Kevin's Watch

Good to hear that in furtherance of the art of doing stuff with no discernable purpose, the value of pi calculation has been pushed back a whopping nine trillion decimal places from twenty two to thirty one trillion. I expect this is of great significance to some aspect of mathematical/physical calculation somewhere, or tells the bods something significant about what compooders can do - but I like it simply for what it is. Big numbers (beloved of BBC popular science presenters everywhere - imagine Cox ejaculating that one on telly tonight!) getting even bigger!

mmm... speaking of ejaculates I found this very interesting

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.psy ... sant%3famp

Vaginal tissue is very absorptive. It's richly endowed with blood and lymph vessels. Given vaginal absorptiveness and all the mood-elevating compounds in found in semen, Gallup, Burch, and SUNY colleague Steven Platek wondered if semen exposure might be associated with better mood and less depression. They surveyed 293 college women at SUNY Albany about intercourse with and without condoms, and then gave the women the Beck Depression Inventory, a standard test of mood. Compared with women who "always" or "usually" used condoms, those who "never" did, whose vaginas were exposed to semen, showed significantly better mood--fewer depressive symptoms, and less bouts of depression. In addition, compared to women who had no intercourse at all, the semen-exposed women showed more elevated mood and less depression.

No - this smacks to me or a casual linkage being made where there is none (or at least it is removed by degrees from the observation if indeed it can be said to exist). Far more likely I'd think, that there is a common(ish) underlying personality trait between those who elect to take the pill (or perhaps that they take the pill) or use a method other than prophylactic use, that links to the likelihood of suffering depression, rather than the presence of some magical antidepressant quality in the makeup of semen. Has the ring of a teenage boy conspiracy meme cooked up for pretty obvious reasons in the form of a desperate last ditch ploy when all else has failed. "By the way, you've been a bit down of late - did you see that study that linked....."

Well Pete, you could have a point .. I think its an intriguing assessment

But moreso.. when looking at the chemical make up of the ejaculate

... sperm comprise ... about 3 percent of semen. The rest is seminal fluid: mostly water, plus about 50 compounds: sugar (to nourish sperm), immunosuppressants (to keep women's immune systems from destroying sperm), and oddly, two female sex hormones, and many mood-elevating compounds: endorphins, estrone, prolactin, oxytocin, thyrotrpin-releasing hormone, and serotonin.

It makes sense that the mood elevating compounds and endorphins would be ansorbed and have a positive impact in countering depression. I get what youre saying about teen meme ... but I think its possibly is as is asserted.

Kinda resonates as true but proof of the pudding, and all that

Certainty intriguing Sky! Did a bit of endocrinology on the way through my education and iirc male sex hormone production in at least one case involves formation of female sex hormone as a precursor somewhere along the biochemical chain of its production pathway. Alas it's all too many years ago for me to remember the details - but here's an interesting titbit I have retained. Did you know that the default pathway for development of an embryo is into a female foetus (certainly in the case of a human anyway) and that it is maleness that has to be imposed upon the growing blastula by the effect of hormones. Left undirected the natural development is into a female.

Further, the male hormone is produced by a duct system that used to be known by the rather prosaic name of the 'wolfian duct system', as opposed to the female ' mularian duct system' which, under the influence of a mysterious (unknown at the time of my study) 'factor x' produced by one of the few active genes on the exclusively male held Y chromosome, has begun by this time to regress. Thus it may be truthfully said if one is so inclined ( ) that maleness is indeed a sexally transmitted .......disease might be taking it a bit too far, but at least let's say, condition!

On such joint assessments I declare sex a credible treatment for depression. Well doesnt work both ways, it would seem but .. nevertheless a credible treatment for the female of the species

Agreed Sky - sex is like pizza (as the saying goes); even when it's bad it's pretty damn good!

Amen brother

Mark your damn calendars, people....

ONE WEEK from today, will PROBABLY be the release of the first EVER
direct images of the BLACK HOLE AT THE CENTER OF THE GALAXY!!!!!!!!
[of any black hole, actually]

www.astronomy.com/news/2019/04/the-even ... hole-image

Oooh fabulous .. will do.
Cheers

I wonder how they will come out?.......

Come out..........

Of a black hole............

It's a sort of play on words..........Gerrit?

Gorrit

V. (If you are still out there) - off topic, but I've just seen your tag line entry of "Mr Reliable" as wonder, have you ever seen the film of this name or do you just use it on your contact with the expression in day to day life? Reason I ask is no-one else I know apart from Mrs P. has seen it - and it's a wonderful film.

Vraith wrote:Mark your damn calendars, people....

ONE WEEK from today, will PROBABLY be the release of the first EVER
direct images of the BLACK HOLE AT THE CENTER OF THE GALAXY!!!!!!!!
[of any black hole, actually]

www.astronomy.com/news/2019/04/the-even ... hole-image

Sound fantastic, vraith! I'll try to remember.

peter wrote:V. (If you are still out there) - off topic, but I've just seen your tag line entry of "Mr Reliable" as wonder, have you ever seen the film of this name or do you just use it on your contact with the expression in day to day life? Reason I ask is no-one else I know apart from Mrs P. has seen it - and it's a wonderful film.

Heh...no, it's for a different reason, 'Tank related. But I looked it up, and now I WANT to see it.

Yay Vs back

Very good, little long, article on this woman. She's way smarter than me and any of y'all fuckers, too. And most everyone else. [[someone around here is a Smolin fan...you, whoever it is, in particular, should read it.]]
Contains quite a number of ideas [some with links to other places] that are hard, deep, and counter to quite a lot of conversation recently here and in the close [and even a short tank-ish issue.]

nautil.us/issue/38/noise/this-physics-pioneer-walked-away-from-it-all

LOL it doesnt take much to find humans cleverer than me, and I fully acknowledge it. I truly enjoy the things that you clever folk present here.

This was a very intriguing and interesting biography .. and its been quite the journey for Fontini Markopoulou.

Kind of ironic and arguably even an indictment against the scientific community of which she was a part ... that a woman heralded for her originality, positivity, uniqueness and fundamental thinking ... attracted with those very attributes the very risks that saw her work shut down and labelled... speculative. I cant help thinking that her path was curtailed by the scientific establishment because of her gender.

Seems incredibly short sighted to me. I was impressed by her approach to scientific questions .. that she never assumed an answer or answers were not achievable. That kind of positive approach, one would imagine would be critical to discovery.

I googled her .. and watched a couple of her videos .. and looked at a presentation she gave from her entrepreneurial role as CEO of Doppel.

What an interesting port folio she is working on .. involving the creative, speculative AND substantive. She seems well challenged .. from everything she said about her experiences in this role.

It was particularly interesting to me her perspectives on human evolution AND technology. That human physicality has evolved WITH human ingenuity ... WITH specifically the tools and technology we have invented.

And her work would seem to feed right into hybrid human cyborg future that V is optimistic about.

And tbh its almost impossible from Fontinis perspective not to see human evolution in such terms ... and given Markopoulous tech company research in psychophysiology to create technology that changes how the user perceives, feels and behaves. That in and of itself is quite awe inspiring.

Well this is fun stuff. Coulda gone in graphene thread...there is one, isn't there?...but it's quite a bit broader than just the material.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-twis ... -20190430/

Interesting...scientists are saying moonquakes are causing the moon to shrink. [volume needed to hear clip]

www.msn.com/en-us/video/science/moonqua ... ocid=ientp