Accismus

I am obsessed by all things “secret passage/Escher-ish logic-defying spaces/castles/labyrinths” (you know what I mean, right?). From Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves (interesting side note, if you don’t know: Poe is Danielewski’s sister and Haunted is meant to provide a soundtrack to his book) to this addictive blog by a tour guide at the Winchester Mystery House, I really can’t get enough. things magazine has a great roundup of blog items on this topic, and likens the unfolding of mysterious chambers to the never-ending tangle of blog posts:

So why are these structures so fascinating? We’d hazard that they represent a convenient synthesis of several elements missing from modern life, and that their survival – even if it is only in virtual form – as ruined carcasses allows our memories and imaginations to hold on to a strong narrative from the past. There’s not a lot of mystery in architecture anymore . . . Both empty buildings and blogs present themselves as vessels for exploration, neatly compartamentalised, reducing life into a series of boxes. Whereas one is the ultimate wunderkammer of curious afflictions, aspirations, delusions and illusions – phantoms of the mind – the other uses the physical object (or at least its pictorial representation) as the landscape to traverse. These giant, empty brick labyrinths function as useful places to keep the dark parts of our mind.

Okay, sure.

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What’s the story on the recovery of the ozone layer? Here’s an excerpt from a ScienceNow article on 3 Quarks Daily:

Once greeted as good news, the recovery of the ozone layer is increasingly seen as a mixed blessing. In April, researchers found that a healing ozone hole could amplify global warming by trapping more heat in the atmosphere (ScienceNOW, 24 April). And in tomorrow’s issue of Science, climatologists report that ozone recovery could disrupt wind patterns in the Southern Hemisphere, potentially leading to a warming of Antarctica. The findings suggest that actions taken by humans to protect the planet from the harmful effects of solar radiation could accelerate climate change on the frozen continent.

But on the ScienceNow site, the article has since been replaced with this:

The recovery of the ozone layer is considered essential for the health of the planet’s living creatures, but new research suggests it could also assist in the fight against global warming. In the 13 June issue of Science, climatologists report that ozone recovery could restore wind patterns in the Southern Hemisphere that have blown out of kilter due to ozone depletion and the buildup of greenhouse gases.

Will it save us or kill us??? I HAVE TO KNOW!

(Actually, I don’t care.)

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Can you identify languages you don’t actually speak when you hear others speaking them? This was one of the auditory categories at trivia night at Pete’s Candy Store a long time ago, and it was harder than I thought it would be. I can identify Italian, since I took it in college (and nothing else sounds just like it), and of course French, and usually Chinese (although I can’t id the dialect). But otherwise, I can’t usually pinpoint a language with confidence. Korean is toughest, apparently:

It’s plausible that people can recognize languages that they don’t know, and there have even been some experimental tests. Thus Y.K. Muthusamy et al., “Perceptual Benchmarks for Automatic Language Identification”, ICASSP 1994, found that native English speakers, given a short training session with 9 languages, were able to identify samples with durations of 1, 2, 4 and 6 seconds at rates of 20.7%, 37.4%, 45.8% and 49.7%. This is not terrific performance, but it is still better than chance (which would be 11.1%). Some languages were harder than others – thus subjects recognized Korean correctly only 13.5% of the time in the first quarter of the experiment, and despite feedback after each trial, this only increase to 16.7% in the last quarter of the experiment.

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Did you know that “all my eye and Betty Martin” is an old-fashioned British slang expression meaning, “Nonsense!”? I didn’t, but I plan to start saying it all the freaking time, and I suggest you all do the same.