Some things keep Weekender up at night in wonder.
These eternal questions we brood upon hour and hour, night after dank night of soul-searching mulch. Questions such as – if there is a Godly master plan, is free will therefore a self-negating concept? How many cars would we actually need if we all did car-share? How would the book of Ezekiel be interpreted if we really did find aliens in fiery chariots? How did Kim Kardashian manage to grow in that shape? Where do all the spare socks really go? And how much does the Internet weigh?
Well, that latter question’s easy enough. According to a video by Vsauce, if you take each individual data point together, it’s about as much as a strawberry. Not entirely unrelated is news that Professor John Kubiatowicz of the University of California, Berkley, took a break from doing any real work by calculating that a completely full 4GB Kindle is a billionth of a billionth of a gram heavier than when it was empty. This is because keeping the electrons still uses extra energy. Apparently it’s all down to E=MC2, which Weekender read a whole book about once and still doesn’t quite understand. But we kept the book on our shelves to look clever, just next to The Selfish Gene and A Brief History of Time, both of whose covers we enjoy immensely, as does Kim, we hear.
Horrible noises
You know that really horrible sound when someone runs their fingernails down a blackboard? Or squeaky Styrofoam? It’s really nasty, right? Well, researchers of the University of Vienna and the Macromedia University for Media and Communication in Cologne, Germany have conducted psychoacoustic tests which indicated a change in skin conductivity to frequencies within the range of human speech.
It was felt that this physical response was generated by the shape of the human ear canal, which is most sensitive in the frequency range of 2,000 to 4,000 Hertz and amplifies said sounds to unpleasant effect. Doesn’t make the experience any more palatable, of course, but at least we know why now. Enough to (almost) make you smile.
Talking of which, according to an apparently real paper by Department of Otolaryngology, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Oakland, the Mona Lisa smile may be actually down to Bell’s palsy.
“[The smile] is presented as a possible example of facial muscle contracture that develops after Bell’s palsy when the facial nerve has undergone partial wallerian degeneration and has regenerated. The accompanying synkinesis would explain many of the known facts surrounding the painting and is a classic example of Leonardo da Vinci as the compulsive anatomist who combined art and science.” said the abstract.
But wait! Not so, blasted back JE Borowski of the Operative Dentistry Georgetown University School of Dentistry, Washington, DC.
“The Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo Da Vinci, 1503, pictures a smile that has been long the subject of conjecture. It is believed, however, that the Mona Lisa does not smile; she wears an expression common to people who have lost their front teeth.
“A closeup of the lip area shows a scar that is not unlike that left by the application of blunt force. The changes evident in the perioral area are such that occur when the anterior teeth are lost. The scar under the lower lip of the Mona Lisa is similar to that created, when, as a result of force, the incisal edges of the teeth have pierced the face with a penetrating wound.”
So there you have it: she might have been punched in the gob. That’s that one put to bed.
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