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[hummingwolf]

Links from assorted syndicated feeds.

Fun with monkeys: Monkey Shakespeare Simulator. My best results so far are only 17 letters each, but I've only had monkeys typing for me for about five years. (Link via languagelog.)

Oh, unwilly will love this: Cancellation due to irony. "'Sixty Minutes' has indefinitely postponed a segment that was designed to cast doubt on the administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. CBS is now saying that the report would not run before the November 2 presidential election. The reason for dumping the story, though, is not a new standard of journalistic responsibility, but embarrassment from an excruciating irony: The report attacks the Bush administration for not recognizing that some of the information about Iraq's nuclear weapons program was based on forged documents." (Link to the World Magazine Blog simply because I can't get any BugMeNot login to work at the NYTimes today and my own account lapsed a while ago.)

Reward offered to solve riddle of ancient cliff tombs. "Management of a famous Taoist mountain in east China's Jiangxi Province has offered to pay 400,000 yuan (US$48,000) to anyone who can give a convincing explanation of how tombs were built on its steep cliffs more than 2,600 years ago." Surely one of you creative people can think of a good explanation, or at least an entertaining story. (From archaeonews.)

Same feed as above: Bronze Age funeral experiment staged in Scotland.

The Archaeolink prehistory park at Oyne (Scotland) recreated a Bronze Age funeral, cremating the body of a pig in a bizarre but significant Scottish Archaeology Month experiment.

Archaeolink staff teamed up with colleagues from the National Museums of Scotland to stage the investigation. The event saw the experts create an ancient cremation pyre, then set it ablaze to find the effect of heat on objects from clothing and jewellery to offerings. "This is very much a scientific experiment," said centre manager Lynn Millar. She said a pig carcase had taken the place of an ancient costumed body so as to accurately replicate a Bronze Age pyre.

The Archaeolink investigation was inspired by the discovery at Findhorn in 1988 of the 3,800-year-old Bronze Age burial of a woman and baby. Archaeologists were intrigued to find the woman had been wearing a necklace of precious faience beads. While some of the beads, made from a glass-like material, were thoroughly charred or destroyed, others survived undamaged despite the fierce, furnace-type temperatures.

The experiment will help establish how damage may be related to the positioning of items in a pyre. A replica faience necklace has been created at Oxford University to the original design, and will be placed around the shrouded pig put inside the pyre."

From newscientrss: Burp vaccine cuts greenhouse gas emissions. Also "Astronomers poring over the deepest image ever taken of the universe are coming to different conclusions about what made space transparent to light billions of years ago. The research may illuminate when the first galaxies were born."

From the same feed: "Australian scientists have discovered how a naturally morphine-free poppy blocks production of the narcotic, in a finding that could lead to the development of more effective drugs." But There is now proof that morphine occurs naturally in the human brain, which means that one day chronic-pain patients may be getting a diagnosis of morphine deficiency. It also means, since morphine's been found in the limbic system, that morphine may play a vital role in human emotions--and therefore an important role in the human decision making process.

Money can't buy happiness (from scienceblog).

Via physicsweb: Weird liquid "freezes" when heated.

"Scientists have unearthed the fossil of an ancient aquatic reptile that sported a neck almost twice as long as its meter-long body. The 1.7-meter-long neck appears to have been too rigid to twist around in search of prey, however, so its function was at first uncertain. “This animal was one of those things that comes along and says 'wait a minute, you don't know as much as you thought you did'” about what long necks are good for, says Michael LaBarbera of the University of Chicago, one of the authors of a paper detailing the find published today in Science." (via sciam, though it's been reported many other places as well).

And from scienceblog, Females May Be More Susceptible To Overindulge 'Sweet Tooth' (um, duh) while Cold Sugar in Space Provides Clue to the Molecular Origin of Life. Cold sugar, you say? You mean I'm not the only one who likes to freeze candy bars?