All posts tagged: thought

Ancient mammoth-tusk boomerang is twice as old as we thought

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] An artefact made from a mammoth tusk is the oldest known boomerang Talamo et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 The world’s oldest known boomerang may be 22,000 years older than previously thought, suggesting it was crafted during a period when early humans displayed an increase in artistry. In 1985, archaeologists unearthed a 72-centimetre-long ivory boomerang buried beneath six layers of sediment in Obłazowa cave in Poland. Later sediment sieving revealed a Homo sapiens thumb bone nearby, as well as antler tools, a bone bead and pendants made from fox teeth. In the 1990s, radiocarbon dating suggested the thumb was 31,000 years old – but surprisingly, the boomerang was dated to just 18,000 years old, several millennia younger than the artefacts in higher layers. Sahra Talamo at the University of Bologna in Italy suspected contamination. “Even a trace amount of modern carbon – from glue or conservation products – can throw off the radiocarbon date by tens of thousands of years,” she says. Analyses of the thumb’s carbon-nitrogen ratios showed signs that the collagen …

Paralyzed, Alana Nichols thought her athletic career was over. Then she changed her mind.

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Sign up for Big Think on Substack The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free. Alana Nichols became an athlete at 5 years old. It started after her grandparents enrolled her in T-ball, when she hit her first home run and felt the thrill of running the bases. Since that moment, athletics have been a crucial part of her identity.  As a little girl, Nichols played softball, basketball, and volleyball. Then, in junior high, she discovered snowboarding — a sport that allowed her to get creative and explore her limits. She could go as fast as she liked, move however she wanted, and immerse herself in her own style. “The mountain was my canvas,” she explained, “I could just create.” The jump that changed everything It was during a trip to Colorado in November of 2000, 17-year-old Nichols took a risk that would change the course of her life: She attempted a backflip off a ski jump. Mid-air, she over-rotated and came down hard, landing on her …

‘People thought I was dead’: Noel Edmonds on quitting showbiz for life in New Zealand

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter “Sometimes I struggle to explain why I’m so excited about this Kiwi adventure,” muses Noel Edmonds, former Deal Or No Deal host turned New Zealand businessman. “It comes down to the land – the look, the feel of it. We have a beautiful home, and in the morning, we wake up to a view of the mountains. Whether or not you can see them tells you what the weather will be like. “Just a few kilometres away, there’s a beautiful beach, the Moutere River, and within an hour’s drive, you’re in serious bush – wild terrain. “The scenery here is magical. Even after six years, we’ll go for a drive and still say: ‘Wow’.” open image in gallery Noel and his wife Liz moved to New Zealand in 2018 (ITV) Edmonds’ love for the New Zealand countryside and the people …

New AI Research Suggests that the Dead Sea Scrolls are Older than Previously Thought – OpentheWord.org

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Cave 4Q, one of the 11 caves containing the Dead Sea Scrolls, located in the West Bank, Palestine Credit: Effi Schweizer, Wikipedia, Public Domain In a paper published in Plos One, researchers from Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands suggest that the Dead Sea Scrolls are older than originally thought. In fact, some may be dated back to the time they were originally written. The group came to this conclusion by using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze the documents, Premier Christian News reports. The AI program was named Enoch after one of the Bible’s oldest patriarchs. It analyzed the different handwriting styles and patterns of 30 selected manuscripts. Additionally, the researchers used radiocarbon to re-date the selected texts. But first they removed the castor oil that had been applied when they were discovered in the 1940s and 1950s to preserve the documents. There were concerns that this oil affected the dating. Earlier studies determined that the documents ranged in date from the third century BC to the first century AD. However, the new analysis suggests …

Former Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs assistant breaks down as she tells trial of alleged sexual assaults: ‘I thought I was going to die with this’ | Ents & Arts News

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] A former employee of Sean “Diddy” Combs broke down in tears as she described being sexually assaulted by the hip-hop star on several occasions – telling the court the alleged abuse was “the most traumatising, worst thing that’s ever happened to me”. Three weeks into the trial, Mia* is the second alleged victim to testify against Combs, following his former partner Cassie’s evidence alleging years of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. While Cassie waived her right to anonymity, Mia did not want to be identified and is appearing in court in Manhattan, New York, under a pseudonym. She started by telling the court about witnessing Combs, 55, being violent towards Cassie, before moving on to talk about her own experiences. Diddy trial day twelve – as it happened Image: Combs’s motherJanice Combs has been supporting him in court every day. Pic: Reuters Mia told the court she once woke to find Combs on top of her and that he forced her to have sex against her will. Another time, he forced her to perform …

Why Tolkien thought “sub-creation” was the secret to great fantasy and science fiction

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Sign up for the Mini Philosophy newsletter A place to pause and reflect on life’s bigger questions, with Big Think’s Jonny Thomson. This article was first published on Big Think in April 2022. It was updated in May 2025. People sometimes look down on fantasy — not the prize-winning, metaphorical magical realism kind, but the kind of fantasy that has swords, sorcery, and dragons. It is generally accepted that children can enjoy made-up worlds, magical beasts, and dark lords. But, when we become adults, it seems we ought to turn to “proper” literature — mature, respectable, and written in ornate prose. It’s as if the books we read are a status symbol, and those who read serious books, about serious things, must be serious people. But this misses the point of what fantasy is about, and the totemic father of the genre, J.R.R. Tolkien, has a lot to say on the topic. Sub-creation The snobbery of those who look down on fantasy has a long pedigree — so much so that, in 1947, J.R.R. …

Pure Thought on Paper | Chris Ware

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Between 1918 and 1920, The Little Review serialized James Joyce’s Ulysses, a work so extraordinary, so experimental, and so exacting in its efforts to render the flow and form of human experience that in literary circles it gained an incandescent notoriety, not only for its capturing of the texture of perception and memory over the course of a single day but also because the book was so fabulously dirty. “God knows I have no objection whatsoever to so-called frankness in novels,” Vladimir Nabokov offered in his college lectures on Ulysses—though he did lightly tweak Joyce for implying that ordinary citizens think about sex as much as does poor Leopold Bloom. Nabokov also criticized Joyce for stressing language too much in his depiction of human consciousness, as “man thinks not always in words but also in images.” Such a parry might seem odd to level at a writer, especially by a writer, and particularly at one who could paint pictures with phonemes as could Joyce. But Nabokov was a closet comics fan: he owned an …

Was William Shakespeare’s Marriage Closer—and Less Estranged—Than We Thought?: A 17th-Century Letter Changes What We Know About the Bard’s Life.

Published by José

[ad_1] Image via Here­ford Cathe­dral and Here­ford Map­pa Mun­di Trust At this point, every aspect of William Shake­speare’s life has pro­duced more spec­u­la­tion than any of us could digest in a life­time. That goes for his pro­fes­sion­al life, of course, but also his even more scant­i­ly doc­u­ment­ed per­son­al life. As far as his mar­riage is con­cerned, the known facts are these: on Novem­ber 27th, 1582 a mar­riage license was issued in Worces­ter to the 18-year-old William Shake­speare and the approx­i­mate­ly 26-year-old Anne Hath­away. Six months lat­er came the first of their three chil­dren, Susan­na. For most of his pro­fes­sion­al life, William lived in Lon­don, while Anne — willed only her hus­band’s “sec­ond-best bed” — remained in his home­town of Strat­ford-upon-Avon. Accord­ing to one com­mon inter­pre­ta­tion, the Shake­spear­es’ was a shot­gun wed­ding avant la let­tre, moti­vat­ed less by romance than expe­di­en­cy. That would cer­tain­ly explain their appar­ent choice to live apart, though William’s career would prob­a­bly have brought him to Lon­don any­way, and with­out a good rea­son to be in the city, it was­n’t a bad …

Your brain doesn’t learn the way we thought, according to new neuroscience breakthrough

Published by José

[ad_1] Every day, people are constantly learning and forming new memories. When you pick up a new hobby, try a recipe a friend recommended or read the latest world news, your brain stores many of these memories for years or decades. But how does your brain achieve this incredible feat? In our newly published research in the journal Science, we have identified some of the “rules” the brain uses to learn. Learning in the brain The human brain is made up of billions of nerve cells. These neurons conduct electrical pulses that carry information, much like how computers use binary code to carry data. These electrical pulses are communicated with other neurons through connections between them called synapses. Individual neurons have branching extensions known as dendrites that can receive thousands of electrical inputs from other cells. Dendrites transmit these inputs to the main body of the neuron, where it then integrates all these signals to generate its own electrical pulses. It is the collective activity of these electrical pulses across specific groups of neurons that …

I thought sports weren’t for me, until I realised they’re a game-changer for ticking off cardio

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] From running around in the garden to chasing friends in the playground, doing cardio came naturally in childhood. But as an adult, it can often feel like a chore. While I love strength training, I’ve never found a good cardio routine that I enjoy—always finding excuses to skip runs. That was until last year, when I decided to give tennis a proper go. I wasn’t particularly sporty at school and I hadn’t experimented with many sports as an adult, but I’d dabbled with tennis a few times at school, and once when I stayed at a hotel with a tennis court. It’s also one of the few sports I actually watch, so I always felt drawn to playing it myself. However, doing so requires finding someone to play with you. Luckily, I have a friend who plays and we hired a court at our local park. This became a regular after-work event—one I looked forward to. I now play twice a week. I play once with my boyfriend, who is a much better player …