Tag: study

My New English Translation of the Yijing!

UK: Honouring Richard Hunn – My Finished Translation of the Book of Change! (4.5.2026)

I was studying the reading (interpretation) of ancient and traditional Chinese ideograms with my teacher – Richard Hunn (1949-2006) – between 1989 and 2006 (as a private student). An offshoot of this was the mastering of the modern (simplified) Chinese text and its corresponding “pinyin” (spell-hear) phonetic alphabet. Since 1949, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has worked wonders reversing the 90% illiteracy-rate and turning it completely around. Today, throughout the entirety of China (a big place) around 90% of the people are literate with some elderly and/or disabled people suffering various (understandable) barriers to being able to read and write. In these cases, various literate citizens are tasked with reading and writing for these individuals – so as to ensure that all their rights are fully pursued and applied under the 1956 Socialist Constitution (and its various updates and improvements).

Continue reading

The explosion of complex life may have occurred four million years earlier than previously thought. © Xiaodong Wang

China: The Origins of Complex Life Pushed Back to Before the Cambrian! (6.4.2026)

Associate Professor Fan Wei, a leader of the group, says, “After years of fieldwork, we finally found several sites with the right conditions where animal fossils are preserved together with abundant algae.”

Unlike most Ediacaran sites, where organisms are preserved as impressions in sandstone, the Jianchuan fossils are preserved as thin carbon-rich films. This is type of preservation is more typical of famous Cambrian sites such as the Burgess Shale in Canada.

This exceptional preservation reveals anatomical details rarely seen in Ediacaran fossils, including feeding structures, digestive systems and organs used for movement.

Associate Professor Ross Anderson, a co-author of the study from the Oxford Universities Museum of Natural History, says, “Our results indicate that the apparent absence of these complex animal groups from other Ediacaran sites may reflect differences in preservation rather than true biological absence.”

“Carbonaceous compressions like those at Jiangchuan are rare in rocks of this age, meaning that similar communities may simply not have been preserved elsewhere.”

Continue reading

Ancient Seafaring Scaffolding from the Time of Henry VIII!

Brixham: “What’s this Scaffolding? It’s a Feature”! (29.3.2029)

Of course, as The Beatles once reminded us “Nothing is Real!” – in the hyper-extension of capitalism that is “the holiday”. It is a time of no work (unless you are on a working holiday – we’ve all been there – labour in exchange for ten-minutes on a beach), no struggle, and comfortable living – but this week or two takes around 50-weeks of hard graft just to raise the deposit. When I was in Spain, I once witnessed an Englishman arrive with his case at our holiday resort – returning after just two or three weeks after his last visit. His previous sojourn had been “magical” in his own words and he had gone home, re-mortgaged the house, and rebooked in exactly the same Benidorm hotel! The problem was that no one else he had stayed with had rebooked – and none of the staff could remember who he was!

Continue reading

Illustration showing Archaeopteryx in life, including its tertial feathers that would have helped it fly. Credit: Michael Rothman. Click image to enlarge.

US: Ongoing Analysis of – Archaeopteryx Fossil – Continues to Proves Darwin Right! (21.3.2026)

Differences in modern birds

Modern birds evolved shorter upper arm bones and specialized tertial feathers to close this gap.

Remarkably, the Chicago specimen of Archaeopteryx shows it had long tertial feathers too – something unseen in its flightless dinosaur relatives.

“Our specimen is the first Archaeopteryx that was preserved and prepared in such a way that we can see its long tertial feathers,” she noted.

These feathers, absent in closely related non-avian dinosaurs, suggest those creatures couldn’t fly.

“That tells us… Archaeopteryx could,” O’Connor added. “This also adds to evidence that suggests dinosaurs evolved flight more than once – which I think is super exciting.”

Continue reading

My Revolutionary Clobber!

Cuba: My Study of Che Guevara’s Work! (27.2.2026)

Oddly, Audible, despite hosting some fairly right-wing and far-right tomes – to its credit – it also hosts Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara (amongst others). Yes – some are bourgeois aberrations – but others are straight from the original ideological source material and convey clear Socialist and Communist thinking. So far – so good. Recently, whilst carrying-out my academic work of translating ancient Chinese texts into English – I play audio-books in the background – so I can continue to “learn” whilst working. This is how, over the last three-months, I made an effort to study the Cuban Revolutionary experience. This came about after I had a conversation (a few years ago) with a Spanish man now living in Sutton – who surprised me when he said he had no interest in China or the USSR – but rather the Central and South American experience. This got me thinking – as I used to generally integrate all these movements – assuming they were different aspects of the 1917 Russian Revolution (which of course they are). The point is that different ethno-centric experiences abound – even if we are political allies all heading in the same ideological direction.

Continue reading

A device called a cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT) pacemaker, can switch the heart’s fuel from sugar to fat after only two minutes, a study has found.

Oxford: CTC Pacemaker Could Help Reverse Heart Failure Symptoms by Switching Heart’s Fuel from Sugar to Fat! (21.1.2026)

Professor Neil Herring, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Oxford, said: “The size of the improvement we’ve seen in the hearts in our study in response to CRT is remarkable. The slowing down of electrical signals in the heart, in some people who have heart failure, may mean the signal for the heart to use fat for fuel is lost, and their heart switches to using glucose instead. A pacemaker restores the “use fat for fuel” message through fixing the signalling problem as it regulates the heart. This then helps the heart to start to recover. 

Continue reading

1 2 3 … 11