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BS: Random Traces From All Over
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: beardedbruce Date: 18 Sep 08 - 12:12 PM Obama Deletes Another Unread MoveOn.org E-Mail September 17, 2008 | Issue 44•38 CHICAGO—After receiving yet another unwanted e-mail from liberal political action group MoveOn.org Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama deleted the message from his inbox without even glancing at its contents. Inside Obama's Emails "Ugh, not these people again," Obama was overheard to say as he placed the unread e-mail into the Gmail folder marked "Trash." According to official records, the e-mail, entitled "50,000 Obama buttons?" was sent at 6:47 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Aides say that Obama checked his mail at 7 a.m. before leaving for a charity fundraiser, and appeared visibly dismayed upon realizing that his new message was from MoveOn.org. "It seems like every time I turn on my computer, another goddamn MoveOn.org e-mail pops up," said Obama, noting that this is the third message from the progressive online organization he has deleted in the past week. "How many of these things am I going to get?" "They already know I'm going to vote for Obama," Obama added. "The only people who sign up for this thing are Democrats anyway. They're just preaching to the choir." Obama reportedly joined the MoveOn.org mailing list while attending the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Although he was initially intrigued by the idea of receiving newsletters and updates from a group of like-minded, politically active Americans, Obama said the nonstop deluge of e-mails has made him regret his decision. "I usually get excited when I see that I have one unread message," Obama said. "I think that maybe it's something interesting or important, but then I see it's another MoveOn e-mail and my heart just sinks. It's like getting nothing." Obama has deleted approximately 25 e-mails from MoveOn.org in the past two months. In addition, Obama's junk folder contains nearly 60 messages from various MoveOn employees and members whose e-mail addresses Obama has previously flagged as spam. Perhaps most telling of his recent frustrations, Obama's mail records confirm that, in April 2008, he replied to a MoveOn.org e-mail entitled "10 Things You Need to Know About John McCain" with the message "Shut up." Obama, who has traveled across the nation advocating unity among all races and social classes, said he was tired of the onslaught of MoveOn e-mails alleging the organization is making a difference with free campaign buttons, meet-ups, and "make your own Obama video" contests. "I tried to skim over a few of them at first, but after a while, it's like, 'enough,'" said Obama, who noted that a pro-Obama house party should never be touted as "historic." "The other day, four people sent me the same freaking petition. The same one. How many times do I have to sign this?" "I know this election is important and everything," Obama added. "But these people seriously need to relax." Although he acknowledged that it takes little time and effort to discard the unwanted messages, the senator said that MoveOn has nonetheless become a nuisance. In recent weeks, he has begun automatically deleting any e-mail in which he sees the name "Barack Obama" in the subject line, which has only created further problems. "Shortly after the DNC, I accidentally erased a personal message from my grandmother congratulating me on my nomination," Obama said. "Way to go, MoveOn.org." According to Obama, however, the most annoying aspect of the MoveOn e-mails is the "self-righteous manner" in which the political advocacy group's mostly white employees have appropriated his campaign message and used it as their own. "It's irritating that these people think they're doing everybody this great service just by clicking 'send' a million times," Obama said. "I'm trying to make the world a better place, but with all the time I've been spending deleting e-mails, it's going to take me forever." the Onion |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: beardedbruce Date: 18 Sep 08 - 12:13 PM 'Time' Publishes Definitive Obama Puff Piece July 18, 2008 | Issue 44•29 NEW YORK—Hailed by media critics as the fluffiest, most toothless, and softest-hitting coverage of the presidential candidate to date, a story in this week's Time magazine is being called the definitive Barack Obama puff piece. "No news publication has dared to barely scratch the surface like this before," columnist and campaign reporter Michael King wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday. "This profile sets a benchmark for mindless filler by which all other features about Sen. Obama will now be judged. Just impressive puff-journalism all around." The 24-page profile, entitled "Boogyin' With Barack," hit newsstands Monday and contains photos of the candidate as a baby, graduating from Columbia University, standing and laughing, holding hands with his wife and best friend, Michelle, greeting a crowd of blue-collar autoworkers, eating breakfast with diner patrons, and staring pensively out of an airplane window while a pen and legal pad rest comfortably on his lowered tray table. According to political analysts, the Time piece features the most lack-of-depth reporting on Obama ever published, and for the first time reveals a number of inconsequential truths about the candidate, including how he keeps in shape on the campaign trail, and which historical figures the presidential hopeful would choose to have dinner with. "The sheer breadth of fluff in this story is something to be marveled at," New York Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet said. "It's all here. Favorite books, movies, meals, and seasons of the year ranked one through four. Sure, we asked Obama what his favorite ice cream was, but Time did us one better and asked, 'What's your favorite ice cream, really?'" Time managing editor Rich Stengel said he was proud of the Obama puff piece, and that he hoped it would help to redefine the boundaries of journalistic drivel. "When the American people cast their vote this November, this is the piece of fluff they're going to remember," Stengel said. "Not the ones by Newsweek, Harper's, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Economist, Nightline, The Wall Street Journal, or even that story about lessons Obama learned from his first-grade teacher we ran a month ago." The article, which follows Obama for 12 days during his campaign, was written by reporter Chris Sherwood, and is relentless in its attempt to capture the candidate at his most poised and polished. Sherwood said the profile easily trumps all other fluff pieces in its effort to expose the presidential candidate for who he really is: "an awesome guy." "My editors told me that if I wanted to uncover the most frivolous, trivial information on Obama, I had to be prepared to follow the puff," Sherwood said. "That meant that not only did I have to stay and watch Sen. Obama play endless games of basketball with city firemen to show readers how athletic and youthful he is, but I also had to go to NBA shooting experts to learn what aspects of his jump shot are good and what parts are great." Sherwood said he was granted full access to the candidate, and was permitted by chief strategist David Axelrod to ask any question he desired—an opportunity the reporter used to lob the easiest softballs at Obama yet, ranging from how happy he felt when he met his wife to what songs are currently on his iPod playlist. Sherwood was also fearless in his effort to paint the candidate as someone who is "surprisingly down to earth," a phrase that is used a total of 26 times throughout the feature. "If we were going to get the story we wanted, it was my responsibility as a journalist to ask the really tough questions to his two young daughters," said Sherwood, who grilled Malia and Sasha Obama, 9 and 7, about whether they were "proud of [their] daddy." "I also had to capitalize on every opportunity to compare the story of Obama's upbringing and rise to power to that of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s and John F. Kennedy's, no matter how suspect those parallels really are." According to the Time reporter, work on the profile was often harder than he had anticipated, with Obama at times dodging questions about whether or not he played a musical instrument, and about what Monopoly piece he thought best represented his candidacy and why. "Situations like these are when you have to get on the phone and talk, not only to his mother, but to his aunt, his uncle, a Boy Scout leader, or maybe even one of his camp counselors growing up," Sherwood said. "And if they don't return your call, you turn to Sunday school teachers and former babysitters—anyone who is willing to go on record and say that Barack Obama was a really good kid who was destined for great things." Added Sherwood, "It's all about getting the factoids out in the open." Readers have so far responded favorably to the piece, with sales of the latest issue of Time nearly tripling that of an issue last month featuring a 36-page exposé that tore apart and vilified former candidate Hillary Clinton's health-care plan. "I'm not quite sure how he intends to turn around the economy or get us out of Iraq," said California resident Geoff Mills, an ardent Obama supporter who read the Time story. "But any man who prefers his steak cooked medium-rare has my vote." the Onion |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 18 Sep 08 - 01:55 PM Jaysus, Bruce. Find something real to do, huh? A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: beardedbruce Date: 18 Sep 08 - 02:08 PM Like starting a "Popular Opinion " thread to accumulate comments that agree with me? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: beardedbruce Date: 18 Sep 08 - 02:11 PM beardedbruce 18 Sep 08 - 12:13 PM beardedbruce 18 Sep 08 - 12:12 PM Amos 18 Sep 08 - 12:00 PM Amos 18 Sep 08 - 09:06 AM Amos 17 Sep 08 - 11:55 AM Amos 12 Sep 08 - 02:37 PM Amos 10 Sep 08 - 10:26 AM Amos 10 Sep 08 - 09:34 AM Amos 07 Sep 08 - 11:23 PM You were saying????? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 18 Sep 08 - 02:12 PM Sure, go for it: "Popular Hallucinations on the Conservative Movement" or something. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 20 Sep 08 - 09:02 PM MORE BIKES, FEWER BIKE ACCIDENTS. In a study that at first glance seems counterintuitive, researchers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia reviewed safety studies from 17 countries and 68 cities in California and found that the more people bike in a community, the less they collide with motorists. ╲It appears that motorists adjust their behavior in the presence of increasing numbers of people bicycling because they expect or experience more people cycling,╡ said Julie Hatfield, and injury expert from the university. With fewer accidents, people perceive cycling as safer, so more people cycle, thus making it even safer, she said. ╲Rising cycling rates mean motorists are more likely to be cyclists, and therefore be more conscious of, and sympathetic towards, cyclists,╡ she said. Safety experts said the decrease in accidents that comes with an increase in cycling is independent of improvements in cycling-friendly laws and better infrastructure such as bike paths. The safety studies reviewed were from Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, 14 other European countries, and 68 cities in California. Although the review focused on bicycling, it appears that the more is safer rule also applies to pedestrians, Hatfield said. (Phys News) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 21 Sep 08 - 10:41 PM http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/ Tuesday, September 23 at 8 p.m. Astronomers are closing in on the proof they've sought for years that one of the most destructive objects in the universe--a supermassive black hole--lurks at the center of our own galaxy. Could it flare up and consume our entire galactic neighborhood? Join NOVA on a mind-bending investigation into one of the most bizarre corners of cosmological science: black hole research. From event horizon to singularity, the elusive secrets of supermassive black holes are revealed through stunning computer-generated imagery, including an extraordinary simulation of what it might look like to fall into the belly of such an all-devouring beast. Here's what you'll find on the companion Web site: Inside an Enigma http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/enigma.html Explore the oddities of black holes in this interview with NASA's Steve Ritz. Black Holes Explained http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/explained.html Listen in as top physicists take on the challenge. Galactic Explorer http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/expo-flash.html Astronomer Andrea Ghez talks of her huge discovery and her life. Hear audio highlights or go to the full interview. Birth of a Black Hole http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/form.html In this slide show, see how a dying star is reborn as a black hole. Tiny Black Holes http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/tiny.html Miniature black holes might be all around us, even passing through Earth. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 23 Sep 08 - 02:14 PM A MUSLIM CREATIONISM DEBATE (Click for full article) Taking on Darwin in Turkey By Daniel Steinvorth in Istanbul Fundamentalist Christians in America are not the only ones leading a crusade against Darwin. Creationism and "intelligent design" are becoming increasingly popular among Turkey's Muslims, too. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 24 Sep 08 - 09:33 AM In Japes for Our Tymes the author provideth Middle English translations of modern comics with humorous effect. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: bobad Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:54 PM Tree-generated electricity may be key to preventing forest fires: scientists Last Updated: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 | 3:42 PM CBC News MIT researchers are experimenting to see if electricity generated by trees can power a network of sensors to prevent forest fires from spreading. The scientists said Tuesday that their pilot system produces enough electricity to allow temperature and humidity sensors to wirelessly transmit signals four times a day, or immediately if there's a fire. Forestry officials often rely on remote-controlled weather stations to transmit local climate data used in fire prediction models. But it's expensive and difficult to recharge or replace the batteries that power isolated stations. Tapping into the tiny amounts of electricity produced by trees can recharge batteries automatically, cutting costs and increasing fire surveillance, say the scientists. A single tree doesn't generate a lot of power, but over time the "trickle charge" adds up, "just like a dripping faucet can fill a bucket over time," Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering in Cambridge, Mass., said in a release. Scientists have long known that trees can produce minute amounts of electricity. But no one knew exactly how the energy was produced or how to take advantage of it. Zhang and his co-authors reported the answer in the August issue of the Public Library of Science ONE: the energy comes from an imbalance in pH (potential of hydrogen Ñ the measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution) between a tree and the soil in which it grows. "[The] sustained voltage difference routinely observed between parts of trees and soil is mainly due to a difference in pH between the two. Specifically, the tree-root-soil system acts as a concentration pH cell," the authors write. The scientists plan to test their tree-powered wireless sensor network this spring on land owned by the United States Forest Service. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:42 PM FURTHEST SEEABLE THING. For the first time in history you could have looked half way back to the origin of the universe with your naked eye. On the night of March 19, 2008 a telescope mounted in space observed a flash from a gamma ray burst, an extremely explosive celestial object, which set several records. First, if youâ•˙d been looking in that direction you would have been able to see, with your own unaided eyes, something at a distance further-seven billion light years---than anything a human being has ever seen in history. Second, since looking out into space is equivalent to looking back in time (it takes the light from distant objects many years to reach the Earth), you would have been witnessing the earliest thing ever seeable by the naked eye. A new report describes observations made of the explosion by an orbiting telescope called Swift and by some of ground-based telescopes that got in on the action once they were notified by Swift. Swift has three onboard detectors which look not at ordinary visible light but at much more energetic light in the form of x rays and gamma rays. One feature of Swiftâ•˙s mission is that as soon as it sees something interesting it alerts controllers on the ground so that other telescopes can be turned in that direction. In this way the explosive outburst, whose official name is GRB 080319B, could be tracked by telescopes sensitive to other kinds of light, such as infrared and even radio waves. The March 19 event is an example of a gamma ray burst. This comes about when certain heavy old stars have used up all their internal fuel. When a star has no more fuel, the force of gravity causes it to contract. If this process is violent enough, the star can blow apart as a supernova. In some special cases, what is left behind is a black hole, and outward going shock waves which, when they criss-cross, can create a brilliant flash of light. For a short time this light is more powerful than that coming from an entire galaxy of stars. The cone of energy flying away from the explosion can be quite narrow, so to be observed from far away, as this object was, it had to be aligned just right to be seen by Swift. This gamma burst was not the furthest ever observed with a telescope, but it was the brightest in terms of the energy released. So bright, in fact, that it could have been seen unaided in areas of North and South America the night of March 19, if only for about 40 seconds. The splash of light arriving at Swiftâ•˙s place in orbit that two of Swiftâ•˙s three detectors were temporarily blinded. Fortunately several telescopes quickly maneuvered into position and could study the stellar explosion as it unfolded. By then the gamma rays, the most energetic part of the light blast, would have died down. But other types of light continued to issue from the scene. According to Swift scientist Judith Racusin, an astronomer at Penn State, this has become the best-observed gamma ray burst, and the observations have already changed the way we think about bursts work. When you look out at the night sky about 3000 stars are visible. Everything you can see at night is either a planet in our home solar system or one of those stars, all of which are located in our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The furthest thing you can normally see with the naked eye, and with some difficulty, is the Andromeda Galaxy, about 2.5 million light years away. Only about once a century is a supernova visible from any further galaxy. And by now itâ•˙s been 400 years since weâ•˙ve seen one of those. That makes GRB 080319B all the more impressive. It breaks the record of most distant seeable-with-the-naked-eye thing by a factor of a thousand. Located in the Bootes Constellation, the gamma burst is at a distance of 7 billion light years, which means that it took light seven billion years to come from the blast to Earth. That means that a person seeing the visible portion of the blast would have been looking halfway back toward the time of the big bang, when, according to modern cosmology, the universe began. When the blast occurred the sun hadnâ•˙t even appeared yet, much less the Earth, much less the human species. (The results appeared Nature magazine, 11 September 2008.) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 26 Sep 08 - 05:36 PM "Fountains are great tourist attractions. Just think about the crowds drawn to the Bellagio in Las Vegas. But fountains don't need to be huge to be impressive. Take the fountain in this Video of the Day, for example. This fountain can actually make pictures and words with falling water. It's been described as working like an inkjet printer. Hundreds of nozzles create precise streams of water. Timed just right, images are created. This intelligent waterfall welcomes people to Canal City Hakata. That Japanese shopping complex was built around an artificial canal. There are several fountains at the complex. But this one takes the cake!" Smart-Fountain Painitng, an awesome demonstration. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 27 Sep 08 - 08:47 PM Mathematicians in California could be in line for a $100,000 prize (£54,000) for finding a new prime number which has 13 million digits. Prime numbers can be divided only by themselves and one. The prize was set up by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to promote co-operative computing on the Internet. The team from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) found the new number by linking 75 computers and harnessing their unused power. This enabled them to perform the enormous number of calculations needed to find and verify a new prime. Thousands of people around the world linked the powers of their personal computers in the search for new "Mersenne" prime number - named after 17th-Century French mathematician Marin Mersenne. Mersenne primes are expressed as two to the power of P, minus one - with P being itself a prime number. Edson Smith, the leader of the winning UCLA team, told the Associated Press news agency: "We're delighted. Now we're looking for the next one, despite the odds." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 27 Sep 08 - 09:26 PM The soft green heart-shaped leaf of the horny goat weed could hold the key to a new drug for treating erectile dysfunction. Researchers say the Viagra alternative could be as effective as the famous blue pill, but have fewer side-effects. Mario Dell'Agli of the University of Milan, Italy, and colleagues tested four plants which are used as natural aphrodisiacs in traditional cultures to establish their potential as alternatives to Viagra. Viagra's active compound, sildenafil, works by inhibiting an enzyme called phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5). Because PDE5 helps control blood flow to the penis, inhibiting PDE5 promotes male erection. Dell'Agli and his colleagues tested the four plants in vitro to see how efficient they were at inhibiting PDE5. Just one – Epimedium brevicornum, also known as horny goat weed and Bishop's Hat – had an effect. This confirmed previous studies showing that icariin, a compound found inside the horny goat weed, is a PDE5 inhibitor. The fifth compound Sildenafil, however, is 80 times more effective at inhibiting PDE5 than icariin. Dell'Agli and his team extracted icariin from the plants, and produced six modified versions of it, which they also tested on PDE5. The most efficient of these, compound 5, "works as well as Viagra", says Dell'Agli. A drug made from compound 5 could also cause fewer side effects than Viagra. In addition to PDE5, sildenafil affects other phosphodiesterases, including some that are essential to sight and heart function. As a result, people who have heart problems are not advised to take Viagra and patients who do take the drug sometimes suffer disturbances to their eyesight. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 27 Sep 08 - 10:24 PM A giant goose-like bird that was the size of a light aircraft and had a beak like a crocodile's jaws has been found to have soared above Britain 50 million years ago. A fossil skull preserved in London clay has been identified as belonging to a relative of modern ducks and geese with a wingspan of 5m (16ft) and armed with a beakful of teeth. The ancient creature has been nicknamed Mother Goose by Gerald Meyr, the palaeontologist who identified it, because of the bird's extraordinary size. It is thought to have had a similar lifestyle to the albatross of today, which spends most of its life at sea and is a master at using thermals and air currents to remain airborne with minimum effort. The ancient goose, one of the biggest species of bird to take to the skies, was even bigger than the wandering albatross, which, at up to 3.7m wing tip to wing tip, has the biggest wingspan of all living birds. Mother Goose, more properly named Dasornis emuinus, is thought to have had a wingspan almost 50 per cent bigger than the wandering albatross. "Imagine a bird like an ocean-going goose, almost the size of a small plane," said Dr Meyr, of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt. "They had lightweight bones so despite their great size they weren't very heavy. I think they were capable of soaring and gliding – though they would probably have needed strong winds to take off. "By today's standards these were pretty bizarre animals, but perhaps the strangest thing about them is that they had sharp, tooth-like projections along the cutting edges of the beak. "The beak was so covered in bony teeth that it looked like a crocodile." Some early birds had enamel teeth but these were lost about 100 million years ago, yet Mother Goose reevolved them, this time made from bone and possibly covered with a layer of keratin, the biological material used for the beak. Dr Meyr believes that the 60 to 80 teeth in the beak, estimated at 20-25cm long, were developed to help the prehistoric bird keep a grip of the fish and squid it would have snatched from the sea. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 29 Sep 08 - 01:07 PM Private Company Launches Its Rocket Into Orbit Reprints Save Share Digg Mixx Yahoo! Buzz Permalink By JOHN SCHWARTZ Published: September 28, 2008 A privately financed company launched a rocket of its own design successfully into orbit on Sunday night, ushering in what the company's founders hope will be a new era of spaceflight. It was the fourth launching attempt by the company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, which was founded by Elon Musk, an Internet entrepreneur born in South Africa. "We've made orbit!" Mr. Musk exclaimed to his employees at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., proclaiming the moment "awesome." "There were a lot of people who thought we couldn't do it — a lot, actually," he said after thanking his employees. "But, you know, the saying goes, fourth time's the charm." Mr. Musk, 37, founded SpaceX in 2002 after selling the online payment company he helped found, PayPal, to eBay for $1.5 billion. SpaceX, which has more than 500 employees, captured one of the most coveted prizes of the new space industry: a commercial orbital transportation services contract worth as much as $100 million. Known by its acronym, Cots, the program encourages private-sector alternatives to the space shuttle. The company is developing a larger rocket, the Falcon 9, to provide cargo services to the International Space Station for NASA after the shuttle program winds down in 2010. The company also hopes to adapt its technology to carry people to the station, which could help bridge the gap until the debut of the next generation of NASA spacecraft, planned for 2015. "This is just the first step in many," Mr. Musk told his team. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 30 Sep 08 - 09:44 PM A teenager whose lottery win turned her into an overnight millionaire said that, when the truth sunk in, she screamed so much that it alarmed her dog, who bit her on the bottom. Would-be lawyer Ianthe Fullagar, 18, from Ravenglass, Cumbria, won more than £7m in the EuroMillions lottery, on only the second occasion she had bought a ticket. She was tempted to try after hearing that the jackpot was more than £100m. "At first I thought I had matched three numbers, so I couldn't believe it when I realised I had the five main numbers plus one Lucky Star," she said. "I checked the ticket and saw that the average win for those numbers was £280,000 and couldn't stop screaming. My mum called the National Lottery Line and it was only then that I realised I had won a share of the jackpot. We were both screaming so loudly that my dog, Brock, didn't know what was happening and bit me on the bottom." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 01 Oct 08 - 09:32 AM "In general, for "good" traits, such as generosity, friendliness, and sense of humor, most people rate themselves as above average; for "bad" traits like snobbishness and dishonesty people typically describe themselves as below average (less snobbish, less dishonest). Most of us thus believe we are less biased than other people, less racist, less prone to conform, and less prone to be influenced by advertising. Yet, while good at spotting bias and prejudice in others, we are routinely blind to it in ourselves. These happy illusions extend to those we identify with. People expect that members of their own ethnic groups are more likely to smile (even in situations where a smile is inane, such as being alone in a room waiting for a computer to start up). Asked to pick out photographs of people likely to support the same political party as themselves, they pick more beautiful people than they do for supporters of an opposing party. In general, people tend to hold more favorable views of their "in-group," to exaggerate differences with a perceived out-group, and to treat members of their in-group more generously. When it comes to studying ourselves — to trying to understand how we compare to other animals on the planet — we run into similar problems. We consistently overestimate human uniqueness and underestimate the abililities of other animals. On the overestimation side, we only need to look at history to see that humans tend to have any number of self-aggrandizing beliefs — we have a long tradition of believing ourselves to be the center of the universe, for example, or to think the planet was created especially for us. We often forget that for the first two billion years of its existence, the planet was home only to bacteria, and that bacteria make all other lifeforms possible: we are as dependent on the bacteria in our guts as a termite or cow. And when the chimpanzee genome was published, there was a big disappointment. The genes that have been evolving fastest between our lineage and theirs turned out not to be those involved in head size or intelligence, but those involved in reproduction and the immune system—the same pattern you see between any other pair of closely related species of mammal. Moreover, in our assessments of other animals, we are consistently surprised. My favorite example of this comes from a headline in Nature a few years ago that announced that "sheep are not so stupid after all." The reason for the re-evaluation of ovine intelligence was a series of elegant experiments that showed that sheep can recognize and remember other sheep. But sheep are social animals: they live in flocks. It would be astonishing if they could not do this. (A sheep newspaper would no doubt have run the headline, "Humans Amazed Again!") The idea that we need outside help in assessing ourselves isn't new. The great 19th century scientist Thomas Huxley, in his classic text about the evolution of humans and their similarities to chimpanzees and gorillas, wrote:
Huxley goes on to argue that only a human could deny the extraordinary resemblances between humans and their primate cousins. Since then, the genuine difficulty in disconnecting the "mask of humanity" has grown more apparent. As we continue to learn about the inherent human tendencies towards bias, and the flattering illusions we like to maintain, it may get easier to guard against the problem, and to assess ourselves more clearly. Yet perhaps — probably — there are some biases that our brains have that we simply can't see at all, blind spots that we, as a species, can never discover we have. " Olivia Judson, writing in the Times. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 09 Oct 08 - 02:51 PM NEW YORK - In a sign of the times, the legendary National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits to record the growing debt. The Times Square-area ticker needs two additional digits to track a national debt 100 times larger than the current $10.2 trillion. As a short-term fix the digital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock has been switched to a number one - the "1" in $10 trillion. The Durst Organization says it plans to update the sign next year. The late Manhattan real estate developer Seymour Durst put the sign up in 1989 to call attention to the then-national debt of $2.7 trillion. The clock was turned off during the 1990's when the debt decreased. Seymour Durst died in 1995, and his son Doug Durst now runs the company that maintains the clock. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Donuel Date: 10 Oct 08 - 09:32 AM The stock market bell was rung today by the Cancer SSociety and the ambassador of Jibuti. (its hard to find anyone who wanted this honor today) GM is now at its all time low matched only by their 1929 earnings. wanna buy a $4 dollar share of GM? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 10 Oct 08 - 04:00 PM NOt unless they can start desinging cars for the 21st century instead of the nineteenth. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 11 Oct 08 - 05:12 PM Fertile women hit a high note Wednesday, 8 October 2008 Agence France-Presse The closer a woman was to ovulation, the more her pitch was raised, the investigators found. Credit: iStockphoto Related articles Deep-voiced men make more babies Couples with age gap have more kids Women prefer men desired by others Face facts: Women's instincts are right in mating game Don't want twins? Don't drink milk PARIS: A woman raises the pitch of her voice during her most fertile period of the month in an unconscious boost to her femininity, according to a study published today. As they report in the British journal Biology Letters a pair of scientists at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) asked 69 women to make voice recordings when they were at high and low fertility points in their menstrual cycle. Minnie mouse on helium The closer a woman was to ovulation, the more her pitch was raised, the investigators found. The increase in tone was only slight – not exactly Minnie Mouse on helium - but the peaks were enough to be picked up by the voice decoder and presumably by the male ear, as well. The difference was the greatest on the two days preceding ovulation, when fertility within the cycle is the highest. Curiously, this distinction only occurred when, among the sentences she was asked to speak, the volunteer introduced herself: "Hello, I'm a student at UCLA." The scientists suggest the pitch change happens because men are lured to a more "feminine" voice in a woman - and women respond to the instinct. Sexual signals and reproductive fitness are strongly associated with voice, which is why women are often drawn to men with the husky voice of the supposed alpha male. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 14 Oct 08 - 11:01 PM By Mary Brophy Marcus, USA TODAY Time spent Googling the latest campaign news or searching for choice eBay buys may help stimulate and improve the minds of middle-aged and older Americans, UCLA scientists suggest. Research reported in next month's American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry is the first to assess how performing Internet searches influences brain activity in older Americans, says study author Gary Small, professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. The research included 24 healthy volunteers ages 55 to 76. Half had Internet-searching experience, and the others had none. All were asked to perform Web searches and book-reading tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which recorded the brain-circuitry changes they were experiencing. All of the volunteers showed significant brain activity during the reading task, which stimulated brain regions that control language, reading, memory and visual abilities. BETTER LIFE: More news on preventing dementia But during Internet searches, major differences flared up between the two groups, Small says. Only those who had previous Web-search experience registered extensive activity in decision-making and complex-reasoning portions of the brain. "Our most striking finding was that Internet searching appears to engage a greater extent of neural circuitry that is not activated during reading, but only in those people with prior Internet experience," Small says. He is also co-author of iBrain (HarperCollins, 2008), which was released on Tuesday and explores how older Americans can keep up with younger generations in an increasingly technological world. Small says that over time, he'd expect the inexperienced Internet searchers to benefit as well. Harvard neuroscientist Randy Buckner says the study is interesting because it explores influences of the modern world on the brain. But he wonders if completely novel activities influence brain activity or if it's the activity of Web searching itself that causes a leap in brain bustle. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Donuel Date: 15 Oct 08 - 12:56 PM Stress reduction has been found highly significant when people meditate for the well being of people they do not like. I think Jesus was on to something when said forgive your enemies and pray.+ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 15 Oct 08 - 11:35 PM n a new study of a fossil fish that lived 375 million years ago, scientists are finding striking evidence of the intermediate steps by which some marine vertebrates evolved into animals that walked on land. There was much more to the complex transition than fins evolving into sturdy limbs. The head and braincase were changing, a mobile neck was emerging and a bone associated with underwater feeding and gill respiration was diminishing in size, a beginning of the bone's adaptation for an eventual role in hearing for land animals. details here. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 16 Oct 08 - 04:13 AM "scientists are finding striking evidence of the intermediate steps by which some marine vertebrates evolved into animals that walked on land" Tasmanian Hand fish I'm not making this up, you know... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 16 Oct 08 - 05:12 PM Man 'roused from coma' by a magnetic field 15 October 2008 NewScientist.com news service Linda Geddes JOSH VILLA was 26 and driving home after a drink with a friend on 28 August 2005 when his car mounted the kerb and flipped over. Villa was thrown through the windscreen, suffered massive head injuries and fell into a coma. Almost a year later, there was little sign of improvement. "He would open his eyes, but he was not responsive to any external stimuli in his environment," says Theresa Pape of the US Department of Veterans Affairs in Chicago, who helped treat him. Usually there is little more that can be done for people in this condition. Villa was to be sent home to Rockford, Illinois, where his mother, Laurie McAndrews, had volunteered to care for him. But Pape had a different suggestion. She enrolled him in a six-week study in which an electromagnetic coil was held over the front of his head to stimulate the underlying brain tissue. Such transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been investigated as a way of treating migraine, stroke, Parkinson's disease and depression, with some promising results, but this is the first time it has been used as a potential therapy for someone in a coma-like state. The rapidly changing magnetic fields that the coil creates can be used either to excite or inhibit brain cells - making it easier or harder for them to communicate with one another. In Villa's case, the coil was used to excite brain cells in the right prefrontal dorsolateral cortex. This area has strong connections to the brainstem, which sends out pulses to the rest of the brain that tell it to pay attention. "It's like an 'OK, I'm awake' pulse," says Pape. At first, there was little change in Villa's condition, but after around 15 sessions something happened. "You started talking to him and he would turn his head and look at you," says McAndrews. "That was huge." Villa started obeying one-step commands, such as following the movement of a thumb and speaking single words. "They were very slurred but they were there," says Pape, who presented her findings this month at an international meeting on brain stimulation at the University of Göttingen, Germany. "He'd say like 'erm', 'help', 'help me'." After the 30 planned sessions the TMS was stopped. Without it, Villa became very tired and his condition declined a little, but he was still much better than before. Six weeks later he was given another 10 sessions, but there were no further improvements and he was sent home, where he remains today. Villa is by no means cured. But he is easier to care for and can interact with visitors such as his girlfriend, who has stuck by him following the accident. "When you talk to him he will move his mouth to show he is listening," McAndrews says. "If I ask him, 'Do you love me?' he'll do two slow eye blinks, yes. Some people would say it's not much, but he's improving and that's the main thing." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 17 Oct 08 - 05:53 PM In a study of Christian church members who approached their church for help with a personal or family member's diagnosed mental illness, researchers found that more than 32 percent were told by their pastor that they or their loved one did not really have a mental illness. The problem was solely spiritual in nature, they were told. Here's the thing: Other studies have found that clergy, and not psychologists or other mental health experts, are the most common source of help sought in times of psychological distress. "The results are troubling because it suggests individuals in the local church are either denying or dismissing a somewhat high percentage of mental health diagnosis," said study leader Matthew Stanford, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University in Texas. "Those whose mental illness is dismissed by clergy are not only being told they don't have a mental illness, they are also being told they need to stop taking their medication. That can be a very dangerous thing." The results, based on surveys of 293 individuals, were published in the journal Mental Health, Religion and Culture. Baylor researchers also found that women were more likely than men to have their mental disorders dismissed by the church. In a subsequent survey, Baylor researchers found the dismissal or denial of the existence of mental illness happened more in conservative churches, rather than more liberal ones. All of the participants in both studies were previously diagnosed by a licensed mental health provider as having a serious mental illness, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, prior to approaching their local church for assistance. ... (LiveScience.com) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 17 Oct 08 - 08:02 PM "Mental illnesses afflict 25 percent of U.S. adults, according to official numbers. But in reality, we're all a little crazy. And for good reason: Nature doesn't really care about our happiness. ..." "...Natural selection wants us to be crazy — at least a little bit. While true debilitating insanity is not nature's intention, many mental health issues may be byproducts of the over-functional human brain, some researchers claim. As humans improved their gathering, hunting and cooking techniques, population size increased and resources became more limited (in part because we hunted or ate some species to extinction). As a result, not everyone could get enough to eat. Cooperative relationships were critical to ensuring access to food, whether through farming or more strategic hunting, and those with blunt social skills were unlikely to survive, explained David C. Geary, author of "The Origin of Mind" (APA, 2004), and a researcher at the University of Missouri. And thus, a diversity of new mental abilities, and disabilities, unfurled. The Nature of joy It might seem as though modern man should have evolved to be happy and harmonious. But nature cares about genes, not joy, Geary said. Mental illnesses hinder one in every four adults in America every year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. And this doesn't count those of us with more moderate mood swings. To explain our susceptibility to poor mental health, Randolph Nesse in "The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology" (Wiley, 2005) compares the human brain with race horses: Just as horse breeding has selected for long thin legs that increase speed but are prone to fracture, cognitive advances also increase fitness — to a point...." "...ven if 16 million men today can trace their genes to Genghis Khan (nature's definition of uber-success can be measured by his prolific paternity), very few potential despots achieve such heights. Perhaps to check selfish urges, in favor of more probable means to biological success, social lubricants such as empathy, guilt and mild anxiety arose. For example, the first of our ancestors to empathize and read facial expressions had a striking advantage. They could confirm their own social status and convince others to share food and shelter. But too much emotional acuity — when individuals overanalyze every grimace — can cause a motivational nervousness about one's social value to morph into a relentless handicapping anxiety. Pondering the future Another cognitive innovation made it possible to compare potential futures. While other animals focus on the present, only humans, said Geary, "sit and worry about what will happen three years from now if I do that or this." Our ability to think things over, and over, can be counterproductive and lead to obsessive tendencies. Certain types of depression, however, Geary continued, may be advantageous. The lethargy and disrupted mental state can help us disengage from unattainable goals — whether it is an unrequited love or an exalted social position...." Full story at Live Science. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 20 Oct 08 - 01:18 PM In the autumn of 1938, Hitler's thugs launched a brutal attack on the Jews, which later became known as Kristallnacht. Now, an Israeli journalist has found remnants of that pogrom in a dump near Berlin. It was almost exactly seven decades ago that Nazi SA thugs spread out across Germany to spread terror among the Jewish population. The event, which saw thousands of Jewish shops destroyed, hundreds of synagogues torched and dozens of Jews killed, came to be known as Kristallnacht. Now, an Israeli journalist conducting research near Berlin has stumbled upon what might be a massive dump full of the wreckage from the pogrom, which took place on the night of Nov. 9, 1938. The find, first reported in this week's edition of SPIEGEL, was made by Yaron Svoray, 54, less then an hour's drive northeast of Berlin in the German state of Brandenburg. While conducting research on Carinhall, the country residence of Nazi honcho Hermann Göring, a local told him that objects from Jewish houses destroyed during the pogroms had been dumped nearby. Upon further inspection, Svoray quickly found a number of artifacts that possibly corroborated the local's claim, including a green glass bottle with a Star of David imprinted on its bottom and part of an elaborate backrest that Svoray believes were to be found in synagogues of the time. The dump where the objects were found is roughly the size of four football fields. An old map identifies the general area as having been in use since 1900 and indicates that the specific area in which Svoray found the relics was used as a location for unloading trash between 1935 and 1940. "In all probability, what we're dealing with here are remains from Kristallnacht," Svoray said, referencing the so-called "Night of Broken Glass" pogrom of November 9, 1938, which saw Nazis launch a coordinated attack on synagogues and Jewish businesses across Germany. Over 1,400 synagogues and other Jewish religious establishments in Germany and Austria were either heavily damaged or destroyed on that night, according to estimates of the German Historical Museum. Dozens of Jews were killed in the attack, and thousands were arrested and led away to concentration camps.... (Der Spiegel) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 21 Oct 08 - 04:55 PM "Every day, you handle the deadliest substance on earth. It is a weapon of mass destruction festering beneath your fingernails. In the past 10 years, it has killed more people than all the wars since Adolf Hitler rolled into one; in the next four hours, it will kill the equivalent of two jumbo jets full of kids. It is not anthrax or plutonium or uranium. Its name is shit—and we are in the middle of a shit storm. In the West, our ways of discreetly whisking this weapon away are in danger of breaking down, and one-quarter of humanity hasn't ever used a functioning toilet yet. " Read the complete story on shit here. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 22 Oct 08 - 10:51 AM EW DELHI — India launched its first unmanned spacecraft to orbit the moon early Wednesday, part of an effort to assert its power in space and claim some of the business opportunities there. Related Times Topics: India Enlarge This Image Indian Space Research Organization, via Associated Press In an undated photo, the Chandrayaan-1 was taken to the launching pad in Sriharikota. The Indian mission is scheduled to last two years, prepare a three-dimensional atlas of the moon and prospect the lunar surface for natural resources, including uranium, a coveted fuel for nuclear power plants, according to the Indian Space Research Organization. The spacecraft will not land on the moon, though it is supposed to send a small "impactor" probe to the surface. The launching of Chandrayaan-1, as the vehicle is called — roughly translated as Moon Craft-1 — comes about a year after China's first moon mission. Talk of a space race with China could not be contained, even as Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, was due to visit Beijing later in the week. "China has gone earlier, but today we are trying to catch them, catch that gap, bridge the gap," Bhaskar Narayan, a director at the Indian space agency, was quoted by Reuters as having said. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 27 Oct 08 - 11:35 AM Salisbury says it was 1970s entrepreneur Henry Smolinski who developed a wing and engine to be hooked to the back of a Ford Pinto, a subcompact car in the era, with hopes of production. "It was fun," says Bert Boeckmann, whose Galpin Motors in Los Angeles is the nation's largest Ford dealership. He took a test ride in the Flying Pinto to an altitude of about 10 feet. But the operation "was kind of working on a shoestring" and didn't pay enough attention to safety. Smolinski and a colleague were killed in 1973 when a wing collapse led to a fiery crash. "Henry said if he ever died, he would like to die in his Flying Pinto," Boeckmann recalls. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 27 Oct 08 - 04:51 PM 'Twin' solar system 'like ours' 3 hours ago Undiscovered planets may lie hidden in a "twin" solar system 10.5 light years from the Earth, scientists believe. Epsilon Eridani looks very like a much younger version of our own star system, say astronomers in the latest edition of the Astrophyiscal Journal. It possesses a rocky asteroid belt identical to the one that lies between Mars and Jupiter, and an outer ring of icy material similar to the Kuiper Belt at the edge of our Solar System. In addition it has a second outer belt of asteroids containing 20 times more space rock than the inner one. Astronomers think unseen planets must have confined and shaped the three rings of material surrounding Epsilon Eridani. Three planets with masses between those of Neptune and Jupiter would neatly explain the observations. One candidate planet near the innermost asteroid belt has already been detected from the "wobble" effect of its gravity on the star. A second planet is thought to lurk near the second asteroid belt and a third near the inner edge of Epsilon Eridani's "Kuiper Belt". Epsilon Eridani, which is visible to the naked eye, is slightly smaller and cooler than the Sun but much younger. Whereas the Sun formed around 4.57 billion years ago, Epsilon Eridani is only around 850 million years old. The star's asteroid belts were found using the Spitzer space telescope. Dr Massimo Marengo, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the US astronomers who made the discovery, said: "Studying Epsilon Eridani is like having a time machine to look at our solar system when it was young." Co-author Dr Dana Backman, from the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute, said: "This system probably looks a lot like ours did when life first took root on Earth." Although Epsilon Eridani's "Kuiper Belt" is about 100 times more packed with icy debris than our own, scientists think that when our solar system was 850 million years old, its Kuiper Belt must have looked very similar. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 29 Oct 08 - 10:33 AM AN unmanned spacecraft from India — that most worldly and yet otherworldly of nations — is on its way to the moon. For the first time since man and his rockets began trespassing on outer space, a vessel has gone up from a country whose people actually regard the moon as a god. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Vivienne Flesher The Chandrayaan (or "moon craft") is the closest India has got to the moon since the epic Hindu sage, Narada, tried to reach it on a ladder of considerable (but insufficient) length — as my grandmother's bedtime version of events would have it. So think of this as a modern Indian pilgrimage to the moon. As it happens, a week before the launching, millions of Hindu women embarked on a customary daylong fast, broken at night on the first sighting of the moon's reflection in a bowl of oil. (This fast is done to ensure a husband's welfare.) But reverence for the moon is not confined to traditional Indian housewives: The Web site of the Indian Space Research Organization — the body that launched the Chandrayaan — includes a verse from the Rig Veda, a sacred Hindu text that dates back some 4,000 years: "O Moon! We should be able to know you through our intellect,/ You enlighten us through the right path." (NYT) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 30 Oct 08 - 05:41 PM ET, phone... each other? If aliens really are conversing, we are not picking up what they are saying. Now one researcher claims to have a way of tuning in to alien cellphone chatter. On Earth, the signal used to send information via cellphones has evolved from a single carrier wave to a "spread spectrum" method of transmission. It's more efficient, because chunks of information are essentially carried on multiple low-powered carrier waves, and more secure because the waves continually change frequency so the signal is harder to intercept. It follows that an advanced alien civilisation would have made this change too, but the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI) is not listening for such signals, says Claudio Maccone, co-chair of the SETI Permanent Study Group based in Paris, France. An algorithm known as the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is the method of choice for extracting an alien signal from cosmic background . |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 31 Oct 08 - 10:44 AM After an electrical malfunction caused it to go dormant a month ago, the Hubble Space Telescope is back in business. But the space shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble has been pushed back again, NASA officials said Thursday. To show this week that the orbiting eye still has the same chops as ever, astronomers from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore used Hubble's wide-field planetary camera 2 to record this image of a pair of smoke-rings galaxies known as Arp 147. The galaxies, about 450 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus, apparently collided in the recent cosmic past. According to Mario Livio, of the space telescope institute, one of the galaxies passed through the other, causing a circular wave, like a pebble tossed into a pond, that has now coalesced into a ring of new blue stars. The center of the impacted galaxy can be seen as a reddish blur along the bottom of a blue ring. (Picture here). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 31 Oct 08 - 10:48 AM A Beautiful Math (Click link to see images) By John Tierney The rough edges of the black shape in this famous fractal, named the Mandelbrot set, are derived from the equations described in Nova's program this evening on fractal geometry, "Hunting the Hidden Dimension." (Art Matrix) It's hard enough to make modern mathematics comprehensible in print, so I'm especially impressed to see anyone try to do it on television. Tonight, at 8 p.m. on PBS, Nova is presenting "Hunting the Hidden Dimension," an hour-long documentary on what it calls a "compelling mathematical detective story," the discovery of fractal geometry and its resulting applications. Of course, it doesn't hurt that there are lots of beautiful examples of fractals the natural world — and the unnatural worlds of "Star Trek" and "Star Wars." [UPDATE, Wednesday, Oct. 29] If you missed the show last night, you can watch it by clicking here. You'll see a beautiful explanation of how patterns of static in phone lines led to the Mandelbrot set pictured above — and much more. I agree with Xanthippe's critical verdict on the show: "Brilliant." The documentary, produced and directed by Michael Schwarz and Bill Jersey, tells how the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot became obssessed with "roughness" because so much in nature was not explained by orderly classical shapes like cones and spheres. He developed equations to explain shapes ranging from clouds to broccoli, and the equations turned out to be useful in creating movies, building cell-phone antennas, developing stronger concrete and a myriad of other applications |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 03 Nov 08 - 02:00 PM Stevens Juror Dismissed, Lied About Father's Death Washington Post - 1 hour ago By Del Quentin Wilber A juror dismissed from the trial of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) after she told the judge her father had died in California admitted in court today that her excuse had been a lie: She actually left town to attend a horse race. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 07 Nov 08 - 09:08 PM Skeleton Of 12,000-Year-Old Shaman Discovered Buried With Leopard, 50 Tortoises And Human Foot ScienceDaily (Nov. 5, 2008) — The skeleton of a 12,000 year-old Natufian Shaman has been discovered in northern Israel by archaeologists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The burial is described as being accompanied by "exceptional" grave offerings - including 50 complete tortoise shells, the pelvis of a leopard and a human foot. The shaman burial is thought to be one of the earliest known from the archaeological record and the only shaman grave in the whole region. Dr. Leore Grosman of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University, who is heading the excavation at the Natufian site of Hilazon Tachtit in the western Galilee, says that the elaborate and invested interment rituals and method used to construct and seal the grave suggest that this woman had a very high standing within the community. Details of the discovery were published in the PNAS journal on November 3, 2008. What was found in the shaman's grave? The grave contained body parts of several animals that rarely occur in Natufian assemblages. These include fifty tortoises, the near-compete pelvis of a leopard, the wing tip of a golden eagle, tail of a cow, two marten skulls and the forearm of a wild boar which was directly aligned with the woman's left humerus. A human foot belonging to an adult individual who was substantially larger than the interred woman was also found in the grave. Dr. Grosman believes this burial is consistent with expectations for a shaman's grave. Burials of shamans often reflect their role in life (i.e., remains of particular animals and contents of healing kits). It seems that the woman was perceived as being in close relationship with these animal spirits. Method of burial The body was buried in an unusual position. It was laid on its side with the spinal column, pelvis and right femur resting against the curved southern wall of the oval-shaped grave. The legs were spread apart and folded inward at the knees. According to Dr. Grosman, ten large stones were placed directly on the head, pelvis and arms of the buried individual at the time of burial. Following decomposition of the body, the weight of the stones caused disarticulation of some parts of the skeleton, including the separation of the pelvis from the vertebral column. Speculating why the body was held in place in such a way and covered with rocks, Dr. Grosman suggests it could have been to protect the body from being eaten by wild animals or because the community was trying to keep the shaman and her spirit inside the grave. Analysis of the bones show that the shaman was 45 years old, petite and had an unnatural, asymmetrical appearance due to a spinal disability that would have affected the woman's gait, causing her to limp or drag her foot. Fifty tortoises Most remarkably, the woman was buried with 50 complete tortoise shells. The inside of the tortoises were likely eaten as part of a feast surrounding the interment of the deceased. High representation of limb bones indicates that most tortoise remains were thrown into the grave along with the shells after consumption. The recovery of the limb bones also indicates that entire tortoises, not only their shells, were transported to the cave for the burial. The collection of 50 living tortoises at the time of burial would have required a significant investment, as these are solitary animals. Alternatively, these animals could have been collected and confined by humans for a period preceding the event. Shaman graves in archaeology According to Dr. Grosman, the burial of the woman is unlike any burial found in the Natufian or the preceding Paleolithic periods. "Clearly a great amount of time and energy was invested in the preparation, arrangement, and sealing of the grave." This was coupled with the special treatment of the buried body. Shamans are universally recorded cross-culturally in hunter-gatherer groups and small-scale agricultural societies. Nevertheless, they have rarely been documented in the archaeological record and none have been reported from the Paleolithic of Southwest Asia. The Natufians existed in the Mediterranean region of the Levant 15,000 to 11,500 years ago. Dr. Grosman suggests this grave could point to ideological shifts that took place due to the transition to agriculture in the region at that time. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 08 Nov 08 - 04:44 PM William Robinson writes "After an 18-day journey, Chandrayaan-1, the moon mission of India, has entered Lunar orbit. The maneuver was described as crucial and critical by scientists, who pointed out that at least 30 per cent of similar moon missions had failed at this juncture, resulting in spacecraft lost to outer space. The lunar orbit insertion placed Chandrayaan-1 in an elliptical orbit with its nearest point 400 to 500 kilometers away from the moon, and the farthest, 7,500 kilometers. By November 15, the spacecraft is expected to be orbiting the moon at a distance of 100 kilometers and sending back data and images (the camera was tested with shots looking back at Earth). The Chandrayaan-1 is also scheduled to send a probe to the moon's surface." (Slashdot) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 09 Nov 08 - 08:16 PM Meanwhile, back in the lower GI of civilization: - The Supreme Court debated whether the Federal Communications Commission was correct in fining the Fox network for unscripted use of offensive words by Bono, Cher and Nicole Richie. Bono and Cher both used adjectival forms of a commonly heard expletive that is, in some contexts, a rude synonym for sexual intercourse; Richie, more creatively inclined, used several expletives while describing the difficulty of getting cow manure out of a Prada purse. To sum it up: It is difficult indeed. The stakes are high. The FCC fined the network $50,000 per station for the gaffes. In doing so, it claimed the unilateral ability to decide what words were offensive, in what contexts they were offensive, precisely how offensive they were and how large the penalties should be. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg noted, the FCC had determined that the swearing in "Saving Private Ryan" was OK - even though a lot of stations bleeped the words anyway - whereas the swearing by blues musicians in a Martin Scorsese documentary was a threat to civilized discourse. This despite the fact that the actors in "Saving Private Ryan" were reciting scripted lines, while the blue musicians were just making offhand comments. Of course, the musicians were not involved in pretending to kill Nazis when they used the unacceptable words. Justice John Paul Stevens inquired about the word "dung." The government lawyer said "probably" that would not be offensive. Stevens also suggested an interesting standard: If a joke was funny enough, it could escape sanctions. Although the FCC is already at work on its funny-o-meter, the government had no comment. RSS Feed: |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 11 Nov 08 - 10:05 PM "New large-scale studies of DNA are causing a rethinking of the very nature of genes. A typical gene is no longer conceived of as a single chunk of DNA encoding a single protein. It turns out, for example, that several different proteins may be produced from a single stretch of DNA. Most of the molecules produced from DNA may not even be proteins, but rather RNA. The familiar double helix of DNA no longer has a monopoly on heredity: other molecules clinging to DNA can produce striking differences between two organisms with the same genes — and those molecules can be inherited along with DNA. Scientists have been working on exploring the 98% of the genome not identified as the protein-coding region. One of the biggest of these projects is an effort called the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements, or 'Encode.' And its analysis of only 1% of the genome reveals the genome to be full of genes that are deeply weird, at least by the traditional standard of what a gene is supposed to be and do. The Encode team estimates that the average protein-coding region produces 5.7 different transcripts. Different kinds of cells appear to produce different transcripts from the same gene. And it gets even weirder. Our DNA is studded with millions of proteins and other molecules, which determine which genes can produce transcripts and which cannot. New cells inherit those molecules along with DNA. In other words, heredity can flow through a second channel." (Slashdot) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 11 Nov 08 - 10:16 PM A Beautiful Dissertation on Wisdom by a plurality of sweethearts. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 12 Nov 08 - 10:50 AM Ten actual remarks by Charles Darwin, from the UK Timeson-line edition: So, in the interests, of rescuing him from the no-man's-land in which he has become trapped, here are 10 Darwin quotations, from his later years, which you are unlikely to hear from the mouths of either creationists or atheists in 2009. 1. "The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic." (Autobiography) 2. "It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist." (Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879) 3. "I hardly see how religion & science can be kept as distinct as [Edward Pusey] desires… But I most wholly agree… that there is no reason why the disciples of either school should attack each other with bitterness." (Letter to J. Brodie Innes, November 27 1878) 4. "In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God." (Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879) 5. "I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind." (Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879) 6. "I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the son of God." (Letter to Frederick McDermott, November 24 1880) 7. [In conversation with the atheist Edward Aveling, 1881] "Why should you be so aggressive? Is anything gained by trying to force these new ideas upon the mass of mankind?" (Edward Aveling, The religious views of Charles Darwin, 1883) 8. "Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?" (Letter to Graham William, July 3 1881) 9. "My theology is a simple muddle: I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent Design." (Letter to Joseph Hooker, July 12 1870) 10. "I can never make up my mind how far an inward conviction that there must be some Creator or First Cause is really trustworthy evidence." (Letter to Francis Abbot, September 6 1871 |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 12 Nov 08 - 11:18 AM Theodorid (King of the Visigoths) died in the thirteenth year of his reign. His brother Euric succeeded him with such eager haste that he fell under dark suspicion. Now while these and various other matters were happening among the people of the Visigoths, the Emperor Valentinian was slain by the treachery of Maximus, and Maximus himself, like a tyrant, usurped the rule. Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, heard of this and came from Africa to Italy with ships of war, entered Rome and laid it waste. Maximus fled and was slain by a certain Ursus, a Roman soldier. After him Majorian undertook the government of the Western Empire at the bidding of Marcian, Emperor of the East. But he too ruled but a short time. For when he had moved his forces against the Alani who were harassing Gaul, he was killed at Dertona near the river named Ira. Severus succeeded him and died at Rome in the third year of his reign. When the Emperor Leo, who had succeeded Marcian in the Eastern Empire, learned of this, he chose as emperor his Patrician Anthemius and sent him to Rome. Upon his arrival he sent against the Alani his son-in-law Ricimer, who was an excellent man and almost the only one in Italy at that time fit to command the army. In the very first engagement he conquered and destroyed the host of the Alani, together with their king, Beorg. Now Euric, king of the Visigoths, perceived the frequent change of Roman Emperors and strove to hold Gaul by his own right. The Emperor Anthemius heard of it and asked the Brittones for aid. Their King Riotimus came with twelve thousand men into the state of the Bituriges by the way of Ocean, and was received as he disembarked from his ships. Euric, king of the Visigoths, came against them with an innumerable army, and after a long fight he routed Riotimus, king of the Brittones, before the Romans could join him. So when he had lost a great part of his army, he fled with all the men he could gather together, and came to the Burgundians, a neighboring tribe then allied to the Romans. But Euric, king of the Visigoths, seized the Gallic city of Arverna; for the Emperor Anthemius was now dead. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 12 Nov 08 - 11:45 AM And in another part of the jungle altogether: Going for the Guinness World Record Dallas residents gathered to watch giant beach balls bounce around the downtown area. The balls measure 36 feet in diameter and are more than three stories high. To break the Guinness record, the balls need to be at least 32.8 feet (10 meters) in diameter and made of real beach ball material. (ABC) I have to ask, though, what "real" beach ball material is. Coconut shell? Gourds? The mind boggles at the new definition here exposed of the word "real", brought to you from Fantasy Land, where people get famous for ...well, for being famous. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 12 Nov 08 - 05:58 PM Most university students believe that if they're "trying hard," a professor should reconsider their grade. One-third say that if they attend most of the classes for a course, they deserve at least a B, while almost one-quarter "think poorly" of professors who don't reply to e-mails the same day they're sent. Those are among the revelations in a newly published study examining students' sense of academic entitlement, or the mentality that enrolling in post-secondary education is akin to shopping in a store where the customer is always right. The paper describes academic entitlement as "expectations of high marks for modest effort and demanding attitudes toward teachers." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Bill D Date: 12 Nov 08 - 06:26 PM Oh, my..... I saw the beginning of that attitude when *I* was a graduate asst. 35 years ago! They wanted the 'grade'....not necessarily the knowlege that earned it.. and, if I hit 'send' in time, 600.. |
