A while ago, I noted this development:

No fewer than 22 times, researchers documented wild chimpanzees on an African savanna fashioning sticks into ‘spears’ to hunt small primates… In each case a chimpanzee modified a branch by breaking off one or two ends and, frequently, using its teeth to sharpen the stick. The ape then jabbed the spear into hollows in tree trunks where bush babies sleep… Anthropologist and study co-author Paco Bertolani witnessed… a chimpanzee successfully extract a bush baby with a spear.

Now, via Dr Westerhaus, comes more news from the animal kingdom:

A male chimpanzee in a Swedish zoo planned hundreds of stone-throwing attacks on zoo visitors, according to researchers. Keepers at Furuvik Zoo found that the chimp collected and stored stones that he would later use as missiles. Further, the chimp learned to recognise how and when parts of his concrete enclosure could be pulled apart to fashion further projectiles.

The findings are reported in the journal Current Biology. There has been scant evidence in previous research that animals can plan for future events. Crucial to the current study is the fact that Santino, a chimpanzee at the zoo in the city north of Stockholm, collected the stones in a calm state, prior to the zoo opening in the morning. The launching of the stones occurred hours later – during dominance displays to zoo visitors – with Santino in an “agitated” state. This suggests that Santino was anticipating a future mental state – an ability that has been difficult to definitively prove in animals.

I know. If they learn to make fire, we’re screwed.

Dr Westerhaus alerts us to the Museum of Retro Technology and in particular this gallery of sound mirrors and acoustic location devices, used to detect enemy aircraft prior to the development of radar.

Related, and a little more discreet: Concealed hearing devices of the 19th century, including the amplifying vase and the acoustic beard.

Obama’s inauguration has been covered at tremendous length elsewhere, but it would seem a tad churlish if I neglected it entirely. Here are two images of the proceedings taken by the GeoEye-1 satellite at around 11am EDT yesterday from a height of 423 miles. Click to enlarge.

Does art progress? Theodore Dalrymple has his doubts: 

One often hears of ‘cutting-edge’ art; indeed, the much older term, avant garde, is of the same ilk. This suggests that there is progress in the arts, as there is in science, and that what comes after must, in some sense, be better than what came before. Art has some kind of destination, with later artists further along the road to it than earlier.

In science, progress is a fact (except for the most extreme of epistemological sceptics, none of whom, nevertheless, would be entirely indifferent as to whether their surgeon used the surgical techniques of, say, the 1830s, rather than those of this century). The most mediocre bacteriologist alive today knows incomparably more that did Louis Pasteur or Robert Koch, for example; the most mediocre physics graduate knows incomparably more than Sir Isaac Newton ever did. This is because scientific knowledge is cumulative. But no one would suggest that the paintings of Rothko were better than those, say, of Chardin because he lived a long time after Chardin, and that Chardin’s were better than those of Velasquez for the same reason.

Art teachers and critics use the false analogy with science in order to deny the importance of tradition in artistic production. They do not realise that science is entirely dependent on tradition for its progress. It is not just that most competent scientists know a lot about the history of their subject, but that the very problems that they set about solving, their entire mental worlds, are inherited by them. No scientist has to discover everything anew for himself: no mind, however great, is expected to begin again from zero. Tradition is the precondition of progress, not its antithesis or enemy.

The comparison of art with science isn’t entirely convincing. One could argue, at least notionally, that the destination of science – its conclusion, as it were – would be a complete explanation of the entire physical universe, including the people in it who happen to ponder such things. It’s a pretty fanciful idea, perhaps, but a comprehensible one. But what would an analogous artistic destination be – a work of such staggering beauty that those who see it burst into tears and die contentedly?

Snowflakes photographed by Kenneth Libbrecht.

More. How to photograph snow.

While this site has much to offer readers with an interest in music, psychodrama and abandoned mental hospitals, it’s possible I’ve neglected any engineers and physicists among us. To remedy this mortifying oversight, here’s a little thought experiment, courtesy of Sam Hughes: 

A plane is standing on a runway that can move (like a giant conveyor belt). This conveyor has a control system that tracks the plane’s speed and tunes the speed of the conveyor, relative to the Earth, to be exactly the same (but in the opposite direction).

Now comes the question.

Will the plane be able to take off?

The answer isn’t quite as obvious as one might assume. Needless to say, a detailed pondering ensues.

Update: Because you know you secretly want to, How to Destroy the Earth. 

This is oddly charming. James May meets an upgraded ASIMO robot – one being trained in object recognition. What struck me about the clip isn’t so much the robot’s ability to discern types of object and note their similarities, though its abilities are impressive. It’s the fact that watching ASIMO in action elicits a distinct urge to treat it as a child. 

(h/t, The Thin Man)

Space station toilet malfunction. 

“It failed late yesterday,” NASA spokesperson John Ira Petty said of the Russian-built space commode in televised commentary from Mission Control in Houston. “Russian specialists are troubleshooting. The problem appears to be a [gas] separator issue. In the meantime, the crew has been instructed to use the toilet in the Soyuz [TMA-12] spacecraft.” NASA has paid $19 million for a second Russian-built space toilet, which will be delivered alongside other life support, exercise equipment and sleeping quarters during a November shuttle mission. Having two working main toilets is vital for the space station, which is expected to double its crew size to six astronauts next year.

I know, I know. I must resist the urge to post distasteful bathroom items.

A while ago, in the comments following this, I wrote:

It occurs to me that the implications of social construction can appeal to rather unsavoury motives. If a person’s tastes and disposition are primarily socially constructed, that person can also, presumably, be remade to suit society and its representatives. Such high-minded Agents of Society might even become “engineers of the human soul,” to borrow Stalin’s phrase. The idea of innate disposition and talent is in some circles quite contentious, not least with regard to intelligence and its unequal distribution. This seems to cause unease in ways that, say, the unequal distribution of musical or athletic talent does not. It also undermines many conceptions of egalitarianism, which is probably why it causes such a fuss.

And it does cause a fuss. It’s possible, for instance, to find people who are (or will be) employed precisely because of their well above average intelligence performing extraordinary contortions to deny the existence of the intelligence they possess. Some, like Joseph Kugelmass, an English graduate student at the University of California, say things like this:

The abstract personal definition of “intelligence,” reified in our minds thanks to IQ tests and their derivatives, is a source of social ills and should be abandoned. It impedes and confuses pedagogy, underwrites racism and sexism, inhibits culture, and trivializes political debate… To claim that intelligence exists as a phenomenon, but not as an inherent personal quality, is the same as arguing that race or gender exist as social phenomena but not as simple, natural facts. […] Intelligence, like all essentialism, is a technology of power. It reinforces privilege and hierarchizes speech. It cuts art and language off from its inspirations, aping capital by circulating language through a series of useless oppositions… and non-signifying refinements of craft.

Setting aside the tendentious postmodern framing, dutifully regurgitated, note how the objection to intelligence as a personal attribute is asserted rather than argued and is essentially political in origin.

With the above in mind, here’s a short TED lecture from 2003, in which Steven Pinker addresses the political appeal of the “blank slate” theory, its prevalence, and its shortcomings. Topics touched on include ideological taboos, experience versus theory, and the self-inflicted disrepute of literary criticism.

Pinker’s book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, is well worth reading.

Related: On Stalin’s dislike of genetics and the idea of human nature.

Time for another episode of the excellent documentary series The Planets, this time on the Sun. Titled Star, the episode captures the magnitude of several “Eureka!” moments, as when Angelo Secchi, the Vatican’s chief astronomer, realised the blinding disc in the daytime sky is another one of those points that twinkle at night. As with previous episodes, there’s plenty of rare footage and some interesting characters, not least Kristian Birkeland, who created laboratory auroras while wearing a fez to protect his brain from radiation.

Part 1:

Splitting light. Secchi’s discovery. A makeshift umbrella. Twisted magnetism.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Part 2:

Artificial auroras. Comets and clues. Force field. Heliopause. The stuff of life.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Related: Astronomical Odds, Craters, Freefall.  (h/t, The Thin Man.)