Clipmarks | tidbit2's Comments

Cookie Monster Slayer

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:01:15 GMT

clipped by: carrerinyes
clipper's remarks: Bring me head of cookie monster!

Cookie Monster Slayer

This killer Cookie Monster Slayer was spotted at the Dragon*Con 08 fantasy/SF convention earlier this month. Nancy Dorsner of Dabbled brought back the photographic evidence.

The Paranormal

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:24:14 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: some organisations such as the United States National Science Foundation have stated that mainstream science does not support paranormal beliefs.
Perhaps that's one of the reasons Scientists are surprised so often

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Paranormal is an umbrella term used to describe unusual phenomena or experiences that lack an obvious scientific explanation.^[1] In parapsychology, it is used to describe the potentially psychic phenomena of telepathy, extra-sensory perception, psychokinesis, ghosts, and hauntings. The term is also applied to UFOs, some creatures that fall under the scope of cryptozoology, purported phenomena surrounding the Bermuda Triangle, and other non-psychical subjects.^[2] Stories relating to paranormal phenomena are widespread in popular culture and folklore

Paranormal · Forteana
Cryptozoology · Supernatural
Ghosts · Psychics
Remote viewing · Clairvoyance
Extra-sensory perception
Near-death experience
Precognition · Psychokinesis
Psychometry · Telepathy
Apparitional experience
Parapsychology
Haunted locations
UFOs · UFO sightings
Paranormal UFO explanations
Paranormal fiction
Ghost hunting · Folklore

Skepticism

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
Debunking · Hoaxes

1 Paranormal research

How Art can Put Your Pain to Sleep...

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:41:36 GMT

clipped by: mugofcoffee

Clip Source: www.medindia.com

Art, it is said, transcends all emotion and now scientists have given this view an entirely new perspective. Researchers at the University of Bari in Italy now say that looking at a strikingly beautiful painting can actually distract from real physical pain!

The research team headed by Professor Marina de Tommaso at the Neurophysiopathology Pain Unit questioned a group of men and women to pick the 20 paintings they considered most ugly and most beautiful from a selection of 300 works by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli.

The volunteers were then asked to contemplate either the beautiful paintings, or the ugly painting, or a blank panel while the team zapped a short laser pulse at their hand, creating a sensation as if they had been pricked by a pin.

The participants rated the pain as being a third less intense while they were viewing the beautiful paintings, compared with when contemplating the ugly paintings or the blank panel.

Confucius says:

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:03:15 GMT

clipped by: milmufmas

Clip Source: www.awakeblogger.com

Confucius, whose name literally means "Master Kong", lived 551-479 BCE. He was a Chinese thinker and philosopher, whose teachings have deeply influenced not only Asian thought and life. He presented himself as a "transmitter who invented nothing"

1. "Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself."

2. "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance."

3. "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."

4. "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it."

5. "The Superior Man is aware of Righteousness, the inferior man is aware of advantage."

6. "Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart."

7. "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do."

8. "He who learns but does not think, is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger."

9. "He that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools."

If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear

Beauty and the Brain

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:21:38 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Future work may elucidate the long-term effects of one's surroundings on brain function and the relationship between aesthetically pleasing spaces and their functionality. What one considers beautiful is, of course, influenced by culture, learning, and experience, and not everything we find beautiful will ultimately be traceable to the structure and function of our brain. The larger question "What is beauty?" still poses a major challenge, but answering it no longer seems so impossible.

Clip Source: www.seedmagazine.com

Neuroaesthetics promises to reinvigorate science's search for a theory of beauty.

Why is something beautiful? David Hume argued that beauty exists not in things but "in the mind that contemplates them." And everyone has at some point heard the old saw that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But Plato had a fanciful answer made to argue for a universal truth: In his world of forms, he claimed there existed a perfect Form of Beauty, which was imperfectly manifested in what we call beautiful.

Such knowledge of spatial cognition provides an understanding of the brain's response to the built environment and can inform architects as they consider the aesthetic elements and function of a space. "From an architectural point of view," says Vismann, "I find the correspondence between what occurs in the brain and the physical nature of space and spatial navigation fascinating."

understanding the neural bases of spatial perception will inspire projects, inform the design process

Tags: brain, beauty, perception, neuroaesthetics

Creator of the Web concerned on Spreading Disinformation on the Web

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:03:28 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Warning sounded on web's future

The internet needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science, says the creator of the World Wide Web.

he was increasingly worried about the way the web has been used to spread disinformation.

Sir Tim told BBC News that there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources.

I'd be interested in different organisations labelling websites in different ways".

Sir Tim spoke to the BBC to publicise the launch of his World Wide Web Foundation which aims to improve the web's accessibility.

Alongside this role it will aim to make it easier for people to get online.

The Web Foundation will also explore ways to make the web more mobile-phone friendly.

will also look at how the benefits of the web can be taken to those who cannot read or write.

will also look at concerns that the web has become less democratic, and its use influenced too much by large corporations and vested interests.

Tags: tim berners-lee, web, internet, www, science, knowledge, future

Pink Floyd's Richard Wright Dies at 65

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:57:09 GMT

clipped by: sahara
clipper's remarks:

Clip Source: www.popeater.com

LONDON (Sept. 15) - A Pink Floyd spokesman says founding member Richard Wright has died. He was 65.

Wright died Monday after a battle with cancer at his home in Britain. His family did not want to give more details about his death. The spokesman is Doug Wright, who is not related to the artist.

Richard Wright met Pink Floyd members Roger Waters and Nick Mason at college and joined their early band Sigma 6.

Sigma 6 eventually became Pink Floyd and Wright wrote and sang some of the band's key songs. He wrote "The Great Gig In The Sky" and "Us And Them" from Pink Floyd's 1973 "The Dark Side Of The Moon."

He left the group in the early 1980s to form his own band but rejoined Pink Floyd for their 1987 album "A Momentary Lapse of Reason."

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Clip Source: www.popeater.com

Tags: music, legend

Survival of the Wittiest: sexual attractiveness of self-deprecating humour

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 08:24:49 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: I'll give this a go but I'll probably be crap at it.

Clip Source: www.independent.ie

Forget the big car, the big heart, or even the big house. The quickest way to a woman's heart is the ability to poke fun at yourself.

The less serious he is, the more women seriously want him. A witty man can, apparently, have us laughing all the way to the bed.

"Many studies show that a sense of humour is sexually attractive, especially to women, but we've found that self-deprecating humour is the most attractive of all," said Greengross, whose Dissing Oneself: The Sexual Attractiveness of Self-Deprecating Humour, will be published later this month in Evolutionary Psychology.

"Self-deprecating humour can be an especially reliable indicator, not only of general intelligence and verbal creativity, but also of moral virtues such as humility," according to Mr Greengross.

My friend Julie is smitten by a guy she met in Waterstone's last month who told her: "I asked the assistant where the self-help section was, but she said telling me would defeat the purpose."

Tags: humour

for one it is ipod,for the other it is iless

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:28:37 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: Success is a complex issue. ipod is cool due to several reasons; technology design and marketing... so it is not only about who was the first to invent, but who was the first to introduce.

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Apple admit Briton DID invent iPod, but he's still not getting any money

Apple has finally admitted that a British man who left school at 15 is the inventor behind the iPod.

Kane Kramer, 52, came up with the technology that drives the digital music player nearly 30 years ago but has still not seen a penny from his invention.

The computer giant even flew Mr Kramer to its Californian headquarters to give evidence in its defence during a legal wrangle with another firm, Burst.com, which claimed it held patents to technology in the iPod and deserved a cut of Apple’s ?89billion profits.

Two years ago, Mr Kramer told this newspaper how he had invented and built the device in 1979 – when he was just 23.

His sketches at the time showed a credit-card-sized player with a rectangular screen and a central menu button to scroll through a selection of music tracks – very similar to the iPod.

But in 1988, after a boardroom split, he was unable to raise the ?60,000

Tags: ipod, invention

The Brain Unmasked

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:37:22 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

New imaging technologies reveal the intricate architecture of the brain, creating a blueprint of its connectivity.

Diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) is one of these twists. It uses magnetic resonance signals to track the movement of water molecules in the brain: water diffuses along the length of neural wires, called axons. Scientists can use these diffusion measurements to map the wires, creating a detailed blueprint of the brain's connectivity.

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

On the next page is an animation of the wiring of a marmoset monkey.

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

The marmoset brain, shown above, is about the size of a plum. By scanning a dissected brain for 24 hours, scientists were able to generate a map with a spatial resolution of 400 microns. "The image quality and resolution are much higher than we can obtain in a living subject," says Wedeen.

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

Tags: science, neuroscience, brain

Music Taste and Personality

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:22:44 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Leonard Cohen Lovers: intelligent, sensitive, extremely sexy, beautiful, creative, at ease with themselves, arrogant bastards

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

BLUES

High self-esteem, creative, outgoing, gentle and at ease

JAZZ

High self-esteem, creative, outgoing and at ease

CLASSICAL MUSIC

High self-esteem, creative, introvert and at ease

RAP

High self-esteem, outgoing

OPERA

High self-esteem, creative, gentle

COUNTRY AND WESTERN

Hardworking, outgoing

REGGAE

High self-esteem, creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle and at ease

DANCE

Creative, outgoing, not gentle

INDIE

Low self-esteem, creative, not hard working, not gentle

BOLLYWOOD

Creative, outgoing

ROCK/HEAVY METAL

Low self-esteem, creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, at ease

CHART POP

High self-esteem, not creative, hardworking, outgoing, gentle, not at ease

SOUL

High self-esteem, creative, outgoing, gentle, at ease

Musical tastes and personality type are closely related, according to a study of more than 36,000 people from around the world.

The research, which was carried out by Professor Adrian North of Heriot-Watt University, is said to be the largest such study ever undertaken.

Tags: music, personality

Music Taste and Personality

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:22:44 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Leonard Cohen Lovers: intelligent, sensitive, extremely sexy, beautiful, creative, at ease with themselves, arrogant bastards

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

BLUES

High self-esteem, creative, outgoing, gentle and at ease

JAZZ

High self-esteem, creative, outgoing and at ease

CLASSICAL MUSIC

High self-esteem, creative, introvert and at ease

RAP

High self-esteem, outgoing

OPERA

High self-esteem, creative, gentle

COUNTRY AND WESTERN

Hardworking, outgoing

REGGAE

High self-esteem, creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle and at ease

DANCE

Creative, outgoing, not gentle

INDIE

Low self-esteem, creative, not hard working, not gentle

BOLLYWOOD

Creative, outgoing

ROCK/HEAVY METAL

Low self-esteem, creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, at ease

CHART POP

High self-esteem, not creative, hardworking, outgoing, gentle, not at ease

SOUL

High self-esteem, creative, outgoing, gentle, at ease

Musical tastes and personality type are closely related, according to a study of more than 36,000 people from around the world.

The research, which was carried out by Professor Adrian North of Heriot-Watt University, is said to be the largest such study ever undertaken.

Tags: music, personality

Brave New World of Digital Intimacy

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:15:43 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: It is easy to become unsettled by privacy-eroding aspects of awareness tools. But there is another — quite different — result of all this incessant updating: a culture of people who know much more about themselves. Many of the avid Twitterers, Flickrers and Facebook users I interviewed described an unexpected side-effect of constant self-disclosure. The act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act. It’s like the Greek dictum to “know thyself,” or the therapeutic concept of mindfulness. (Indeed, the question that floats eternally at the top of Twitter’s Web site — “What are you doing?” — can come to seem existentially freighted. What are you doing?) Having an audience can make the self-reflection even more acute, since, as my interviewees noted, they’re trying to describe their activities in a way that is not only accurate but also interesting to others: the status update as a literary form.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

On Sept. 5, 2006, Mark Zuckerberg changed the way that Facebook worked, and in the process he inspired a revolt.

Pundits predicted that News Feed would kill Facebook, but the opposite happened. It catalyzed a massive boom in the site’s growth. A few weeks after the News Feed imbroglio, Zuckerberg opened the site to the general public (previously, only students could join), and it grew quickly; today, it has 100 million users

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

In essence, Facebook users didn’t think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why?

Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.

Tags: brave new world, digital intimacy

Stressed Out — Chew Some Gum

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:35:15 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

A new study discovers chewing gum helped relieve anxiety, improve alertness and reduce stress among individuals in a laboratory setting.

The research effort, titled “An investigation into the effects of gum chewing on mood and cortisol levels during psychological stress,” will be presented at the 2008 10th International Congress of Behavioral Medicine.

The study examined whether chewing gum is capable of reducing induced anxiety and/or acute psychological stress while participants performed a battery of ‘multi-tasking’ activities.

The use of chewing gum was associated with higher alertness, reduced anxiety and stress, and improvement in overall performance on multi-tasking activities.

• Relieved Anxiety: When chewing gum, participants reported lower levels of anxiety.
o Gum chewers showed a reduction in anxiety as compared to non-gum chewers by nearly 17 percent during mild stress and nearly 10 percent in moderate stress.

Tags: stress, chewing, gum

Loch Ness mystery noise unsolved

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:04:17 GMT

clipped by: valann 47

Clip Source: www.unexplained-mysteries.com

Residents on the shores of Loch Ness are having their sleep disturbed by a mystery humming noise similar to that which sparked a spate of calls to a council in Suffolk. Mikko Takala, who lives in a cottage overlooking the loch near Drumnadrochit where he runs a webcam site tracking the elusive Loch Ness Monster, has been having sleepless nights for weeks.His mother, who lives with him, and a near neighbour have also been woken in the wee sma' hours by the same strange humming noise, which one blue blooded Suffolk resident, Lord Philips of Sudbury, said could be mistaken for a spacecraft landing.

"It's a complete mystery because you only seem to hear it from indoors and its exactly the same as what is being experienced in Suffolk.

If someone had said to me a spacecraft had landed on the meadows I would have said, 'well I heard it'.

Tags: mystery, noise, loch ness, suffolk