What a gray and miserable day

[conuly]

I love it in principle, but I'm no more chipper than I was yesterday, when it was so hot I melted.

Why Can’t Apes Talk?

Decoding the Unusual Shape of the Nepali Flag

Decades after a Nobel Prize snub, Jocelyn Bell Burnell's just won $3 million for her work

There’s a WWII-Era Submarine Stuck in the New Jersey Mud

Quantum weirdness in 'chicken or egg' paradox

Can good teaching be taught?

The big squeeze

Past goose-steppers proud of place in North Korean parades

Trump tells supporters it'll be 'your fault' if he gets impeached

Gun Owners More Likely To Vote Than Non-Gun Owners

Comments

[greghousesgf]

what about those chimps and gorillas that sign?

[stardreamer]

Frankly, that article didn't impress me. ISTR reading many years ago that the capacity to produce verbal speech was mediated by a different part of the brain than the capacity to understand and make the concepts of speech, and that this is why some stroke patients lose the ability to speak but not to read and write. the specific section of the brain involved is called Broca's Area, and IIRC apes don't have anything corresponding to it. This is why, although their oral structures are perfectly capable of producing verbal speech, they don't. Signing isn't mediated by Broca's Area.

[conuly]

More controversial than you think. Not a few fluent speakers of ASL have complained that the apes are not producing grammatically possible phrases in ASL and that, often, people are seeing what they want to see with regards to signs in the first place.

(Of course, if the researchers are themselves not fluent in ASL, who knows where it starts?)

[greghousesgf]

I didn't say anything about it being controversial one way or the other. I do think it was kind of odd that there would be no reference at all to it in that article.

[spikethemuffin]

How is the foot?

[conuly]

Better!

...but I slept funny and now my shoulder really aches.

[spikethemuffin]

In my family, we express sympathy for aches and pains, then offer the following advice with the most deadpan expression possible: "You should kill them all."

That sounds like it sucks, and I'm sorry. You should kill them all.

[marahmarie]

"Gun Owners More Likely To Vote Than Non-Gun Owners"

*hums Come As You Are*

Seriously, how the heck did they arrive at that conclusion? Nevermind... *reads article*

OK, so:

University of Kansas researchers analyzed data from the General Social Survey between 1972 through 2012 and found that gun owners are more likely to register to vote and more likely to vote in presidential elections than non-gun owners. (Those findings, which were presented at the American Political Science Association in August, have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.)

Not more likely to vote in mid-terms, I see *almost collapses from relief*

But yeah, if that's so then this will be a serious problem come 2020.

Not to nitpick (because who knows how they figured this out) but I kinda take umbrage with "more likely to register to vote", as well: aren't more Dems registered than Republicans in most areas of the country?

[conuly]

Well, gun ownership doesn't only fall along D/R lines.

[marahmarie]

Is there any credible research (I wonder; no need to answer this question yourself) if gun owners tend to lean more conservative (even if they are registered to vote as D or whatever)? I understand my head's filled with bleak stereotypes of beard-stroking, gun-toting, Bible-bearing, terbacca-chewing whomevers MAGA-ing it up at the polls but I just wonder if there's any credence to that idea, after all (or if, more pointedly, I'm just trippin').