by Paul Hegarty.......... "Full with Noise,..." is about noise music, specifically the version that has come to be called Japanese Noise -- itself composed of many different strands. The first half deals with the question of noise. What is it, whose is it, and how can we think about it. Also, how does noise inflect our thinking, rather than being an object; at what point does noise lose its noiseness and become meaning, music, signification? Or -- is there even a point where noise can subsist? Mostly, the text below takes the view that noise is a function of not-noise, itself a function of not being noise. Noise is no more original than music or meaning, and yet its position is to indicate the banished, overcome primordiality, and cannot lose this 'meaning'. Noise, then, is neither the outside of language nor music, nor is it simply categorisable, at some point or other, as belonging exclusively to the world of meaning, understanding, truth and knowledge. Read More ...
Dirty HC Punk explosion - Bristol scene Rise up + Disorder 9 free CDs
From The Cortinas to Lunatic Fringe and Disorder, Bristol had a huge Punk scene that has influenced, affected and stimulated a vast range of artists that operate in the city. Many of these artists produce music that wouldn’t necessarily suggest a Punk heritage but scratch beneath the surface of a lot of the major players in the Bristol milieu and you will find a fondness for the times of `spikey barnets’, limited musical ability, a `F*** You’ attitude and disrespect for the music industry and its poseur hierarchy. Read More ...
A straight shot west out of Boston on I-90 will carry you, in two hours or less, to Western Massachusetts, where the country still looks like it did twenty or even 40 years ago: college towns, I-91 tracing the same lazy ladder from Springfield up through Holyoke and Northampton, Amherst and Deerfield. Out there it's taken for granted that the houses will be drafty, the winters uniformly long, and that, on any given trip to the local supermarket, one might spot Thurston or Lou or Kim or J, on-and-off locals for more than twenty years. {audio}http://www.archive.org/download/DinosaurJrDrawings/07Drawerings_64kb.mp3{/audio} ... Drawerings Read More ...
By way of decrying a society that left its citizens unbearably restrained, Edith Wharton describes how in New York in the 1870s, women would order dresses from their Paris dressmakers and then leave them in tissue paper at least two years before wearing them in public; the thought of showing them "in advance of the fashion" was unforgivably vulgar. Social life has changed, but cultural life seems just as restricted now – even Animal Collective are held back by trends that seem a couple of years old (and that they helped to invent). When I think back on 2009, I’ll first remember how our impoverished aesthetic generation repeatedly scraped the resin from the cultural trash barrel. Every second person is wearing neon leggings, and the ones who aren’t rock a ‘70s aesthetic, with high-waisted jeans and moccasins. Christmas sweaters are getting impossible to find at the thrift store. Ska revival. Garage rock revival. It never ends. Read More ...
Black Punk Time: Blacks in Punk, New Wave and Hardcore 1976-1984 + free albums
By James Porter and Jake Austen ....... When punk-rock arrived--as we now know it--back in 1975-77, it was the kick in the ass the music world needed. At a time when the wide-ranging rock scene incorporated everything from Midwestern Metal to Outlaw Country to funk-fusion combos like Weather Report, there was an overall, evident energy drop. When the debut albums appeared from the Ramones, the Dictators, Patti Smith, the Sex Pistols, the Dead Boys, and others, the edge was back. As Spin, VH1, Rolling Stone and the rest of the self-important "Rock History Reports" so boldly declare these days, punk was the wildest, angriest, most vital, most energetic, hottest shit going. Read More ...
For a small country New Zealand has long been pumping out some impressive music. Way back in the 1960s it was crazed long-haired punkers messed up on all sorts of stuff - musical (the Pretty Things, Love, the 13th Floor Elevators, the Troggs and who-knows-what-else) and I guess otherwise. Some of the best of these bands (at least, the ones that recorded) can be heard on Wild Things vol 1 and 2, compiled by NZ music historian John Baker, the first of which came out on Flying Nun, the second probably on Baker's own Zero Records, also the home to No. 8 Wire: Psychedelia Without Drugs. Read More ...
For just over 10 years, London's Guapo has been working in the world of avant and progressive rock. The band's past is a bit hard to track with its numerous lineup changes and guest musicians. The most recent change in roster was the resignation of Matthew Thompson, the founding member of Guapo, which occurred just before the release of 2005's Black Oni. The departure of Thompson has left Guapo with percussionist David Smith and multi-instrumentalist Daniel O'Sullivan. Though O'Sullivan is by no means a founding member of the band, but he was essential in honing the sound on Guapo's last two LPs: Five Suns and Black Oni. These two albums have been pivotal in building Guapo's following of fans, so it's hard not to credit O'Sullivan as an asset to the band.... {audio}http://www.neurotrecordings.com/artists/guapo/audio/Guapo-The%20Selenotrope.mp3 {/audio} ... The Selenotrope Read More ...
Leon Theremin /1896-1993/ - the great forefather of Rock N' Roll /big noise master/
In 1919, in the midst of the Russian Civil War, Theremin invented the musical instrument that bears his name. The theremin is an electronic device that resonates sound when its operator waves his hands near its two antennas. It was the first musical instrument designed to be played without being touched. He invented the theremin (also called the thereminvox) in 1919, when his country was in the midst of the Russian Civil War. After a lengthy tour of Europe, during which he demonstrated his invention to full audiences, Theremin found his way to the United States. He performed the theremin with the New York Philharmonic in 1928. He patented his invention in 1929 (U.S. Patent 1,661,058 ) and subsequently granted commercial production rights to RCA. In 1938 Theremin was kidnapped in the New York apartment he shared with his American wife (the black ballet dancer, Iavana Williams) by the NKVD (forerunners of the KGB). He was transported back to Russia, and accused of propagating anti-Soviet propaganda by Stalin. Read More ...
Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet
The biggest threat to the open internet is not Chinese government hackers or greedy anti-net-neutrality ISPs, it’s Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence. McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering. He’s the nice-seeming guy who’s willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, while coming off like a straight shooter to those who are not in the know. When he was head of the country’s national intelligence, he scared President Bush with visions of e-doom, prompting the president to sign a comprehensive secret order that unleashed tens of billions of dollars into the military’s black budget so they could start making firewalls and building malware into military equipment. Read More ...
The Peyote Way Church of God - believe that the Holy Sacrament Peyote can lead an individual toward a more spiritual life
The Peyote Way Church of God is a non-sectarian, multicultural, experiential, Peyotist organization located in southeastern Arizona, in the remote Aravaipa wilderness. It is not affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Native American Church, or any other religious organizations, though we do accept people from all faiths. Church membership is open to all races. We encourage individuals to create their own rituals as they become acquainted with the great mystery. We believe that the Holy Sacrament Peyote, when taken according to our sacramental procedure and combined with a holistic lifestyle (see Word of Wisdom), can lead an individual toward a more spiritual life. Peyote is currently listed as a controlled substance and its religious use is protected by Federal law only for Native American members of the Native American Church. Read More ...
Japan’s Annual Penis Festival – Celebrates Fertility
KOMAKI, Japan — It's springtime in Japan and that means one thing. Actually, two things. Penis festivals and vagina festivals. It may sound like a sophomoric gag. But these are folk rites going back at least 1,500 years, into Japan's agricultural past. They're held to ensure a good harvest and promote baby-making. Maybe they should hold more such festivals. Japan has one of the world's lowest birthrates (1.37 children per woman), which experts blame on stagnant incomes and changing gender relations. Read More ...
Dreamachine - stroboscopic flicker device enter you to a hypnagogic state - try it right here in your browser
The dreamachine (or dream machine) is a stroboscopic flicker device that produces visual stimuli. Artist Brion Gysin and William Burroughs's "systems adviser" Ian Sommerville created the dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter's book, The Living Brain. In its original form, a dreamachine is made from a cylinder with slits cut in the sides. The cylinder is placed on a record turntable and rotated at 78 or 45 revolutions per minute. A light bulb is suspended in the center of the cylinder and the rotation speed allows the light to come out from the holes at a constant frequency of between 8 and 13 pulses per second. This frequency range corresponds to alpha waves, electrical oscillations normally present in the human brain while relaxing. Read More ...
All world secret underground bases build for space travelers
The following material comes from people who know the Dulce (underground) base exists. They are people who worked in the labs; abductees taken to the base; people who assisted in the construction; intelligence personal (NSA,CIA,FBI ... ect.) and UFO / inner-earth researchers. This information is meant for those who are seriously interested in the dulce base. for your own protection be advised to “use caution” while investigating this complex.Does a strange world exist beneath our feet? Strange legends have persisted for centuries about the mysterious cavern world and the equally strange beings who inhabit it. More UFOlogists have considered the possibility that UFOs may be emanating from subterranean bases, that UFO aliens have constructed these bases to carry out various missions involving Earth or humans. Read More ...
Black-lip Rattail ............ These sorts of rattails feed in the muddy seafloor by gliding along head down and tail up, powered by gentle undulations of a long fin under the tail. The triangular head has sensory cells underneath that help detect animals buried in the mud or sand. The common name comes from the black edges around the mouth. Read More ...
German-Japanese flight to Moon and Mars in 1945-46
The moon has allways held a significant place for humanity both as a source for romantic inspiration for poets and the like to outstanding curiosity for scientists. Allthough, it is said to be a shadowy place some say of Aliens others say of Top Secret Moon Bases that are supposed to belong to The Third Reich what do you think ? It is said that in the early nineties that Nazies landed on the moon using some sort of giant flying saucer type object. These Nazi flying Saucers were said to stand about 45 mtrs high, had 10 stories of crew quaters and had a diameter of 60 mtrs. Well here is videos and texts that links that story ........ Read More ...
Island of Ghosts: Hashima Island - Japan’s rotting metropolis
Hashima, an island located in Nagasaki Bay, is better known as Warship Island (Gunkanshima). The island was inhabited until the end of the 19th century, when it was discovered that the ground below it held tons of coal. The island soon became a center of a major mining complex owned by Mitsubishi Corporation. As the complex expanded, rock brought out of the shafts was used to artificially expand the island. Seawalls created in this expansion turned Hashima into the monstrous looking Gunkanshima; its artificial appearance makes it looks more like a battleship than an island. Read More ...
The Marijuana Conspiracy - The Real Reason Hemp is Illegal
MARIJUANA is DANGEROUS. Pot is NOT harmful to the human body or mind. Marijuana does NOT pose a threat to the general public. Marijuana is very much a danger to the oil companies, alcohol, tobacco industries and a large number of chemical corporations. Various big businesses, with plenty of dollars and influence, have suppressed the truth from the people. The truth is if marijuana was utilized for its vast array of commercial products, it would create an industrial atomic bomb! Entrepreneurs have not been educated on the product potential of pot. The super rich have conspired to spread misinformation about an extremely versatile plant that, if used properly, would ruin their companies. Read More ...
Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way— and its vast cultural consequences Read More ...
Not so long ago experts predicted the imminent collapse of religion in modern western culture. Religion – often synonymous in these discussions with superstition, magic, and delusion – would at last give way to the autonomy of human reason and the power of the experimental method of natural investigation. But something happened on the way to religion’s funeral. People kept on believing. Recent neuroscientific and evolutionary research has suggested that either many of the hallmarks of religion are, or are byproducts of, adaptations that helped our earliest ancestors survive. Read More ...
Learn How to Pronounce the Iceland Volcano Eyjafjallajokull and remember; When He Erupted In 1821, it lasted 2 years
The last time Eyjafjallajökull erupted, it lasted 2 years stretching from 1821-1823. It also erupted in 920 and 1612. Eyjafjallajökull's eruption usually precedes an eruption for another Icelandic volcano called Katla, as it did in 1823. Katla's eruptions are usually more violent than Eyjafjallajökul's. Due to the second activity on Eyjafjallajökull volcano since April 14, there are thousands of flights have been cancelled not only in Europe but also some flights from Asia, America and other continents. More over, it was also reportedly more than ten thousands of air travelers still stranded after a plume of ash cloud spreading across thousands of miles. No need to repeat the same news in every single post, actually there’s an interesting thing from the Iceland volcano’s name Eyjafjallajokull. Pronunciation is so difficult for some of us. Even, many people still don’t know what’s the right pronunciation of Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Did you know that? Read More ...
A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution. They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent. Read More ...
A speech given by Bertrand Russell, March 6, 1927, National Secular Society, South London branch, Battersea Town Hall ............ "As your chairman has told you, the subject about which I am to speak tonight is "Why I Am Not a Christian." Perhaps it would be as well, first of all, to try to make out what one means by the word "Christian." It is used these days in a very loose sense by a great many people. Some people mean no more by it than a person who attempts to live a good life. In that sense I suppose there would be Christians of all sects and creeds; but I do not think that is the proper sense of the word, if only because it would imply that all the people who are not Christians -- all the Buddhists, Confucians, Mohammedans, and so on -- are not trying to live a good life. I do not mean by a Christian any person who tries to live decently according to his lights. Read More ...
The international community has come out in force to condemn and declare war on the Somali fishermen pirates, while discreetly protecting the illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fleets from around the world that have been poaching and dumping toxic waste in Somali waters since the fall of the Somali government eighteen years ago. In 1991, when the government of Somalia collapsed, foreign interests seized the opportunity to begin looting the country’s food supply and using the country’s unguarded waters as a dumping ground for nuclear and other toxic waste. Read More ...
Victorian England popular&legal drugs (hashish, opium, absinthe and Chloral)
Victorian England, spanning roughly the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), is characterized in popular understanding as a time of personal and family values. The codification of the notion of values developed into specific and detailed ideas about social and cultural propriety and restraint. The very term "Victorian" has come to be used in our own time by cultural conservatives who look to the reign of Victoria as a touchstone for their own desires about social order. Prudishness, excessive formality, and repression, it is popularly assumed, characterized Victorian culture. Read More ...
The World's First Commercial Brain-Computer Interface + history of BCI
A brain–computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain–machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a brain and an external device. BCIs are often aimed at assisting, augmenting or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor functions. Research on BCIs began in the 1970s at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) under a grant from the National Science Foundation, followed by a contract from DARPA. The papers published after this research also mark the first appearance of the expression brain–computer interface in scientific literature. Read More ...
The giant ALICE detector is already underway at CERN, and researchers are scrambling to add an electromagnetic calorimeter to capture jet-quenching, the newest way to look inside the quark-gluon plasma — the hot, dense state of matter that filled the earliest universe, which the Large Hadron Collider will soon recreate by slamming lead nuclei into one another. CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is known mainly as the accelerator that will soon begin searching for the Higgs particle, and other new physics, in proton collisions at unprecedented energies — up to 14 TeV (14 trillion electron volts) at the center of mass — and with unprecedented beam intensities. But the same machine will also collide massive nuclei, specifically lead ions, to energies never achieved before in the laboratory. Read More ...
Microbial communities in fluid inclusions and long-term survival in halite + The 11th Hour - documentary
Fluid inclusions in modern and ancient buried halite from Death Valley and Saline Valley, California, USA, contain an ecosystem of “salt-loving” (halophilic) prokaryotes and eukaryotes, some of which are alive. Prokaryotes may survive inside fluid inclusions for tens of thousands of years using carbon and other metabolites supplied by the trapped microbial community, most notably the single-celled alga Dunaliella, an important primary producer in hypersaline systems. Deeper understanding of the long-term survival of prokaryotes in fluid inclusions will complement studies that further explore microbial life on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system, where materials that potentially harbor microorganisms are millions and even billions of years old. Read More ...
The Secrets of Coral Castle and pyramids EXPLAINED by Leedskalnin's Magnetic Current theory
Coral Castle doesn't look much like a castle, but that hasn't discouraged generations of tourists from wanting to see it. That's because it was built by one man, Ed Leedskalnin, a Latvian immigrant who single-handedly and mysteriously excavated, carved, and erected over 2.2 million pounds of coral rock to build this place, even though he stood only five feet tall and weighed a mere 100 pounds. Ed was as secretive as he was misguided. He never told anyone how he carved and set into place the walls, gates, monoliths, and moon crescents that make up much of his Castle. Some of these blocks weigh as much as 30 tons. Ed often worked at night, by lantern light, so that no one could see him. He used only tools that he fashioned himself from wrecks in an auto junkyard. Read More ...
Vadim Chernobrov & Russian secrets experiments with time machines
A disturbing story in the March, 2005. 1 issue of Pravda suggests that the U. S. Government is working on the discovery of a mysterious point over the South Pole that may be a passageway backward in time. According to the article, some American and British scientists working in Antarctica on January 27, 1995, noticed a spinning gray fog in the sky over the pole. U. S. physicist Mariann McLein said at first they believed it to be some kind of sandstorm. But after a while they noticed that the fog did not change its form and did not move so they decided to investigate. Read More ...
Seven theories of everything that pretend to describe the fundamental nature of the universe
We still don't have a theory that describes the fundamental nature of the universe, but there are plenty of candidates.
The "theory of everything" is one of the most cherished dreams of science. If it is ever discovered, it will describe the workings of the universe at the most fundamental level and thus encompass our entire understanding of nature. It would also answer such enduring puzzles as what dark matter is, the reason time flows in only one direction and how gravity works. Small wonder that Stephen Hawking famously said that such a theory would be "the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God". But theologians needn't lose too much sleep just yet. Despite decades of effort, progress has been slow. Rather than one or two rival theories whose merits can be judged against the evidence, there is a profusion of candidates and precious few clues as to which (if any) might turn out to be correct. Read More ...
How Norbert Wiener Invents Cybernetics + his book " God and Golem, Inc.........."
Norbert Wiener invented the field of cybernetics, inspiring a generation of scientists to think of computer technology as a means to extend human capabilities. Norbert Wiener was born on November 26, 1894, and received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Harvard University at the age of 18 for a thesis on mathematical logic ( see below "The Logic of Boolean Algebra"). After working as a journalist, university teacher, engineer, and writer, Wiener he was hired by MIT in 1919, coincidentally the same year as Vannevar Bush. In 1933, Wiener won the Bôcher Prize for his brilliant work on Tauberian theorems and generalized harmonic analysis. Read More ...
The T2K Experiment - From Tokai To Kamioka - Where is the anti-matter?
From the beginning of 2010, the T2K experiment will fire a beam of muon-neutrinos from Tokai on Japan's east coast, 300km accross the country to a detector at Kamioka. It hopes to investigate the phenomenon of "neutrino oscillations" by looking for "muon neutrinos" oscillating into "electron neutrinos". A million pound detector has been built at the University of Warwick as part of a vital experiment to investigate fundamental particles - neutrinos. Read More ...
It was nearly the end of WWII. At that same time, scientist Viktor Schauberger worked on a secret project. Johannes Kepler, whose ideas Schauberger followed, had knowledge of the secret teachings of Pythagoras that had been adopted and kept secret. It was the knowledge of Implosion (in this case the utilization of the potential of the inner worlds in the outer world). Hitler knew - as did the Thule and Vril people - that the divine principle was always constructive. A technology however that is based on explosion and therefore is destructive runs against the divine principle. Thus they wanted to create a technology based on Implosion. Read More ...
The Size Of Our World or How Insignificant the Earth Really Is in the Universe
Compared to you and me, the Earth is really big. But compared to Jupiter and the Sun, the Earth is pretty tiny. There are many ways we can measure the size of the Earth. Let's look at how big the Earth is, and then compare it to other objects in the Solar System. The diameter of the Earth is 12,742 km. In other words, if you dug a hole down into the Earth, passed through the center of the Earth, and came out the other side, you would have dug a hole 12,742 km deep (on average). That's about 4 times longer than the diameter of the Moon. Read More ...
Strange Images from Space - Photos&videos of the Bizarre in Our Universe
Some weird and unusual objects are floating around in the cosmos. Space is always serving up something new, unusual, and unexpected. Here are images and explanations of obejcts that have amazed and delighted astronomers. Read More ...
Project Icarus is a 21st century theoretical study of a mission to another star. Icarus aims to build on the work of the celebrated Daedalus project. Between the period 1973-1978 members of the BIS undertook a theoretical study of a flyby mission to Barnard's star 5.9 light years away. This was Project Daedalus and remains one of the most complete studies of an interstellar probe to date. The 54,000 ton two-stage vehicle was powered by inertial confinement fusion using electron beams to compress the D/He3 fusion capsules to ignition. It would obtain an eventual cruise velocity of 36,000km/s or 12% of light speed from over 700kN of thrust, burning at a specific impulse of 1 million seconds, reaching its destination in approximately 50 years. Read More ...
Mysterious Radio Waves from Unknown Object in M82 Galaxy
There is something strange is lurking in the galactic neighborhood. An unknown object in galaxy M82 12 million light-years away has started sending out radio waves, and the emission does not look like anything seen anywhere in the universe before except perhaps by Ford Prefect. M82 is starburst galaxy five times as bright as the Milky Way and one hundred times as bright as our galaxy's center. "We don't know what it is," says co-discoverer Tom Muxlow of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics near Macclesfield, UK. But its apparent sideways velocity is four times the speed of light. This "superluminal" motion occurs usually in high-speed jets of material bursting out by black holes. Read More ...
Unsettled Mechanism of Supernova Detonation Gets a New Twist
Type Ia supernovae, often used to calibrate cosmological measurements, may arise from merging white dwarfs, after all
When stellar cataclysms known as type Ia supernovae flare up far across the universe, their brightness and consistency allow astronomers to use them as so-called standard candles to measure cosmological distances. Just over a decade ago, two teams used the supernovae to show that the universe is accelerating in its expansion due to the influence of dark energy, a shocking discovery that thrust type Ia supernovae into the astrophysical limelight. But how exactly did these cosmic mileposts come to be? Read More ...
Astronomers had found evidence of something that occurred before the (conventional) Big Bang
Our cosmos was "bruised" in collisions with other universes. Now astronomers have found the first evidence of these impacts in the cosmic microwave background. There's something exciting afoot in the world of cosmology. Last month, Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford and Vahe Gurzadyan at Yerevan State University in Armenia announced that they had found patterns of concentric circles in the cosmic microwave background, the echo of the Big Bang. Read More ...
Secret Robotic Space Plane Launched By US Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) has launched a secret space plane into orbit, carried in the nose of an Atlas 5 rocket. The USAF is not calling the X-37B a weapon or anything else, and the classified mission was broadcast live, but only for several minutes into the flight. The plane, built by Boeing, was originally part of a NASA programme but was later abandoned and turned over to a secretive USAF unit. There are no details on how much it costs or when it is coming back to earth, but when it does return the unmanned craft will land itself, using the onboard autopilot. Read More ...
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Homescience Think Tank Research Project: The Orangutan Language Project
Think Tank Research Project: The Orangutan Language Project
Forty frequently used body language signals were identified by British researchers who spent nine months observing orangutans in three European zoos. And the results have been compiled into the first ape dictionary - a guide on how our cousins chat to each other in the wild. It shows the apes have at least 25 signals or gestures for 'I want to play', for example - ranging from a back roll and somersault, to a yank of their hair or a bite of the air.
Other clowning gestures for play include placing objects on their heads, playing with their faces and raising their arms. Brushing with a hand means they want something to stop, while embracing and pulling at the same time means they want another ape to walk with them. Other gestures include hitting the ground, swatting, grabbing, and dangling upside down. Although studies of great ape body language have been carried out before, none has focused so closely on the intentional meanings of specific gestures. The findings don't just reveal how apes communicate - they also shed light on the origins of human speech millions of years ago.
What is Think Tank?
Think Tank is a place to think about thinking. It combines the appeal of orangutans, macaques, and other charismatic species with an interactive exploration of the question: "What is thinking?" Think Tank is unique in the zoo world in that it is about a biological process thinking, rather than a particular animal species or habitat.
How can scientists determine when animals are actually thinking? Scientists have different opinions about which animal behaviors actually involve thinking. Thinking, as defined in Think Tank, is said to occur if three elements exist: image, intention, and flexibility. For example, this scenario suggests that thinking is occurring:
A person wanting a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie will have an image of that cookie in his head. With the intention of getting a cookie, he will set out for a bakery. When he gets there, he finds it is closed. Flexibility is shown when he can decide to buy the ingredients, go home, and bake his own cookies. In other words, when Plan A fails, he can switch to Plan B, or even Plan C.
To help visitors understand thinking, Think Tank explores three domains of behavior Tools, Language, and Society for evidence of thinking.
In the introductory area of Think Tank's interpretive gallery, visitors are invited to examine their own beliefs about thinking. "Mission Control" presents the parts of the brain and their function. Visitors can also compare brain sizes of different animals, from an 82,000-pound (180,400 kg) finback whale to a 10-ounce (280 g) squirrel.
The next area of the exhibit, "Tools," investigates the definitions of tool use and presents examples of animals that appear to be using tools. It includes a display of hermit crabs that show complex tool-using behavior when choosing a shell, and a termite mound where visitors can practice using twigs and grass stems to "fish" like chimpanzees do for termites. This area also looks at human tool use, from early hominids to modern humans.
In Think Tank's orangutan enclosure, visitors can watch the behaviors of the orangutans, who climb and swing over from the Great Ape House on the "O Line" (a series of towers and cables). Inside Think Tank, the orangutans demonstrate their tool-using and problem-solving abilities. The orangutans are free to travel between Think Tank and the Great Ape House, however some prefer to stay in one location.
Visitors can view scientific studies in progress by watching the Zoo's behavioral researchers. In one of the studies, the orangutans use computers to learn a symbolic language. In this Orangutan Language Project (OLP), the researcher wants to know how orangutans think about the world. Think Tank staff will perform daily demonstrations and lead discussions on the research in progress.
Does social behavior require thinking? Can animals invent new ways of doing things? These are the two main questions asked in the "Society" section of the exhibit, where the focus is on deception, cooperation, alliance-building, innovation, and conflict between animals. The intricate social structure of a leaf-cutter ant society, deceptive acts of several species, and an examination of whether innovation leads to tradition and culture in social groups, are explored in this area of Think Tank. Social strategies can also be observed in this section by watching Think Tank's Sulawesi macaques.
Think Tank is a trail-blazing, thought-provoking, interactive exhibit that gives visitors insight into the "behind-the-scenes" work of behavioral scientists. In creating this unique exhibit, Think Tank developers hope to inform visitors about this exciting field of scientific study, stimulate an interest in scientific careers, and instill a new respect for nature conservation.
The Orangutan Language Project
The Orangutan Language Project (OLP) explores the abilities of orangutans to use symbols and syntax to express their thoughts. Demonstrations of language research with the orangutans allow visitors to see scientific investigation in progress. Think Tank is the only place in the world where visitors have free access to observe scientists studying animal cognition.
The orangutans are learning to use a symbol-based language that is presented on a computer monitor. The monitor screen has large "buttons" that are big enough for orangutan fingers. The OLP dictionary contains a total of about 70 symbols. All symbols are abstract and have no visual relation to what they represent. In other words, the symbol for an apple looks nothing like an apple.
There are seven different categories of symbols and each category currently contains ten individual symbols. The symbol categories are:
* foods * non-food objects * proper names of people * proper names of orangutans * verbs * adjectives * Arabic numbers
Each category of symbols has its own specific exterior shape. For example, all food symbols have a rectangular exterior and all non-food object symbols have a circular exterior. A rectangle alone means "food" and a circle alone means "non-food object." Thus, each symbol can be broken down into its component parts just as a words are spelled using a series of letters. Individually, the interior components of each symbol are meaningless (like the letters of a word). It's the arrangement within the exterior shape that gives each symbol a specific meaning. In addition to the seven categories, there are symbols that mean "send," "clear," "yes/good," and "no/wrong."
The OLP dictionary can be expanded to as many symbols as the orangutans can learn. Currently, the orangutans are building their vocabularies. The next step will be to introduce syntax so that the individual symbols can be strung together to form simple sentences.
The orangutans participate in the OLP on a voluntary basis. There are no coercive or disciplinary elements to the program; orangutans are only reinforced with positive rewards. The animals are never coerced into working by being deprived of food, companionship, play time, or anything else.
Orangutan memory
While a great deal is known about human memory, we know little about how memory works in nonhuman primates. It appears that nonhuman primates rely on memory in such everyday tasks as foraging for food and recognizing familiar individuals. The purpose of this research is to investigate memory in orangutans.
When humans are asked to memorize a list of unrelated words in a series of trials, they begin to organize the words in idiosyncratic clusters. This phenomenon has been termed subjective organization, since the nature of the associations are unique to each person. This spontaneously-developed organization strategy increases the number of words that a person can remember. The crucial parts of this task are that the words are unrelated and that it requires free recall on the part of the person being tested. Unrelated words are necessary to prevent organization based on semantic categories (which we know humans will use). Free recall, in which the person is free to produce the list words in any order, allows the researcher to see what strategies the person used to organize the words.
Subjective organization in nonhuman primates has not been studied, probably because of the difficulty in making a free recall task with animals that can't speak. However, it is possible to create a recognition memory task that allows animals that can't speak to produce the list items in any order. In this task, list items (photographs) are presented on a touch-screen video monitor. The orangutan is required to touch each item as it appears, in order to show that the item has been seen. Following the presentation of the list, all the list items appear in a random arrangement on the screen along with a set of items that were not on the list. The orangutan must touch the list items, and only the list items, in any order. Once all the list items have been touched, the orang utan is rewarded, and the next trial begins.
The first question being addressed is whether orang utans will develop an organizing strategy for long lists. In humans, the ability to develop such memory strategies does not begin to appear until the age of six or seven. It is not until ten or eleven that humans can utilize such strategies consistently and efficiently. If orang utans are able to develop an organizational strategy to help them learn a list, it would show that they are capable of sophisticated memory strategies.
Even if the orangutans fail to show signs of subjective organization, we can find out if they can use category information to organize lists. In other words, we can present lists that are made up of items that can be classified into categories (foods, insects, trees, animals). We suspect that orangutans will be able to use such category information to organize lists. If we find that these animals do this, we will be able to use that as a stepping stone to further explore the thinking ability of these animals.
Self-Awareness & Empathy in Orangutans
The purpose of this research project is to explore orangutan self-awareness. Do orangutans recognize themselves? Do they understand that different people see the world in different ways? Those are the questions that this research is trying to answer.
Does an orangutan recognize itself in a mirror? If so, it must have a concept of self. Mirrors were used in studies at the National Zoological Park to test whether orangutans recognize themselves in mirrors. While some definitely do, others seem to treat their reflections as if they were other orangutans.
To study whether orangutans are capable of empathy, we need to be able to identify if an orangutan can use its own experiences to understand that different people view the world in different ways. For example, can an orangutan use its own experience of visual impairment with a blindfold to understand that another individual cannot see when he or she wears a blindfold? Human children don't begin to understand this simple concept until at least the age three or four. The results with the orangutans show that they do understand that other individuals are visually impaired when blindfolded.
Another way orangutan empathy is being studied is to determine whether they can understand the goals and intentions of their caretakers. To test this, a situation is set up in which an orangutan sees a keeper trying to get an object placed just out of reach. The orangutans have access to tools (long sticks) that they previously have been able to use to get out-of-reach objects. If the orangutan helps by giving the keeper a tool, then the animal is obviously able to empathize with the keeper's goals and intentions.
Evidence of Thinking
Social interactions may offer some of the strongest evidence of thinking. Survival depends on fulfilling needs, but how does a social animal fulfill the needs of finding resources, safety, and reproduction when other members of the group are all trying to do the same things? The answer is strategic thinking.
Dealing with other individuals in a group can be complicated. Who can be trusted? Who can help? Who is the leader? Many individuals means many social possibilities. When there are multiple ways to achieve a social goal, it is likely that strategic thinking is occurring. To get what you want, planning and flexibility are the keys, and that means thinking.
The Strategic Thinking area of Think Tank considers hierarchies and beneficial relationships. In particular, four different goals of social living are explored:
* How to increase status in society * How to join forces against a rival * How to make up after a fight * How to find a mate
Obtaining these social goals requires answers to several questions:
* Who is each individual (including age and sex) and to whom is each individual related? * Who is dominant in which situations and who is subordinate in which situations? * Where are resources located and who has access to them? * What is your place in the hierarchy?
Once these questions are answered, this information must be used to select a series of behaviors that meet a certain goal.
The Strategic Thinking touch-screen computer in the Society of Think Tank challenges visitors to reach four social goals important to chimpanzees. Visitors roleplay life in a chimpanzee group by touching photos that illustrate certain behaviors.
Deception and Innovation as Evidence of Thinking
Deception and innovation are two activities that may provide evidence of thinking. Creating diversions, misinforming, and withholding information are all deceptive acts. In order to label a behavior "deceptive" or "innovative", a scientist must be very familiar with the normal range of behaviors for a particular species.
Deception is not always a behavior that shows thinking. For many species it is part of a feedback loop where a certain stimulus triggers the next activity. For instance, a plover will "fake" an injury to distract a predator away from its nest. This is deception, but all plovers use this same behavior and it is not learned. It shows little flexibility and is therefore not evidence of thinking.
There are good anecdotal examples of behaviors that appear to involve thinking-based deception. For instance, scientists have observed a baboon give a "false alarm." The baboon was being threatened and chased by other group members. To thwart the chasers, he stopped, stood up on his hind legs, and looked into the distance—the same behavior baboons exhibit when they see a predator or another baboon group. In this case there was no danger; the behavior got the other baboons to stop their chase and look in the same direction so the alarm-calling baboon could escape.
The formation of new behaviors (innovation) and the process by which they become traditions within a society may also be evidence of thinking. An example of innovation within a social group is when a wild female Japanese macaque began washing her food with water. The behavior was soon copied by others in the group. When infants began washing their food also, the behavior was passed on to a new generation and a tradition was born. Researching these types of innovation can take many years since new social traditions sometimes spread slowly through a population.
Forty frequently used body language signals were identified by British researchers who spent nine months observing orangutans in three European zoos. And the results have been compiled into the first ape dictionary - a guide on how our cousins chat to each other in the wild. It shows the apes have at least 25 signals or gestures for 'I want to play', for example - ranging from a back roll and somersault, to a yank of their hair or a bite of the air.
