Clipmarks | Kore7's Pops

Shaking things up on Clipmarks.com

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:55:57 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: Please read the entire post by clicking the source link before reacting.

Clip Source: clipmarks.wordpress.com

Unfortunately, we have recently become increasingly concerned that the site has become overly antagonistic and inappropriately controlled by a disproportionately loud group of users. In all honesty, we no longer feel that the processes of our site are producing a unique, high quality blend of content. Instead, the magical blending of diverse topics on the Clipmarks home page has seemed to dissolve into a battleground for extremely hostile politically oriented users who are overwhelming the rest of the site. Because of this we are working on making some fundamental changes to the way the Clipmarks site works. We will do our best to make changes that improve the site and will continue to iterate until we are comfortable that it is just right.

Tags: clipmarks

A wandering mind able to project themselves into imaginary situations - can do important work'..

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:07:08 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: ...scientists are learning - and may even be essential
"Einstein, for instance, was notorious for his wandering mind ".

Clip Source: www.boston.com

A wandering mind can do important work, scientists are learning - and may even be essential

In a culture obsessed with efficiency, daydreaming is derided as a lazy habit or a lack of discipline, the kind of thinking we rely on when we don't really want to think. It's a sign of procrastination, not productivity, something to be put away with your flip-flops and hammock as summer draws to a close.

In recent years, however, scientists have begun to see the act of daydreaming very differently. They've demonstrated that daydreaming is a fundamental feature of the human mind - so fundamental, in fact, that it's often referred to as our "default" mode of thought. Many scientists argue that daydreaming is a crucial tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections.

If your mind didn't wander, then you'd be largely shackled to whatever you are doing right now," says Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California,

How to catch a mouse without a mousetrap

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 02:58:03 GMT

clipped by: milmufmas

Clip Source: glass.typepad.com

Get a toilet paper tube and crease two lines to form a flat sided tunnel.

Put a treat on one end of the tube: A cracker and dab of peanut butter works great.

Get a tall (at least 20 inches) bucket. A trash can works well.

Balance the tube precariously on the edge of a table or counter with the treat hanging directly over the tall sided receptacle.

The mouse will scurry to the treat (they like tunnels) and fall into the trap.

Set the fella loose at least a mile away from your abode.

Also, folks have asked how this could work if you don't have a counter or table. Simple: get a piece of cardboard and crease it to make a ramp up to a small trashcan.

Motion blur photos - Beautiful!

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:35:26 GMT

clipped by: willhelm
clipper's remarks:

Clip Source: digital-photography-school.com

The Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremonies in Pictures

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:49:00 GMT

clipped by: haraya

Clip Source: www.boston.com

Beijing held its formal opening ceremony today for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The ceremony, held in the National Stadium known as the Bird's Nest, was attended by thousands, and watched by millions more on television. Below are some highlights of the nearly 4-hour performance. (24 photos total)

Tags: china, beijing, photography, olympics, sports, photos, collection, gallery, event, performance

* Bridges in Europe

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:31:00 GMT

clipped by: willhelm

Clip Source: blog.hotelclub.com

Pont du Gard, France

Bridge of Sighs, Venice

Ponte Vecchio, Florence

Tower Bridge, London

Charles Bridge, Prague

Oresund Bridge (Öresundsbron)

The Old Bridge, Mostar

Széchenyi Chain Bridge, Budapest

Have you met Tan Hong Ming?

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:57:14 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks: He's so cute.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: commercial, television, children, perception, malaysia, video, cute, love, race, interview

The Electric Sheep Screen-Saver: A Case Study in Aesthetic Evolution (paper)

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:29:29 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks: Thanks to Kore7's comment on invictus' clip, I discovered there's a working linux version now.

2 minutes later, I found this paper on the Electric Sheep Project and simply had to share it.

Clip Source: draves.org

The Electric Sheep Screen-Saver: A Case Study in Aesthetic Evolution

Scott Draves

Spotworks, San Francisco CA, USA

Electric Sheep is a distributed screen-saver that harnesses idle computers into a render farm with the purpose of animating and evolving artificial life-forms known as sheep. The votes of the users form the basis for the fitness function for a genetic algorithm on a space of fractal animations. Users also may design sheep by hand for inclusion in the gene pool. This paper describes the system and its algorithms, and reports statistics from 11 weeks of operation. The data indicate that Electric Sheep functions more as an amplifier of its human collaborators' creativity rather than as a traditional genetic algorithm that optimizes a fitness function.

Full paper as PDF (c) Springer-Verlag

Electric Sheep Home Page

Tags: pdf, paper, sheep, electric sheep, screensaver, free, evolution, art

Mirrors Don’t Lie.. : -)

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:34:05 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: “When people are made to be self-aware, they are likelier to stop and think about what they are doing,” Dr. Bodenhausen said. “A byproduct of that awareness may be a shift away from acting on autopilot toward more desirable ways of behaving.” Physical self-reflection, in other words, encourages philosophical self-reflection, a crash course in the Socratic notion that you cannot know or appreciate others until you know yourself. "

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

For the aging narcissist of Shakespeare’s 62nd sonnet, the mirror delivered a much-needed whack to his vanity, the sight of a face “beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity” underscoring the limits of self-love.

To scientists, the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of mirrors make them powerful tools for exploring questions about perception and cognition in humans and other neuronally gifted species, and how the brain interprets and acts upon the great tides of sensory information from the external world.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

How can we be so self-delusional when the truth stares back at us? “Although we do indeed see ourselves in the mirror every day, we don’t look exactly the same every time,”

“Which image is you?”

“Our research shows that people, on average, resolve that ambiguity in their favor, forming a representation of their image that is more attractive than they actually are.”

Multimedia

Graphic

Mirror Images

7 habits of highly successful people

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:23:39 GMT

clipped by: bignosemousie

Clip Source: www.mcsweeneys.net

7 Habits of
Highly Successful
People.

1. Skiing
2. Yachting
3. Snorkeling
4. Golf
5. Polo
6. Dinner parties
7. Shopping

Tags: humor, these lists are making me laugh

Nassim Nicholas Taleb(1960- )

Thu, 31 May 2007 16:55:54 GMT

clipped by: freedom2112
clipper's remarks: " I have said that nobody is safe in Extremistan. This has a converse: nobody is threatened with complete extinction either. Our current environment allows the little guy to bide his time in the antechamber of success- as long as there is life, there is hope"

Nassim Nicholas Taleb; The Black Swan
(the Long Tail)

i say..........this is just a study of "frequency"..the word "just" may not be correctly used here..but that would depend on the depth of the study

Taleb is one of my favorites...he has taken a very complex situation...and made it fun..at least for me---"Fooled by Randomness" opened my eyes to how simple everything is in a given situation... sometimes it just takes another perspective within yourself...and why understanding randomness achieves that ..."simplicity"

Clip Source: www.fooledbyrandomness.com

"My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves & the quality of their knowledge too seriously & those who don’t have the guts to sometimes say: I don’t know...." (You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment & make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race).

Tags: stocks, philosophy, science, randomness

How Stem Cells Decide What They'll Become

Sun, 25 May 2008 13:09:29 GMT

clipped by: Beholder
clipper's remarks: They began by examining populations of seemingly identical blood stem cells, and found that a cell marker of "stemness," a protein called Sca-1, was actually present in highly variable amounts from cell to cell -- in fact, they found a 1,000-fold range. One might think that low Sca-1 cells are simply those cells that have spontaneously differentiated. However, when Huang and Chang divided the cells expressing low, medium and high levels of Sca-1 and cultured them, each descendent cell population recapitulated the same broad range of Sca-1 levels over nine days or more, regardless of what levels they started with.
Blood stem cells with low levels of Sca-1 differentiated into red blood cell progenitors seven times more often than cells high in Sca-1 when exposed to erythropoietin, a growth factor that promotes red blood cell production.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

How does a stem cell decide what specialized identity to adopt -- or simply to remain a stem cell? A new study suggests that the conventional view, which assumes that cells are "instructed" to progress along prescribed signaling pathways, is too simplistic. Instead, it supports the idea that cells differentiate through the collective behavior of multiple genes in a network that ultimately leads to just a few endpoints -- just as a marble on a hilltop can travel a nearly infinite number of downward paths, only to arrive in the same valley.

The landscape analogy and collective "decision-making" are concepts unfamiliar to biologists, who have tended to focus on single genes acting in linear pathways.

"A single pathway is not a good way to understand a whole process. Our goal has been to understand the driving force behind it."

Tags: stem cells, cloning, genetics

Out of the Shadows - Snow Leopards

Thu, 29 May 2008 13:29:20 GMT

clipped by: Beholder

Clip Source: ngm.nationalgeographic.com

The elusive Central Asian snow leopard steps into a
risk-filled future.

When a snow leopard stalks prey among the mountain walls, it moves on broad paws with extra fur between the toes, softly, slowly, "like snow slipping off a ledge as it melts," Raghu says.

"You almost have to turn away for a minute to tell the animal is going anywhere. If it knocks a stone loose, it will reach out a foot to stop it from falling and making noise." One might be moving right now, perfectly silent and perfectly tensed, maybe close by. But where? That's always the question. That, and how many are left to see?

Clip Source: ngm.nationalgeographic.com

DARKNESS CLAIMS the last crags. Raghu and I won't glimpse a snow leopard this day. It's not a disappointment. The great cat is only living up to its reputation for being impossible to find.

There's no escaping the fact that most of the world's big cats are in deep trouble, from the heavily poached tiger to the last 30 free-roaming Amur leopards.

Tags: snow leopards, endangered species

THEN & NOW: Africa Satellite Images Show Stark Changes

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:47:57 GMT

clipped by: Beholder

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

Satellite images from 1972 (left) and 2007 (right) show water-level decline in Lake Chad, once the world's sixth largest.

At the junction of Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, the lake is now one-tenth its former size, due to declining rainfall and diversion of water for human use.

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

Africa's most populous urban area, Cairo, Egypt, is shown in 1972 (left) and 2005 (right).

An exploding population has driven the city's expansion, encroaching on much of the precious arable land surrounding the Nile River, according to a UN atlas released June 11, 2008.

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

1978 (left) and 2004 satellite images show the roughly 500-square-kilometer (190-square-mile) reservoir formed by the Manantali Dam in Mali.

Below the dam, loss of the annual flood cycles have reduced agriculture substantially

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

The depletion of Guinea's resource-rich coastal zone is illustrated in satellite images from 1975 (left) and 2007.

Tags: ecology, environment

One of the signs of passing youth...

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:55:06 GMT

clipped by: LiveOakCenter

Clip Source: www.me.com

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them. -- Virginia Woolf

Clipmarks | Kore7's Pops

Shaking things up on Clipmarks.com

A wandering mind able to project themselves into imaginary situations - can do important work'..

A wandering mind can do important work, scientists are learning - and may even be essential

How to catch a mouse without a mousetrap

Motion blur photos - Beautiful!

The Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremonies in Pictures

* Bridges in Europe

Bridge of Sighs, Venice

Ponte Vecchio, Florence

Tower Bridge, London

Charles Bridge, Prague

Oresund Bridge (Öresundsbron)

The Old Bridge, Mostar

Széchenyi Chain Bridge, Budapest

Have you met Tan Hong Ming?

The Electric Sheep Screen-Saver: A Case Study in Aesthetic Evolution (paper)

The Electric Sheep Screen-Saver: A Case Study in Aesthetic Evolution

Scott Draves

Spotworks, San Francisco CA, USA

Mirrors Don’t Lie.. : -)

Multimedia

Mirror Images

7 habits of highly successful people

7 Habits ofHighly SuccessfulPeople.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb(1960- )

How Stem Cells Decide What They'll Become

Out of the Shadows - Snow Leopards

The elusive Central Asian snow leopard steps into a risk-filled future.

THEN & NOW: Africa Satellite Images Show Stark Changes

One of the signs of passing youth...

7 Habits of
Highly Successful
People.

The elusive Central Asian snow leopard steps into a
risk-filled future.