Friday Night Miscellany

Hola Darlings! Right to it tonight -- Is there really Aramaic writing (in Hebrew letters) on the Shroud of Turin? A Vatican researcher, Barbara Frale, told Vatican Radio July 26 that her own studies suggest the letters on the shroud were written more than 1,800 years ago. The article goes on to say that Frale, who is a researcher at the Vatican Secret Archives, has written a new book on the shroud and the Knights Templar, the medieval crusading order which, she says, may have held secret custody of the Shroud of Turin during the 13th and 14th centuries.She told Vatican Radio that she has studied the writings on the shroud in an effort to find out if the Knights had written them."When I analyzed these writings, I saw that they had nothing to do with the Templars because they were written at least 1,000 years before the Order of the Temple was founded" in the 12th century, she said. Okay... Can culture be embedded in DNA? A study using Zebra finches says "yes." Hmmmm, maybe -- I'd like to read more about this. Where is it? Cf. every bit of information in David Shenk's "The Genius in All of Us" blog. I respect David Shenk's opinion. He is a man who knows how to thoroughly research and submerge himself in a subject. Among other best-selling books, Mr. Shenk wrote THE IMMORTAL GAME: A History of Chess-- or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Art, Science and the Human Brain. This is, bar none, the best non-fiction book on chess I've read. An interesting article about intra-species communication (specifically - bees) when brought together from opposite ends of the world. Why can't people do this? We are supposed to be at the top of the "evolutionary scale", aren't we???