Thursday Things: Almost Christmas
19 December 2019. Vol 1 No 19. By Dan McGirt. #19
Welcome to Thursday Things! It’s the last Thursday before Christmas, so chug that egg nog and let’s get to this week’s edition!
That’s hot cocoa, not egg nog. Because, frankly, egg nog is disgusting. Photo by Pro Church Media on Unsplash
This may not be the greatest gift of all, but if you’re old enough to remember the 80s (or the early 90s, though I’m not sure why you’d want to), it’s a great gift: The Far Side is back! Gary Larson’s classic surreal, absurd, sly, and often subtle single panel cartoons warped the minds of a generation. The Far Side was published in daily newspapers (remember those?) from 1980-1995, with Larson retiring about the time the Internet took hold in popular culture. It is, of course, possible to find many Far Side cartoons online, but there has been no official, Larson-approved, non-copyright violating online source for the cartoons until now. As Larson explains at his new website:
[Y]ears ago, when I slowly started realizing I had a second publisher and distributor of my work, known as Anyone With a Scanner & Associates, I did find it unsettling enough to write an open letter to “whom it may concern,” explaining — best as I could — why I preferred that the people doing this would kindly refrain. I won’t rehash it all here, but my powers of persuasion had at least some impact, and many of my fans were very understanding and responsive. Maybe it takes a warped mind to understand a warped mind. (No, seriously, my thanks to those who removed my cartoons willingly, or even begrudgingly.)
So fast-forward to today, and hey, look! I’m writing another letter! This time, though, I’m writing to say something I never thought I would: Welcome to The Far Side website! Guess I’ve got some ’splainin’ to do.
Follow the link and read the whole letter, because it is hilarious. Bottom line: the publishes a daily dose of classic Far Side entries, with the promise of occasional new cartoons to come in 2020. There are also Larson sketchbooks and a couple of pages collecting Far Side cartoons by category (ones featuring scientists, ones featuring animals, etc). Best Christmas ever!
Here are 11 Twisted Facts about ‘The Far Side’, like the time a newspaper accidentally swapped the captions for The Far Side and Dennis the Menace.
Dogs can count, according to new research from Emory University. Or at least, dogs have an innate sense of numbers:
In the new study, Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues recruited 11 dogs from various breeds, including border collies, pitbull mixes, and Labrador golden retriever mixes, to see whether they could find brain activity associated with a sensitivity to numbers. The team, which pioneered canine brain scanning (by getting dogs to voluntarily enter a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner and remain motionless), had their subjects enter the scanner, rest their heads on a block, and fix their eyes on a screen at the opposite end.
Eight of the eleven dogs showed more brain activity when the number of dots projected on the screen changed, suggesting that dogs, like humans and other primates, have a region of the brain dedicated to representing quantities (in science talk that’s “evidence for numerical ratio-dependent activation in parietotemporal cortex.”) So don’t think your dog doesn’t know how many treats the other dog got! Give more treat, human! I am good boy! Give treat! You can read all the details in the new issue of Biology Letters.
Apparently they’re not all snowflakes: Millennials outpace older generations in starting their own small businesses.
According to a new survey, out of a pool of 1,000 millennials, 1,000 Gen-Xers, and 1,000 Baby Boomers, millennials were found to be most likely to have some type of small business. By a long shot.
Nearly one in three millennials (30 percent) said they have some type of small business or side hustle, with 19 percent saying it’s actually their main source of income.
The entrepreneurial millennials credit growing up with the internet and being more comfortable with social media and technology in general with fueling their business-starting ways. “The most popular sectors for millennials to start small businesses in are arts, music, and entertainment (13 percent), food and beverage (12 percent), and retail and sales (10 percent).” Exit question: But how many of these “small businesses” are actually “I’m an Instagram influencer!”? Because I’m not sure that counts.
Speaking of technology, this is very cool: Colorblind Museum Visitors Can Now Use High-Tech Glasses to Experience Art as They Never Have Before:
Now several museums, with the help of Berkeley, California company EnChroma, are working to accommodate the colorblind—a group that is not itself included in the ADA—by providing specialty eyewear that allows them to see a broader range of hues. Optical filters in the glasses “remove wavelengths of light where the red and green cones have an excessive overlap” in color-deficient people’s eyes, as EnChroma explains it, so that those with red-green colorblindness can perceive new levels of color.
“To see them see the world anew, it’s not a commonplace experience to have,” said Abrams. “Everyone put their glasses on at the same time and there was silence, and I thought, Are they not working? In fact, they didn’t have a vocabulary yet to talk about red and green. There was no foundation from which to express what they were experiencing, just stunned facial expressions. Then they started to say ‘Wow!’ To bear witness to that is not something we get to do all the time. I feel very proud.”
I don’t have a comedic aside here. I simply think it is awesome that we live in a country and in a time where it is possible to make a device available that enables colorblind people to experience the world — and appreciate art (even modern art…) — live they never could before. (And if you have a colorblind friend or loved one on your Christmas list, the filtering glasses apparently retail for $250 to $450. Also — red and green! Very seasonal! Okay, I had a comedic aside after all.)
I enjoy Christmas music in moderation. I enjoy all the classics, and even some of the newer songs. But the 24/7 replay everywhere you go, on every city sidewalk, busy sidewalk, whether you’re sitting by an open fire or in a one-horse open sleigh, does get on my nerves after a while. So I’ll close with a non-Christmas music item: Heavy Metal combats emotions like depression and anger according to new research published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
a study of 39 adults aged between 18 and 34 found they were inspired and calmer when they listened to heavy metal.
"I was wondering how people use this music, because people who listen to it would use it in different emotional states," Ms Sharman said.
"We found the music regulated sadness and enhanced positive emotions.
"When you're angry and you listen to something that's highly arousing, it's going to match your emotional state."Ms Sharman said the respondent's levels of hostility, irritability and stress decreased after listening to heavy metal or extreme music.
… Ms Sharman said the study refutes previous research which found a correlation between people who enjoy heavy metal and higher levels of anxiety and depression.
So if an excess of holiday tunes is getting you down, maybe crank up the metal. Just put your headphones on first, please.
Thank you for reading! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah or other seasonal celebration of your choice to all our Happy Subscribers.
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