Clipmarks | Moonowler's clips

The War On Terrorism In Sweden

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:36:43 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

On June 18 a new law was passed in Sweden granting the national defense’s civilian agency National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) the right to collect and analyze all communication data that in some way passes the borders of the Kingdom of Sweden.

The official lie offered as excuse for this horrid, uncivilized law is, like in all other countries, the threat of terrorism. It is unlikely anyone actually believes Sweden, an insignificant socialist country in the far north in moral, financial, and political decline, is on the terrorists’ list of future targets, yet the sense of a common external threat of a faceless enemy seems to be as effective in Sweden as elsewhere.

Most of these Orwellian laws are part of a new "anti-terrorism" initiative in the European Union, where a new union-level situation center in Brussels, called SitCen, is proposed in order to coordinate the EU countries’ national security police, intelligence and surveillance efforts

The joy of taking some time out

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:22:40 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks:

Embrace the faff. Stare out of the window. Bend paperclips. Stand in the middle of the room trying to remember what you came downstairs for. Pace. Drum your fingertips. Move papers around. Hum. Look at the garden.Go to the shed with the intention of tidying up and instead fall asleep. Make mental notes. Read every single word of the newspaper - even the job ads - before getting down to work. Lose yourself in erotic reveries. Pat your pockets. Resolve to be more organised in future. Be useless.

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

A new report says that we waste three hours a day faffing around, doing nothing in particular

The survey was carried out by the Learning and Skills Council, who, not surprisingly, argued we should instead use those three hours to Learn some Skills.

I beg to differ.

Faffing is when we disconnect from the matrix and idle for a while, like a car. Our body and spirit know deep down that human beings were not made for constant toil so subconsciously creates space through the mechanism of faffing.

Faffing of course does not fit the programme. We are supposed to be busy, productive citizens.

Clearly these sorts of ideals are designed to make us faffers feel bad. Well, don't.

Faffing is completely harmless, whereas its opposite - dynamic, purposeful activity - is often very harmful. Faffers do not tend to kill people or make them work 12-hour days or sell them shoddy merchandise or lend them vast sums of money that they cannot pay back.

Tags: self, time, well-being, health, body, work, survey, opinion, advice, rest

#5 of the Top 10 Battles for the Control of Iraq

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 02:46:11 GMT

clipped by: Moonowler

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

637 AD - Battle of Al-Qadisiyah

The Persian Sasanians ruled Mesopotamia from 224 AD. They thrived for centuries, but eventually became distracted by fighting the Romans and amongst themselves. Ultimately, an unlikely outside force would topple them. The Arabs had been tribesmen, unorganized and militarily primitive. The new religion of Islam, founded by Muhammad, united the tribes. In 634, the Arab campaign against the Sassanians began. 18,000 Arab tribesmen, led by General Khalid ibn al Walid ("The Sword of Islam") reached the Euphrates delta and began battling the Iranians (Persians), who were rallied by their hero, Rustam. A decisive battle occurred at Al-Qidisiyah, a village south of Baghdad. Though outnumbered six to one, the Arabs defeated the Iranians, exhausted by many battles against the Byzantines. Rustam was killed. The Arabs shortly captured the Sassanid capital at Ctesiphon, ending their dynasty and introducing Islam to the region.

How Green Pavement Fills the Water Cycle

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 02:15:27 GMT

clipped by: Moonowler

Clip Source: science.howstuffworks.com

During heavy storms, you can see and even hear floods of water rushing into that sewer, taking everything in its path. We call this runoff. Runoff not only contributes to flooding and erosion; it also plays a part in the contamination of our water supply.

Runoff occurs because traditional pavement is nonporous -- meaning it doesn't allow rainwater to settle back into the ground. Green pavement, a relatively new concept in green building, is a permeable and porous pavement (try saying that three times fast) that absorbs rainwater instead of repelling it. It allows water to return to the ground, which means the water doesn't wash into the sewer, along with oil, gas and pesticide residue.

Green pavement is a viable alternative for footpaths, driveways and parking lots, and one day it could revolutionize highway systems.

Tags: water, roads

Permafrost melting now extends 1,000 miles inland

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 02:09:08 GMT

clipped by: Moonowler

Clip Source: www.pslweb.org

The latest scientific research indicates that there could be no ice at the North Pole this summer, while the Siberian permafrost—soil that is below freezing temperatures year round—may start melting three times faster.

The scientific consensus on global warming is that it has been caused by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which are emitted by fossil fuel-based power plants, automobiles and other sources.

The melting now extends 1,000 miles inland into areas that previously have been frozen all year long. As the area of sea ice decreases, less sunlight is reflected and more heat is absorbed.

It is not the case that temperatures are simply going up at a steady rate each year; instead, the quantitative change of rising temperatures appear poised to transition to a phase of qualitatively different, accelerated climate change.

The only solution to the crisis of global warming is a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions

Tags: arctic, north pole, habitat, environment, 2008, carbon

Program Search through Adobe

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:00:32 GMT

clipped by: Moonowler
clipper's remarks: Adobe Web in Google Desktop, Yahoo! toward searchable flash.

Clip Source: www.clickz.com

The software manufacturer announced yesterday that it would begin providing optimized Flash technology to leading search engines that will make rich Internet applications (RIA) and dynamic content created using Flash more easily identifiable.

The optimized Flash technology will now allow search engines to identify text within Flash programs that would otherwise have escaped them without requiring any change in behavior on the developers' part. The result should be millions of newly searchable RIAs and dynamic experiences, including brand experiences on the Web.

Adobe is also hoping this will convince developers to use Flash in places where they otherwise would not have, as the search problems had long been a sticking point with the program.

"Flash should add to the experience, but never be 100 percent of it," he said. "We're defeating the purpose of what Flash is meant to be if we get too extreme. The old principles still apply."

Tags: adobe, google, yahoo!, flash

Mystery Of Infamous 'New England Dark Day' Solved By Tree Rings

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:15:22 GMT

clipped by: revenantdm
clipper's remarks: Damn, there goes another great "mystery!" This is one of the better researched and annotated mysteries as the article says of what people recorded of animal behavior and that Gen. George Washington commented on it in his journal.
Tree ring dating is helping us understand many strange atmospheric events. Listen the trees are "talking."

Clip Source: www.monstrous.com

Mystery Of Infamous 'New England Dark Day' Solved By Tree Rings

At noon, it was black as night. It was May 19, 1780

Accounts of that day, which became known as 'New England's Dark Day,' include mentions of midday meals by candlelight, night birds coming out to sing, flowers folding their petals,and strange behavior from animals

The mystery of this day has been solved by researchers at the University of Missouri who say evidence from tree rings reveals massive wildfires as the likely cause, one of several theories proposed after the event, but dismissed as 'simple and absurd.'

Limited ability for long-distance communication prevented colonists from knowing the cause of the darkness

In the midst of the Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington noted the dark day in his diary while he was in New Jersey

Nearly 230 years later, MU researchers combined written accounts and fire scar evidence to determine that the dark day was caused by massive wildfires burning in Canada

Tags: washington, dark, new england, tree rings, fires, unsolved, mystery

Cyber World Map

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:14:49 GMT

clipped by: Moonowler

Clip Source: www.serendipit-e.com

A message for visitors from the future...

Tags: maps, cyber

Useless

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:12:30 GMT

clipped by: Moonowler
clipper's remarks: For Math Lovers!

Clip Source: xkcd.com

A webcomic of romance,
sarcasm, math, and language.

Useless

Mantle Helium-3 in Geothermal Power

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:32:27 GMT

clipped by: Moonowler
clipper's remarks: The geochemists examined the ratio of helium-4 (the garden-variety helium that lifts birthday balloons) and its rarefied cousin, helium-3. The earth's crust contain just one helium-3 atom for every 100 million atoms of helium-4. But helium-3 is a thousand times more common in the earth's mantle.

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

Helium isotopes reveal hidden stores of geothermal energy.

Smelling land: Elevated levels of helium in the water pumping through this geothermal power plant in Nevada’s Dixie Valley could be a clue into finding hidden geothermal hot spots.

Most geothermal power plants exploit the relatively rare but easy to spot hot water associated with volcanoes, limiting geothermal energy to a niche role in meeting global energy demand. It works well in Iceland and a few other places, but geothermal energy is a largely untapped resource in much of the world, in part because, in the absence of a volcano or hot springs, it's hard to find the right spot to tap into the resource.

Water is more likely to circulate rapidly through such regions, providing the circulation of heat emanating from the earth's mantle or generated in its crust by radioactive decay.

Currently, geothermal systems supply less than 1 percent of that demand.

Tags: chemistry, water, earth, nevada

Historical Maps Standards in Second Life

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:19:48 GMT

clipped by: Moonowler

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

Second Life devoted to showcasing the historical maps

Both globes were made by Giovanni Maria Cassini, the terrestrial in 1790 and the celestial in 1792.

The island features a gallery in the center where visitors can view maps and receive free maps and other digital souvenirs. Surrounding the gallery is a topographical rendering of an 1883 map of Yosemite Valley; users can toggle between two-dimensional and 3-D displays. Along the skyline, two great globes, one terrestrial and the other celestial, turn, animated by an enormous clockwork that can provide front-row seats for avatars who fly inside.

For one thing, Second Life didn't naturally support scanning at the high resolution needed to fully showcase the maps, causing the team to have to scan maps in pieces and stitch them together by hand.

See videos of the historical maps in Second Life.

Tags: maps, geography, time, standards

All About Fog

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:50:59 GMT

clipped by: Moonowler
clipper's remarks: Sea fog is a common type of fog along the California cost.

Clip Source: starryskies.com

When the air near the ground cools to dew point, the water vapor in the air will become visible as fog in the air or dew on the ground.

Fogs during summer will only happen with clear skies and near 100% humidity. There must also be condensation nuclei – or something onto which the water can condense. Condensation nuclei can be dust particles, aerosols, pollutants etc.

Fog can form at lower humidity levels if there are a really large amount of nuclei, especially if it is something such as salt.

The basic requirements for fog to form are moisture in the air – the closer to 100% humidity the better, and the air near the ground must be cooling to within 5 F (3 C) of dew point – this is the temperature to which air must be cooled in order for water vapor in the air to condense to liquid water.

During winter – fog forms in a different manner, almost the opposite of summer fogs.

Winter fog is more common around bodies of water and is sometimes called lake effect fog.

Tags: fog, weather, climate, atmosphere, water, humidity, salt

Gaia Mythos and the Promise of a Lonely Planet

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 04:37:38 GMT

clipped by: Moonowler
clipper's remarks: The Sophia narrative is an imaginative picture of human origins based on the experience of Gnostic seers. The Anthropos template is central to Gnostic cosmology, and closely related to the enigma of the Archons.

Clip Source: www.metahistory.org

This essay, the third in a trilogy, is dedicated to all those who are presenting, and participating in, an acoustic recitation of the Gaia Mythos in the USA for the Eve of the year 2005.

In the Gaia Mythos, the preexistent, preterrestrial form of humanity is called Atu Kadmon. This is a play on Adam Kadmon, "earth creature, composed of letters or code," a term found in the Kabala.

The Aeon Sophia beholds the figure of Atu Kadmon,

It may, however, resemble the ten-Sephira Tree of Life configured as a fractal array of chemical nodes, a configurated membrane of nucleic acids

Elsewhere in The Apocryphon of John and the other cosmological treatises, anthropos is used to indicate generic humanity

The Coptic equivalent is rhome, "human."

Aeon Sophia is said to be in the Ninth, a code term for the terrestrial realm. The Eighth indicates the visible starry zone surrounding the Earth, and the Seventh, the Heptad, is the planetary realm exclusive of the Earth

Tags: 2005, 2012, stars, religion, bible

Countdown to 2012: Genesis Long Count

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 04:09:32 GMT

clipped by: Moonowler
clipper's remarks: In 551 BCE, the vernal point was transiting the head-stars of the Ram. In the time of Alexander the Great, two centuries later, it still in this region, and had been remarked by skywatchers for some time.

Clip Source: www.metahistory.org

How does this interpretation of the start date of the Long Count play against the historical record? Well, here´s a little trick: go to the midpoint of the Count by subtracting one-half of 5126 years from 3114 BCE. This comes to 551 BCE. The 6th Century BCE was the moment when the Yahwist narrative of Genesis came into rigid formulation under the reforms of King Josiah (ruled 640 - 609), lauded as the ideal ruler in that brutal manifesto of theocracy, Deuteronomy. Between 587 and 537 BCE a large part of the Jewish nation was exiled to the city of Babylon

connecting the events at the midpoint of the Long Count with my thematic overview of the significance of the Count.

Want to try another node? Go to the midway moment between 3114 BCE and 551 BCE. This is 1832 BCE, the period assigned to the patriarch Abraham who was born, by some accounts, around 1812 BCE. The Code of Hammurabi (b. 1810) is the earliest surviving example of a totalitarian, male-mandated social agenda.

Tags: stars, sky, cosmology, history, bible, religion, 2012

Countdown to 2012:Krishna and Osiris

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 04:00:50 GMT

clipped by: Moonowler
clipper's remarks: Long Count (13 Baktuns) dates from early in the Classical Maya era, 200 - 900 CE- we are in the 74th moon.

Clip Source: www.metahistory.org

Like the Hindu timescale, Maya calendrics runs into "nonillions" of years—the range of remote, unimaginable numbers. The mathematician-priests who devised the Maya calendar recorded exact dates of events, down to the day, but they also liked to extrapolate far backward and forward in time.

The Maya calendar is a cultural artifact from the general category of the World Ages. Computing the long-term chronology of the cosmos was a concern in all ancient cultures from China to Peru.

In devising these systems, the calendar-makers did not limit themselves to time in the human scale, but extended their computations to countless thousands of years.

The number 4,320,000,000 occurs in Hindu chronology where it is associated with the cosmological motif of the "Days and Nights of Brahma." This number caught the attention of Joseph Campbell, who observed that 4,320,000,000 years, or 4.32 billion years, is intriguingly close to the current estimate for the geological age of the earth, 4.5 billion years

Tags: 2012, bible, religion, history, calendar, era

Clipmarks | Moonowler's clips

The War On Terrorism In Sweden

The joy of taking some time out

#5 of the Top 10 Battles for the Control of Iraq

637 AD - Battle of Al-Qadisiyah

How Green Pavement Fills the Water Cycle

Permafrost melting now extends 1,000 miles inland

Program Search through Adobe

Mystery Of Infamous 'New England Dark Day' Solved By Tree Rings

Cyber World Map

A message for visitors from the future...

Useless

A webcomic of romance,sarcasm, math, and language.

Useless

Mantle Helium-3 in Geothermal Power

Historical Maps Standards in Second Life

All About Fog

Gaia Mythos and the Promise of a Lonely Planet

Countdown to 2012: Genesis Long Count

Countdown to 2012:Krishna and Osiris

A webcomic of romance,
sarcasm, math, and language.