dangerousmeta!, the original new mexican miscellany, offering eclectic linkage since 1999.

New Scientist: Strange signals from 234 stars could be ET - or human error.

Makes me think of the original “Journey to the Center of the Earth”. Professor Lindenbrook (James Mason) taps on a wall, thinking he’s communicating with a fellow prisoner. Instead it’s Gertrud the duck.

ANN: Ancient ‘Kennewick Man’ remains returned to Columbia River tribes.

It’s about time.

BBC: Western contact with China began long before Marco Polo, experts say.

“Other discoveries include new evidence that the First Emperor’s tomb complex is much bigger than first thought and 200 times bigger than Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.” China is wisely taking their time before excavating Qin’s tomb. If historical texts are correct, it is under a dome that models the night sky over China, and his entire empire is rendered in miniature underneath, with rivers and streams flowing of liquid mercury. I hope I’m still around when they finally open it.

SciAm: Long-Forgotten Research Unearths New Mystery About Lyme Disease.

Got Lyme, took the meds, and still have symptoms? Read this, urgently.

Authority Nutrition: Alternate-Day Fasting - A Beginner’s Guide.

Useful.

Discover: FDA Approves First Artificial Pancreas Faster Than Anyone Expected.

Apparently not for pancreatic cancer, just for diabetes?

Business Insider: Rep. Mike Coffman wants the feds to investigate SpaceX’s explosion.

He’s right, though. I’ve not read the letter, just the news article. All third party contractors need robust, independent oversight. Frankly, I’m surprised this doesn’t already exist. Richard Feynman must be spinning in his grave. “Science must match reality.”

Haaretz: Monumental forgotten gardens of Petra rediscovered after 2,000 years.

“Now archaeologists are discovering the Nabataean capital, situated in the southwestern deserts of Jordan, once was adorned with an exquisite, artificially irrigated garden. It featured paths likely shaded by vines, trees and date palms, and grasses, which were cultivated next to a huge, 44-meter wide swimming pool.” Not bad. Indiana Jones’ fictional Grail knight sat around for decades in a paradise.

Youtube: Once upon a time… mission complete.

Sleep well, Rosetta.

Neuroskeptic: The Terrorist Inside Robin Williams’ Brain.

It’s a very sad story, only read if you have the ability to absorb it without consequences. A terrible end for such an amazing person. Gifts given are sometimes devastatingly and cruelly ripped away. Makes me even more convinced that assisted suicide should be a legal option.

The Atlantic: How Murderous Are Humans?

“Gómez’s team calculated that at the origin of Homo sapiens, we were six times more lethally violent than the average mammal, but about as violent as expected for a primate.” And you don’t want to be reincarnated as a meerkat.

Brown.EDU: 13th century Maya codex, long shrouded in controversy, proves genuine.

“Houston and his coauthors outline what a 20th century forger would have had to know or guess to create the Grolier, and the list is prohibitive: he or she would have to intuit the existence of and then perfectly render deities that had not been discovered in 1964, when any modern forgery would have to have been completed; correctly guess how to create Maya blue, which was not synthesized in a laboratory until Mexican conservation scientists did so in the 1980s; and have a wealth and range of resources at their fingertips that would, in some cases, require knowledge unavailable until recently.”

AuthorityNutrition: The 14 Most Common Signs of Gluten Intolerance.

Of note. In spite of the GF hatred and the belief that gluten intolerance is a myth - read the footnoted studies. Gluten affects many of us, negatively. What you choose to call it, I don’t give a darn. But keep our GF options available, please. Just reduce the sugar content, will ya?

Complex: Enjoy Earth While It Lasts - Atmospheric Carbon Levels Pass the Point of No Return.

Clickbait. But.

I was just thinking last night about a sci-fi concept. What if our existence is the result of seeding comets with genetic material designed to reduce the number of habitable planets in the universe in order to preserve a galactic status quo? That we are Von Neumann machines designed to destroy ecosystems? That we can never evolve beyond our destructive behavior?

Maybe that’s why we’ve not detected other species via SETI.

Then again, if we do become self aware, who might show up?

Good story. One day I might write it. @ME.

Science: Surface uplift and time-dependent seismic hazard due to fluid injection in eastern Texas.

“... wastewater injection in eastern Texas causes uplift, detectable in radar interferometric data up to >8 kilometers from the wells.”

Authority Nutrition: How to Choose The Best Yogurt for Your Health.

Yes, but only certain stores ever carry anything other than the sugar-loaded ‘candy’ yogurts. Annoying.

NY Times: Museum Officials and Archaeologists Sign Petition Against N. Dakota Pipeline.

“In this case, it’s pretty clear that the Standing Rock area is important to our national history for a lot of reasons.” Legal efforts to preserve the historical spaces will be the strongest argument for rerouting the pipeline; the judge pretty much threw out all else.

Aeon: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious.

“Science’s history matters. Anti-Copernicans such as Locher and Brahe show that science has always functioned as a contest of ideas, and that science was present in both sides of the vigorous debate over Earth’s motion.”

Guardian.UK: 375 top scientists warn of ‘real, serious, immediate’ climate threat.

“These facts are incontrovertible. No reputable scientist disputes them. It is the truth.”

Discover: The Root of Gravity.

It’s amazing to me that we still haven’t sussed gravity. I was digging around this subject just the other week.

SciAm: Human Skeleton Found on Famed Antikythera Shipwreck.

“Only a handful of examples of human remains have been found on ancient wrecks ...”

Telegraph.UK: Another car park, another King.

“Archaeologists have discovered what could be King Henry I’s remains languishing beneath a Ministry of Justice car park on the site of Reading prison.” The dead never get to rest, it seems. They just idle.

NY Times: ‘Active Monitoring’ of Prostate Cancer Does Not Increase Death Rate.

Of note, guys.

NY Times: Could Ancient Remedies Hold the Answer to the Looming Antibiotics Crisis?

“Meanwhile, the world indulged in the existing array of antibiotics in such a reckless fashion that it’s hard to know where to place blame. Physicians are just as guilty of overprescribing antibiotics — even to mollify hypochondriacs — as patients are of demanding the drugs too often.” No, you are wrong, NY Times. This is incorrect and placing blame squarely in the wrong place. Physicians were given perks to push antibiotics to patients - by drug companies. I worked as an A/V tech long enough to see how the third-generation cephalosporins were marketed. “Your patient could take amoxicillin and be better in a week, or take our new cephalosporin and be better in A DAY.” Doctors were complicit, but they wouldn’t/couldn’t have done it alone. To blame the patient, after the use of the above marketing? Revisionist history.

Guardian.UK: Scientists reveal most accurate depiction of a dinosaur ever created.

It’s even smiling. I wonder.