Requiem for a pope. Despite the sadness of seeing an era and a great man pass, I was slightly happy for Taiwan as Pres. Chen Shui-bian was able to attend the Pope's funeral with full diplomatic dignity. He was referred to as President of Taiwan and given a spot standing alongside other dignitaries: Kings, Queens, Presidents, Dictators, you name it. I thank the Vatican for having the guts to stand up to China. After all, for the Church, the ultimate authority is God and his Will, and I'm pretty sure God is not afraid of China.
Here's an interesting story, mice sing ! Check out the sound clip at the bottom of the page. Apparently during courtship male mice sing. This was discovered when researchers let male mice sniff on female or male mice urine, and though the original intention was to see how the male brain differentiates the pheromones, they noticed a rather complex ultrasound pattern erupted when hetero (whether there are homo mice is a question) male mice smelled female pheromones. This places mice in the same league as some other complex singing beings such as birds and dolphins! This is interesting for many reasons, but one I can think of is since mice are relatively easy to manipulate genetically, and the fact that they utilize complicated vocal patterns to court mates means perhaps mice have some simple language abilities. So we may be able to understand how language and vocal abilities develop and play such a crucial role (obviously as in birds better singers get to procreate!) in animals. We a...
Comments
Post a Comment