Clipmarks | dakotayii's Comments

origins of laughter

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:38:16 GMT

clipped by: aydin

Holt: V. S. Ramachandran, the brain researcher, has a theory about the origin of laughter — that when you're in the jungle and there's an apparent threat, the first member of the kinship group to notice that it's not a real threat emits this stereotyped vocalization. And it's contagious, so everyone starts laughing. That's also the basis of the relief theory of humor, that there's a release of the energy you had summoned up to solve some puzzle. Kant said that the essence of humor is a strained expectation dissolving into nothing.

I Shall Meet Him With Courgage

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 23:55:35 GMT

clipped by: Sheroug

Clip Source: www.alionline.net

I joyfully hasten to meet Death. If he comes before I have had the opportunity of developing all my artistic powers, then, notwithstanding my cruel fate, he will come too early for me, and I should wish for him at a more distant period; but even then I shall be content, for his advent will release me from a state of endless suffering. Come when he may, I shall meet him with courage. Farewell!

--Beethoven

The Urge to End It

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:22:31 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks:

Is suicide the deadly result of a deep psychological condition - or a fleeting impulse brought on by opportunity?

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

How to explain why, among the only species capable of pondering its own demise, whose desperate attempts to forestall mortality have spawned both armies and branches of medicine in a perpetual search for the Fountain of Youth, there are those who, by their own hand, would choose death over life? Our contradictory reactions to the act speak to the conflicted hold it has on our imaginations: revulsion mixed with fascination, scorn leavened with pity. It is a cardinal sin — but change the packaging a little, and suicide assumes the guise of heroism or high passion, the stuff of literature and art.

There are those who display the classic symptoms of so-called suicidal behavior, who build up to their act over time or who choose methods that require careful planning. And then there are those whose act appears born of an immediate crisis, with little or no forethought involved.

Tags: suicide

English language in the future

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:41:21 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii
clipper's remarks: In China, this sort of free-form adoption of English is helped along by a shortage of native English-speaking teachers, who are hard to keep happy in rural areas for long stretches of time. An estimated 300 million Chinese — roughly equivalent to the total US population — read and write English but don't get enough quality spoken practice. The likely consequence of all this? In the future, more and more spoken English will sound increasingly like Chinese.

Clip Source: www.wired.com

The targeted offenses: if you are stolen, call the police at once. please omnivorously put the waste in garbage can. deformed man lavatory. For the past 18 months, teams of language police have been scouring Beijing on a mission to wipe out all such traces of bad English signage before the Olympics come to town in August. They're the type of goofy transgressions that we in the English homelands love to poke fun at, devoting entire Web sites to so-called Chinglish. (By the way, that last phrase means "handicapped bathroom.")

But what if these sentences aren't really bad English? What if they are evidence that the English language is happily leading an alternative lifestyle without us?

By 2020, native speakers will make up only 15 percent of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language. Already, most conversations in English are between nonnative speakers who use it as a lingua franca

Tags: society

Halal, Kosher,Shechita

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:56:28 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Kosher is the term most people would associate with food conforming to Jewish law, but the word to describe the actual method used to slaughter animals is shechita.

According to the Torah - the body of written Jewish laws - the laws of shechita were given to Moses at Mount Sinai, and must be followed if Jews wish to eat meat

"It is absolutely the only method used, according to Jewish law. Eating kosher food is the foremost principle of being an orthodox Jew".

Shechita is performed with an extremely sharp knife, known as a chalaf, making a single cut across the front of the animal's neck, severing several arteries in order for it to bleed to death (as Jews are forbidden from consuming blood). Mr Cohen confirms that "this principle is the same, whether for a bird or a cow".

halal and shechita, are similar, in that both involve cutting the animal's throat. However, the most obvious difference between the two is that the latter does not require any kind of ritual blessing.

Tags: society

Adults 'scared to approach children'

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:03:52 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Adults are afraid to interact with other people's children because they fear being labelled a paedophile, according to a report published today by the thinktank Civitas.

The report, Licensed To Hug, calls for regulation and vetting to be relaxed because the "dramatic escalation of child protection measures has succeeded in poisoning the relationship between the generations".

In the past, the report says, adults would have routinely helped children in distress or rebuked those who were misbehaving but now think twice about the consequences. Instead, there was now "an atmosphere of mistrust".

Tags: children, adults

TypeRacer

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 12:08:32 GMT

clipped by: Sheroug
clipper's remarks: This is cute

Clip Source: play.typeracer.com

typeracer

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Stephen Chen

156 wpm

38 minutes ago

Nature - pictures

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:37:33 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Hovering: The heron spots her target and hones in for the kill

Escape: The mother duck frantically tries to lead her offspring to safety

Trapped: The duckling has no chance and is caught in the heron's bill

Chaos: The heron stands tall as the family of ducks are left flailing in the water

Stare: The heron and the duck lock eyes as it holds the duckling aloft

Distraction: The mother duck attempts to stop the heron flying away

Desperate: She tries to fly off in pursuit

Quick meal: With one gulp, the duckling is gone

Tags: photos

How do you masturbate an elephant

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:43:31 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii
clipper's remarks: Of course male elephants don't (ordinarily, so far as we know) have any trouble ejaculating when interacting sexually with other elephants, and may ejaculate prematurely during their efforts to achieve successful penetration (Bagemihl 1999). It can take (presumably inexperienced) males a bit of rooting around with the flexible penis before finding the vulva. As is well known, the elephant vulva is not located just beneath the tail as is the case in most mammals, but down on the ventral surface and well between the legs, meaning that the vagina is very long (70-90 cm). This unusual position means that pregnancies are sometimes unnoticed and even that females have on occasion been mistakenly identified as male: Shoshani (1991) wrote of a case where a female was thought to be a male throughout her 25 years of life and was only found to be female on her death. Why elephants are built like this has been a long standing question.

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

It seems that manual stimulation of the penis (1) just doesn't do it for elephants, and (2) is physically dangerous (read on), so you have to stick your arm into the animal's rectum and vigorously stimulate its prostate gland

[Video]

Image from Hildebrandt et al. (2000). Non-obvious abbreviations: amp = ampullae, bu = bulbourethral gland, pro (which looks like prc due to poor cropping in the original figure) = prostate gland, pb = pelvic bone, sv = seminal vesicle.

[Video]

Tags: science

America Becoming Land of Surveillance

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:07:01 GMT

clipped by: blueridge
clipper's remarks: Despite lack of evidence that it is effective, or evidence that proves it is not from UK studies. But the security merchandisers are making a fortune and state and local governments are impulsively spending faster than a woman with a credit card:

.P. Freeman said the domestic market for such systems last year had doubled over five years, to $9.2 billion, and estimated that it would more than double again by 2010, to more than $21 billion.

You are paying for your loss of liberty, while they profit, which is insult to injury. It's worth wondering how many government officials own stock in security companies, which would be a conflict of interest in that lawmakers also profit through authorizing this spending.

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

Smile! More and more, you’re on camera

Public surveillance video mushrooms despite lack of evidence it works

Alex Johnson

Reporter

• Profile

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, local governments across the country set aside concerns over privacy and installed surveillance cameras in public streets and plazas.

Now — even after a damning report by the head of London’s extensive surveillance network and with little evidence that the systems work — police in many cities are trying to add thousands more cameras to their networks.

“‘Cameras Everywhere’ continues to be the best description of the trend in the video surveillance market,” security market analysts J.P. Freeman Co. said in a report in 2006 that estimated that a quarter of major U.S. cities were investing in the technology.

Officials in many cities are eager to take advantage of money from state and federal security agencies to install the cameras on street corners and intersections

Tags: surveillance, constitution, privacy, cctv, cameras, government spending

Circumcision - cutting the competition

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:47:10 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii
clipper's remarks: Some forms of genital mutilation have obvious effects on fertility. For instance, several African and Micronesian societies practice testicular ablation—the crushing or cutting off of one testicle. Some Australian aborigines engage in subincision, which exposes part of the urethra and thus causes sperm to leak out of the base of the penis. Circumcision does not have quite such clear-cut effects. But there are several ways it may affect fertility: most obviously, the lack of a foreskin could make insertion, ejaculation or both take longer. Perhaps long enough that an illicit quickie will not always reach fruition.

Older men are in a position to form alliances with younger men—passing on knowledge, lending them political support and giving them access to weapons. By insisting that the young undergo genital mutilation of some form as a quid pro quo, an older married man can seek to ensure that even if he is cuckolded, he will still be the father of his wives’ children.

Clip Source: www.economist.com

CIRCUMCISION and other forms of male-genital mutilation are commonplace in many societies around the world. The origin of these practices, however, puzzles anthropologists and evolutionary biologists

Explanations have ranged from the pragmatic (a ritual that marks the beginning of adulthood and bonds men together) to the Freudian (having something to do with the pain of the separation from the mother). However Christopher Wilson, a neurobiologist at Cornell University, has a different idea. In a recent paper in Evolution and Human Behavior he suggests that male-genital mutilations are actually intended to prevent younger men from fathering children with older men’s wives.

Tags: science

Jesus action figure, $20

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:27:40 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: Read the summary (written for little kids, I guess) of Jesus' life and ministry.

Clip Source: store.messengersoffaith.net

A long time ago, God sent His only Son, Jesus, from heaven to Earth. He was born to a woman named Mary and a man named Joseph. His earthly parents raised Jesus until He became a man. Then, He left them to travel all around the land. He helped lots of people by teaching them, healing them and performing many miracles! (New Testament Gospels)

Now children can learn more about Jesus’ incredible Tale of Glory while they play! Jesus narrates his own biography, and also quotes key memory verses from the Bible, including Mark 12:30, Mark 12:31 and John 3:16. Our unique start/stop function allows children to pause and restart the story at any point.

Colorful mini-storybook included. For ages 3+

Tags: religion, stuff, product, funny, children

RIP George Carlin

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:29:40 GMT

clipped by: ericw
clipper's remarks: Very sad, he was a true legend of comedy.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71.

Penis reduction pills

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:05:39 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii
clipper's remarks: WTF...............sadly ,that is not on my to do list.

Clip Source: www.yesbutnobutyes.com

This is marketing genius. Buy a prominently-labeled bottle of Penis Reduction Pills and make sure you leave them in a place in your home where everyone can see them. Hell, leave them on your desk at work!

We here at PenisReductionPills.com have a solution for men with any size penis who want everyone to believe, probably mistakenly, that they have an enormous johnson, without the possibility of doing anything to change the size of their penises. To do this, we pledge to sell the finest penis reducing placebos available today, using only government-approved placebo ingredients, shipped in boxes with our logo and name emblazoned in large type on all six sides. We are the premiere male ego enhancement product on the market today under $10.

Tags: humor

Sarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 18:06:17 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii
clipper's remarks: It's also easy to imagine how sarcasm might be selected over time as evolutionarily crucial. Imagine two ancient humans running across the savannah with a hungry lion in pursuit. One guy says to the other, "Are we having fun yet?" and the other just looks blank and stops to figure out what in the world his pal meant by that remark. End of friendship, end of one guy's contribution to the future of the human gene pool.

Fast forward a few million years and the network of human relationships is wider and more complex, and just as important to survival. The corporate chairman throws out a sarcastic remark and those who "get" it laugh, smile, and gain favor. In the same way, if the chair never makes a remark, sarcastic people are making them behind his or her back, forming a clique by their mutually negative, but funny, comments. Either way, sarcasm plays a role in making and breaking alliances and friendship.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Humans are fundamentally social animals. Our social nature means that we interact with each other in positive, friendly ways, and it also means we know how to manipulate others in a very negative way.

Neurophysiologist Katherine Rankin at the University of California, San Francisco, has also recently discovered that sarcasm, which is both positively funny and negatively nasty, plays an important part in human social interaction.

So what?

I mean really, who cares? Oh for God's sake. Don't you have anything better to do that read this column?

According to Dr. Rankin, if you didn't get the sarcastic tone of the previous sentences you must have some damage to your parahippocampal gyrus which is located in the right brain. People with dementia, or head injuries in that area, often lose the ability to pick up on sarcasm, and so they don't respond in a socially appropriate ways.

Tags: society