Clipmarks | sylviadafox's clips

Dick Cheney, Role Model

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:10:10 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox
clipper's remarks: "Ms. Couric asked Joseph Biden, Ms. Palin’s rival, the same question in a separate interview. He had it exactly right when he told her that Mr. Cheney’s theory of the “unitary executive” held that “Congress and the people have no power in a time of war.” And he had it right in the debate when he called Mr. Cheney “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had in American history.” "

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

In Thursday night’s debate, Ms. Palin was asked about the vice president’s role in government. She said she agreed with Dick Cheney that “we have a lot of flexibility in there” under the Constitution.

It is hard to tell from Ms. Palin’s remarks whether she understands how profoundly Dick Cheney has reshaped the vice presidency — as part of a larger drive to free the executive branch from all checks and balances. Nor did she seem to understand how much damage that has done to American democracy.

Mr. Cheney has long taken the bizarre view that the lesson of Watergate was that Congress was too powerful and the president not powerful enough. He dedicated himself to expanding President Bush’s authority and arrogating to himself executive, legislative and legal powers that are nowhere in the Constitution.

The Constitution does not state or imply any flexibility in the office of vice president. It gives the vice president no legislative responsibilities other than casting a tie-breaking vote

How locust can make cars safer

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:42:44 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Volvo is determined to build an injury-proof car by 2020, and the engineers working out the bugs developing so complex a vehicle hope to include a few as well. They're studying the African locust to figure out how to make cars mimic the insect's uncanny ability to avoid crashing into each other as they swarm.

The goal is to incorporate the African locust's "sensory-input routing methodologies" in a car, making it smart enough to avoid hitting people. "If we could trace how the locust is able to avoid each other, maybe we could program our cars not to hit pedestrians," says Jonas Ekmark, Volvo's director of preventative safety.

Rind's research at the Insect Vision Laboratory focuses on the behavioral patterns of locusts in flight and how it is that millions of them can swarm without hitting each other. Turns out the bugs' visual input is transmitted directly to their wings, seemingly bypassing the brain in what Rind calls the Locust Principle.

Tags: technologies

could life evolve on the internet?

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 02:46:30 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

If principles of life are universal, could life emerge on the internet?

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Key to Nowak's model, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the basic concept of selection and mutation in the absence of replication. He called this period prelife, and characterized it as a "generative system that can produce information."

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Indeed, computer viruses and e-mail spam have arguably displayed evolutionary characteristics. But Nowak was more interested in the forms of social life produced by the internet. "It's already an interesting phenomenon that allows people to function in a different way," he said. "It leads to very different properties than what were out there before."

Carl Woese. "Man is the one who's undergoing this incredible evolution now," he said earlier this year in my article on complexity and evolution. "We see some in the insects, but the social processes by which man is evolving are creating a whole new level of organization."

Jewish descendants in China's Kaifeng rediscover their heritage

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:04:26 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox

Clip Source: www.ynetnews.com

Proud of their newfound heritage. Kaifeng Jews

Shi Lei and his father

Descendants of centuries-old Jewish community in China's Kaifeng rediscover Jewish heritage after near complete assimilation in local community

Ancient Kaifeng had a Jewish community – a small but thriving one, whose story is unique in the history of the Jewish people. For the 800 years of its existence, Kaifeng's Jews never suffered from persecution or discrimination.

In the prophecy of the redemption in the book of Isaiah it states: "See, they will come from afar – some from the north, some from the west, some from the region of Sinim ("Chinese")" (Isaiah, 49:12); but biblical scholars agree that the verse does not speak of China per se.

DNA testing done over the past few years on the descendents of the Kaifeng Jews, proved them distant relatives of Armenian, Iranian and Iraqi Jews.

merchants from Persia

Confucianism is willing peacefully coexist with any religious belief

Surprise: a young waitress in New York

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:31:49 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox

Clip Source: www.signandsight.com

Berliner Zeitung 16.08.2008

Diedrich Diederichsen casts his mind back to 1982 when he met a 24-year-old waitress in New York who, for all her New Wave crow's nest hairdo and extreme coolness, occasionally deigned to speak to the customers: "As she did to me when I pushed my miserable dollar over to her for my barely- affordable drink. 'I'll tell you how it works in here. You have to give me a tip. And that means double what you pay, or more. Then you only have to pay for every third drink, and we're both happy.' I though this was a very decent suggestion, it showed understanding for my provincial idiocy (and poverty) and of course she stood to gain by training this guest. Because he went back every night. The waitress was Madonna."

Tags: stories

News of Bigfoot

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:02:33 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

If you haven’t heard already, the Bigfoot claim from last week is debunked – the supposed Sasquatch in the freezer box is just a costume, according to admissions from its alleged finders, Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton.

The only positive thing that has come from it is that it has gotten people very interested again in Bigfoot. But this singular event does not necessarily represent the entire issue at hand – the question of the existence of Bigfoot does not pivot on whether the costume or corpse in the freezer turned out to be genuine. So that turns the conversation to legitimate efforts of mine and others to try and find out if there’s anything actually to the Bigfoot [myths].

wireless electricity soon?

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:57:24 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

Are we closing in on laptops that can recharge without those annoying power cords?

Yesterday Intel, the world's largest chip manufacturer, demonstrated a form of wireless energy transfer by lighting a 60-watt bulb from a power source three feet away, in an effect they referred to as WREL (wireless resonant energy link)

If the trick sounds familiar, that's because researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reported the same thing last year under the moniker WiTricity.

Two years ago, MIT researcher Marin Soljacic figured out a way to transmit electricity via the magnetic field surrounding a charged loop of wire. A similar loop wired up to a light bulb or another electrical device would draw power from that magnetic field—no wires attached.

The promise of the MIT advance is having your laptop draw power from anywhere in a room, similar to WiFi. But that seems to be a ways off. You can see from the photo above that the coils involved are way too big to fit in a laptop.

Tags: technology

Uncle Sam wants your brain

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:01:46 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Drugs that make soldiers want to fight. Robots linked directly to their controllers' brains. Lie-detecting scans administered to terrorist suspects as they cross U.S. borders.

These are just a few of the military uses imagined for cognitive science -- and if it's not yet certain whether the technologies will work, the military is certainly taking them very seriously.

"It's way too early to know which -- if any -- of these technologies is going to be practical," said Jonathan Moreno, a Center for American Progress bioethicist and author of Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense. "But it's important for us to get ahead of the curve. Soldiers are always on the cutting edge of new technologies."

Moreno is part of a National Research Council committee convened by the Department of Defense to evaluate the military potential of brain science. Their report, "Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies," was released today.

Tags: neuroscience, military

amazing volcano pictures

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 23:51:28 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox

Clip Source: www.wired.com

Tambora Reddens Skies, Disrupts Global Weather, 1815

cute olympic mascots

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:54:30 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox
clipper's remarks: Amik and Misha are my favorite

Clip Source: www.mapsofworld.com

Waldi--mascot of 1972 Olympic Summer Games in Munich, Germany

Waldi, the dachshund. Very popular in Bavaria, but he also possesses qualities which are indispensable to an athlete: resistance, tenacity and agility

Amik--mascot of the 1976 Olympic Summer Games in Montreal, Canada

It was a beaver called Amik, a name taken from the Algonquian language, which is the most popular language amongst the American Indians in Canada. Amik means beaver.The beaver symbolizes hard work.

Misha--mascot of the 1980 Olympic Summer Games in Moscow

The Moscow Olympic bear Misha was developed by the renowned illustrator of children's books Victor Chizikov.

Hodori -- mascot of the 1988 Olympic Summer Games in Seoul, Korea

a little tiger designed by Kim Hyun with typical Oriental color

Ho is derived from the Korean word for tiger, and Dori is a diminutive for boys in Korea

1992 Olympic Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain

a dog named Cobi

based on dolls, thousands of years old, found at archeological sites in Greece

how dopamine explains everything from pleasure seeking to stock market to social behavior

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 22:44:10 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox

Clip Source: www.seedmagazine.com

Schultz started to notice something odd about these dopamine neurons: They began to fire just before the monkeys got a reward.

temporal difference reinforcement learning (TDRL)

The software makes predictions about what will happen

then compares these predictions with what actually happens. If the prediction is right, that series of predictions gets reinforced

if the prediction is wrong, the software reevaluates its representation

The crucial feature of these dopamine neurons, say Montague and Dayan, is that they are more concerned with predicting rewards than with the rewards themselves. Once the cells memorize the simple pattern — a loud tone predicts the arrival of juice — they become exquisitely sensitive to variations on the pattern.

He’s linked the transactions of a single neurotransmitter to a dizzying array of behaviors

stock market bubbles

the breakdown of social graces

“fictive error learning signal,”

Tags: science, brain

Are efforts to save panda a giant waste of money?

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:35:03 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

About 22 percent of all mammals are listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), but the percentage is significantly higher for creepy, crawly, backbone-less invertebrates, which enrich the soil, filter water, recycle nutrients, pollinate plants, decompose animal carcasses and waste products, play a vital role in the food chain, and inspire biomimetic creations.

What are pandas good for?

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

Pandas have been ridiculed for their decidedly non-bearlike vegetarian diets, their apparent lack of interest in—and aptitude for—sex, their tendency to spend the majority of their time sitting, eating, scratching (video), and defecating (about 40 times per day)—even for being, shall we say, plump.

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

The panda has been called "possibly one of the grossest wastes of conservation money in the last half century" by conservationist Chris Packham

But a closer look reveals a different picture: The charismatic megafauna may get all the glory, but they also bring in the bucks

amazing images of Brocken spectre

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:36:21 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox

Clip Source: thenonist.com

De Quincy in his Confessions of an Opium Eater devotes a section to “The Apparition of the Brocken."

“A Brocken spectre, also called Brocken bow or mountain spectre, is the apparently enormously magnified shadow of an observer, cast upon the upper surfaces of clouds opposite the sun.

The ‘spectre’ appears when the sun shines from behind a climber who is looking down from a ridge or peak into mist. The light projects the climber’s shadow forward through the mist, often in an odd triangular shape due to perspective. The apparent magnification of size of the shadow is an optical illusion that occurs when the observer judges his shadow on relatively nearby clouds to be at the same distance as faraway land objects seen through gaps in the clouds, or when there are no reference points at all by which to judge its size. The shadow also falls on water droplets of varying distances from the eye, confusing depth perception.

Tags: phenomena, science

Five revolutionary minds

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:19:13 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox

Clip Source: revminds.seedmagazine.com

Fernando Esponda

"What caught my eye was that the information being used by the immune system was a negative kind of information," he says. That is, the immune system doesn't have a record of every possible pathogen that could invade the body. Instead, it learns what the body itself looks like and knows to go on the offensive when it encounters anything that doesn't match its definition of "self." "Can we do the same thing with data?"

Reverse surveys reveal only a little about each subject but a lot about a population, and they can accurately estimate how common a behavior is without anyone having to admit to it.

Clip Source: revminds.seedmagazine.com

The mainstream approach to cognition holds that it happens in the mind and that material culture is nothing more than an outgrowth of our mental capacities. Archaeologist Lambros Malafouris is challenging this deep-seated idea

the hypothesis of extended mind, which posits that material culture is not a reflection of the human mind but an actual part of it.

Clip Source: revminds.seedmagazine.com

Aleksandra Walczak

Tags: ideas, science

solar total eclipse on August 1 in China

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 06:07:42 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox
clipper's remarks: follow the link to see the hour-long video (the video clipping does not seem to work).

Clip Source: www.exploratorium.edu

PROGRAM

Clip Source: www.exploratorium.edu

On August 1, 2008, a total solar eclipse will occur as the new moon moves directly between the sun and the earth. The moon's umbral shadow will fall on parts of Canada, Greenland, the Arctic Ocean, Russia, Mongolia, and China. The Exploratorium's eclipse expedition team (our fifth!) will Webcast the eclipse live from the remote Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwestern China near the Mongolian border. Read their dispatches.

Clipmarks | sylviadafox's clips

Dick Cheney, Role Model

How locust can make cars safer

could life evolve on the internet?

Jewish descendants in China's Kaifeng rediscover their heritage

Surprise: a young waitress in New York

News of Bigfoot

wireless electricity soon?

Uncle Sam wants your brain

amazing volcano pictures

St. Helens Blows Its Top, 1980

Pinatubo Kills by Ash and Mud, 1991

Vesuvius Buries Pompeii, A.D. 79

Laki Starves Thousands to Death, 1783

Kelut Kills Kilopeople, 1586

Japan's Unzen Kills, Very Un-Zen, 1792

Nevada del Ruiz Turns Glaciers to Concrete, 1985

Mount Pelée Burns and Gases City, 1902

Krakatau Explosion Rocks Hemisphere, 1883

Tambora Reddens Skies, Disrupts Global Weather, 1815

cute olympic mascots

how dopamine explains everything from pleasure seeking to stock market to social behavior

Are efforts to save panda a giant waste of money?

amazing images of Brocken spectre

Five revolutionary minds

solar total eclipse on August 1 in China