Clipmarks | invictus's clips

11 most important philosophical quotes

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 15:27:14 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: be sure to visit this amazing site

Clip Source: www.neatorama.com

11 Most Important Philosophical Quotations.

1. “The unexamined life is not worth living” – Socrates (470-399 BCE)

2. “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily” – William of Ockham (1285 - 1349?)

3. “The life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” – Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679)

4. “I think therefore I am” – René Descartes (1596 – 1650)

5. “To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi).” Or, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” – Bishop George Berkeley (1685 – 1753)

6. “We live in the best of all possible worlds.” – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 – 1716)

7. “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.” G.W.F. Hegel (1770 – 1831)

8. “Who is also aware of the tremendous risk involved in faith – when he nevertheless makes the leap of faith – this [is] subjectivity … at its height.” – Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855)

9. “God is dead.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

10. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” – Albert Camus (1913 – 1960)

11. “One cannot step twice in the same river.” – Heraclitus (ca. 540 – ca. 480 BCE)

Bonus: Fake Your Way Through a Conversation (with Correct Pronunciation!)

Tags: quotes, philosophy

"What We Are Seeing Is the Fall of America"

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:40:20 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Harold Bloom speaks...

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Harold Bloom, Yale literature professor and cultural critic, is one of America's most prominent and provocative intellectuals.

Speaking at his home in New Haven where he is recovering from a recent health scare, a pale and weak Bloom seems to have symbolically embodied what he calls the "poor state of the nation."

"I am 77 years old and I have never seen this country in such a bad state. It is madness. What we are seeing is the fall of the Roman Empire, only now it is the fall of America, the glory of our Empire. This war is what Parthia was to Rome.

"We have caused a monstrous mess. We don't even count killed Iraqis. God knows how many Iraqi women, children and men have been killed by our accidental shootings, which we are such experts at, or by other Iraqis. No, 'Benito Bush' (Bloom's pet name for President George Bush) deserves, if we had a functioning civil law in the world, to be condemned for crimes against humanity. Bush is ultimately responsible for this war," Bloom says

Tags: iraq war, united states, middle east, chaos, war

Space Balls. An accurate model of Planets to Sun etc

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 17:57:41 GMT

clipped by: sohil

Clip Source: webisto.com

Tags: science, space, photoshop, planets, sun, astronomy

Rare Book Room

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:19:20 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: An awesome reference site with a good collection of scanned rare books.

Clip Source: rarebookroom.org

Introduction

The "Rare Book Room" site has been constructed as an educational site intended to allow the visitor to examine and read some of the great books of the world.

Over the last ten years, a company called "Octavo" embarked on digitally photographing some of the world ’s great books from some of the greatest libraries. These books were photographed at very high resolution (in some cases at over 200 megabytes per page).

This site contains all of the books (about 400) that have been digitized to date. These range over a wide variety of topics and rarity. The books are presented so that the viewer can examine all the pages in medium to medium-high resolution.

Tags: books, rare books, reference

Rare dead star found near Earth

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:22:55 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Neutron stars form when massive stars exhaust their fuel

Astronomers have spotted a space oddity in Earth's neighbourhood - a dead star with some unusual characteristics.

The object, known as a neutron star, was studied using space telescopes and ground-based observatories.

But this one, located in the constellation Ursa Minor, seems to lack some key characteristics found in other neutron stars.

Details of the study, by a team of American and Canadian researchers, will appear in the Astrophysical Journal.

If confirmed, it would be only the eighth known "isolated neutron star" - meaning a neutron star that does not have an associated supernova remnant, binary companion, or radio pulsations.

Either Calvera is an unusual example of a known type of neutron star, or it is some new type of neutron star, the first of its kind

Robert Rutledge, McGill University

The object has been nicknamed Calvera, after the villain in the 1960s western film The Magnificent Seven.

Tags: space, neutron star, calvera, science

The Mathematical Lives of Plants

Mon, 07 May 2007 00:43:06 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

The seeds of a sunflower, the spines of a cactus, and the bracts of a pine cone all grow in whirling spiral patterns. Remarkable for their complexity and beauty, they also show consistent mathematical patterns that scientists have been striving to understand.
...
Scientists have puzzled over this pattern of plant growth for hundreds of years. Why would plants prefer the golden angle to any other? And how can plants possibly "know" anything about Fibonacci numbers?

For the first time, scientists have found convincing biochemical mechanisms responsible for the interlocking spiral growth patterns seen in many plants. (The Romanesco broccoli plant is a striking example.) The video of the experiment with magnetized liquid iron droplets demonstrates how the geometry of such growth could occur in nature.

Clip Source: www.sciencenews.org

Each yellow nub in the center of this daisy is actually its own miniature flower, complete with a full set of reproductive organs. The buds form interlocking clockwise and counterclockwise spirals.
Scott Hotton

The golden angle is the angle subtended by the smaller (red) arc when two arcs that make up a circle are in the golden ratio.
Wikipedia

This sunflower has 21 clockwise and 34 counterclockwise spirals.
Scott Hotton

Plants form new seeds or buds from the center. In this picture, the circle labeled 1 would be the most recent bud. The circle labeled 2 would have been formed just previously, and it forms the golden angle with bud 1

An image of the tip of a Norway spruce branch, viewed through an electron microscope, shows small buds that are primordial. In this case, they will eventually turn into needles. The primordia form at the tip and then move outward and downward.
R. Rutishauser

This cactus, a Mammilaria moellerana, has golden-angle spirals.
Eleanor Farrington

Tags: math, plants, biology, symmetry, sprial, science, nature, geometry, fibonacci, patterns

The Newspaper Clipping Generator

Sat, 08 Jul 2006 01:47:22 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: tools.fodey.com

The Newspaper Clipping Generator

Tags: humor, newspaper clipping

My second "clipiversary"

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 17:56:32 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Yes, it's been 2 years today. Thanks for everything, guys...

Clip Source: omega.wordpress.com

Time runs so fast and somebody should definitely do something about it; like bribing the sun and convince it for slowing down the earth’s orbital voyage around it. When I was browsing the new clips at Clipmarks this morning, I suddenly noticed that date on my profile: “Joined: 11/10/2005″. Yes, today it’s been exactly 2 years since I joined Clipmarks, which means 730 great days, 104 wonderful weeks or 24 months full of clipping, sharing and fun.

As I often mention it here on this modest blog or elsewhere, Clipmarks has been a very special thing in my online life. Now while I am browsing more than 1700 clips I posted (and many more others, posted by fellow clippers) I can’t help thinking “What if there had not been a site like this, what if Clipmarks never existed?”

So thanks again Clipmarks, for these great 2 years; and thanks to all clippers who have been making this “infotainment” experience a very special one. I am proud of being a part of this great community.

Tags: clipmarks

Some Books on Critical Thinking

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 15:45:23 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: rtnl.wordpress.com

“Teaching Critical Thinking“

There are hundreds of books on thinking and how to improve it, ranging from airport junk to turgid academic treatises. Here is a short list of some of the best, focusing on critical thinking

Cialdini, R. B. (1984). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Giere, R. N. (1996). Understanding Scientific Reasoning

Heuer, R. J. (1999). Psychology of Intelligence Analysis.

Kepner, C. H., & Tregoe, B. B. (1997). The New Rational Manager

Minto, B. (1995). The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking.

Myers, D. G. (2002). Intuition: Its Powers and Perils.

Paul, R. W., & Elder, L. (2002). Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life

Piatelli-Palmarini, M. (1994). Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule our Minds.

Salmon, M. (1989). Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking

Spence, G. (1995). How to Argue and Win Every Time

Whyte, J. (2004) Crimes Against Logic

Tags: books, book, literature, help, start, thinking, critical, critical thinking, skepticism, skeptic, academic, logic, science, psychology

World's oldest wall painting unearthed in Syria

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:47:43 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old wall painting underground in northern Syria which they believe is the oldest in the world.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

A view of a painting uncovered at Djade al-Mughara Neolihic site, northeast of the Syrian city of Aleppo, in this September 2007 handout photo. The painting was discovered by a team of French archaeologists, who described the painting as the oldest in the world. (Handout/Reuters)

Tags: archaeology, syria, art, rock art, prehistory

Parallel Universes: They Do Exist

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:27:30 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Revisiting & re-clipping some of my old stuff.

Clip Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Parallel Universes

Everything you're about to read here seems impossible and insane, beyond science fiction. Yet it's all true.

Scientists now believe there may really be a parallel universe - in fact, there may be an infinite number of parallel universes, and we just happen to live in one of them. These other universes contain space, time and strange forms of exotic matter. Some of them may even contain you, in a slightly different form. Astonishingly, scientists believe that these parallel universes exist less than one millimetre away from us. In fact, our gravity is just a weak signal leaking out of another universe into ours.

For years parallel universes were a staple of the Twilight Zone. Science fiction writers loved to speculate on the possible other universes which might exist.

But now it seems the speculation wasn't absurd enough. Parallel universes really do exist and they are much stranger than even the science fiction writers dared to imagine.

Tags: phsics, parallel universes, universe, science

Eighty million years without sex

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:02:04 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Asexual organisms are usually short-lived

The mystery of how an animal has survived for 80 million years without sex has been solved by UK scientists.

A Cambridge team says the creature owes its existence to a genetic quirk that offers some recompense for its prolonged celibacy.

Many asexual organisms have died out because they cannot adapt to changes in the natural world.

But an evolutionary trick allows this pond-dweller to survive when conditions change, researchers report in Science.

There could be some benefit to millions of years without sex after all

Dr Alan Tunnacliffe, University of Cambridge

The animal is a tiny invertebrate known as a bdelloid rotifer. It lives in freshwater pools. If deprived of water, it survives in a desiccated state until water becomes available again.

The secret to this novel survival mechanism lies in a twist of asexual reproduction, whereby the animal is able to make two separate proteins from two different copies of a key gene.

Tags: biology, genetics, sex, science

Missing: Large lake in southern Chile

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 02:28:15 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Missing: Large lake in southern Chile

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - A lake in southern Chile has mysteriously disappeared, prompting speculation the ground has simply opened up and swallowed it whole.

The lake was situated in the Magallanes region in Patagonia and was fed by water, mostly from melting glaciers.

It had a surface area of between 4 and 5 hectares (10-12 acres) -- about the size of 10 soccer pitches.

"In March we patrolled the area and everything was normal ... we went again in May and to our surprise we found the lake had completely disappeared," said Juan Jose Romero, regional director of Chile's National Forestry Corporation CONAF.

"The only things left were chunks of ice on the dry lake-bed and an enormous fissure," he told Reuters.

CONAF is investigating the disappearance.

Tags: chile, mystery, missing lake, world

Saudi woman to be beheaded for being a "witch"

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:28:49 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Being beheaded by sword in a public place... For being a "witch" or practising "witchcraft"...

Welcome back to the Middle Ages: "Burn the witch!" or "Behead the witch!", by the name of God.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Saudi Arabia is a close ally of the US, who enthusiastically invaded Iraq to bring "human rights and democracy" to Arabs, right?

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Many Saudi executions are beheadings by the sword in public places

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.

Human Rights Watch says the trial failed to meet the safeguards in the Saudi justice system.

The confession which the defendant was forced to fingerprint was not even read out to her, the group says.

Also Ms Falih and her representatives were not allowed to attend most of the hearings.

Tags: religion, bigotry, theocracy, idiocy, saudi arabia, justice, law, witchcraft

Five Women Buried Alive - and the Media Ignore It

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:43:15 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Last month, the U.S. media were full of stories about the resignation of Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan. But another event that same week in Pakistan -- that tribesmen buried five young women alive for wanting to choose their own husbands -- got almost no coverage.

According to the Asian Human Rights Commission, the women's "crime" was that they defied tribal elders and arranged marriages to men of their own choosing in a civil court. They were abducted at gunpoint by some men and dragged off to a remote field, where they were beaten, shot, thrown into a ditch, and then, while still breathing, smothered to death with rocks and mud.

Yet not even when a member of the Pakistani parliament, Israr Ullah Zehri, defended these barbaric killings as "century-old traditions" -- when he said that killing women who defy male control by wanting to chose their own husbands is necessary to "stop obscenity" -- was there international outrage.

Tags: pakistan, human rights, murder, traditions, women, democracy

Clipmarks | invictus's clips

11 most important philosophical quotes

11 Most Important Philosophical Quotations.

1. “The unexamined life is not worth living” – Socrates (470-399 BCE)

2. “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily” – William of Ockham (1285 - 1349?)

3. “The life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” – Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679)

4. “I think therefore I am” – René Descartes (1596 – 1650)

5. “To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi).” Or, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” – Bishop George Berkeley (1685 – 1753)

6. “We live in the best of all possible worlds.” – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 – 1716)

7. “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.” G.W.F. Hegel (1770 – 1831)

8. “Who is also aware of the tremendous risk involved in faith – when he nevertheless makes the leap of faith – this [is] subjectivity … at its height.” – Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855)

9. “God is dead.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

10. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” – Albert Camus (1913 – 1960)

11. “One cannot step twice in the same river.” – Heraclitus (ca. 540 – ca. 480 BCE)

Bonus: Fake Your Way Through a Conversation (with Correct Pronunciation!)

"What We Are Seeing Is the Fall of America"

Space Balls. An accurate model of Planets to Sun etc

Rare Book Room

Rare dead star found near Earth

The Mathematical Lives of Plants

The Newspaper Clipping Generator

Name of the newspaper:

Date:

Headline:

Your own news story:

My second "clipiversary"

Some Books on Critical Thinking

World's oldest wall painting unearthed in Syria

Parallel Universes: They Do Exist

Eighty million years without sex

Missing: Large lake in southern Chile

Missing: Large lake in southern Chile

Saudi woman to be beheaded for being a "witch"

Five Women Buried Alive - and the Media Ignore It