M.J. Rose

I bet you haven’t heard of the Senegambian stone circles.

So, what are they?

The Senegambian Stone Circles are various stone circles that are spread over thousands of miles in both Senegal and the Gambia.

It seems that every continent has its ancient secrets. No one is sure exactly how old these things are…

Senegambian stone circles

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“The stones were erected around the eighth century on top of earlier graves. The ten to twenty-four stones in each circle vary in size up to ten-ton stones, from 1 to 2.5 metres high and are generally of laterite. The stones mark burials and were erected before the twelfth century. There are around 1,000 stone circles, the biggest concentration being more than 1,000 stones in fifty-two circles at Djalloumbéré and those around the village of Wassu, which has a museum devoted to them. One notable circle is actually a V formation. Traditionally, for unknown reasons, people leave small rocks on the stones. The use to which the stones were put is not clear but recent excavation work (2006), reported by the National Geographic Society, suggests a funerary purpose given the large number of human remains found at the sites. Archaeologists at the site are pursuing the theory that different parts of a body were buried at different sites and at different times…” (The rest is here.)

For more info on these mysterious circles, click here.

What was it like before we had single serving receptacles at our disposal as simple as the common paper cup? Such objects are taken for granted to the point where they seem invisible, and yet the significance of such objects is legion…

The Unnatural History of the Dixie Cup

The man called Alan Turing was certainly a genius: He foresaw the power and influence of computers – as well as how they would work. He also lived a life of persecution for being a homosexual, he was eventually arrested and forced into chemical “castration”. They say he committed suicide by lacing an apple with cyanide (his favorite story was Snow White and The Seven Dwarves.)

But the most interesting thing about Turing is that he was the first person to ask the question: Will machines someday be able to think like humans? And if so, will they be victims of prejudice too?

The Turing Problem

from RadioLab

“100 years ago this year, the man who first conceived of the computer age was born. His name was Alan Turing. He was also a math genius, a hero of World War II and he is widely considered to be the father of artificial intelligence. But the world wasn’t kind to Alan Turing. In 1952, he was arrested and convicted under a British law that prohibited “acts of gross indecency between men, in public or private.”