You should read this for 1/15/2023:
Food and Drink
A six-pack of sauvignon: could canned wine help save the planet?
A 2014 report by the Wine Institute, an industry association of California wineries, found that glass bottles accounted for 29% of the carbon footprint of wine – and that’s not including transport, during which the vessels’ heavy weight pushes emissions up further. To top it all off, the creation of glass bottles in white-hot furnaces is hugely energy-intensive. We think of glass as recyclable, which technically it is – but in the US, only 31% of glass is recycled, compared with 50% of aluminium cans. For wine drinkers who care about the planet, considering alternative containers is essential.
History and Archaeology
An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological Calendar
In at least 400 European caves such as Lascaux, Chauvet and Altamira, Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens groups drew, painted and engraved non-figurative signs from at least ~42,000 BP and figurative images (notably animals) from at least 37,000 BP. Since their discovery ~150 years ago, the purpose or meaning of European Upper Palaeolithic non-figurative signs has eluded researchers. Despite this, specialists assume that they were notational in some way. Using a database of images spanning the European Upper Palaeolithic, we suggest how three of the most frequently occurring signs—the line <|>, the dot <•>, and the —functioned as units of communication. We demonstrate that when found in close association with images of animals the line <|> and dot <•> constitute numbers denoting months, and form constituent parts of a local phenological/meteorological calendar beginning in spring and recording time from this point in lunar months. We also demonstrate that the sign, one of the most frequently occurring signs in Palaeolithic non-figurative art, has the meaning . The position of the within a sequence of marks denotes month of parturition, an ordinal representation of number in contrast to the cardinal representation used in tallies. Our data indicate that the purpose of this system of associating animals with calendar information was to record and convey seasonal behavioural information about specific prey taxa in the geographical regions of concern.
Science and Nature
‘Cool’: nine-year-old finds rare, ancient shark tooth on Maryland beach
Green comet approaching Earth for first time in 50,000 years
“Comets are notoriously unpredictable, but if this one continues its current trend in brightness, it’ll be easy to spot,” NASA said on its blog earlier this month.
“It’s just possible it could become visible to the unaided eye under dark skies,”The icy celestial body – called C/2022 E3 (ZTF), a “mouthful of a name”, according to NASA – is making its closest approach to the sun on 12 January before making its closest approach to Earth on 2 February.
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Women’s Work
Why Evangelical women are questioning the church—and their faith
The sheer joy of Jamie Lee Curtis cheering Michelle Yeoh sets a new bar for female best-friendship
Something Wonderful
After three years of covering covid, I built my own air filter
Washington Post health reporter Lena H. Sun used in making a do-it-yourself box fan air filter, also known as the Corsi-Rosenthal Box.
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