Clipmarks | chestnut501's clips

The Highest Point on the Planet

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:45:29 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501
clipper's remarks: It's not Mount Everest

We all know that Mount Everest, at 29,035 feet above sea level, is the highest spot on our planet. Sir Edmound Hillary taught us that, right? Well, yes… that is unless we think about the word "highest" in a different way.

Think instead of that point on the planet closest to the moon and the stars, in other words to "out there."

According to Issac Newton, the centrifugal force of the Earth's spin will result in a slight flattening at the poles and bulging at the equator, which would make the planet slightly oblate. Mathematicians call this an "oblate spheroid," which means that anyone on the equator is already standing "higher," or closer to outer space, than people who aren't on the bulge.

the hightest point of Earth is Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador

a 20,000-plus-foot peak sitting on top of a bulge on the Earth. Mount Everest is a 29,000-plus-foot peak sitting lower down on that same bulge. Because Chimborazo is a bump on a bigger part of the bulge, it is 1.5 miles higher than Everest!

Tags: science, geology, earth, space, equater, issac-newton, physics, math

Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:43:10 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501
clipper's remarks: We have entered a new phase of evolution. "At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information."

But what distinguishes us from our cave man ancestors is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, Hawking points out, over the last three hundred.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

In the last ten thousand years the human species has been in what Hawking calls, "an external transmission phase," where the internal record of information, handed down to succeeding generations in DNA, has not changed significantly. "But the external record, in books, and other long lasting forms of storage," Hawking says, "has grown enormously.

we are now entering a new phase, of what Hawking calls "self designed evolution," in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA. "At first," he continues "these changes will be confined to the repair of genetic defects, like cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy.

I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression."

If the human race manages to redesign itself, to reduce or eliminate the risk of self-destruction, we will probably reach out to the stars and colonize other planets.

Tags: science, evolution, internal, external, neuroscience, biology, stephen-hawking

Very First Photograph Ever Taken Underwater in 1893

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:32:31 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501
clipper's remarks: Check out that old diving gear.

Clip Source: 4.bp.blogspot.com

Tags: photography, photograph, first, underwater, 1893, picture, photo, diver, divingsuit

Drawing and Storytelling in Sand

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:24:08 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501
clipper's remarks: Ксения Симонова - Реквием из песка

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: art, culture, history, anthropology, folklore, ukrainian, fables, video, music, educational

Michael Jackson's Last Rehearsal

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:14:42 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501
clipper's remarks: It Would Have Been a Great Concert

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: news, michael-jackson, released, rehearsal, this-is-it, tour, video, music, film

Scientists Make Radio Waves Travel Faster Than Light

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:23:34 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501
clipper's remarks: A Los Alamos National Laboratory gadget, called a polarization synchrotron, combines radio waves and a rapidly spinning magnetic field, which forces radio waves to travel faster than the speed of light. The resulting phenomenon could lead to new technologies in health and communications.

Clip Source: www.santafenewmexican.com

Scientist John Singleton insists that Albert Einstein wouldn't be mad at him, even though at first blush Singleton appears to have twisted the famous physicist's theories about light into a pretzel.

Most people think Einstein said that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, but that's not really the case, Singleton said.

Einstein predicted that particles and information can't travel faster than the speed of light — but phenomenon like radio waves? That's a different story, said Singleton, a Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow.

Singleton has created a gadget that abuses radio waves so severely that they finally give in and travel faster than light.

Singleton's discovery could have wide-ranging technological impacts in areas such as medicine and communications, he said.

"Because nobody's really thought about things that travel faster than light before, this is a wide-open technological field," Singleton said.

Tags: physics, theory, energy, speed, einstein, astronomy, pulsars, discoveries, news, science

Faces in the Sand

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:31:15 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501
clipper's remarks: Check out this artful crop of sand-crafted expressions come to life

Clip Source: www.womansday.com

Agony

Despair

Purposeful

Perturbed

Skeptical

Contemplative

Watchful

Awe

Wonderment

Determined

Tools Are Body Parts to Brain

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:25:12 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501
clipper's remarks: In a report in the journal Current Biology, researchers claim that the brain interprets a tool, such as a hammer, as a temporary extension of your physical body

Clip Source: www.scientificamerican.com

If all you have is a hammer, they say that everything looks like a nail. But when you use that hammer, it looks like your arm—to your brain, anyway

the brain interprets tools as just an extension of your physical self

To move our bodies around in space, the brain builds what’s called a “body schema,” a representation of all our various parts

Now scientists have taken this body-image overhaul a step further. They’ve shown that when we use a tool, even for a few minutes, the brain sees it as a temporary body part.

Subjects were asked to pick up a block. They then used a long, mechanical grabber to pick up the same block. Then they tried to snag the block barehanded again. And it took longer than their initial grab. That’s because they were briefly behaving like their arms were still augmented. So next time you feel like a total tool, you might just be hitting the nail on the head.

Tags: science, neuroscience, tools, extensions, brain, body

Poverty Hurts

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:51:15 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: Been waiting for science to confirm what I always knew & felt growing up in poverty. It's not just about the money, it's the pain that makes it traumatic. This article was life-validating.

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

Poverty Hurts

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

The findings were unambiguous. As reported in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, thinking about expenses and spending—lack of money in general—increased feelings of distress, especially for those who were excluded by their social group. It also led to diminished pain tolerance in the hot-water test. Put another way, people who were focused on financial need suffered more pain of every kind than people who felt financially empowered.

When the researchers looked at this the other way around, they found that inflicting pain or social rejection also increased volunteers' desire for money. There's the risk of a vicious spiral here: the very real pain of being poor and marginalized could actually exaggerate and distort the desire the desire for money, so that further rejection and hardship is even more painful, and so on. The result could be a kind of psychological inflation.

Tags: poverty, pain, suffering, social rejection, money

Rangoli - Floor art in India

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:20:36 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501

Clip Source: www.yeeta.com

Rangoli is one of the most popular art forms in India. It is a form of sandpainting decoration that uses finely ground white powder and colours, and is used commonly outside homes in India.

Rangoli can be wall art as well as floor art. The term rangoli is derived from words rang (colour) and aavalli ('coloured creepers' or 'row of colours').

Tags: india, art, sandpainting, colors, culture

The Epidemic of Misleading Science Journalism

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:41:27 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501
clipper's remarks: Three Excellent Blogs That Expose Bad Science Journalism

Clip Source: www.mindhacks.com

www.badscience.net

Ben Goldacre has written the Guardian’s Bad Science column for 6 years, where he exposes misleading science journalism, health scare hoaxes, pill-pushing quacks and the crimes of the evil multinational pharmaceutical industry.

about how the media promote the publics’ misunderstanding of evidence, focusing on health scares, journalists’ hoaxes, and their consequences,

www.mindhacks.com

Vaughan Bell is a neuropsychology researcher and clinician in the NHS, where he deals with disorders of the mind and brain, and is a writer for MindHacks.com, where he deals with disorders of the media.

how the media loves to tell us that new technology will give us brain damage and mental illness

www.drpetra.co.uk

Petra Boynton is a Social Psychologist

She specialises in researching sex and relationships health.

the problem of unethical or untrained people posing as ‘media experts’, and what happens when journalists fail to fact check science and health stories.

Tags: science, reports, studies, journalism, writers, big, pharma, con

Awesome Close-Ups of the Sun

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:56:23 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501

Clip Source: www.yeeta.com

How Many Gallons of Water Does it Take to Make...

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:23:59 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501
clipper's remarks: Violence over water rights is already breaking out in regions of the world where water is scarce. Along with political tensions--and maybe wars--we're going to see food production affected, and more people flat out hungry and thirsty. And it's all because we're simply using too much water.

Clip Source: www.treehugger.com

you'd be surprised how many gallons of water it takes to create the products that make our lives comfortable. Here's a rundown of some of the most shocking . . .

Single Board of Lumber
5.4 gallons of water are used to grow enough wood for one lumber board

Barrel of Beer
In order to process a single barrel of beer (32 gallons of booze), 1,500 gallons of water are sucked down

Latte
It takes 53 gallons to make every latte, as I've noted before:

That sugar, doesn't that have to be grown as cane first? Hm. And then there's that plastic lid, which has to be created and distributed over hundreds of miles. And doesn't plastic require a pretty vast amount of water and oil to produce? Come to think of it, there's the sleeve and the cup itself too . . .

Individual Bottled Water
This irony shouldn't be lost on anyone: it takes 1.85 gallons of water to manufacture the plastic for the bottle in the average commercial bottle of water.

Gallon of Paint
Takes 13 gallons of water to make.

Tags: news, life, science, geography, geology, water, usage, rights, shortage

Eureka!!! 1908 Tunguska Event Caused by Comet ( photos & video )

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:11:52 GMT

clipped by: chestnut501
clipper's remarks: An Explosion 1000 times greater than Hiroshima, to find out the amazing story of how the mystery was solved, go to http://www.universetoday.com/2009/06/24/1908-tunguska-event-caused-by-comet-new-research-says/ "As the sun rose on the 30th June 1908 in Central Siberia, it was drowned out by a bright light streaking across the sky. Moments later, the atmosphere was reeling from an almighty explosion that, according to eye witness reports, sounded a lot like persistent artillery fire. However, the Earth was not under attack from UFOs, as one popular theory insisted, neither had a black hole just passed through the Earth or antimatter been annihilated as equally popular hypotheses suggested, but instead the natives of the remote Tunguska region had just experienced the most powerful impact event in recent history." The Earth had been hit by a Comet.

Clip Source: www.universetoday.com

The 1908 Tunguska event has always been mysterious and intriguing because no one has been able to fully explain the explosion that leveled 830 square miles of Siberian forest.

the latest research has concluded that the Tunguska explosion was almost certainly caused by a comet entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

Following the Tunguska Event, the night skies shone brightly for several days across Europe, particularly Great Britain — more than 3,000 miles away.

Clip Source: www.astronomynow.com

3D reconstruction of Lake Cheko based on real topographic data. The water level has been placed 40 metres below the actual level to show the main morphological features of the lake.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: news, astronomy, history, earth, tunguska, comet, explosion, expeditions, crater

Walter Laqueur: Exodus: Ein Staat / Zwei Staaten

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:11:03 GMT

clipped by: Johanna_G
clipper's remarks:

Walter Laqueur said:

Israel hat nicht akzeptiert, dass ein kleines Land mit sieben Millionen Einwohnern (von denen 20 Prozent Araber sind) sich entsprechend seines Ranges in der Welt und seiner beschränkten Macht verhalten muss. In Israel existiert der naive [...] Glaube, dass es auf internationaler Ebene eine Gerechtigkeit für alle gibt, dass sich auch kleinere Staaten Morde [...] erlauben können, wenn dies Grossmächten möglich ist. [...] Der kleine Staat braucht alle ihm erreichbaren Abschreckungsmittel. Um zu überleben, tut er aber auch gut daran, sich in Zurückhaltung zu üben. Die Vorteile einer solchen Strategie hätten angesichts der zahlreichen Konflikte in der arabischen Welt offensichtlich sein sollen, aber sie wurden über Jahrzehnte ignoriert.

Clip Source: www.hagalil.com

Seit den 1960er Jahren hat der arabisch-israelische Konflikt amerikanische Präsidenten und Regierungen weit über seine tatsächliche Bedeutung hinaus beschäftigt. Daran dürfte sich auch in den kommenden Jahren nichts ändern. Die Ursachen hier für sind nicht ohne weiteres verständlich, denn eine besondere strategische oder wirtschaftliche Bedeutung hat die Region nicht…

Daher drängt sich die Frage nach anderen Gründen für die erhöhte Bedeutung gerade diesen Konfliktes auf

Bislang fehlt eine zufriedenstellende Antwort auf die Frage nach der überproportionalen Aufmerksamkeit für diese winzige Region in Nahost, von der angeblich die schlimmste Bedrohung für den Weltfrieden ausgeht.

Die Ereignsse von 1967 haben in Israel eine Welle mystischer Trancezustände und messianischer Hoffnungen ausgelöst.

Neben der mystischen Stimmung gab es auch rationale Argumente für das Festhalten an den neuen Grenzen.

Tags: israel, palästina