Clipmarks | kelvin273's clips

See your brain on drugs (literally)

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:40:28 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273
clipper's remarks: Apparently, no matter the individual's specific hallucinations, the brains of people on LSD all look alike.

Clip Source: blogs.discovermagazine.com

[Video]

The Star Wars Trilogy (as told by someone who hasn't seen the movies)

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:41:48 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273

Clip Source: www.suvudu.com

If you’re even remotely aware of the original Star Wars trilogy, then you’re probably going to get a kick out of this one. If you aren’t, then you’ll probably still get a kick out of this video. I watched it at work and ended up with tears in my eyes, a bright red face, and an office full of co-workers who were getting pretty concerned for my well-being. It’s that funny. Star Wars: Retold is a recounting of the first three movies’ story arc by someone who hasn’t actually seen the movies. It was also the winner of the ‘George Lucas Selects’ award in the 2009 Star Wars Fan Movie contest. Enjoy!

[Video]

Tags: humor, star wars, video

Placebo effect photographed

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:15:54 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273

Clip Source: www.popsci.com

Medicine has increasingly looked to the placebo effect's seemingly mysterious power to make people feel better in the absence of painkillers or pharmaceutical drugs. Now researchers have used fMRI scanners to pinpoint specific cells in the spinal cord that they believe are responsible for this ability to deaden pain.

A part of the spinal cord near the lower neck, called the dorsal horn, normally lights up with pain response. But no pain-related neural activity showed when researchers applied a so-called painkiller cream, which in fact was a placebo containing no active medication.

The research team applied painful heat to one arm of 13 volunteers, and then applied what they said was a painkiller cream and a control cream -- except that neither cream had active ingredients.

Tags: medicine, science

Piano Stairs in Sweden

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:38:45 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273

Clip Source: www.boingboing.net

[Video]

Laptop With Two Monitors

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:44:32 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273
clipper's remarks: Now that is one weird visual.

Clip Source: www.maximumpc.com

Know why your next notebook might sport two displays? Because the concept is pretty rad, for one. But the real reason is because it appears manufacturers are starting to jump on the double-screen bandwagon that hasn't even left the corral just yet.

It started back in January of this year when Lenovo released its dual-screen W700ds, and then more recently Alaska-based gScreen promised to release a dual 15.4-inch screen laptop dubbed the Spacebook in time for the holidays. The latest to enter the double-wide fray is Japan-based PC maker Kohjinsha, who's been showing off a laptop with two widescreen LCDs.

Both screens measure 10.1 inches with one of them sliding out from behind the other so users can still close the unit like a typical notebook.

Tags: computers, laptops, tech

Medical malpractice reform won't save very much

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 04:14:03 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273
clipper's remarks: The centerpiece of Republican ideas on healthcare reform apparently won't save as much money as they thought.

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

Medical malpractice reform is unlikely to cut healthcare spending significantly, the Congressional Budget Office reported Friday.

Enacting a cap on pain-and-suffering and punitive damages, changing liability laws and tightening the statute of limitations on malpractice claims would lower total healthcare spending by about one-half of 1% each year -- $11 billion at the current level -- according to an estimate by the nonpartisan agency.

The figure is far lower than previous estimates by groups backing malpractice reform. On Sunday, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) blasted Democrats for blocking attempts to reform malpractice laws. "Almost everybody agrees that we can save between $100 billion and $200 billion if we had effective medical malpractice reform," he said.

Tags: healthcare, politics

Saturn has another, really big ring

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:56:02 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273

Clip Source: blogs.discovermagazine.com

Astronomers have found an enormous and diffuse new ring of Saturn that lies far, far beyond the rest of the planet’s famous circlets. Researchers say the new ring is comprised of debris ejected from Saturn’s outlying moon Phoebe during impact. The new discovery also solves a puzzle regarding the curious two-faced appearance of Saturn’s moon Iapetus, whose leading hemisphere is much darker than its trailing side [New Scientist].

The discovery would appear to resolve a longstanding mystery in planetary science: why the walnut-shaped Iapetus has a two-tone complexion, with one side of the moon significantly darker than the other. “It has essentially a head-on collision. The particles smack Iapetus like bugs on a windshield” [BBC News], says Verbiscer. Studies of the darker material on Iapetus have shown that its composition is similar to that of Phoebe’s surface.

Tags: astronomy, planets, saturn, science

Espresso Book Machine: Fast On-Site Printing Press for Bookstores

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:50:54 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273

Clip Source: www.suvudu.com

The last one, the sci-fi/fantasy expert, divulged his bookstore will be getting a very cool contraption in November, one he hopes will create not only a new revenue stream for their bookstore but one that will help countless Seattle readers in their pursuit for knowledge, entertainment and publishing.

The bookstore in question is receiving an Espresso Book Machine!

Well, what is it?

[Video]

As you can see from the video, the espresso book machine does exactly what you imagine it to. It is literally a printing press, small enough to fit in a bookstore, that allows the store to print and bind an out of print edition or print an on demand book within 10 minutes of taking an order. And on top of that it is affordable.

Tags: books, bookstores, printing

Controversial German author turned away at New York airport

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:46:29 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273

Clip Source: www.dw-world.de

United States border guards detained Karl Dietrich Wolff upon his arrival in New York for several hours before ordering him to return immediately to Germany. The officials said Wolff's visa, which should have been valid until 2010, had expired in 2003. Wolff was not given a reason for his visa's early expiration.

"They had printed out a slip of paper with my picture from the visa. On top of it was printed 'Revoked, Revoked, Revoked,'" Wolff told Deutsche Welle in an interview.

In Germany, he is best known for publishing critical editions of classical writers such as Friedrich Hoelderlin or Franz Kafka. He also founded Germany's Black Panther Solidarity Committee and was a leader of the Socialist German Student Union activist group in the 60s. Wolff once publically described the American ruling class as 'criminal bandits' and 'a reincarnation of the Nazis.' The statements earned him a ban from the United States in 1969. The ban was lifted in 1987,

Britain seats first independent Supreme Court

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:16:25 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Judges who will form the highest court in the United Kingdom are set to be sworn in on Thursday in a major milestone in British legal history.

The Justices of the Supreme Court are replacing the Law Lords as the final court of appeal for almost all cases in the United Kingdom.

The court is independent of Parliament and will hear the most important cases.

The change brings the UK into line with many other countries around the world. The new court will act as the final court of appeal in all matters other than criminal cases in Scotland.

Although the actual business and workings of the justices will be essentially the same as the Law Lords, it will be watched closely to see if the move across Parliament Square will affect the way its decides cases.

One group of influential solicitors and barristers are launching a blog to monitor the Supreme Court's decision-making.

But others have criticised the change, arguing that it is largely a cosmetic exercise.

Tags: england, government, law, uk

Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking sing

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 11:03:52 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273
clipper's remarks: Though Sagan sounds kind of like Kermit the Frog when they speed him up to fit the melody. Still makes for a surprisingly cool track, though.

Clip Source: blogs.discovermagazine.com

[Video]

Tags: carl sagan, science, stephen hawking

Why the Fed shouldn't be in the regulation business

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 10:00:03 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

But during the years of the housing boom, the pleas failed to move the Fed, the sole federal regulator with authority over the businesses. Under a policy quietly formalized in 1998, the Fed refused to police lenders' compliance with federal laws protecting borrowers, despite repeated urging by consumer advocates across the country and even by other government agencies.

The hands-off policy, which the Fed reversed earlier this month, created a double standard. Banks and their subprime affiliates made loans under the same laws, but only the banks faced regular federal scrutiny. Under the policy, the Fed did not even investigate consumer complaints against the affiliates.

"In the prime market, where we need supervision less, we have lots of it. In the subprime market, where we badly need supervision, a majority of loans are made with very little supervision," former Fed Governor Edward M. Gramlich, a critic of the hands-off policy, wrote in 2007.

Tags: economy, federal reserve, government

Richard Dawkins concedes belief in God and in religion not incompatible

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 02:32:16 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273
clipper's remarks: Excerpt from a Newsweek interview

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

Are those incompatible positions: to believe in God and to believe in evolution?

No, I don't think they're incompatible if only because there are many intelligent evolutionary scientists who also believe in God—to name only Francis Collins [the geneticist and Christian believer recently chosen to head the National Institutes of Health] as an outstanding example. So it clearly is possible to be both. This book more or less begins by accepting that there is that compatibility. The God Delusion did make a case against that compatibility in my own mind.

Tags: science, religion, evolution, richard dawkins

Chinese dinosaur fossils show oldest known feathers

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:11:12 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Exceptionally well preserved dinosaur fossils uncovered in north-eastern China display the earliest known feathers.

The creatures are all more than 150 million years old.

The new finds are indisputably older than Archaeopteryx, the oldest recognised bird discovered in Germany.

Professor Xu Xing and colleagues tell the journal Nature that this represents the final proof that dinosaurs were ancestral to birds.

The theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs has always been troubled by the absence of feathers more ancient than those on the famous Archaeopteryx.

This has given critics room to question the idea.

But the new fossils, which come from two separate locations, are in most cases about 10 million years older than the German bird discovered in the late 19th Century.

Tags: dinosaurs, paleontology, science

Water all over the Moon's surface

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:50:16 GMT

clipped by: kelvin273
clipper's remarks: Unfortunately, it's only present in the top few millimeters of the surface.

Clip Source: blogs.discovermagazine.com

While it’s not quite time to build the first lunar swimming pool, scientists do report that they’ve found the chemical signature for water all over the moon’s surface, not just in the permanently shadowed craters near the poles that recent studies suggested might harbor ice. The findings give new hope to people dreaming of a lunar settlement where astronauts could live off the land.

Evidence of both both water and a closely related molecule called hydroxyl was detected by India’s first lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1, which scientists later lost contact with. The findings were then backed up by measurements from NASA’s Deep Impact and Cassini probes, and three teams’ papers will be published today by Science.

Tags: moon, science, space