Clipmarks | abailart's Comments

Beginning of Time Discovered

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:59:30 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501
clipper's remarks: Zooming in on the Universe's First Starlight: "Everything Else Came After This"

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Scientists have seen the first starlight ever recorded,

the first star to send light which reached Earth. This light is the earliest, the furthest away, the most red-shifted, and every other factor that could possibly say "Everything else ever came after this."

The bright light is also poignant as it results from a Gamma Ray Burst, GRB 090423, meaning that this first light comes from the death of a star imploding into a neutron star or even an early black hole. The light exhibited a record breaking redshift of 8.2

The event occurred when the universe was only half a billion years old and the light has literally spent all of time to get here.

The starburst was so early it was used to confirm that this kind of thing even happened back then. The signal outshone galaxies, and is now our earliest evidence of anything that happened back then.

Tags: astronomy, physics, time, space, big-bang-theory, first-light

Clever fools: Why a high IQ doesn't mean you're smart

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:25:52 GMT

clipped by: clip-on-tie
clipper's remarks: Entire article at NewScientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427321.000-clever-fools-why-a-high-iq-doesnt-mean-youre-smart.html?full=true

Clip Source: www.copytaste.com

via

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties, he says, including logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and working-memory capacity - how much information you can hold in mind.

Clip Source: www.copytaste.com

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Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

The flip side of this is that everyone can improve their rational thinking and decision-making skills. Richard Nisbett at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and others discovered that just half an hour's training in statistical reasoning can improve a person's ability to use rational thinking in everyday situations. And we don't need formal training to improve: there are many tricks we can teach ourselves, says Perkins (see "How to avoid making foolish decisions").

Editorial: A rational alternative to testing IQ

Tags: new scientists with big brainzzzzz, smirt people, brainzzzzzzzzz

Why no outrage over foreclosures?

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:20:03 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Why do we automatically assume the buyers are at fault? Did they risk other peoples' money? Did they know we were in a housing bubble? Was it explained that the ARM would default if their home value declined? Why do we let professional sales-people make money leading people into the largest purchase in their lives without issuing precautions that first-time homebuyers often do not understand? And why is the homebuyer the loser, rather than the shyster that sold them a loan they could not possibly have understood? Why do we let them take our homes away?

Clip Source: ehrenreich.blogs.com

A few days before Congress passed its Housing Bill, Carlene Balderrama of Taunton MA found her own solution to the housing crisis. Just a little over two hours in advance of the time her mortgage company, PHH Mortgage Corporation – may its name live in infamy – was to auction off her home, Balderrama killed herself with her husband’s rifle.

This is not the kind of response to hard times that James Grant had in mind when he wrote his July 19 Wall Street Journal essay entitled “Why No Outrage?” “One might infer from the lack of popular anger,” the famed Wall Street contrarian wrote, “that the credit crisis was God's fault rather than the doing of the bankers and the rating agencies and the government's snoozing watchdogs.” For contrast, he cites the spirited response to the depression of the 1890s, when lawyer/agitator Mary Lease stirred crowds with the message that “We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out

We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by force if necessary

Tags: mortgage, finance, foreclosure

Self Awareness - The Essential Key

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:02:36 GMT

clipped by: willhelm

Clip Source: www.pickthebrain.com

Is there an ‘essential key’ to personal development? One without which the ‘unlocking’ of your potential might be difficult if not impossible?

Without this ‘key’ personal growth is slow, and sluggish.

The ability to self-observe, what some people call self-awareness.

Self-awareness meaning the ability to become aware of what is going on in:

* Your mind’s eye (the cinema screen of your mind)

* Your inner ear (verbal self-talk, sounds, talk from other ‘parts’ of you)

* Your feelings (meaning tactile and visceral feelings inside and outside of your body)

* Your emotions (feelings that you have labelled as ‘emotions’)

* Intuition- literally ‘inner-knowing’

If you are not aware of what is going on inside YOU – what your perceptions are reporting to you on the inside, you lack access to vital information.

You can’t change what you’re not aware of.

Defenders of Christianity

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:31:18 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Thank goodness it was all so long ago.

Clip Source: wapedia.mobi

'We shall not tolerate in our ranks anyone who hurts Christian ideas.'

Hitler

The Oxford Group was a Christian movement that had a following in Europe and America in the 1920s and 1930s. It was initiated by an American Lutheran pastor Dr. Frank Buchman,

Buchman referred to Himmler as "a great lad"

'He lets us have house-parties whenever we like.' He did not seem to think much of England or of Canada: England was in a terrible state — 'seething with Communism'; and so was Canada.

I thank Heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism,

Through such a man God could control a nation overnight and solve every last, bewildering problem.

The world needs the dictatorship of the living spirit of God.

Human problems aren't economic. They're moral and they can't be solved by immoral measures.

they could be solved through a God-controlled Fascist dictatorship.

Tags: oxford group, national socialism

Beware! The Toxins are All Around You!

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:03:23 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: We must keep our souls clean.

Clip Source: www.ianhaig.net

Like everyone, I ate cornflakes growing up. Little did I realise lurking behind those crunchy bowls of golden goodness was a perverse health fanaticism at work in the form of cornflakes creator Dr John Harvey Kellogg.

The other story here is fanaticism, in particular the health fanaticism of inner cleansing, de-toxification, colonic irrigation, enemas and the desire to eradicate ones body of internal toxins and pathologies at all costs. Contemporary body cleansing and the detox industry have taken on almost evangelical status, not dissimilar to Kellogg's day, whereby a clean body on the inside represents a clean mind and spirit, a soul worthy of entry into God's Kingdom. Beauty itself, is a parable for a soul that it pure and uncorrupted, ugliness on the other hand can only mean a contaminated and polluted soul.

Dirt like shit, is beneath us, a metaphor for all things low, the dirty underclass, the filthy beggar,

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Clip Source: www.cures-they-dont-want-you-to-know-about.com

Clip Source: www.passdt.com

Clip Source: healthproductreview.org

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Clip Source: www.personal.kent.edu

Clip Source: farm4.static.flickr.com

Clip Source: www.monoscope.com

Clip Source: www.mandyparker.com

Clip Source: 4.bp.blogspot.com

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Tags: clean and dirty, saved and damned

Whatever is going on here, it is not science

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 04:04:09 GMT

clipped by: amgumen
clipper's remarks: Read more

Clip Source: www.financialpost.com

Only by playing with data can scientists come up with the infamous 'hockey stick' graph of global warming

The often-hyped claim that the modern climate has departed from natural variability depended on flawed statistical methods and low-quality data. The IPCC review process, of which I was a member last time, is nothing at all like what the public has been told: Conflicts of interest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored and there are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion.

I get exasperated with fellow academics, and others who ought to know better, who pile on to the supposed global warming consensus without bothering to investigate any of the glaring scientific discrepancies and procedural flaws. Over the coming few years, as the costs of global warming policies mount and the evidence of a crisis continues to collapse, perhaps it will become socially permissible for people to start thinking for themselves again.

Brits flee socialized healthcare

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:27:15 GMT

clipped by: billpar

Clip Source: michellemalkin.com

Brits flee socialized healthcare

Oh, what lovely conditions we have to look forward to should Hillary Clinton and Michael Moore get their way:

Record numbers of Britons are travelling abroad for medical treatment to escape the NHS – with 70,000 patients expected to fly out this year.

And by the end of the decade 200,000 “health tourists” will fly as far as Malaysa and South Africa for major surgery to avoid long waiting lists and the rising threat of superbugs, according to a new report.

The first survey of Britons opting for treatment overseas shows that fears of hospital infections and frustration of often waiting months for operations are fuelling the increasing trend.

Patients needing major heart surgery, hip operations and cataracts are using the internet to book operations to be carried out thousands of miles away.

India is the most popular destination for surgery, followed by Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, Poland and Spain. But dozens more countries are attracting health tourists

Tags: healthcare

A Mind All Logic is Like a Knife All Blade.....

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:59:46 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: allpoetry.com

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

Age considers; youth ventures.

Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.

Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it.

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

Do not say, 'It is morning,' and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.

Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941),γ[›] sobriquet Gurudev,δ[›] was an Indian -Bengali polymath. As a poet, novelist, painter ,musician, and playwright, he reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse",[1] he became Asia's first Nobel laureate by winning the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature

Tags: rabindranath tagore

Facts are cooling off climate alarmism

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:34:14 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: blogs.ajc.com

It’s an inconvenient time for world leaders to be speechifying about global warming — earlier this week at the United Nations, today and tomorrow at a G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh. The supposed certainty behind their push for new eco-regulation is melting faster than the Arctic ice.

Global temperatures have held steady for several years, contrary to the expectations of statistical models. This month, a leading German user of these climate models predicted temperatures would fall for “one or two decades” to come.

Why the reprieve? The German, Mojib Latif, cited changing currents in the northern Atlantic Ocean. He even went a step further, saying the currents were also responsible for an unknown portion of the warming in the late 20th century.

There’s more. Writing in the journal Science, a group of scientists has offered a new explanation of how the sun affects the Pacific climate system.

Climate models missed this effect

Climate models have missed a lot

Tags: climate change, global warming, politics, religion, science

Why Groups and Prejudices Form So Easily: Social Identity Theory

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:53:41 GMT

clipped by: einbar

Clip Source: www.spring.org.uk

Why Groups and Prejudices Form So Easily: Social Identity Theory

This classic social psychology experiment shows how little excuse people need to form into groups and start discriminating against others.

People's behaviour in groups is fascinating and frequently disturbing. As soon as humans are bunched together in groups we start to do odd things: copy other members of our group, favour members of own group over others, look for a leader to worship and fight other groups. Just glance at Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment for proof of how easy it is to provoke war between groups.

social psychologist Henry Tajfel

believed it was possible for a group, along with its attendant prejudices, to form at the drop of a hat

they thought a group could form even when there was no face-to-face contact between members, none of the people knew each other and their 'group' behaviour had no practical consequences. In other words they had absolutely nothing to gain (or lose) from this barely existent group

Serial Killer With 15 Abortions

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:56:27 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight

Clip Source: rightwingnews.com

Not all serial killers are wanted by the police. Self-described abortion addict Irene Vilar is free to kill and kill again with the active encouragement of authorities, who confiscate your money to help finance her homicidal activities.

Vilar has committed 15 abortions in 16 years. Here’s how ABC sees fit to report on her accomplishment, and on her attempt to exploit it for financial gain:

Irene Vilar worries that her self-described “abortion addiction” will be misunderstood, twisted by the pro-life movement to deny women the right to choose.

Her book, “Impossible Motherhood,” which will be released by Other Press on Oct. 6, chronicles her own dark choices: 15 abortions in 16 years, much of it as a married woman.

I wonder if the butchers at Planned Parenthood give her every tenth abortion on the house. They definitely owe her a lifetime achievement award.

Tags: abortion, murder

Dennis the Menace 2

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:31:21 GMT

clipped by: wiganfootie

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Scrawled on a pack of Players, Dennis the very first Menace

He may lack his trusty catapult and faithful hound Gnasher, but the spiky hair, scowl and shorts are instantly recognisable.

This is the first ever sketch of Dennis the Menace, which has been unseen for more than half a century.

After a few tweaks, this picture – drawn on the back of a cigarette packet – was transformed into the schoolboy rogue and scourge of softies idolised by readers of The Beano for 58 years.

Beano editor Alan Digby, who came across the Player’s packet during research for a new BBC series of Dennis And Gnasher, said: ‘This is an incredible find. Dennis is Britain’s most iconic comic-strip character.

‘We found it among the original rough drafts. From there we pieced together the story of how Dennis was created.’

The character was dreamed up in 1950 by The Beano’s editorial team, led by founding editor George Moonie.

Modern incarnation: Dennis the Menace

IS REALITY REALLY REAL? A test of Quantum Theory.

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:07:00 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: If you have an interest in this stuff, you need to go to the website and read all three pages, if you think you really exist, that is.

Clip Source: seedmagazine.com

Anton Zeilinger heads up the IQOQI lab in Vienna. Photograph by Mark Mahaney.

A team of physicists in Vienna has devised experiments that may answer one of the enduring riddles of science: Do we create the world just by looking at it?

Some physicists still find quantum mechanics unpalatable, if not unbelievable, because of what it implies about the world beyond our senses. The theory’s mathematics is simple enough to be taught to undergraduates, but the physical implications of that mathematics give rise to deep philosophical questions that remain unresolved. Quantum mechanics fundamentally concerns the way in which we observers connect to the universe we observe. The theory implies that when we measure particles and atoms, at least one of two long-held physical principles is untenable: Distant events do not affect one other, and properties we wish to observe exist before our measurements. One of these, locality or realism, must be fundamentally incorrect.

Tags: science, quantum theory

Wigan3-1 Chelsea

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 19:08:48 GMT

clipped by: wiganfootie

Clip Source: uk.eurosport.yahoo.com

Wigan secured a famous 3-1 victory over 10-man Chelsea, their first over one of the 'big four' in 35 matches, at the DW Stadium to knock the Blues off the top of the Premier League table.

Titus Bramble headed the Latics in front in the first half, only for Didier Drogba to pull Chelsea level just after the break thanks to an error from Chris Kirkland.

Eight minutes into the second half Hugo Rodallega ran through and was brought down by Chelsea keeper Petr Cech, who was red-carded - and the attacker smacked the spot-kick home.

In injury time Paul Scharner slid in to finish after Maynor Figueroa squared across the six-yard box - and set the home fans celebrating.

It was not less than Wigan deserved as they enjoyed a good deal of the ball after the opening goal against a Chelsea side missing Joe Cole and Michael Ballack, out with a cold and calf injury respectively.