The unrestrained reindeer

Was poor Rudolph so much under Santa Claus's rein that he had to be named reindeer?

[Middle English reindere : Old Norse hreinn, reindeer; see ker-1 in Indo-European roots + Middle English der, animal; see deer.]
From the 'Free dictionary':
"Although Saint Nick uses reins on his reindeer and reindeer are used to pull sleds in Lapland and northern Siberia, the word reindeer has nothing to do with reins. The element -deer is indeed our word deer, but the rein- part is borrowed from another language, specifically from the Scandinavian languages spoken by the chiefly Danish and Norwegian invaders and settlers of England from the 9th to the 11th century. Even though the Old Icelandic language in which much of Old Norse literature is written is not the same variety of Old Norse spoken by these settlers of England, it is close enough to give us an idea of the words that were borrowed into English. Thus we can cite the Old Icelandic word hreinn, which means "reindeer," as the source of the first part of the English word. The word reindeer is first recorded in Middle English in a work composed before 1400."


Actually, I have an icelandic dictionary (fascinating language & country..), and that tells me that hreindyr is the word for reindeer; the 'free dictionary' text above says "hreinn" is reindeer, but in modern icelandic that actually translates to 'clear' or 'pure', so maybe the reindeer was originally a 'pure animal', or somewhere someone's sources got mixed up...

Icelandic is the most well conserved language of the indo-european language family, and shows most of the roots of english and german word pretty well, and is very similar still to it's medieval form. That means the word 'hreindyr' is really close to the source of our reindeer and the german 'Rentier' (Ren does not have any meaning in german, so we just took over the sound of the word).

No room for Santa Claus..
Free the reindeers!

Talk with your mate!

What about that perfect partner that waits for you somewhere, that just has to be found sometime, soon, or sooner, or later.. or what??

We all know that the high ideals we put into our relationships are partly exaggerated by romantic notions of the perfect connection, and the astonishing concept of everything just working smoothly, without any glitch, yet so exciting, and all without us putting any effort or thought into it.. What we might not realize is how much we are influenced by the romance culture put forth by our media - and how much it might interfere with us actually leading good, romantic but realistic lifes..

Check out this article on BBC about how watching romantic comedies leads to more people believing in fate and destiny and may result in couples communicating less - because it should be all obvious if you love each other, no? Shouldn't he just KNOW what I want..?

A follow-up questionaire to the reported study can be found here, fill it out, help research, help yourself, and: talk with your partner!

:)

Find Waldo.. ehh.. the toolbox

The endeavour has landed, and with it one toolbox less, as you might have heard or read. It is, truly, lost in space. But we can find it!

Check out this link to figure out how to track the toolbox in space, using simple binoculars, telescopes or digital cameras..

In case that is too much effort (I won't try, that's for sure...) here is a video from BBC showing the flight of the toolbox & how it can be that it can be tracked despite being just briefcase sized and 212 miles away from earth:



Have fun!

Health at work

This is a random post, stealing - pardon me, borrowing from BBC - they just got sometimes real good stuff... anyway, think about your work life - is it stressful? Are you in charge of your project, whichever that is? Do you feel like your work and contribution is appreciated? Or are you one of those poor souls that have the worst, most critical, never satisfied boss, themselves?
Read this and figure out how you can empower yourself, clean up your work relations to have a healthy environment and not die young and frustrated from a heart attack...
and, most importantly: drink more red wine!
(okay, maybe not that much more)
:)

Heavenly sounds

Have you ever wondered about whether stars sing? No?? Well, start wondering about it now..

One of the more recent approaches of studying astronomy and development of planets, stars & galaxies is "stellar seismology": collecting radiowaves from far distant space objects and compressing them into audible soundwaves. Here is the fourier spectrum of a "recording" taken over 60 days, from HD49933, as shown by the Institute d'astrophysique spatiale:

More revealing than looking at this graph is to listen to the sound of space on Jodcast - be patient, they talk a bit for about the first 5 minutes - which is really interesting, but some of you might just want to hear planets sing.. they'll sing, no worries..

A short article about the most recent study can be found here on BBC, also containing a few more sample sound files.

Isn't that eerily like whale singing?

We got one more, from an earlier study, also reported about on BBC: listen to micro-flares of the sun!

How entangled are you?

Blame it on the unfortunately limited capacity of these wonderful devices called our brains - we can't rationally grasp it. Nothing new about that though, after all there are plenty of things around us we all or most of us don't get, so, just one more item in a long list to shake your head about and wonder.

Can something be faster than the speed of light? Remember your basics of common sense. Remember your school physics.
Yes!
Right!!
Cannot be!!!
Correct answer.
Now back to reality: cannot be, but is anyway.

For all of you who are not entirely familiar with quantum physics, here's the idea: all material, i.e. the atoms we're made of, are composed of subatomic particles. These particles do not behave quite like the larger scale matter. One phenomenon of those very small particles that is not covered by our normal physics is "entanglement".

This means that two particles act as a unity even if they are far apart from each other. If the one's spin changes, the other one's spin changes as well. This happens across great distances, and so far it appeared to be very fast.

But how fast is very fast in the quantum world? Is this entanglement due to a physical causality connection, meaning one particle changes, and this change somehow results in the entangled partner's change? Or are they really acting as one & at once?

A study just came out, measuring exactly that: how fast do entangled particles ex/change with each other? The experiment comprised two villages in Switzerland (that's the country with the cheese fondue, right.), 18km apart from each other and separated by the lake of Geneve. That's the lake where you get thrown into when you lose your bread in the cheese fondue.

Two photons were entangled in the middle between the two villages and then sent via fiberoptics one to each village. There the photons pass through interferometers, and, because of the magic of quantum physics that is beyond my level of understanding, the interference between the possible routes each of the photons could have taken can be measured and, if correlated with each other, is indicative of quantum entanglement or of an interaction between the photons. The whole setup allows to measure the minimum speed of this hypothetical interaction. What they found was that this interaction was at least 10,000 times faster than the speed of light, and quite possibly even instantaneous.

So much for the Warp drive.

Now, this study has severe and really interesting implications for various aspects of life and the such, coming from a mind entirely outside of physics since quite a while.. (obviously):
- can we trash the idea of causality?
- is time a specialty-item in our tiny world, and instantaneous co-action the ruling force that we have overlooked so far?
- what does all that dark matter and dark energy got to do with this, and is there a medium along which entanglement happens, just in a higher dimension than ours?
- how can matter be stable? How can I sort of look the same everyday (except Sunday morning, I looked a little worn out then), if my particles are switching spins with their buddies all the time?
- how many of my particles are entangled and with whom??!!

I will not say anything about the majority of these points. That's up to you and the physicists around us. What I really want to know:

How many entangled particles do you have to share with another person to feel, at a distance, that moment when something special happens to him/her? And how many hours do you have to spend with someone til you're sufficiently entangled to feel really connected?
Or have you been quantum-physically intertwined with each other all your life, since the beginning of those particles coming into being, are you just like them different sides of the same coin, like a gemini looking for its lost twin you have been looking for that other side of you since the Big Bang?

Now that's definitely out of reach for my brain, but, I feel, right in touch with the intution of all those old souls among us...

Happy entangling to all of you!

Guy’s too hot for the girl? Sounds fishy..

Mating is a complex process. We knew that.
From simple basic attraction to careful approach over rightout flirtation to something more serious, sometimes, or more physical, depending on personality and individual choice of the moment. Now and then, the sudden retreat, or worse, the move to a different opportunity - just like 5 year-olds in the toy store, brighter bigger better, loud and shiny, taken, sold, gone - worst case, the replacement is clearly below standard in respect to the dumped toy (or so the dumped toy believes).
But, don't despair: this may implicitly show the great appreciation for the freshly ignored previous potential mating partner.

Biology is the field of study where you'll find anything, in any shape or color. What is entirely ridiculous in one context, is just perfect in another.
Enough preamble, let's talk about fish.


A recent study, published in Current Biology, looked at male atlantic mollies flirting with the girl fishies. For a matter of decency I will not go into detail about what flirting with the typical atlantic molly entails.. one could call it advanced foreplay. Read the article yourself. And no, there are no pictures, freak.

Guy alone with a set of females, he clearly goes straight for the best lady out there, big and healthy, that can have lots of babies and belongs to the right species (the baby thing is tricky otherwise).
Now, have another guy hang out and watch. The human guy might simply show off more but still go for the best girl. Not so the molly - he ignores the supergirl and starts flirting with the small fish that clearly won't be producing much offspring and doesn't look half as good. Can't cook well either. Why the hell would he do that?
Remember, mating is not a very unique thing, even if you think you're so special at it - we all do it, we all want it, and we all know that if someone is attracting serious attention, there must be something about them that we might have missed at first glance. The molly basically yells at his competitor: hey, look at that cute little fish, she's really hot! Hoping, that the other guy will go straight for her, exhaust his energies and other resources with this not-so promising catch while he can go back to his one and only.

"Sending deceptive signals and leading competitors away from a preferred female can be a powerful alternate mating strategy..."

Got it? Now, go home and remember that being suddenly dumped for the low-grade replacement may be the best compliment you've ever received.. :P

Hummmmm.... Got sidetracked ..

..in the middle of the night.. and BBC news is still the best for that sort of situation, providing the short notions that turn simple information into citable weirdities (someone should finally invent this word!) of life:

A deep hum lures females to a male's nest

Who wouldn't agree? I definitely won't argue with this, that's for sure. It's all about the hum, guys, even in cold-blooded creatures, and, if I may add, even more so in the warm-to-hot-blooded ones. Already Frank Zappa (would it be legal to link to the Dynamo Hum lyrics? Likely not..) knew that, and one should really trust him about that kind of thing.



Unfortunately, there is no comment on what happens after the luring - more humming? How far do the similarities go? Is there the fish-pendant of the cat-purr after extensive massage treatment? The late night breakfast accompanied by more guttural singing, leaning towards Tom Waits- and John Lee Hooker-impersonations?

I'm left wondering whether I should hang out in the Cumberland someday and watch and listen to the catfish - they seem to be the sort of fish making humming noise, right? But that might be an invasion into a bit too personal space even for fish..

If you still need the news behind the hum , don't get sidetracked too far, you might miss the perfect female swimming by, ready to be lured in for a vocal revelation..