Clipmarks | neochonetes's clips

TaxPayer Suicide

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 02:13:12 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes

Alex’s Notes: Dont know about you, but I consider Jim Rogers to be a very smart man. You dont become a Billionaire in commodities by being stupid. He has some very interesting things to say about the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in a recent interview.

During a 40-minute interview during a wealth-management conference in this West Coast Canadian city last month, Rogers said that:

• U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke should “resign” for the bailout deals he’s handed out as he’s tried to battle this credit crisis.
• That the U.S. national debt – the roughly $5 trillion held by the public– essentially doubled in the course of a single weekend because of the Fed-led credit crisis bailout deals.
• That U.S. consumers and investors can expect much-higher interest rates – noting that if the Fed doesn’t raise borrowing costs, market forces will make that happen.
• And that the average American has no idea just how bad this financial crisis is going to get.

Tags: taxpayer, usa, financial markets, federal research

BEWARE the Tomato

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:40:35 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes
clipper's remarks: This is the primary source for reporting all the cases of Salmonella saintpaul infections beginning in April of 2008.

Clip Source: www.cdc.gov

Investigation of Outbreak of Infections Caused by Salmonella Saintpaul

Click Here for Advice to Consumers

CDC is collaborating with public health officials in many states, the Indian Health Service, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate an ongoing multi-state outbreak of human Salmonella serotype Saintpaul infections. An epidemiologic investigation conducted by the New Mexico and Texas Departments of Health and the Indian Health Service using interviews comparing foods eaten by ill and well persons has identified consumption of raw tomatoes as the likely source of the illnesses in those states. The specific type and source of tomatoes is under investigation; however, the data suggest that large tomatoes, including Roma and round red, are the source.

Since mid-April, 167 persons infected with Salmonella Saintpaul with the same genetic fingerprint have been identified in 17 states:

it is likely many more illnesses have occurred than those reported

not on today’s map

Tags: tomato, primary source, salmonella saintpaul, infection, bloody diarrhea, fatal, united states, centers for disease control

Technology & Models to the Rescue

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:19:33 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes

Clip Source: www.nsf.gov

Forecasters Implement New Hurricane-Tracking Technique

Provides detailed, frequent images of a storm's location

VORTRAC will provide forecasters with detailed updates on hurricanes as storms approach land.
Credit and Larger Version

A new technique that helps forecasters continuously monitor landfalling hurricanes, giving them frequent and detailed images of a storm's location, will be implemented this summer.

The technique, known as VORTRAC (Vortex Objective Radar Tracking and Circulation), was successfully tested by the hurricane center last year.

The system, which relies on existing Doppler radars along the U.S. coast, provides details on hurricane winds and central pressure every six minutes, indicating whether the storm is gathering strength in the final hours before reaching shore.

One of VORTRAC's strengths is that it can use radar data to calculate the barometric pressure at the center of a hurricane, a key measure of its intensity.

Tags: hurricane, technology, weather, forecast science, meteorology

Rubber Room

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 04:33:35 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes
clipper's remarks: Hard to believe this could happen in America, but teachers are trained not to complain, as it is considered insubordination.
Is any wonder why people don't want to become teachers?

Clip Source: www.thislife.org

350: Human Resources

02.29.2008

The true story of little-known rooms in the New York City Board of Education building. Teachers are told to report there instead of their classrooms. No reason is usually given. When they arrive, they find they've been put on some kind of probationary status, and they must report every day until the matter is cleared up. They call it the Rubber Room. Average length of stay? Months, sometimes years. Plus other stories of the uneasy interaction between humans and their institutions.

The Rubber Room story was produced by Joe Richman and the good people at Radio Diaries

Note: we're doing the Rubber Room story with some filmmakers who are making a feature-length documentary about the Rubber Room. Learn more here.

We first heard about the rubber room from a documentary by Jeremy Garrett. There's a trailer at rubberroommovie.com. Jeremy's looking for funding to finish the film, and a distributor. (23 minutes)

Tags: rubber room, teachers new york city, board of education, probation, no due process, radio diaries, this american life, human resources

Groundhog Nightmare

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:56:14 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes
clipper's remarks: Early onset Alzheimer's disease seems to be on the rise. HBO produced a documentary about this issue.
So sorry for anyone who remembers that they once knew something after they have to deal with it each day! The Nightmare version of Groundhog Day!

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Terry Pratchett attacks the NHS over Alzheimer's policy

By Gary Cleland and Ben Farmer

Last Updated: 2:35am GMT 16/03/2008

The novelist Terry Pratchett has attacked the NHS for its decision to deny an Alzheimer's drug to hundreds of sufferers like him, as he spoke about his battle with the illness.

The bestselling author, who was diagnosed with the early-onset form of the disease last year, said it is a "shock and a shame" that research funding for the disease is a tiny proportion of that available for cancer, as he donated £500,000 towards research into a cure.

Ahead of his speech to a conference of Alzheimer's researchers in Bristol, Mr Pratchett told the BBC that he is having to teach himself to type again after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Mr Pratchett said: "The only obvious sign even to myself is that my typing, which used to be pretty good touch-typing, is now the old traditional hunt and peck."

"I’m having to relearn to type practically every day," he added.

Tags: terry pratchett, nhs, aricept, alzheimer's, policy, health

Solar Weather Light Show

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:07:22 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes
clipper's remarks: Find more ways to see and collect amazing real images of Earth's magnetic field protecting us from Sun Storms. Learn more about Earth and get fabulous images from NASA and their partners. I love the interviews of the Inuit elders and the older scientists who first began the science station in the Arctic. Very cool stories.

Clip Source: neochonetes.blogspot.com

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Interactive Science Experiences: Solar Weather 2008

With a bit of effort, you can break into the Web2.0 world, and NASA has the tools to help. There are an enormous number of projects, activities and materials available to teachers, for science, math and technology, yet also for social studies, languages and other areas of education.

All you have to do is find the topic you are studying, and NASA can point you to the websites and online interactive practices to grab and hold students' attention. Then the rest is up to you, do one activity, one project or an array of related interactions and lessons. Don't forget to make an official connection with the NASA group, so you can always email or talk with someone who can help or answer questions.

One of the most exciting, yet practical Sun-Earth celebrations of the SECEF, Ancient Observatories, continued the NASA educational traditions while paving the trail into the online, interactive path for science education.

Tags: solar weather, sol, sun, earth, sun-earth day, arctic, inuit, history, science

Tree of Life Redo

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:27:19 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes
clipper's remarks: This is a summary of an research article from Nature. Science teachers and interested hobbyists will be intrigued to learn how the data base was created and new implications about various changes in relationships since it takes new research into account.

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

A list of biologists long enough to choke a horse has completed a new tree of life for animals, resolving the relationships among all the major groups and suggesting some weird things about the origins of animals with well-developed tissues.

This was the surprise tissue finding — comb jellyfish (jellies with well-developed tissues) diverged from other animals even before the lowly sponge, which has no tissue to speak of.

Either comb jellies evolved their complexity independently from other animals or sponges became greatly simplified through the course of evolution

If corroborated, “this would significantly change the way we think about the earliest multicellular animals,” Dunn said. The results are detailed in the March 6 issue of the journal Nature.

These gigantic trees of life (this one is said to be the most comprehensive animal tree of life to date) require massive computer power to run algorithms and resolve huge matrices of data

more than 120 processors

in labs around the globe

Tags: animal domain, tree of life, compilation, research update, nature, livescience blog, robin lloyd

Shopaholics: More to Come

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:06:02 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes
clipper's remarks: As the economy lags for those normally able to buy some "extras", the impulse to shop may be a natural response...even if it is self-defeating.

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

The Truth About Shopaholics

By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 03 March 2008 09:15 am ET

New research reveals while some super-shoppers spend to boost self-esteem and band-aid other perceived internal deficits, others' carts are driven by plain-old materialism. Whatever the motivation, however, researchers mostly agree that buying behaviors can range from frivolous fun to serious addiction.

Compulsive buying can be thought of as a chronic tendency to purchase products far in excess of a person’s needs and resources.

"There are some people who are just total rational consumers; they buy what's on sale, or what they need and nothing else," said researcher James Roberts of Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business in Texas. "On the other end, there are compulsive shoppers who buy to their own financial ruin and to relationship problems and other kinds of debt; and then there's the rest of us somewhere in between."

impulse control disorder is treatable

Tags: shopaholic, research, continuum, self-esteem, fun, addiction, impulse disorder, therapy, economy

Discovering Cool Pics & Podcasts

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:46:40 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes
clipper's remarks: This is part of the National Science Foundation website where you can listen to podcasts. There are also thousands of really fantastic images sent in from researchers all around Earth. You can get an rss feed.

Clip Source: www.nsf.gov

"Eye Screen" -- The Discovery Files

Play Audio

The Discovery Files podcast is available through iTunes or you can add the RSS feed to your podcast receiver.

University of Washington engineers have for the first time, combined a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.

Credit: NSF/Clear Channel Communications/Karson Productions

Audio Transcript:

I'm Bob Karson with the Discovery Files -- new advances in science and engineering from the National Science Foundation.

If the eyes are windows to the soul, the contact lens may become the TV screen.

Using a complex microfabrication technique, University of Washington researchers have come up with a way to imprint tiny circuit boards and LEDs directly on a flexible contact lens.

"The Discovery Files" covers projects funded by the government's National Science Foundation. Federally sponsored research -- brought to you, by you! Learn more at nsf.gov or on our podcast.

Tags: nsf, national science foundation, podcast, rss feed, images, mp3

Twitterquette

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:42:03 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes
clipper's remarks: An interesting viewpoint of Twitter; based on surveys of twitter participants

Clip Source: broadstuff.com

On Twitterquette

Thayer Driver has done a great survey of Twitter behaviour....her heads up on her blog over here is:

People mainly use Twitter mostly to see what their contacts are up to (50.6%).
- Most respondents to this survey are followed by twice the amount of people (101-200 followers) than they follow themselves (51-100 followers).
- You’re most likely to become un-followed if your Tweets aren’t deemed relevant to your followers

Relevance is a big thing, clearly - both volume and value - and I suspect its the belated realisation by early adopters that the contents of their lunchbag etc are of minimal interest to others that has driven what to me is Twitter's greatest shift over the last year, i.e. people actually starting to talk about useful stuff and not the drivel it initially sarted with.

Tags: twitter, social networking, relevance, followers, tweets

Manipulating Data

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:47:28 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes
clipper's remarks: Surprisingly, the semantic web is still not up and running. Personally, I think we have the technology to group data in varieties of ways and instances. Evidently, I have a greater confidence in scientists and programmers than is warranted. There are some cool examples of ways to constructively show data. For instance, GapMinder, a fantastic way to display important information gathered over many years, so people can see real relationships...not be wowed by propaganda or stuck in accepted, unverified ideas.

Clip Source: broadstuff.com

Semantic Web - esperanto for automata?

Article in Read/Write Web about an interview with (Sir) Tim Berners Lee (points to a more complete transcript on ZD Net as well):

“There’s an awful lot of data out there. And I think, one of the huge misunderstandings about the Semantic Web is, ‘oh, the Semantic Web is going to involve us all going to our HTML pages and marking them up to put semantics in them.’ Now, there’s an important thread there, but to my mind, it’s actually a very minor part of it. Because I’m not going to hold my breath while other people put semantics in by hand… So, where is the data going to come from? It’s already there. It’s in databases…”

In addition, there was an allusion to the area we think will most drive the semantic web, ie the needs of machines on the 'net - they are just not smart enough to understand context, and thus will need a simple taxonomy (an Esperanto for sensors - the Pidgin protocols?) to function.

benefits for people

making it easy to have one identity

Tags: statistics, programming, database, gapminder, semantic web, trends, ideas, validate

Tag, Your It!

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:33:55 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes
clipper's remarks: Where is the X-Prize for the ethicists who are able to inform the public what will be the social, moral, biological, and political possiblities of this DNA tagging?

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The Race to Read Genomes on a Shoestring, Relatively Speaking

DNA sequencing elements are displayed on a monitor at Pacific Biosciences headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.

By ANDREW POLLACK

Published: February 9, 2008

Multimedia

Reading a Genome With Light

A person wanting to know his or her complete genetic blueprint can already have it done — for $350,000.

If the cost of sequencing a human genome can drop to $1,000 or below, experts say it would start to become feasible to document people’s DNA makeup to tell what diseases they might be at risk for, or what medicines would work best for them. A DNA genome sequence might become part of each newborn’s medical work-up, while sequencing of cancer patients’ tumors might help doctors look for ways to attack them.

Tags: dna, tagging, x-prize ethics, testing, genetics, genes, dna sequencing

Lazy Productivity: Not an Oxymoron

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:27:23 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes
clipper's remarks: Leo Babauta presents practical, yet effective ways to improve productivity and make a greater impact through your day.

Clip Source: blog.liferemix.net

Featured Blog

Zen Habits

By Leo Babauta

Lazy Productivity: 10 Simple Ways to Do Only Three Things Today

Editor's note: This post was written by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits.

I have to admit, I'm as lazy as the next guy. I have my moments of productivity, where I'm cranking out the tasks and checking things off my to-do list like my life depended on it.

But for the most part, I just want to do a few things each day, and then take a nap.

And as it turns out, that's all that's needed. Doing just a few things each day has worked wonders for my productivity -- I do less, but those few things I do have a higher impact. With this method, I've created a couple of successful blogs, and achieved a few other things along the way. Not trying to brag, but only showing that laziness can actually work if you put it to work for you.

How can laziness work? Well, if you only want to do three things, just do three things. But here's the key: make those three things count.

making laziness work for you:

Tags: zen habits, leo babauta, productivity, organization, impact, effective, work habits

Steps to Save Stolen Data

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:19:57 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes
clipper's remarks: These are some excellent productivity habits, and I intend to include them in my new data archiving regimen. Minimalism is in style now, and it prevents disasters.

Clip Source: zenhabits.net

How Productivity Habits Reduced the Impact of Theft … Twice

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Lodewijk van de Broek of the How to Be an Original blog.

In the past two months my laptop has been stolen twice. The first time someone broke into my car and the second time was four weeks later when someone invaded our home. That second time they took the entire bag I take to work, with the laptop, my PDA, some paper files and notebooks.

According to the police the two incidents are most likely not related, since the home invasion appeared to be a quick one. We are only missing some “quick grabs”. But it sure does shake your world!

My family and I learned many lessons from these two events, and my employer too (as they were company laptops). But what struck me in both events was how minor the damage was as far as data loss was concerned, both digital and analog. This was largely due to productivity habits I have adopted in the last year.

Tags: archives, data, productivity, diy, theft, laptop, good habits, data storage, pda

Dissecting del.icio.us

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:51:17 GMT

clipped by: neochonetes
clipper's remarks: What is the breakdown on the name del.icio.us and its meaning. Also tips for unique naming of domains.

Clip Source: www.quickonlinetips.com

February 16th, 2005

Decoding the Domain Name del.icio.us

[This article is meant as a short tutorial for newbies to explain the basics how to register a domain name]
del.icio.us has become the most popular social bookmarks manager in recent times. Many surfers are drawn to curiosity by the peculiar domain name del.icio.us. It was an ingenious way to register a domain name. I mean it is much better than getting delicious.com or delicious.net etc. A domain search reveals there are many such names and many more subject to domain name availability.

Now to solve the confusion of the del part. del is actually a subdomain of icio.us (Update: though some readers have pointed in comments that it del is a server of icio.us and not a subdomain). A subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain name. So the main site del.icio.us is hosted on the del server of the domain name icio.us

And so rests the decoding of del.icio.us!

Tags: del.icio.us, domain name, definition, meaning, online