Clipmarks | Lembit's clips

Freak hail storm causes chaos

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:53:11 GMT

clipped by: Lembit
clipper's remarks: Crazy Weather in Colombia.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Freak hail storm causes chaos

A freak hail storm in Colombia led to a 30-car pile up followed by flooding as the hail started to melt.

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Tags: weater, climate, hail stones, bogota, columbia

The Loneliest man on Earth?

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 17:43:59 GMT

clipped by: Lembit
clipper's remarks: Among the few to have clapped eyes on him is Brazilian film-maker Vincent Carelli. It's unclear what happened to the rest of the man's people, but FUNAI reckons "he is the sole survivor of at least two successive massacres", although these massacres have never been proved.

The last time FUNAI tried to contact him in 2005, the man shot its field worker in the chest with an arrow, fortunately not fatally. Since then FUNAI has decided to leave him be.

The Man of the Hole is not alone in his plight: he's one of an estimated 40,000 isolated people worldwide, about whom we know very little. Sadly, one thing we do know is that many of them are constantly threatened by loggers and oil companies, who want to commercialise the land they live on, or harassed by paramilitary groups, missionaries, drug traffickers and foreign tourists who want to make contact.

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

The Word: Man of the Hole

YOUR friends and family are gone. Everyone else you have ever known has vanished. Forever. The loneliness seems unimaginable. But this is reality for one solitary native Brazilian Indian living on a small island of Amazon rainforest amid a sea of cattle ranches and soya plantations.

Virtually nothing is known about him, except that he seems to be the last survivor of his group or people. He has been nicknamed the Man of the Hole because he digs holes a metre wide and 3 metres deep inside little houses that he builds from palm leaves. No one quite knows why he does this.

Nor is anyone sure how long the man has been alone. In 1995, the Brazilian government's Indian affairs department, FUNAI, investigated after hearing rumours of a solitary forest dweller. The ranchers denied he existed - possibly because they were the ones that had bulldozed his home.

The man's existence was confirmed in 1997 when FUNAI stumbled on a house and holes he had built.

Tags: man, hole, brazil, brazilian, anthropology, massacre, survival

What creation?

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:24:16 GMT

clipped by: Lembit
clipper's remarks: It is one thing to use scripture as a moral guide to life's cunundrums, quite another to use it as a users manual for the Universe.

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

What creation?

The very least we can ask of any system, scientific or religious, is that it not be blatantly self-contradictory. Creationists like to nit-pick evolution, trying to put scientists on the defensive.

But creation proponents believe in "the inerrancy and full authority of Scripture and in the literal historicity of Genesis, with its record of six-day Creation," as one says on the website of the Institute for Creation Research.

In Genesis, chapter 1, plants and animals were created before any human, yet in chapter 2, man was created first, then the plants, the animals and, lastly, woman.

The creationists should be called to account: which scriptural creation story is incorrect? How do they know? How can "inerrant scripture" contain something incorrect?

From issue 2610 of New Scientist magazine, 30 June 2007, page 23

Tags: religion, creationism, science, truth, creation, genesis, bible

What makes a compelling conspiracy theory?

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 15:54:39 GMT

clipped by: Lembit
clipper's remarks: for example, the assassination of a president by a single, possibly mentally unstable, gunman, or the death of a princess because of a drunk driver. This presents us with a rather chaotic and unpredictable relationship between cause and effect. Instability makes most of us uncomfortable; we prefer to imagine we live in a predictable, safe world, so in a strange way, some conspiracy theories offer us accounts of events that allow us to retain a sense of safety and predictability.

Other research has examined how the way we search for and evaluate evidence affects our belief systems. Numerous studies have shown that in general, people give greater attention to information that fits with their existing beliefs, a tendency called "confirmation bias". Reasoning about conspiracy theories follows this pattern.

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

The lure of the conspiracy theory

So what kind of thought processes contribute to belief in conspiracy theories? A study I carried out in 2002 explored a way of thinking sometimes called "major event - major cause" reasoning. Essentially, people often assume that an event with substantial, significant or wide-ranging consequences is likely to have been caused by something substantial, significant or wide-ranging.

I gave volunteers variations of a newspaper story describing an assassination attempt on a fictitious president. Those who were given the version where the president died were significantly more likely to attribute the event to a conspiracy than those who read the one where the president survived, even though all other aspects of the story were equivalent.

To appreciate why this form of reasoning is seductive, consider the alternative: major events having minor or mundane causes

Tags: conspiracy, conspiracy theory, belief, assassination

11-year-old charged with driving drunk

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 14:50:34 GMT

clipped by: Lembit

Clip Source: uk.reuters.com

11-year-old charged with driving drunk in Alabama

MIAMI (Reuters) - An 11-year-old girl was charged with drunken driving after leading police on a chase at speeds of up to 100 mph that ended when she flipped the car in an Alabama beach town.

A video camera in the police car captured the look of surprise on the officer's face when he approached the wrecked car and got a look at the motorist.

The Mobile Press-Register newspaper said the patrolman saw the Chevrolet Monte Carlo speeding and flashed his lights to signal the driver to stop. Instead, the car sped faster, travelling at up to 100 mph (160 kph) before sideswiping another vehicle and flipping over in the Gulf Coast town of Orange Beach, Alabama, on Tuesday night.

The young driver, who lived nearby in Perdido Key, Florida, was treated at a hospital for scrapes and bruises and released to relatives. Police also charged her with speeding, leaving the scene of an accident and reckless endangerment.

Tags: 11, driving, drunk, drinking, car, crash

It's a small(er) world

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 14:36:10 GMT

clipped by: Lembit

Clip Source: environment.newscientist.com

Honey, we shrunk the Earth

"It is essential for the positioning of the satellites that measure rises in sea level – they must be accurate to the millimetre," says Nothnagel, who led the German team. "If the positions of the ground stations tracking the satellites are not accurate to the millimetre, then the satellites cannot be accurate either."

The scientists round the number up to 12,756.274 kilometres (7,926.3812 miles) for the general use.

The world is smaller than we thought – by five millimetres. That is the conclusion of an international project to measure the diameter of the Earth. The last such measurement was made in 2000.

However, the new data does not mean the Earth has shrunk. The new figure is simply more accurate, thanks to more accurate measurements, more data and better geophysical models.

The reduction makes no tangible difference to everyday life – it will not noticeably shorten your journey to work.

Tags: earth, science, measurement, satellite, sea levels

The Last Island of the Savages

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:14:47 GMT

clipped by: Lembit
clipper's remarks:

Then he took a closer look at them. They were small men, well-built, frizzy-haired, and black. They were naked except for narrow belts that circled their waists. And they were holding spears, bows, and arrows which they had begun waving in a manner that seemed not altogether friendly. Not long after this, a wireless operator at the Regent Shipping Company's offices in Hong Kong received an urgent distress call from the Primrose's captain, asking for an immediate airdrop of firearms so that his crew could defend itself. "Wild men, estimate more than 50, carrying various home-made weapons are making two or three wooden boats," the message read. "Worrying they will board us at sunset. All crew members' lives not guaranteed."

This is a really interesing 16,000 word essay which details almost everything known about a populatin of people who live on an island in the Indian Ocean.

Clip Source: www.andaman.org

The Last Island of the Savages

Shortly before midnight on August 2, 1981, a Panamanian-registered freighter called the Primrose, which was traveling in heavy seas between Bangladesh and Australia with a cargo of poultry feed, ran aground on a coral reef in the Bay of Bengal. As dawn broke the next morning, the captain was probably relieved to see dry land just a few hundred yards from the Primrose's resting place: a low-lying island, several miles across, with a narrow beach of clean white sand giving way to dense jungle. If he consulted his charts, he realized that this was North Sentinel Island, a western outlier in the Andaman archi-pelago, which belongs to India and stretches in a ragged line between Burma and Sumatra.

A few days later, a young sailor on lookout duty in the Primrose's watch tower spotted several people coming down from the forest toward the h and peering out at the stranded vessel. They must be a rescue party sent by the shipping company, he thought.

Tags: native, discovery, island, andaman, north sentinel, anthropology

Woman jailed for testicle attack

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 14:20:35 GMT

clipped by: Lembit

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Woman jailed for testicle attack

A woman who ripped off her ex-boyfriend's testicle with her bare hands has been sent to prison.

Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage when Geoffrey Jones, 37, rejected her advances at the end of a house party, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

She pulled off his left testicle and tried to swallow it, before spitting it out. A friend handed it back to Mr Jones saying: "That's yours."

Monti admitted wounding and was jailed for two-and-a-half years.

'Pulled hard'

Sentencing Monti, Judge Charles James said it was "a very serious injury" and that Monti was not acting in self defence.

In his statement, Mr Jones said she grabbed his genitals and "pulled hard".

I am in no way a violent person

Amanda Monti

He added: "That caused my underpants to come off and I found I was completely naked and in excruciating pain."

Tags: testicle, attack, gross, pain

Amazon river 'longer than Nile'

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 14:12:44 GMT

clipped by: Lembit

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Amazon river 'longer than Nile'

Scientists in Brazil are claiming to have established as a scientific fact that the Amazon is the longest river in the world.

The Amazon is recognised as the world's largest river by volume, but has generally been regarded as second in length to the River Nile in Egypt.

The claim follows an expedition to Peru that is said to have established a new starting point further south.

It puts the Amazon at 6,800km (4,250 miles) compared to the Nile's 6,695km.

Mountain source

The precise length of a river is not easy to calculate and depends on correctly identifying the source and the mouth.

The new claim in Brazil follows an expedition by scientists which is said to have discovered a new source for the Amazon in the south of Peru and not the north of the country as had been thought for many years.

While the exact location has yet to be confirmed from two choices, scientists say either would make the river the longest in the world.

Tags: amazon, nile, river, longest, water, geography

Nearly the worlds tallest hotel

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 18:14:12 GMT

clipped by: Lembit
clipper's remarks: I'm sure many of you have came across this building before, but I find it strangely compelling and quite horrifying at the same time.

Clip Source: www.damninteresting.com

North Korea's "Secret" Hotel

Despite being one of the planet's poorest countries, the communist state looks for any achievement to boost itself in eyes of the world.

The DPRK is also one of the world's most secretive nations. For a North Korean, contact with a foreigner can land one in jail… or worse. But there is one embarrassing secret that is hard for the government to hide, literally. It's the Ryugyong Hotel in the Potong District of North Korea's capital city of Pyongyang. It's difficult to hide because it's a massive, 105-story structure which dominates the city's skyline.

The Ryugyong or "Capital of Willows" Hotel stands 1,083 feet tall, and it was planned to have 3,000 rooms and seven revolving restaurants. It has a total of 3.9 million square feet of floor space. The hotel would be the tallest hotel and seventh largest building in the world if it were finished. It would also have been the first building with over one hundred floors outside of New York or Chicago.

Tags: hotel, pyongyang, korea, north korea, building, skyscraper, architecture

Hello toilet, goodbye WC for Beijing Games

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:01:22 GMT

clipped by: Lembit
clipper's remarks: Mmm...mixed elbow with garlic mud, my favourite

Clip Source: uk.reuters.com

Hello toilet, goodbye WC for Beijing Games

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing's battle to standardise and correct English-language signs ahead of the 2008 Olympics has claimed another head -- "W.C.".

By the end of the year, all public conveniences in the city will be called "toilets" instead of the venerable, Victorian-era sounding abbreviation for "water closet", state media reported on Wednesday.

But a rather more vexing question has been what to do about menus to help the hundreds of thousands of tourists, athletes and reporters expected to flood the city, many of whom will not speak a word of Chinese, let alone understand Chinese characters.

All restaurants and hotels rated three star and above will have to use the standard names once they come out, it added.

They are hoping to avoid confusing visitors with the mish-mash of translations now on offer. One well-known Beijing restaurant chain has dishes called "It is small to fry the chicken miscellaneous" and "mixed elbow with garlic mud".

Tags: beijing, olympics, games, china, chinese, language

Yet More Climate Change Myths

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:20:21 GMT

clipped by: Lembit
clipper's remarks: Continued...

Comparisons of temperature indicators such as tree-ring records from around the northern hemisphere suggest there were several widespread cold intervals between 1580 and 1850.

Yet while there is some evidence of cold intervals in parts of the southern hemisphere during this time, they do not appear to coincide with those in the northern hemisphere. Such findings suggest the Little Ice Age may have been more of a regional phenomenon than a global one.

I hope that this adds a little more balance to what seems to have become an argument over politics in recent years than one of scientific investigation.

Clip Source: environment.newscientist.com

Climate myths: We are simply recovering from the Little Ice Age

Some climate sceptics argue that the warming we are now experiencing is simply due to the planet recovering from the Little Ice Age, a period of regionally cold conditions between roughly AD 1350 and 1850. But the key question is why it was colder during the Little Ice Age. And why didn't the climate remain that way, or even get colder still?

The Earth does not have some natural temperature to which it always returns. If it cools, then it must be receiving less heat from the Sun or radiating more into space, or both. If it warms, it must be receiving more heat or retaining more heat.

The term "Little Ice Age" is somewhat questionable, because there was no single, well-defined period of prolonged cold around the entire planet. After 1600, there are records of average winter temperatures in Europe and North America that were as much as 2°C lower than present (although the third coldest winter in England since 1659 was in 1963).

Tags: climate change, climate, global warming, weather, science, co2, ice age

More Climate Change Myths

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:10:12 GMT

clipped by: Lembit
clipper's remarks: Continued...

Basic physics tells us that gases with this property trap heat radiating from the Earth, that the planet would be a lot colder if this effect was not real and that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will trap even more heat.

What is more, CO2 is just one of several greenhouses gases, and greenhouse gases are just one of many factors affecting the climate. There is no reason to expect a perfect correlation between CO2 levels and temperature in the past: if there is a big change in another climate "forcing", the correlation will be obscured.

So why has Earth regularly switched between ice ages and warmer interglacial periods in the past million years? It has long been thought that this is due to variations in Earth's orbit. However, the correlation is not perfect and the heating or cooling effect of these orbital variations is small. It has also long been recognised that they cannot fully explain the dramatic temperature switches between ice ages and interglacials.

Clip Source: environment.newscientist.com

Climate myths: Ice cores show CO₂ increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming

Ice cores from Antarctica show that at the end of recent ice ages, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere usually started to rise only after temperatures had begun to climb. There is uncertainty about the timings, partly because the air trapped in the cores is younger than the ice, but it appears the lags might sometimes have been 800 years or more.

This proves that rising CO₂ was not the trigger that caused the initial warming at the end of these ice ages – but no climate scientist has ever made this claim. It certainly does not challenge the idea that more CO₂ heats the planet.

We know that CO₂ is a greenhouse gas because it absorbs and emits certain frequencies of infrared radiation.

Tags: climate change, climate, global warming, weather, science, co2

Climate Change Myths

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:57:32 GMT

clipped by: Lembit
clipper's remarks: To counter the recent deluge of myths which have been posted regarding Climate Change from a political point of view, I though that I would Clip some regarding climate change from a scientific perspective.

Clip Source: environment.newscientist.com

Climate myths: Human CO₂ emissions are too tiny to matter

Ice cores show that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have remained between 180 and 300 parts per million for the past half-a-million years. In recent centuries, however, CO₂ levels have risen sharply, to at least 380 ppm

So what's going on? It is true that human emissions of CO₂ are small compared with natural sources. But the fact that CO₂ levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions. Now slightly more CO₂ must be entering the atmosphere than is being soaked up by carbon "sinks".

Clip Source: environment.newscientist.com

Tags: climate change, climate, global warming, weather, science

All the Air and Water in the World

Mon, 28 May 2007 03:35:26 GMT

clipped by: Lembit
clipper's remarks: These remarkable images by Adam Nieman give us some impression of the true scarcity of the vital natural resources available to us on this planet.

Viewed like this you can see that the vast oceans and endless sky are merely the thinnest of skins adorning the Earth.

These are the resources that we have to live within and share with every other living organism on Earth This is also where a lot of our waste goes, in these very finite environs.

Clip Source: www.adamnieman.co.uk

All the water in the world (1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it) and all the air in the atmosphere (5140 trillion tonnes of it).

These images depict the total volume of air and water in the world. Surprisingly small quanties when you look at them like this! A version won first prize in the Concepts category of the Visions of Science competition.

Tags: atmosphere, air, water, environment, earth, pollution, climate

Clipmarks | Lembit's clips

Freak hail storm causes chaos

Freak hail storm causes chaos

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World

The Loneliest man on Earth?

The Word: Man of the Hole

What creation?

What creation?

What makes a compelling conspiracy theory?

The lure of the conspiracy theory

11-year-old charged with driving drunk

11-year-old charged with driving drunk in Alabama

It's a small(er) world

Honey, we shrunk the Earth

The Last Island of the Savages

Woman jailed for testicle attack

Amazon river 'longer than Nile'

Nearly the worlds tallest hotel

Hello toilet, goodbye WC for Beijing Games

Hello toilet, goodbye WC for Beijing Games

Yet More Climate Change Myths

Climate myths: We are simply recovering from the Little Ice Age

More Climate Change Myths

Climate myths: Ice cores show CO₂ increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming

Climate Change Myths

Climate myths: Human CO₂ emissions are too tiny to matter

All the Air and Water in the World

Clipmarks | Lembit's clips

Freak hail storm causes chaos

Freak hail storm causes chaos

Jump to Media Player

MEDIA PLAYER

NAVIGATION

BBC News Player

Media options

World

The Loneliest man on Earth?

The Word: Man of the Hole

What creation?

What creation?

What makes a compelling conspiracy theory?

The lure of the conspiracy theory

11-year-old charged with driving drunk

11-year-old charged with driving drunk in Alabama

It's a small(er) world

Honey, we shrunk the Earth

The Last Island of the Savages

Woman jailed for testicle attack

Amazon river 'longer than Nile'

Nearly the worlds tallest hotel

Hello toilet, goodbye WC for Beijing Games

Hello toilet, goodbye WC for Beijing Games

Yet More Climate Change Myths

Climate myths: We are simply recovering from the Little Ice Age

More Climate Change Myths

Climate myths: Ice cores show CO2 increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming

Climate Change Myths

Climate myths: Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter

All the Air and Water in the World

Climate myths: Ice cores show CO₂ increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming

Climate myths: Human CO₂ emissions are too tiny to matter