Stannous Flouride's Book of Truthiness

The choice is yours and some people don’t just blur the line, they eradicate it completely. For example:

British academics have used geographic profiling in a study which backs up a theory about the identity of mysterious street artist Banksy, they said Friday.

Scientists at Queen Mary University of London said the pattern of how Banksy’s artworks are distributed suggests he is artist Robin Gunningham, in a study published in the Journal of Spatial Science. Gunningham was first named as Banksy by the Daily Mail newspaper in 2008.

Banksy’s often politically-themed street art has made him a celebrity in Britain, despite his true identity never having been confirmed.

His most high-profile recent project was Dismaland, which last year mocked the conventions of amusement parks and was located in southwest England.

Geographic profiling is a technique used in fields from criminology to studying patterns of infectious disease.

The study analyzed a series of locations of Banksy’s artworks in London and Bristol and mapped them against “anchor points” such as the homes of people suspected of being Banksy to draw conclusions about possible identity. “Our analysis highlights areas associated with one prominent candidate (e.g. his home), supporting his identification as Banksy,” the paper said. “More broadly, these results support previous suggestions that analysis of minor terrorism-related acts (e.g. graffiti) could be used to help locate terrorist bases before more serious incidents occur, and provides a fascinating example of the application of the model to a complex, real-world problem.”

One of the research team, Steve Le Comber, told the BBC: “I’d be surprised if it’s not Gunningham, even without our analysis, but it’s interesting that the analysis offers additional support for it.”

The BBC also reported that Banksy’s legal team had contacted staff at the university with concerns about how the research was to be promoted.

More fun/strange/odd signs and language:

Newly discovered stone tool-use behavior and accumulation sites in wild chimpanzees reminiscent to human cairns

After discovering conspicuous piles of stones next to trees at four research sites in West Africa, the field teams placed camera traps next to them.

In Guinea Bissau some impressive videos were recorded which confirmed the researchers’ suspicion that chimpanzees were responsible for these stone piles and were regularly visiting these trees. “The PanAf cameras filmed individual chimpanzees picking up stones from beside, or inside trees, and then throwing them at these trees while emitting a long-distance pant hoot vocalization.”

After reading the above my first thought was what that might mean in a ritual or, dare I say it, ‘religious’ context. But I am wary of anything that anthropomorphizes animal behavior and left it out of my reporting.
But it is a legitimate question. Is attaching a value or a meaning to a particular place or object and then passing that down through multiple generations anything else?

We cannot know what the chimpanzees are thinking or why they imitate the others in their troop who preceded them. But it seems that it would be a logical place in both space and time for what would eventually be called ‘worship.’

These scientists and reporters are not as hesitant to discuss that possibility: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2079630-what-do-chimp-temples-tell-us-about-the-evolution-of-religion/See this stone? I’m going to make a really loud noise with it.

Original report and source: Why do chimpanzees throw stones at trees? | Max Planck Society

Putting funny lines in his mouth doesn’t make you want to punch his smarmy face any less, but it does make looking at it for four minutes at least possible

On February 8, 2016, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured several images of blooming phytoplankton and swirling currents along the coast of California and western Mexico.

The images were stitched together into a composite built with data from the red, green, and blue wavelength bands on VIIRS, along with chlorophyll data. A series of image-processing steps highlighted the color differences and subtle features in the water.

Source: California Coastal Current : Image of the Day

It turns out that the look of mutual recognition between human and dog reflects thousands of years of evolution, a bond programmed into our very body chemistry.

Anyone who owns a dog is familiar with the “gaze”—that hypnotic, imploring stare that demands reciprocation. It can seem to hold a world of mystery and longing, or just pure bafflement at what makes humans tick.

Last spring a research team in Japan discovered that both species release a hormone called oxytocin when they look into each other’s eyes—the same hormone released when a human mother beholds her baby.What’s more, the Japanese study showed that higher levels of oxytocin were released during that gaze than during petting or talking. It seems that for dogs, at least where humans are concerned, eyes really are windows to the soul.

“It’s a very compelling study, that even on a chemical basis we get this kind of biological impulse to bond, and animals have the same impulse to bond with us,” says University of Alberta anthropologist Robert Losey, who studies the historical relationship between dogs and humans.

But where does that unique symbiosis begin, one that has long involved even the sharing of parasites and certain diseases? According to Losey, the biochemical bonding impulse is only one part of the story. His own research is focused on teasing out the cultural forces over time that have made dogs and humans such a good fit.

Source: Researcher explores close prehistoric relationship between humans and dogs