congo, in the 1950s in abstract expressionist painting. His (its?) paintings (one of which is pictured above) recently scored a record price for chimp-art at a london auction. Picasso reportedly owned and loved a Congo painting.
In the meanwhile reserchers are trying to [...]

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Gorilla hermeneutics

So this gorilla walks into a bar. The gorilla slaps a $10 bill on the counter and says, “Give me a beer.”
Bartender figures what does a gorilla know? So he gives him the beer, but only gives him $1 in change. It’s a slow night, though, so the bartender figures he should make some conversation. [...]

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