“Education is only a ladder to gather fruit from the tree of knowledge, not the fruit itself”.



It's getting summery out there and the Epistream is feeling a bit fruity.


Bananas don't grow on trees you know.

The banana plant is in fact, a giant herb. Bananas are it's giant berries.

A herb is defined as "any plant with a fleshy, rather than woody stem, which, after the plant has bloomed and set seed, dies down to the ground." The exceptions to this rule are: sage, thyme and rosemary, which have woody stems. With bananas, as the above ground section of the plant dies, a new stem forms a little along the root. This means that over a few years, the plant will appear to "walk".

Bananas are native to Malaya and have been cultivated for over 10,000 years. Wild bananas can still be found in South-East Asia. They have large seeds, a small amount of flesh and are pollinated by bats.

Most banana plants haven't had sex for the past 10,000 years either. Pretty much every banana we eat has been propagated by hand. As a result, bananas are extremely susceptible to disease. Many species have already succumbed to fungal infections like black Sigatoka and Panama disease. In fact, unless a genetically modified version is developed soon, bananas may actually become extinct.

As the most profitable export crop in the world, this would have major ramifications. The industry is worth about $12 billion annually, give or take. It also supports about 400 million people, the vast majority of whom live well below the bread line.

• Europe's largest producer of this tropical fruit is..... Iceland. The bananas are grown in huge greenhouses, heated by geothermal water, two degrees below the Arctic Circle.

Berries are defined as a "fleshy fruit containing several seeds."

Strawberries, raspberries and blackberries are not berries but 'aggregated drupes'. A drupe is a fleshy fruit containing a single stone or pit.

These are called aggregated drupes because each individual fruit is actually a cluster of mini-drupes, the characteristic bumpy bits which make up blackberries and raspberries. Each of these drupelets contain an individual seed.

Peaches, plums, nectarines and olives are drupes. As is a coconut, the world largest drupe, which is known as a "dry drupe" because of it's hard flesh.

Tomatoes, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, watermelons, kiwi fruit, cucumbers, grapes, passion fruit, papaya, peppers and bananas are all actually berries.

Blueberries are berries. Selected pseudonym for the blueberry are: bleaberries, bilberries, whortleberries, huckleberries, hurtleberries, myrtleberries and trackleberries.

Fruity Facts:

Apples and Pears

Cultivated apples all descend from wild crab apples that grow in Northern Europe, Asia, and America.

Apple trees can grow up to 40 feet (12 meters) high.

The U.S. crop of apples is about 4,427,000 metric tons per year.

Pear trees can grow to 60 feet (18 meters) and may be as old as 300 years.

Pear wood is hard and can be used to make furniture.

Apple wood is soft and is sometimes used to make decorative in-lays on wooden furniture.

Oranges, Lemons, and Limes

Orange trees first grew in China.

Oranges were taken to Europe by Arab traders more than 1,000 years ago.

A medium-sized orange contains the amount of vitamin C that a healthy adult should eat daily.

Lemons, oranges, and limes are all citrus fruits. Their juices contain citric acid.

Grated lemon peel is called zest an is sometimes used as flavoring in baking and in candies.

British sailors were given lime juice to keep them from getting a disease called scurvy (malnutrition illness caused by a lack of certain vitamins). British sailors were often called “Limeys” because of this.

Bananas


There are more than 100 varieties of bananas, some even have red skin.

Bananas have high levels of sugars, starch, and vitamins A and C.

Banana ash is used to make soap.

Pineapples

The name pine-apple was the original name for a pine cone (grows on pine trees). Because the fruit pineapple looked like a huge pine cone, it too was called a pine-apple.

Pineapples contain an enzyme that is used in blood tests.

Fibers in pineapple leaves are used to make rope and a cloth called pino.

Pineapples are related to rainforest plants called bromeliads.

Strawberries and Raspberries

The strawberry probably got its name originally from the Anglo-Saxon word streawberige, which means “spreading berry.”

Most raspberries are red, but some varieties are white, yellow, or black.

Raspberries may have been named after a 16th century French wine called raspis.

Raspberries used to be called hindberries.

Peaches, Apricots, Cherries, and Plums

Peaches and apricots and rich in vitamins A and C.

Apricots were first grown in China more than 4,000 years ago.

The wild plum of Northern Europe is the sloe. Sloes have small, hard, bitter fruit. The sloe fruit is used to make a type of alcoholic beverage called sloe gin.

Round cherry pits were used to play games such as marbles.

Almonds are the nutlike seeds from a fruit that looks like a green apricot.

Berries Blackberry juice was used to dye cloth navy blue and indigo.

Black currants are rich in vitamins C and B.

Currant juice can be used to soothe sore throats and colds.

Pemmican is a Native American cake of dried meat flavored with dried currants. (For a modern recipe see Snack in the Saddle Again).

The gooseberry is called the “mackeral currant” in French because gooseberry sauce is served with mackerel, a type of fish.

Melons

Watermelons are related to climbing plants that probably came from tropical Africa.

Melons can grow to 40 pounds (18 kilograms) or more.

Vine fruits Grapes were grown by the ancient Egyptians more than 6,000 years ago.

Passion fruits were first grown in Brazil.

Kiwi plants were first grown in China.

Kiwis were once known as Chinese gooseberries.

Some Mediterranean Fruits

Olive trees can live for more than 1,500 years.

Figs were one of the fruit most often eaten by the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Soft dates contain saccharine, which is sometimes used as a sugar substitute for diabetics.

“Man is more ape than many of the apes.” - Friedrich Nietzsche



Regardless of what you may or may not think you know about human evolution; we definitely did not evolve from apes.

No, I'm not touting the creationist fairytale.


We human beings, or Homo Sapiens Sapiens to be exact, share a common ancestor with apes. This is the elusive 'missing link', whom you've probably heard about before. All we really know about this famous intermediary is that he lived in the Pliocene era, more than five million years ago, and that he descended from squirrel-esque tree-shrew. Who, in turn, evolved from hedgehogs and before that, starfish.

Our closest relative is the chimpanzee and a comparison of our respective genomes shows that we split far more recently than previously thought. This would raise the possibility of interbreeding between early humans and chimps, resulting in a hybrid species which is now extinct. The final separation between the two species occurred just under five and a half million years ago.

Described by Stephen Jay Gould as a "recent African twig on the bushy tree of human evolution", it is most feasible that Homo Sapiens Sapiens indeed has it's roots in Africa. Genetic evidence suggests that the first human population outside Africa were the Andaman islanders. The islands lie off the cost of India and the indigenous population has been isolated for over 60,000 years. Even longer than Australia's aborigines.

Less than 400 Andamanese survive today, divided into two tribes. These tribes are the Jarawa and the Sentinelese. In fact, the hundred or so Sentinelese are so isolated that no-one has ever even studied the language. The other Andamanese languages don't have any known relatives either.

They only have five numbers. Rather, they only really have five 'concepts' of numbers. These are: 'one', 'two', 'one more', 'some more' and 'all'. Nonetheless, they have twelve distinct words to describe the different stages of ripening fruit and two of these are impossible to translate into English.

The Andamanese are one of the only two tribes in the world that cannot make fire. The other are a tribe of African pygmies called the Ake. Instead of making fire, they have developed an elaborate system for keeping and transporting embers in clay pots. These fires have been kept alive for thousands of years, probably having been started by ancient lightening strikes.

As alien as all this sounds, they do share some remarkable similarities with Western civilisation. In particular, their concept of God. Their principle deity's called Puluga. He's invisible, immortal and omnipresent. He's also responsible for creating everything, except evil. He has a big problem with sin but offers great comfort to those in despair. Oh, and he also sent a great flood to punish man's wrongdoing.

Strangely enough, the 2004 tsunami hit the Andaman Islands with it's full force but, as far as recent study has been able to ascertain, left the ancient Andamanese peoples unharmed.

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." - Mark Twain


Cat's are clever.

They've got that 'knowing' vibe about them.

They've also got some pretty amazing hidden talents.

In 1987, a paper in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association studied the cases of 132 cats that had fallen from New York apartments. The average height of the fall was about five and a half storeys and 90% of the precarious pussy cats survived. The range in injuries they suffered followed quite an interesting trend. As perhaps anticipated, the severity of the injuries rose in proportion to the number of storeys they fell. Up to the seventh floor. Above the seventh floor, the number and severity of the injuries to each cat dropped dramatically. So, as a rule, the further the cat falls, the better it's chances actually are.

There are records of cat's falling from more than 30 storeys without injury. In fact, one cat is noted as having survived a 46 storey fall. The record for moggy mettle, however, must be held by the poor pussy thrown 800 feet (244 metres) from a Cessna light aircraft, deliberately. Why some sick S.O.B thought this was a good idea, I don't know. Needless to say, this is not an experiment to be repeated.

As with a lot of small animals, cat's have a non-fatal terminal velocity. It's about 60mph. Once they relax a bit, get orientated and spread themselves out, they can parachute back to earth a bit like a flying squirrel.

Terminal velocity is the speed at which a body's weight equates to air resistance and it stops accelerating. This point occurs at around 120mph for humans and takes about 1,800 feet (550 metres) of free fall.

In 1944, Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade leaped from the tail of his burning Lancaster bomber and fell 19,000 feet (5800 metres). His fall was luckily broken by a pine tree and a well placed snow drift. He was found totally unharmed, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette.

Vesna Vulovic fell a whopping 34,777 feet (10,600 metres) when a terrorist bomb ripped apart her Yugoslavian Airlines DC-10 in 1972. She broke both legs and suffered some spinal damage but her life was saved by her seat and the toilet booth it was attached to.


Cat Facts:

• Both humans and cats have identical regions in the brain responsible for emotion.

• A cat's brain is more similar to man's brain than that of a dog.

• The cat's clavicle, or collarbone, does not connect with other bones but is buried in the muscles of the shoulder region. This lack of a functioning collarbone allows them to fit through any opening the size of their head.

• Cats have 32 muscles that control the outer ear (compared to humans, 6 muscles each). A cat can rotate its ears independently 180 degrees, and can turn in the direction of sound 10 times faster than those of the best watchdog.

• A cat sees about 6 times better than a human at night, and needs 1/6 the amount of of light that a human does - it has a layer of extra reflecting cells which absorb light.

• Recent studies have shown that cats can see blue and green. There is disagreement as to whether they can see red.

• Blue-eyed, pure white cats are frequently deaf.

• Cats have a special scent organ located in the roof of their mouth, called the Jacobson's organ. It analyzes smells - and is the reason why you will sometimes see your cat "sneer" (called the flehmen response or flehming) when they encounter a strong odor.

• Cats purr at the same frequency as an idling diesel engine, about 26 cycles per second.

• Domestic cats purr both when inhaling and when exhaling.

• The cat's front paw has 5 toes, but the back paws have 4. Some cats are born with as many as 7 front toes and extra back toes (polydactl).

• Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway was one of the more famous lovers of polydactyl cats, after being first given a six-toed cat by a ship's captain. Upon Hemingway's death in 1961, his former home in Key West, Florida, became a museum and a home for his cats, and it currently houses approximately fifty descendants of his cats (about half of which are polydactyl). Because of his love for these animals, Hemingway cat, or simply Hemingway, is a slang term which has come to describe polydactyls.

• A domestic cat can sprint at about 31 miles per hour.

• Cat's urine glows under a black light.

• Cats lose almost as much fluid in the saliva while grooming themselves as they do through urination.

• The domestic cat is the only species able to hold its tail vertically while walking. You can also learn about your cat's present state of mind by observing the posture of his tail.

“You don't have to have a professor's dome, Not to go for the honey when the bee's at home” – Berlin Irving


Bees are pretty damned impressive you know. Aside from all of the little tidbits about bees that were covered in the last installment of the Epistream, that bolster out own intelligence with useless facts, we never even touched on the Bees' vast intellect.

OK, maybe vast is a bit strong.

But, did you know that it was Bees who first worked out that the world was round?

Take that Columbus.

Bees have quite a complex language system. They communicate through buzzing and "waggle dancing", passing on important information about the location of the best nectar.

We've identified a few distinct types of buzz and have even managed to link these to specific actions or activities.

• 'Fanning', to cool the hive: a steady 250 beats per second
  
• 'Danger', progressively louder, followed by a series of pulses at 500 beats per second to signal the 'all clear'.
• 'Piping', high pitched chirrup by a new-born queen.
• 'Quarking', the response to 'piping' from the queen's unhatched sisters. The new queen uses this 'quark' to locate them and, as there can only be one queen, kill each and every one.

Bees use their legs to hear, picking up the vibrations from the hive. Their antennae, as well as having chemical receptors to 'smell', may also be covered in small, eardrum-like plates. This would explain why workers touch a bees thorax with their antennae during the "waggle dance", rather than touch the "waggling" abdomen. They're hearing rather than seeing directions to the nectar. Which makes sense, as it's probably pretty dark in a hive.

There was a theory that bees buzzed by using the fourteen spiracles (breathing holes on their sides) in much the same way as a trumpeter uses the valves on his trumpet. However, entomologists from the University of California bunged up the holes, scientifically speaking, and the bees still buzzed. Now, the theory is that buzzing is caused by the vibration of beating wings, amplified by the thorax. Clipping a bees wings doesn't stop the buzzing but does change it's timbre.

The purpose of all this bee chatter is essentially to tell one another where the good nectar is. The reference point for this direction is the Sun. What's really smart is that they can do this when it's overcast or dark by calculating the position of the Sun on the other side of the Earth.

So, despite having a brain that's one and a half million times smaller than our own, bees can learn and store this information. In terms of neurons, humans have somewhere between 100 and 200 billion whereas a bees brain has 950,000 neurons.

Honeybees have a built-in map of the Sun's movements across the sky for a 24 hour period and can adapt it to local conditions very quickly. They make all decisions about where to fly within 5 seconds.

They're also more sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field than any other creature, using it to navigate and make the honeycomb panels of their hive. If you were to put a strong magnet next to a young hive, the bees would construct a cylindrical comb unlike anything found in nature.

• The temperature inside a hive is a steady 37 degrees, the same as the human body.
• The Queen produces an enzyme that stops the other bees developing ovaries.
• It takes the entire lifetime of 12 bees to make a teaspoon full of honey.
• They can cover about seven and a half miles in a single trip and will do this several times a day.
• A single bee would have to fly the equivalent of twice round the world to make a pound of honey.
  

"Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it, so it goes on flying anyway." Mary Kay Ash


While writing the last instalment of the Epistream, I suddenly realised that I had a distinct Hymenoptera knowledge deficiency.

I know, I know, I'm gutted. Don't tell anyone, but I didn't even know what Hymenoptera were.

Having sorted that out now, I'm glad to be able to share a bit more about these interesting insects and put the heinous oversight behind me. So, here is everything you'll ever want to know about them. Apart from how to get rid of them.

Ok, here goes.

Hymenoptera:

* One of the larger insect order, comprising the sawfly, wasp, bee and ant.
* The name refers to the membranous wings of the insects. It's derived from the Ancient Greek words 'humen' (ὑμήν), meaning membrane, and 'pteron' (πτερόν), meaning wing. Their hind wings are connected to their forewings by a series of hooks called hamuli.
* Females typically have a special ovipositor for inserting eggs into hosts. The ovipositor often evolves into their sting.
* The young develop through metamorphosis. That is, they have a worm-like larval stage and an inactive pupal stage before reaching maturity.
* Hymenoptera originated in the Triassic period, the oldest fossils belonging to the family Xyeldae. Social hymenopterans appeared during the Cretaceous.

The order divides into two sub-categories: the Symphyta (sawflies) and the Apocryta (wasps, bees and ants).

Symphyta

* Sawfly adults look like wasps, except they don't have a waist.
* They don't have a sting either.
* They don't form social groups like bees and ants but their larvae do stay together for the defence.
* The females have a special egg-laying tool, a bit like a saw funnily enough, to cut through leaf tissue.
* Sawfly larvae are caterpillar-ish, with five or more abdominal prolegs.


Apocryta

* Apocryta are far more diverse than Symphyta.
* They have one common characteristic - a waist.
* They live in a highly organized group and each member are divided into castes.
* A special genetic configuration (haploid-diploid sex determination, don't you know) leads to this social behaviour.
* Other behaviors that are only found in this order include: their precise navigation skill and communication capacity. All bees, wasps and ants can return to their nest after travelling kilometres away and can tell the others where to go.
* The main difference between bees and wasps is: bees feed their larvae on honey, which is a mixture of pollen and nectar, whereas wasps feed their larvae on meat (mostly paralysed arthropods).


Bee Facts:

* There are more than 2000 different species of bee in the world, but only four of them produce honey.
* Bees cruise at about 15 mph but can hit speeds of up to 20 mph.
* They never sleep.
* When flying, a bee will beat its wings about 180 times per minute.
* The chemical that makes a bee sting itch is called mellitin.
* A bee sees 300 frames per second.
* According to fossil records, bees first appeared on earth about 150 million years ago.


Bumble Bees:

* Unlike honeybees, bumblebees only produce enough honey to feed their young.
* The drone (male) bumblebee doesn't have a sting.
* Despite their size, bumblebees are far less aggressive than honeybees and will usually never attack unless they feel threatened.
* Unlike a honeybee, if a bumblebee does use its sting, it won't die or lose it.


Honey Bees:

* Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
* A full pollen load weighs about 1/6th of the weight of a bee.
* A full load of nectar weighs about ½ the weight of a bee.
* The oldest known record of human interest in honeybees is a drawing on cave wall in eastern Spain, which is about 8,000-11,000 years old. It depicts a man climbing a ladder to collect honey from a nest. Similar drawings have also been found in caves in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
* Ancient records show that beekeeping originated about 6,000 years ago in both China and Egypt.
* Honey Bees have pollen baskets on their legs. They're called 'corbicula'.
* The average worker bee will fly approximately 500 miles before it wears out and dies.
* A Queen has to eat 80 times her own weight to produce 2,000 eggs per day.
* A bee will visit 50-100 flowers during one trip.
* Honey can range in colour from white to gold to dark brown. It's usually a stronger tasting honey when its colour is darker.
* A bee must tap 2 million flowers to make 1lb of honey and would have to fly 55,000 miles to get it.
* One bee will make 0.8g (1/10 of a teaspoon) of honey during its lifetime.
* Mead is made from fermented honey.
* Drambuie is also made from honey.



Wasp Facts:

* There are almost 300 species of wasps in the British Isles alone.
* Only the female wasp stings.
* Wasps, unlike bees, do not die after stinging.
* There are 3 groups of classification for wasps - parasitic, social and solitary.
* Only the Queen wasp survives the winter, by hibernating.
* The common wasp makes her nest from chewed and pulped wood, a bit like paper.
* Parasitic wasps do not build their own nest but use plants, caterpillars and other beasties to host their eggs
* Some parasitic wasps are bright green or blue.


Ants Facts:

* Ants don't sleep.
* When the queen ant dies, so does the entire colony, because no new workers are born.
* The study of ants is called Myrmecology.
* For every human in the world there are one million ants.
* The brain of an ant has about 250,000 brain cells. [There's about a hundred billion in a human brain. Collectively, a colony's hive mind can approach this.]
* An ant's sense of smell is just as good as a dog's is.
* Ants can lift, with their mouths, an object up to fifty times their body-weight and carry it over their heads.
* A leaf-cutter ant queen mates only once before establishing a new colony. She can then keep the sperm viable for up to 15 years and produce as many as 300 million offspring.
* Fire ants first entered the United States about 1918, near Mobile, Alabama and reached Mississippi around 1930.
* Unlike other ants, which bite and then spray acid on the wound, fire ants only bite to get a grip, then sting from the abdomen and inject toxic alkaloid venom called Solenopsin. The sensation is similar to being burned by fire. Thus, Fire Ant

"The only source of knowledge is experience." Albert Einstein


My mother didn't raise a fool you know.

If you tell me there are fairies at the bottom of your garden, I'm going to remain sceptical.
I need to see that kind of thing for myself.

I never thought I'd like sprouts. I was a sucker and fell for the old, "don't knock it til you've tried it". Thus confirming what I already thought I knew.

I have, on a few occasions, burned myself. Not intentionally, of course, but accidents happen. This has given me a pretty solid understanding of the relationship between heat, touch and pain. Enough of an understanding that I no longer need to touch it to know it.

Pain is a tricky one though. Sure, the root of knowledge may well be in experience, but I'm willing to go out on a limb and take someone's word for it every once in a while. I guess that all depends how intent you are on knowing things for yourself. Some folk are just that bit more die-hard I suppose.

Cue American entomologist Justin O. Schmidt...

The Schmidt Sting Pain Index or the Justin O. Schmidt Pain Index is a scale rating the relative pain caused by different Hymenopteran stings. (Hymenoptera are a large order of insects including bees, wasps and ants.) Bet you can tell where this is going, huh?

His original paper, published in 1984, was an effort to categorise and compare the haemolytic properties (involving the distruction of red blood cells) of insect venom. For this paper, he created an index. Starting at 0 for stings that are completely ineffective against humans, progressed through 2, a familiar pain such as a common bee or wasp sting, and finished at 4 for the most painful stings. In his conclusion, he offered some descriptions of the most painful examples... " Paraponera Clavata stings induced immediate, excruciating pain and numbness to pencil-point pressure, as well as trembling in the form of a totally uncontrollable urge to shake the affected part." Now, that stikes me as a man talking from experience.

Schmidt has since refined his scale, culminating in a paper published in 1990 which classifies the stings of 78 species and 41 genera of Hymenoptera.

Again, Schmidt described some of the experiences in vivid detail:

• 1.0 Sweat Bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
• 1.2 Fire Ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
• 1.8 Bullhorn Acacia Ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
• 2.0 Bald-faced Hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
• 2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W.C. Fields extinguishing his cigar on your tongue.
• 2.x Honet Beeand European Hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
• 3.0 Red Harvester Ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
• 3.0 Paper Wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
  
• 4.0 Tarantula Hawk: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.
• 4.0+ Bullet Ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

OK....

That static shock from walking across shag carpet and touching the light switch, I get. It's a pretty universal example. I'll even buy being asked to imagine W.C. Fields stubbing his cigar out on my tongue. I haven't experienced it but it's within my imagining. However, I for one have never mashed my hand in a revolving door. But, this could well be the man that has, purely in the name of science.

Anyway, I'm going to take this guy's word for it.

There are issues with this though. For starters, this is the kind of person that describes a Sweat Bee sting as "almost fruity" and a Hornet sting as "slightly crunchy". Not to mention that this is the type of selfless nutcase that gets himself stung so he can tell others how sore it is. I don't want to burst his bubble but I'm still going to try and avoid being stung anyway, no matter what it's by. And if I am stung, the knowledge that this crazy s.o.b. can empathise will provide little comfort. I'll even go out on a limb and admit that Schmidty can probably take more than me. Some folks are just a bit more into pain. I know this. I have cable TV.

Anesthesiologist Henry Knowles Beecher (1904 - 1976), while serving as an Army medical consultant on the Anzio beachhead, observed that soldiers with pretty serious wounds complained of pain much less than his postoperative patients at Massachusetts General Hospital. Beecher hypothesized that the soldier's pain was alleviated by his survival of combat and the knowledge that he could now spend a few weeks or months recovering in safety and relative comfort. The hospital patient, however, had been removed from his home environment and faced an extended period of illness and the fear of possible complications. Beecher argued that "the reaction component" made pain such a complex and individualized phenomenon that it could only be studied effectively in the clinical setting. Patients with real pain would not exhibit the same physiologic manifestations or the same responses to analgesics as experimental subjects, who knew that they were in no serious danger and that the pain would soon cease.

So, I guess Einstein was right. The only definitive source of knowledge is experience.

But can I take his word for it?

"Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice." Anton Chekhov


"Theory" is quite interesting.

A theory is essentially an explanation. An analytic tool for understanding any given subject matter, based on abstract ideas about that subject matter.

Uh... Eh?

Well, we have this concept of theory somehow not belonging to the real world. It's something that exists conceptually, rather than in reality. I just want to chuck in the word hypothetical and leave it there. But that's where I started today...

So what do we know?

I've heard of Quantum Theory. This must be different to the driving theory test. I don't remember any of the highway code being based on the principle that matter and energy have the properties of both particles and waves.

So, theory's based on informed guess work. An educated guess about the properties of matter and energy lets you build an elaborate framework of more guessing on top and then call it a theory. A bit like guessing how long it takes a car to break from 30mph if it's icy I suppose. The logic is sound enough that we feel confident in calling it a theory.

Sometimes we use the term theoretical in place of hypothetical to describe a result that is predicted by theory but has not yet been adequately tested by practical experiment. It is not entirely unheard of for a theory to produce predictions that are later found to be incorrect. By inference, a prediction proved incorrect by experiment demonstrates that the hypothesis is invalid. So does the buck stop with the theory? Was the experimental conjecture wrong and the theory failed to predict the hypothesis? This is pretty deep you know.

It feels to me a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle and finding a few pieces missing. Even without the picture on the box, it's not really a guess that you need a blue piece to fill in that bit of sky. Also, if you've got pieces with blue sky, sea and sand, the theory that you're making a beach scene is a pretty sound one. But how many little pieces do you think you'd actually need to form the basis of this theory? One piece of sea, one of sand and a nice bit of blue sky would make a solid case for beach, right? Well, there's not a red piece or a bit of sail but suppose the focus of the picture is a big red boat with white sails. Our theory may still be correct; this is the beach. But we've missed the key point. And I'm in dander of doing the same now.

Theories are great, in theory. They move thought on, passed the limitations of actual experience. You run with one until you fill in the gaps and it stops to being a theory. Like when we were thinking about ignorance, the gaps are a good thing. They inspire us to go on and learn. The beef, as usual, is with false knowledge. This is when theories can be damaging. Either they go on long enough that they're taken as fact themselves, or they are cited as evidence, forming the basis of some false knowledge.

The term "theory" is often used colloquially to refer to any explanatory thought, even fanciful or speculative ones. However, in scholarly use it is reserved for ideas which meet baseline requirements about the kinds of observations made, the methods of classification used, and the consistency of the theory in its application among members of that class. Either way, they exist to be scrutinized. They must be continually revised to conform to new observations, by restricting the class of phenomena the theory applies to or changing the assertions made.

Sometimes, scholars set aside a theory because there is no way to examine its assertions analytically. These may continue on in the popular imagination until some means of of examination is found which either refutes or lends credence to the theory. But, it does not simply turn into fact just because it's a long-standing theory. Whether it's about relativity or evolution, theories have to be a work in progress.

"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." - A. A. Milne


The Epistream flippantly glossed over a couple of major discoveries in our last installment. This was to emphasise the obscure roots of ordinary items and was quite intentional.

However, the disregard for those breakthroughs has left me wondering whether or not the case had been closed by way of false knowledge. To address this, let us look at the discovery of penicillin.

Under a microscope, the spore-bearing arms of the mould resemble tiny paintbrushes. The Latin for writer's paintbrush is penicillum, which is where we get the word pencil too.

So, Penicillin. Discovered by...?

Wrong.

Sir Alexander Fleming did receive a Nobel Prize for the re-discovery of its antibiotic qualities in 1944. Now, the top of the class will no-doubt have noticed the use of that critical prefix. The semantic argument on ones ability to re-discover, gripping as it is, will be saved for another time. The real beef here, is mould.

The earliest documented use of mould as an ingredient in healing ointments comes from the Bedouin tribes of North Africa. For over a thousand years they have exploited the antibiotic qualities of the mould that grows on their donkeys' harnesses.

1897 witnessed another triumphant act of re-discovery as French army doctor Ernest Duchesne observed Arab stable hands using the mould from damp saddles to treat saddle sores. Exactly where the stable hands re-discovered this technique from is unknown. However, Duchesne identified the mould as Penicillium Glaucum and used it to cure guinea pigs (actual guinea pigs, rather miscellaneous experimental subjects) of typhoid. He also studied it's effect on the E. coli bacteria in what was the first clinical testing of the antibiotic now known as Penicillin. This research formed the basis of his thesis, in which he advocated further study into its antibiotic implication. Sadly, the Institut Pasteur never acknowledged his work and Duchesne died of tuberculosis in 1912. Ironically, a disease that his own discovery would go on to cure.

Back to Sir Fleming...

Sir Alexander Fleming recounted that the date of his breakthrough re-discovery was the morning of Friday, September 28, 1928. Another example of fortuitous, accidental discovery, it occurred in his laboratory, nestled in the basement of St. Mary's Hospital, now part of London's Imperial College. Fleming noticed that a petri dish containing Staphylococcus culture had been mistakenly left open and was contaminated by blue-green mould. Around it was a halo of inhibited bacterial growth. He concluded that the mould must be releasing a substance that was lysing the bacteria. He grew a pure culture and (re-)discovered that it was a Penicillium mould. At the time, he identified it as Penicillium Rubrum but Charles Thom recognized it to be Penicillium notatum many years later.

Anyway, if you'd like to try your hand at a bit of re-discovering, (and who knows, you might just get a Nobel prize for it too) then here are some likely places to find penicillin...

• Brie
• Camembert
• Danish Blue
• Gorgonzola
• Limburger
• Roquefort
• Stilton

Now, I'm off to do a bit of intrepid re-discovering myself.

"The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand."
- Frank Herbert


There is just so much out there that's seemingly beyond understanding. Human behavior being top of the list. Maths too. And the natural world. It's all a massive jumble of interesting, thought provoking, question raising and frustrating facts and theories. But, this environment is a glasshouse for knowledge. A cognitive grow-bag, sprouting runners of investigation and contemplation.

Like the great swathes of empty space on Marlowe's map of the African continent, soon to be over-run with the inroads of civilisation, the more that we discover, the more questions we unearth, the more we're drawn into the Darkness.

So, Frank's right. Knowledge starts with the discovery something we don't understand. Something that our inquisitive ignorance gives room to grow, rather than truncating it with false knowledge.

There are the scientific discoveries, like X-rays and Penicillin, whose invention is synonymous with the auspicious stumblings of the technically minded. These are the kind of inventions that pose the big questions and add to societies collective knowledge. But you'll kind of, sort of, pretty much know about that already. Such is their position in modern folklore. So check them out.

Now, as you tip up the bag and let the last few crispy, salty morsels fall into your mouth, I bet you think your understanding on the subject is just about total. The empty bag, a fitting symbol of the limit of snack time discovery.

Well, it wouldn't be the Epistream if it ended there...

Lots of amazingly mundane, everyday things have been discovered by accident. And, although our understanding of crisps and silly putty may now feel absolute, this was not always the case.

I give you, the top ten discoveries that, until now, probably didn't seem too exciting!

1. Fireworks - Having originated in China about 2,000 years ago, legend has it that they were accidentally invented by a cook who mixed together charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter. I assume that these items commonplace in the kitchens of era. The mixture burned quickly and when compressed in a bamboo tube, exploded.
2. Crisps - Chef George Crum created the salty snack in 1853 at Moon's Lake House near Saratoga Springs, New York. Apparently, fed up with a customer who kept sending his fried potatoes back because they weren't crunchy enough, Crum sliced the potatoes as thin as possible, fried them in hot grease and doused them with salt. The "Saratoga Chips" became an over night success at the lodge and throughout New England. Eventually, the chips were mass-produced for home consumption, but since they were stored in barrels, they went stale very quickly. That was until the 1920s, when Laura Scudder invented the airtight bag by ironing together two pieces of waxed paper. This kept the crisps fresh for longer.
3. Play-Doh - Accidentally invented in 1955 by Joseph and Noah McVicker while trying to make a wallpaper cleaner. It was marketed a year later by toy manufacturer Rainbow Crafts. More than 700 million pounds of Play-Doh have sold since then but to this day, the recipe remains top secret.
4. Slinky - In 1943, naval engineer Richard James was in development of a spring that would support and stabilize sensitive equipment on ships. When one of the springs accidentally fell off a shelf, it continued moving, and James got the idea for a toy. His wife Betty came up with the name and the Slinky made its debut in late 1945. To date, more than 250 million Slinkys have been sold worldwide.
5. Saccharin - Accidentally discovered in 1879 by researcher Constantine Fahlberg at Johns Hopkins University. Fahlberg's discovery came after he forgot to wash his hands before lunch. He had spilled a chemical on his hands now noticed the bread he was eating tasted unusually sweet. In 1880, Fahlberg jointly published the discovery with his professor, Ira Remsen. In 1884, Fahlberg obtained a patent and began mass-producing saccharin without Remsen. The use of saccharin did not become widespread until sugar was rationed during World War I. Its popularity shot up again during the 1960s and 1970s with the manufacture of Sweet'N Low and the introduction of diet soft drinks
6. Post-it Note - The "small piece of paper with a strip of low-tack adhesive on the back" was conceived in 1974 by Arthur Fry as a way of holding bookmarks in his hymnal while singing in the church choir. He was aware of an adhesive accidentally developed in 1968 by fellow 3M employee Spencer Silver. No application for the lightly sticky stuff was apparent until Fry's "small piece of paper with a strip of low-tack adhesive on the back". The 3M company was initially skeptical about the product's profitability, but in 1980, the Post-it was introduced around the world.
7. Silly Putty - It bounces, it stretches, it breaks. The silicone-based plastic clay was marketed as a children's toy by Binney & Smith, Inc. During WW2, while attempting to create a synthetic rubber substitute, James Wright dropped boric acid into silicone oil. The result was a polymerized substance that bounced but had no real use. That was, until 1950, when marketing expert Peter Hodgson saw its potential as a toy and renamed it Silly Putty. It also has many practical uses; picking up dirt; stabilizing wobbly furniture; stress reduction; physical therapy; and in medical and scientific simulations. It was even used by the crew of Apollo 8 to secure their tools in zero gravity
8. Microwave - In 1945, Percy Spencer was experimenting with a new vacuum tube called a magnetron while doing research for the Raytheon Corporation. Intrigued by the melting chocolate bar in his pocket, he tried another experiment with popcorn. When it started popping, Spencer saw the potential in this revolutionary process. In 1947, Raytheon built the first microwave oven, the Radarange, which weighed 750 pounds, was 51/2 feet tall, and cost about $5,000.
9. Corn Flakes - In 1894, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was the superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan. He and his brother Will Keith Kellogg were Seventh Day Adventists and they were searching for wholesome foods to feed patients that also complied with the Adventists' strict vegetarian diet. When Will accidentally left some boiled wheat sitting out, it went stale by the time he returned. Rather than throw it away, the brothers sent it through rollers, hoping to make long sheets of dough, but they got flakes instead. They toasted the flakes, which were a big hit with patients, and patented them under the name Granose. The brothers experimented with other grains, including corn and in 1906, Will created the Kellogg's company to sell the corn flakes. On principle, John refused to join the company because Will lowered the health benefits of the cereal by adding sugar.
10. Mauve - An 18-year-old chemist, William Perkin, wanted to cure malaria but instead his scientific endeavors changed the face of fashion forever. And, helped fight cancer. In 1856 Perkin was trying to come up with an artificial quinine. Instead of a malaria treatment, his experiments produced a thick murky mess. The more he looked at it, the more Perkin saw a beautiful color in his mess. This was the first-ever synthetic dye. His dye was far better than any dyes that came from nature; the color was brighter, more vibrant, and didn't fade or wash out. His discovery also turned chemistry into a money-generating science - making it attractive for a whole generation of curious-minded people. One of the people inspired by Perkin's work was German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich, who used Perkin's dyes to pioneer immunology and chemotherapy.

"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it." Samuel Johnson


We discussed the difference between knowledge, false knowledge and ignorance in the last entry of the Epistream. To expand on where we left off, King Thamus was skeptical of Theuth's new invention, writing, because he felt that it provided "the conceit of wisdom, instead of real wisdom".

Essentially, anyone who takes anything that they read to be gospel (including the Gospel... and the Epistream) is furnished with this "conceit of wisdom", or false knowledge.

• A priori knowledge is independent of experience.
• A posteriori knowledge is dependent on experience.

So, we're all going to be more inquisitive. If something interests us, we'll try to find out all we can about it. If possible, we'll do this through experience too. Using our nine senses.

Wait... Nine senses?

If you thought there were only five, get with it people.

Aristotle was the first to set out the original five senses. Sight, Smell, touch, taste and hearing. We should really take anything he said with a pinch of salt though. This was a guy who thought that some baby animals appeared by magic, without parents, out of mud and water. Obviously, this was because he didn't have a microscope to observe the minuscule eggs. But, come on. He also thought that eels didn't breed, bees were created by rotting bull carcasses, flies had four legs and intelligence came from the heart rather than the head.

So, the sixth sense? No matter what you've heard, it's not for danger, or for a bargain. It's Thermoception. The top of the class will have already worked out that this is a sense of heat.

Sense seven, Equilibrioception. Again, you guessed it, this is our sense of balance.

Sense eight, Nociception. Right, a gold star for knowing this one... It's the perception of pain from the skin, joints and organs. Excluding the brain, which has no pain receptors. Regardless of where your headache feels like it's coming from.

Sense nine, Proprioception. Often referred to as "body awareness", this is the sense of where your body parts are when you can't see or touch them.

It might not even end there. Neurologists often argue the case for your sense of hunger or thirst, sense of depth, or even a sense of meaning.

And what about Synaesthesia? Which is a neurologically based phenomenon where stimulation of one sense leads to automatic, involuntary experiences of a second sense.

In color-graphemic synesthesia, letters and numbers are perceived as inherently coloured.

In ordinal linguistic personification, numbers, days of the week and months of the year seem to have their own personalities. Whereas, in spatial-sequence synesthesia, numbers, days of the week and months of the year elicit precise locations in space.

Visual motion / sound synesthesia involves hearing sounds in response to visual motion.

Pretty weird huh? Well, maybe not. Outwith our species, we have evidence of some really interesting senses.

Electroception allows sharks to sense electric fields.

Birds and insects migrate using their sense of magnetoception. The sense of magnetic fields.

There's also echolocation in bats and dolphins.

Even infra-red vision in owls.

All of these amazing, information gathering tools. And we rely on googleception?
Well, I think King Thamus would have a pretty dim view of it, don't you?

"To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge" Benjamin Disraeli


I'm taking a stand today people.

Knowledge is a perpetual goal. The carrot on the end of long stick. A driving force.

False knowledge is a dead end. Damaging, limiting and destructive to human evolution.


There's a great bit in the opening of Conrad's Heart of Darkness where Marlowe talks about the map of the African continent as it appeared in his youth. For Marlowe the child, Africa's outline was essentially the sum total of topographical knowledge and this made it quite easy to swallow. This is conceptually akin to that area of uncharted waters which simply read, "There be monsters". This is where imagination lives.

The progression of our knowledge can be charted by the way our ignorance is continually expanding to encompass more and more as time goes on. It reminds me a bit of watching Lost. You've got questions, which upon being answered simply raise more and more questions. As infuriating as this can be, it's healthy.

In an information vacuum, imagination rampantly consumes all available space. It's only natural that a blank canvas leaves plenty of scope to add unfettered form and colour. Complications arise, as Marlowe recognised, when we begin to shade that lacuna with supposed "fact". This is when Darkness takes over those wide open spaces. As George Bernard Shaw expertly put it, “Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”

Ignorance breeds curiosity and fuels imagination. An inquisitive mind seeks to understand why, where false knowledge considers the matter closed. People tend to scapegoat ignorance for others backward, bigoted or biased behavior, whereas I would certainly attribute these traits to assimilated, false knowledge.

The most universal method for the transfer of knowledge is writing. Plato's work Phaedrus recounts Socrates' story of the Egyptian king Thamus and Theuth, the inventor of the written word. In this story, Theuth presents his new invention to King Thamus, telling him that it'll "improve both the wisdom and memory of the Egyptians". King Thamus is skeptical, rejecting it as a tool to aid recollection, rather than a means of retaining knowledge. His argument is that the written word will infect the Egyptian people with fake knowledge because they'll get their facts second hand, without experience.

Sorry. Remind anyone of anything? How much of this internet learning do you think really sinks in? Well, any questions, google 'em.

"Three is a magic number." Bob Dorough

Or, third time's the charm. Whichever.

This is the third installment of the Epistream and I've got to tell you, I'm pretty damn excited.


So, why does 3 have such a good rep? Let's start at the beginning.

Historians have come across similar patterns in the evolution of the number three in early counting systems. It is evident that amongst primitive societies, they have a clearly defined, language equivalent word to describe the quantities "one" and "two" but that they follow that with "many", or "more".

Often, three is the largest number written with as many lines as the number represents. Roman and Chinese numerals still use the number "III". This was how Brahmin Indians wrote it, then the Gupta made the three lines curved. The Nagari turned the lines clockwise and ended each line with a slight downward stroke. Eventually, these strokes connected to the line below and presto, it evolved into a character that looks pretty much like a 3.

Check it out...

There are loads of 3's out there. In fact, they're everywhere.

Your ear has 3 semicircular canals and 3 ossicles (the smallest bones in your body).

There are 3 distinct social groups among the Great Apes:

1. Orangutans (Solitary - little amount of both sexes)
2. Gorillas (Harems - great amount of one sex)
3. Common Chimps (Live in territories defended by related males - great amount of both sexes)

There are three types of galaxy:

1. ellipticals
2. spirals
   
3. irregulars

RNA and DNA each have a triplet codon system.

Three is the atomic number of Lithium, which is also the 33rd most abundant element on Earth.

Atoms consist of three constituents: protons, neutrons and electrons.

A proton consists of three quarks: two up quarks and one down quark. A neutron also consists of three quarks: two down quarks and one up quark.

Isaac Asimov developed the Three Laws of Robotics, which state:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

There are three basic rock formations: Igneous, Metamorphic and Sedimentary.

Freud discussed his three tier model of the psyche in the 1920 essay "Beyond the Pleasure Principle". This was elaborated upon in "The Ego and The Id" (1923), where he developed it as an alternative to his previous topographic schema (conscious, unconscious, pre-conscious).

3 Indian Gods: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (Maheshwara)

3 Greek gods: Zeus, Poseidon and Hades

3 Roman gods: Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto

3 forms of Odin in Eddic Mythology: Har, Jafnhar and Thridi

Budhism's The Triple Bodhi (ways to understand the end of birth)- Budhu, Pasebudhu, Mahaarahath

Three main Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam

The Holy Trinity of the Christian doctrine: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
This is also known as Tripartite division or the Godhead.

According to the Gospel of John, Jesus spread Christianity for 3 years.

Jesus supposedly rose from the dead on the third day after his death.

Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times.

Islam has devotional rites and certain formulas which are repeated three times and others thirty-three times.

A devout Muslim tries to make a pilgrimage to all three holy cities in Islam: Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem.

3 Musketeers

3 Blind Mice

3 Bears ( and Goldilocks)

3 Little Pigs


BUT...

There is no evidence to support goldfish having a three second memory.

It is generally accepted that there were three Wise Men that went to visit the baby Jesus. However, this is just a guess based on the number of gifts that they brought. There is nothing in the bible to support that there were 3 men, or even that they were men, or even that they were particularly wise. They were referred to as Magi and this tells us nothing about their number, wisdom or gender.

Going to Work is 3 times as dangerous as going to War. Statistically speaking.
About 2 million people die from work related accidents every year, as opposed to roughly 650,000 who die at War.

So, take care... and avoid that disgruntled guy in the mail room.

"All men by nature desire knowledge." Aristotle


Here's today's nugget of pyrite for you folks.

And it comes to you with just the slightest hint of irony.

With thanks to Al "ManBearPig" Gore...


Chilly?

Well, it may or may not come as a surprise to you that we are currently experiencing an Ice Age.

OK. Not the full fat, woolly mammoth, Everybody Loves that charming movie franchise kind of Ice Age. But a totally bona fide Ice Age none the less.

An Ice Age is any period in the Earth's history where we have caps of ice at the Poles. The term for the period we're living in right now is 'Interglacial'. Yes, this does make it sound like we're between ice ages. However, it actually refers to the time of warming where our ice is retreating to the Poles. The duration of an interglacial period is not fixed. Experts, of which, I must stress, I'm not one, estimate their duration to be somewhere between 12,000 and 50,000 years. Not taking man's impact into account. However, how it's possible not to I don't know, considering the variables are things like atmospheric conditions. Others factors are things like; the layout of the continents and our planet's orbit. Not that we have any influence over that. But give us time.

We've apparently seen an average increase in surface temperature of 0.2°C per decade in the past 30 years. In fact, we're supposedly within about 1°C of the maximum temperature the planet's achieved in the past million years. And allegedly, global warming of more than 1°C, from the year 2000, will constitute a potentially dangerous climate change. That is, based on models of the likely effects it'll have on sea level and it's impact on species.

Well. A degree doesn't seem a lot to me. But...

In about the year 1500, the average temperature in Northern Europe dropped by a degree and we ended up with polar bears in Orkney. Well, a polar bear. Still, one's enough.

The "Little Ice Age" lasted about 300 years. During that time the Arctic ice sheet stretched far enough south that, not only did Orkney get a visit from a disgruntled and obviously disorientated polar bear, Eskimos even kayaked to Scotland on at least six occasions. As a small side note, Eskimo isn't a derogatory term. Originally coined by Algonquin Indians to describe those people that lived in high Arctic regions, it can mean "someone from another country" or "someone who speaks another language". It's not very P.C. in Canada, where they correct term is Inuit, but Alaskan Eskimos actually prefer it. Chiefly because they are most definitely NOT Inuit.

But anyway, back in the Little Ice Age...

A possible cause for it has been put forward by Utrecht University, the Black Death.

The cataclysmic drop in the population of Europe resulted in massive swathes of fertile farmland abandoned and eventually engulfed in millions of trees. Trees love carbon dioxide, so this would have led to a huge leap in the absorption of CO2 from our atmosphere. This would have led to a drop in the average temperature, the inverse of the greenhouse effect.

This was shortly followed by the eruption of Mount Tambora, Indonesia in 1815. The ash released into the atmosphere gave us a little taste of Nuclear Winter too. 1816 was referred to as "the year without Summer". However, it did provide the inspiration for Lord Byron's Darkness and set the scene for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. So, not all bad.

The Epistream

Knowledge is Power.

That being the case, please view this blog as a 9 volt brain-battery.

Go on, touch your tongue to terminals.

Feels good?

Yeah it does.

Want more?

Sure you do.

Consider it fact fuel. A little cleverness-coal with which to stock your synapse. Let's keep those little embers going 'til home time, shall we?

Well, first things first. Epistream. Not a real word. It's the result of the rough splicing of episteme and stream.

Stream, in this case, is taken to mean the continuous flow of data or information, which typically has a constant, or at least predictable, rate. In terms of the digital transmission of material, the parts which arrive first may be viewed immediately, while you're awaiting the rest. Much is the same here. You can enjoy today's info, safe in the knowledge (or anxious in the assumption, depending whether you're a glass half full or half empty person) that there is more flowing along behind.

Epi- was taken from Episteme. Coming from the Greek verb ἐπίσταμαι, "to know," episteme can be understood to mean a single unit of knowledge. Imagining our brain to be a ball-pool, each ball in the pool would represent one of these units of knowledge. If someone were to pull the plug on this ball-pool the resulting flow could be called an Epistream. Then, if they were to pass out each one, in no particular order and without proper citation, it'd look a lot like this blog.

Epistemology is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope knowledge. The concept was introduced into English by the Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier (1808–1864). Michel Foucault (1926-1984) used the term épistémè in his work The Order of Things (1966) to mean the historical a priori. That is, knowledge that's independent of personal experience or based on theoretics.

It is not to be confused with an Epistrema. This is a genus of the moth family Noctuidae, or Owlet moth, which includes more than 35,000 known species.

Other moth facts:

In the first 56 days of their life, the larva of the Polyphemus moth eats 86,000 times it's birthweight.

The Hawk moth (Sphinx) is the worlds fastest flying insect attaining a speed of over 50 kph.

Moths are NOT attracted to lightbulbs. They're disorientated by them. Apart from the odd forest fire, earthly light sources have been in existence for a very short time in comparison to the moth and moths are therefore used to using only the moon and the sun as light sources to guide them. Because the moon and sun are very far away, the incoming light rays that strike the insect arrive virtually parallel to each other. Moths have therefore evolved to expect to receive light at a fixed part of the eye and as long as they fly in a pretty straight line, this visual pattern stays the same. When the light source is a nearby bulb, the rays of light are coming from all angles. The moth tries to follow a straight line but ends up spiralling towards it.