Clipmarks | murieleileen's Pops

7 Writing Habits of Amazing Writers

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:48:57 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: This extremely prolific writer has won numerous awards, including the National Book Award. She writes in longhand, and while she doesn’t have a formal schedule, she says she prefers to write in the morning, before breakfast . She’s a creative writing professor, and on the days she teaches, she says she writes for an hour or 45 minutes before leaving for her first class. On other days, when the writing is going well, she can work for hours without a break — and has breakfast at 2 or 3 in the afternoon!

Clip Source: writetodone.com

1. Stephen King. In his book On Writing, King says that he writes 10 pages a day without fail, even on holidays.

2. Ernest Hemingway. By contrast with King, “Papa” Hemingway wrote 500 words a day.

3. Vladimir Nabokov. The author of such great novels as Lolita, Pale Fire and Ada did his writing standing up, and all on index cards.

4. Truman Capote. The author of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “In Cold Blood” claimed to be a “completely horizontal author.” He said he had to write lying down, in bed or on a couch, with a cigarette and coffee.

5. Philip Roth. One of the greatest living American writers, Roth works standing up, pacing around as he thinks. He claimed to walk half a mile for every page he writes.

6. James Joyce

Joyce prided himself in taking his time with each sentence. A famous story has a friend asking Joyce in the street if he’d had a good day writing. Yes, Joyce replied happily. How much had he written? Three sentences, Joyce told him.

7. Joyce Carol Oates

Think Yourself Healthy by Appreciating the Exercise You Already Do

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:47:48 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: To illustrate with just one of the outcomes they measured, the average weight of those in the intervention group reduced from 145.5 lbs to 143.72 lbs. Over the same period the control group showed no significant change. For those of you working metric-style that's 66.14 kg down to 65.33 kg.

That's like dropping a bag of sugar. In four weeks. With no additional exercise.

Clip Source: www.spring.org.uk

How strong do you think the link is between mind and body?

For example, is it possible to think yourself fitter without doing any additional exercise, but by simply better appreciating how much exercise you already do? A recent experiment by Alia Crum and Professor Ellen Langer of Harvard University suggests the incredible answer is yes.

Dr Ben Goldacre

describes the study which was carried out on hotel attendants who were informed how much exercise they were already doing as a regular part of their job. Here's Ben's conclusion:

"...amazingly, despite no change in actual exercise levels, in the intervention group, simply being told about the value of what they were already doing caused a significant change for the better on every single one of the objective health measures recorded: weight, body fat, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio and blood pressure."

Tags: psycology, body, mind

Can we harness energy from outer space?

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:36:41 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: While nuclear fusion has already been tested with the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, those reactions give off the majority of their energy as radioactive neutrons, raising both safety and production concerns. Helium-3, on the other hand, is perfectly safe. It doesn't give off any pollution or radioactive waste and poses no danger to surrounding areas.
helium-3 has two protons but only one neutron. When it's heated to very high temperatures and combined with deuterium, the reaction releases incredible amounts of energy. Just 2.2 pounds (one kilogram) of helium-3 combined with 1.5 pounds (0.67 kilograms) of deuterium produces 19 megawatt-years of energy Roughly 25 tons of the stuff could power the United States for an entire year.

Clip Source: science.howstuffworks.com

People have been searching for clean alternative energy sources for decades to no avail. As soon as one source seems to pass the test, someone uncovers its fatal flaw. Nuclear, wind, solar and hydropower have all been dragged through the mud to some degree. Traditional nuclear fission is too risky, winds aren't consistent, the sun doesn't always penetrate the clouds and hydropower dams disrupt natural environments.

It seems like any workable solution is light-years away -- literally. Some researchers think the answer to our energy needs rests in the stars. From wind turbines on Mars to helium-3 fusion, people are increasingly looking to extraterrestrial sources for the Earth's energy needs.

One of the sources they're looking at is helium-3 to use in nuclear fusion reactions. As opposed to nuclear fission, which splits an atom's nucleus in half, nuclear fusion combines nuclei to produce energy.

Tags: energy, space

Animal Myths

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:51:28 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth

Clip Source: www.greenexpander.com

10 Animal Myths Debunked

Hares are cowards

All it needs is beating his paws relentlessly to escape from predators.

Commonly known as boxing

also used by females to “suggest” to the male that it is not yet ready for mating

Bears are slow

can reach a speed of up to 50 km/hr (30 mph.)

Hippos are clumsy

can reach speeds of up to 30 mph (48 lm/h)

faster than an Olympic sprinter

Badgers are sad and lonely

actually quite sociable

living in groups of 2 to 15 members

Giraffes are flexible

not even able to turn their head back

Zebras are given away by their stripes

stripes help them blend into the crowd

disappearing into a grey color spot

Rattlesnakes rattle before they attack

actually rattle when they are frightened

Octopuses use camouflage to protect from enemies

not

only

Male cuttlefish use their color to camouflage from other competing males and protect their females.

Lizards climb with the use of suction

Elephant have a thick skin

Actually its skin

is very sensitive.

Elephants can feel a simple touch

Tags: nature, animals, photos

Before I die I want to...

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 08:46:21 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: Before I die I want to see the world.
And,yes,skydiving of course.

Clip Source: beforeidieiwantto.org

Tags: wishes

The Last Victorian Leviathan Steam Ship

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 10:04:13 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: Alas, the end of the Eastern came with more of a whimper than bang. After suffering far too many accidents, and far too many money troubles, the Eastern passed from one hand to another until eventually the largest ship in the Victorian world came to a humiliating end, first as a floating billboard in Liverpool and then finally broken up and sold as scrap.

- It took two full years just to dismantle this ship (gives you an idea how big it was).
- A mysterious dead body was found inside the special double hull (one can only imagine the desperate story of that stowaway...)

At least Brunel didn't see the sad and pathetic end to his magnificent Great Eastern, though he didn't live to see its majesty either. Brunel died only four days after the great ship's first sea trial.

Clip Source: www.darkroastedblend.com

The More-Than-Great "Great Eastern"

- one of the most spectacular ships ever built!

Built in 1858, it was capable of bringing 4,000 people around the world, without ever once needing to refuel...

An Iron Monster, framed in a cloud of billowing white sails, or looming through the hellish black smoke - this was the ultimate Victorian luxury Trans-Atlantic liner, affectionately called the "great babe" by its eccentric designer:

perhaps the greatest of the great Victorian engineers

a rather small man with very big dreams

At just about five feet, Isambard Kingdom Brunel wasn't a striking figure but what he lacked in height he made up with towering ability.

the biggest and grandest of his

projects

what many folks see as one of the most spectacular ships ever built

construction photographs

a very intricate 3D model of the "Great Eastern" construction

National Maritime Museum

old illustrations and daguerreotypes

the end

came with more of a whimper than bang

Huge ship takes 2 years to dismantle

memorabilia

Tags: photos, history

Awesome Innovations from the Underdeveloped Male Mind

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 11:01:20 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: Hesh says that “the curtain may contain appropriately placed openings to allow for communication by or to the user”, which will allow for interaction like this:

Man without Portable Rain Covering:
“Dude, that’s really a sweet little device you’ve got there.”

Man wearing Portable Rain Covering:
“Thanks. I’ve had it for about a month now and I …..”

Man without Portable Rain Covering:
“Dude, that was sarcasm.”

Clip Source: www.darkroastedblend.com

This article is written by

Scott Seegert

He is the author of "It's a Guy Thing - Awesome Innovations from the Underdeveloped Male Mind"

1.Raymond’s Combined Camouflage and Decoy Device

As the next step in guys’ never ending battle to outsmart wildlife with brains the size of raisins, Raymond offers up his Combined Camouflage and Decoy Device.

2. Edwin’s Safety Clothing

Old people fall down a lot, often injuring themselves in the process. Well, Edwin has come up with a way to alleviate this problem and a quick glance at the illustration above reveals his plan for the elderly – to make them feel so ridiculous they refuse to leave the house.

3. Hesh’s Portable Rain Covering

You’re outside, with no shelter in sight, and it begins to rain. You don’t have an umbrella with you. What do you do? If you’re on the ball, you reach into your pocket, pull out Hesh’s Portable Rain Covering and place it on your head. If you’re really on the ball, you unfold and inflate it first.

Tags: weird inventions, funny

Algae: Biofuel Of The Future?

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:42:57 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

In the world of alternative fuels, there may be nothing greener than pond scum.

Algae are tiny biological factories that use photosynthesis to transform carbon dioxide and sunlight into energy so efficiently that they can double their weight several times a day.

As part of the photosynthesis process algae produce oil and can generate 15 times more oil per acre than other plants used for biofuels, such as corn and switchgrass. Algae can grow in salt water, freshwater or even contaminated water, at sea or in ponds, and on land not suitable for food production.

On top of those advantages, algae — at least in theory — should grow even better when fed extra carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) and organic material like sewage. If so, algae could produce biofuel while cleaning up other problems.

With the grant, the team will try to determine exactly how promising algae biofuel production can be by tweaking the inputs of carbon dioxide and organic matter to increase algae oil yields.

Tags: algae, biofuel, green

Massive New Object Discovered at Edge of the Solar System

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:35:16 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

The Oort Cloud is a spherical cloud of comets believed to lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year from the Sun, which places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. The Kuiper belt and scattered disc, the other two known reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects, are less than one thousandth the Oort cloud's distance. The outer extent of the Oort cloud defines the boundary of our Solar System.

Objects in the Oort cloud are largely composed of ices such as water, ammonia and methane. Astronomers believe that the matter comprising the Oort cloud formed closer to the Sun, and was scattered far out into space by the gravitational effects of the giant planets early in the Solar System's evolution.

Tags: astronomy, solar system

Future 'Top 10' Hot Careers in 2012

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:14:56 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: 5) Simulation Engineering
By 2012, an increase in processing power and rich data will make simulations more realistic, and user-friendly. Simulation engineers will be working on bringing us closer to “Star Trek’s” Holodecks—the ultimate total immersion simulation. Simulations will be in every industry and every engineering field,

6) Boomer Caregiving
7) Genetic Counseling
8) Brain Analysts
9) Space Tourism
10) Roboticists

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

In our information-rich society there is an ever increasing demand for workers in the fields of computers, health care, science and space technology—much of it driven by the demands of the retiring baby boomers. If you like to plan ahead, here is sampling of some of the jobs that will be hot in the next several years and beyond.

1) Organic food Industry

By 2010, organic food and beverage will represent about 10 percent of the total market — a tenfold increase from 1998

2) Computational Biology

There is a growing need to combine computer science, biology and math to make sense of research data in massive quantities,

3) Parallel Programming

By 2012, computers will jump from core duo processors to multi-core processors — as many as 80 processors per machin

4) Data Technology

Data technologists build structures—real and virtual—that turn the pile of data into something meaningful and beautiful,

Tags: future, work, jobs

Sleep on It: How Snoozing Makes You Smarter

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:16:37 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: This insight paved the way for a new understanding of organic chemistry and earned Kekulé a title of nobility in Germany.

Although most of us have not been ennobled, there is something undeniably familiar about Kekulé’s problem-solving method. Whether deciding to go to a particular college, accept a challenging job offer or propose to a future spouse, “sleeping on it” seems to provide the clarity we need to piece together life’s puzzles. But how does slumber present us with answers?

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

During slumber, our brain engages in data analysis, from strengthening memories to solving problems

Key Concepts

As we snooze, our brain is busily processing the information we have learned during the day.

Sleep makes memories stronger, and it even appears to weed out irrelevant details and background information so that only the important pieces remain.

Our brain also works during slumber to find hidden relations among memories and to solve problems we were working on while awake.

n 1865 Friedrich August Kekulé woke up from a strange dream: he imagined a snake forming a circle and biting its own tail. Like many organic chemists of the time, Kekulé had been working feverishly to describe the true chemical structure of benzene, a problem that continually eluded understanding. But Kekulé’s dream of a snake swallowing its tail, so the story goes, helped him to accurately realize that benzene’s structure formed a ring.

Tags: sleep, brain, memory

Green Tomorrows

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:41:55 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: ieet.org

During his talk Jamais Cascio introduced 4 possible scenarios where our world is heading regarding climate change: Jamais: The four boxes represent a variety of “response” scenarios, each embracing elements of the prevention, mitigation, and remediation approaches to solving the climate crisis. Certain approaches may receive greater emphasis in a given scenario, but all three types of responses can be seen in each world.

[Video]

Tags: green, climate change

Israel Moves Toward a National Biometric Database

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:49:32 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: yro.slashdot.org

"Israeli's government has approved the creation of a biometric database which would contain fingerprints and facial photos of all Israeli citizens. If the bill becomes law — and it is at an early stage — the biometric information of each citizen would be embedded in their passport and national ID card. Israeli citizens would be required by law to submit to biometric testing upon request by government employees, soldiers, and policemen, so that their biometric info can be compared to the info embedded in their ID card / passport. The declared purpose of the bill is to combat forgery of passports and ID cards, and also to aid identification 'in cases of a mass disaster.' The bill was approved over objections from civil rights groups and the Israeli Bar. The article notes that no other democratic country has a comprehensive biometric database of all citizens."

Tags: privacy, government, israel

Internet-Telescope Will Provide Movie-like Window on Universe

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:33:10 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: LSST is designed to be a public facility. The database and resulting catalogues will be made available to the public with no proprietary restrictions. A sophisticated data management system will provide easy access, enabling simple queries from individual users. The public will actively share the adventure of discovery.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

"LSST is truly an Internet telescope, which will put terabytes of data each night into the hands of anyone that wants to explore it. The 8.4-metre LSST telescope and the 3-gigapixel camera are thus a shared resource for all humanity — the ultimate network peripheral device to explore the universe."

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, partially funded by $30 million from Microsoft founders Bill gates and Charles Simyoni, the developer of Word and Excel, is projected for ‘first light’ in 2014 in Chile's Atacama Desert -the world's Southern Hemisphere space-observatory mecca. The 8.4-meter telescope will be able to survey the entire visible sky deeply in multiple colors every week with its 3-billion pixel digital camera. The telescope will probe the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, and it will open a movie-like window on objects that change or move rapidly: exploding supernovae, potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids and distant Kuiper Belt objects.

Tags: telescope, internet

Genetics Show How Prehistoric Cultures Migrated & Shared Knowledge

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:14:24 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: The researchers tracked genetic variation on the Y chromosome, the sex chromosome passed from father to son that encodes maleness, using a technique now widely used that was developed in the early 1990s by Underhill and colleagues in the lab of Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, professor emeritus of genetics. The method has given scientists a powerful window into ancient human migrations and prehistoric cultural shifts. The technique has also been adopted by some commercial genealogy services that offer Y-chromosome testing to the public.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Using a genetic technique pioneered at Stanford, a research team found that animal-herding methods arrived in southern Africa 2,000 years ago on a wave of human migration, rather than by movement of ideas between neighbors as previously believed.

Prior research suggested that prehistoric people in eastern and southern Africa had little contact, with only two known migrations between the regions about 30,000 and 1,500 years ago. After Bantu-language speakers migrated from eastern to southern Africa 1,500 years ago, agriculture took off in southern Africa. But the timing of the Bantu migration didn't quite match the 2,000-year-old anthropological evidence for the first sheep and cattle herds in southern Africa, so anthropologists were unsure whether the region's agricultural knowledge came from a wave of ideas that spread in front of the migrating Bantu, or whether a separate migration brought the first herders.

Tags: genetics