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Showing posts from January, 2025

The Asteroid That Made a Mouse Into a Man

Consider that the average human brain size has decreased over the last 10,000 years, with our transition from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists. Being a hunter-gatherer calls for brains as well as brawn, and you’re regularly facing many life-determining novel situations compared to all those regular, repetitive days on the farm. Have we, as a byproduct of our great success as a species, dumbesticated ourselves, and, if so, is that still going on today? Does the relaxed selection pressure resulting from the benefits of modern technological society foster similar changes as our transition to agriculture? Clearly, evolving increased intelligence is not the sure and only path to survival and success, nor is such success guaranteed.  -- https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/asteroid-that-made-mouse-into-man/

The leap year complication

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Periods of 25 Variable Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud

 Periods of 25 Variable Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud -- [ADS link]   Logarithm of the period of the Cephid v/s its corresponding magnitude.