A Happy New Year!

Eating Dirt

On every continent with the exception of Antarctica, there are people who snack on chalk, loam or marl. But it's only now that scientists are gradually beginning to understand what force brings them to do this. Whether people are eating loam from natural sources or buying "healing clay" at the drugstore and eating it, they are clearly following some ancient craving that has been shaped over the course of evolution.
It is not only humans who indulge in a bit of dirt every now and then parrots, cattle, rats, elephants and chimpanzees also partake.Even prehistoric man shared this passion for eating earth an archaeological dig in Africa uncovered powdered loam that had clearly been used as marching rations two million years ago. But the question remains: why?(more from Spiegel)

Ugly Monkey's foreplay lasts longer

Male macaques exchange grooming for the right to mate with females whose fur they have cleaned, a study has found.The researchm by Michael Gumert, of the Division of Psychology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and colleagues, has been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behaviour.
"I found that the amount of grooming a male performs on a female during a sexual interaction is related to the supply/demand ratio of females per male around the male-female pair at the time of the grooming," says Gumert.
Put another way, male monkeys - especially lower status ones - have to groom more to get more action when fewer females are around.The activity often sexually excites the monkeys, particularly the males, so many scientists suspect it evolved into foreplay in humans.(more on monkey sex)

Automated retrieval center previously known as Library

The University of Utah's main library is quickly evolving from a simple repository of paper into a place for people to gather in a variety of settings, both noisy and quiet, crowded and solitary. This massive reallocation of space is made possible without storing any volumes off-site, but with the installation of a $12 million compact book storage system, known as an automated retrieval center. Cutting-edge technology will free up to 80,000 square feet at one of Utah's most intensively used buildings, the J. Willard Marriott Library. The 2 million volume system is North America's largest automated retrieval center and other universities are calling Marriott officials for guidance to build such systems at their libraries(via raw feed)

Cutting the First Christmas Tree in Riga

Forest rangers in Latvia say they are being overwhelmed by large numbers of people illegally cutting down Christmas trees near the capital Riga.
The number of wild Christmas trees is dwindling fast in the city's protected forest, the rangers say.The rangers say they are catching at least 20 people daily - but do not have enough staff to catch everyone. Latvians are allowed to cut down trees in designated national forest, 50km (31 miles) from Riga.
Eastern European history is uncertain whether Riga, Latvia can be appropriately credited with the first decorated tree that started this Christmas tradition.
The most common legend about the first Christmas tree is about Martin Luther, and his walk through a forest in Riga, where he spied the stars shining through the prickly boughs of an evergreen tree. Supposedly, Martin Luther brought the tree home and decorated it with candles to simulate the effect of stars. Or to explain to his children how stars twinkled. Or maybe he decorated it with lights in order to illustrate the “majesty of Christ’s birth.” This may or may not have occurred in 1510. And it may or may not have occurred in Riga, or even Latvia (maybe Germany).
The sources that attribute Latvia with having begun the Christmas tree tradition seem to be mainly PR websites for Latvian tourism or derived from a similar source
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Borat and Wine tasting in Ein Hod

Wine tasting in Ein Hod on Saturday at LevendelBloch. I hope to have half the fun Borat had.

Giblets in your chicken soup and Second Avenue Deli

In fact, the moments I was most acutely conscious of my Jewish identity were the Christmas Eves I spent at the Second Avenue Deli, a place where Jews congregated to huddle against the alienating loneliness of a Christmas-song-saturated city. "Silent Night" for us was a noisy night of chomping and slurping, a steamy communion with the matzo ball soup that so far surpassed the neon yellow concoctions of the theme-park Jewish delis on Broadway. There was something so pure and unalloyed about the ethereally pale essence of the Second's soup and the perfect texture of its matzo balls—not too fluffy, not too dense, just chewy and grainy enough—which has been the subject of more Talmudic disputation than many salient Torah passages.

(by Ron Rosenbaum from Slate)

Oscar Emmanuel Peterson (15 August 1925 – 23 December 2007)

Jazz lovers around the world are mourning a legendary pianist.
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Oscar Peterson Trio Live at Newport