Clipmarks | vk2yoc's clips

When Your Dad’s a Graphic Designer

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:48:03 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: Cute Photos.

We all know that Moms love to dress up their kids. However, when Dad’s a graphic designer, anything is possible. It all started out with the morbid baby picture above… Hulk Hogan is my favorite

10 Most Amazing Ghost Towns

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:36:33 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: Interesting commentary for each town at the source.

Clip Source: www.oddee.com

KOLMANSKOP (Namibia): Buried in sand

PRYPIAT (Ukraine): Chernobyl workers' home

SAN ZHI (Taiwan): a futuristic resort

CRACO (Italy): a fascinating medieval town

ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE (France): the horror of WWII

GUNKANJIMA (Japan): the forbidden island

KADYKCHAN (Russia): memories of the Soviet Union

KOWLOON WALLED CITY (China): A lawless city

FAMAGUSTA (Cyprus): once a top tourist destination, now a ghost town

AGDAM (Azerbaijan): once a 150,000 city of people, now lost

Biodegradable Planet-friendly Plastics -Poised to Become a Commercial Standard?

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:32:24 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Unwanted plastic buildup is so severe that governments across the globe have passed laws banning free plastic bags, and because the average supermarket chain is slightly less rich than a petrochemical country these laws are actually enforced. Millions who've had to balance precarious piles of groceries on the walk home might be pleased to hear about the biodegradable plastic being researched at the University of Hawaii.

Fermenting corn run-off with bacteria might sound like something farmers would do during Prohibition (or in Alabama), but it could be major commercial process in the future. The billion-scrabble-points

polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA to its friends) isn't just biodegradable - it can be made by recycling the waste products of corn-ethanol production, the process releases a quarter of the CO2 of regular plastic production and requires only half the energy.

The CO2 reduction is a major media-friendly point

HOPES FADE FOR BABY WHALE.

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:39:17 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: It's Nature, but we don't have to like it, so prey for a miracle.
Check out the source for more links, plus video.

Clip Source: www.smh.com.au

The fate of the three-week-old baby humpback whale stranded in Pittwater will most likely be decided by vets from Taronga Zoo after attempts to lure it out to sea this morning failed.

The vets hope to be able to assess the health of the calf and whether it can survive. If not, the calf may have to be put down.

The North Sydney manager of the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service, Chris McIntosh, will give an update on efforts to save the whale's life soon but there are fears that, if it is too weak to survive, it may have be destroyed.

The whale - weak, hungry and desperate to find its mother - has probably been ignored by whales swimming along the coast who can hear its distress calls, the National Parks and Wildlife Service says.

National Parks and Wildlife Service spokesman John Dengate refuted reports that there were plans to euthanase the whale, but said there was very little else that could be done.

"It's absolutely the case that we haven't given up on this little whale," he said

Tags: nature, whales, orphan

Scientists Warn: "North Pole Ice Free in Five Years"

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:58:52 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: It just keeps getting worse.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Ice at the North Pole melted at an unprecedented rate last week, with leading scientists warning that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer by 2013. Satellite images show that ice caps started to disintegrate dramatically several days ago as storms over Alaska's Beaufort Sea began sucking streams of warm air into the Arctic

Scientists are saying that the disappearance of sea ice at the North Pole could exceed last year's record loss, when more than a million square kilometers melted as global warming tightened its grip on the Arctic, a landscape vastly different from that found by explorer Robert Peary

'It is a neck-and-neck race between 2007 and this year over the issue of ice loss

This startling loss of Arctic sea ice has major meteorological, environmental and ecological implications. The region acts like a giant refrigerator that has a strong effect on the northern hemisphere's meteorology

global warming is occurring far earlier than any of us expected

Invisible, Untrackable Long Distance Laser-Beam Death System

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:51:06 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: Be afraid.....be VERY AFRAID.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Does this sound like a NeoCon dream, or what? We at the Daily Galaxy have absolutely nothing bad to say about the US Air Force's plans for an airborne, invisible, untrackable long distance laser death system. And if you know what's good for, neither do you.

Most ominous (and ironic) is how USAF chief engineers and directors have been using the phrase "plausible deniability". Since the laser doesn't leave any shell fragments, debris or even have to be the same square mile as the target, the user could conceivably deny all knowledge of why a politically unpopular person suddenly caught fire. Or at least, they could if they weren't already on record talking about their cool multi-million dollar airborne laser system and how it can do exactly that.

Another slight handicap is the fact the system weight 5.5 tonnes

The system trades portability for power

You can't see laser blasts shooting around the place

"Do Humans Have 23 years to Go?"

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:19:34 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: Here's your chance to do something positive. A must read.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

It’s not just about envisioning the future—it’s about inventing the future, creating superstructures to solve and counter super threats facing the planet.

Developed by the Palo Alto-based non-profit think tank, it will launch on September 22 for six weeks. Superstruct allows participants to use their “collective intelligence” to create solutions that can apply to real-world problems

Based on the results of a year-long supercomputer simulation, the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) has reset the "survival horizon" for Homo sapiens - the human race - from "indefinite" to 23 years.

the latest GEAS simulation harnessed over 70 petabytes of environmental, economic, and demographic data, and was cross-validated by ten different probabilistic models. The GEAS models revealed a potentially terminal combination of five so-called “super-threats”, which represent a collision of environmental, economic, and social risks

"You can help.

Superstruct now."

Do Galactic Cycles Influence Earth's Biological History?

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:33:07 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Early last year, research revealed that the rise and fall of species on Earth seems to be driven by the undulating motions of our solar system as it travels through the Milky Way

The University of California, Berkeley found that marine fossil records show that biodiversity increases and decreases based on a 62-million-year cycle. At least two of the Earth's great mass extinctions-the Permian extinction 250 million years ago and the Ordovician extinction about 450 million years ago-correspond with peaks of this cycle, which can't be explained by evolutionary theory.

Our own star moves toward and away from the Milky Way's center, and also up and down through the galactic plane. One complete up-and-down cycle takes 64 million years- suspiciously close to the Earth's biodiversity cycle.

Normally, our galaxy's magnetic field shields our solar system from this "galactic wind." But every 64 million years, the solar system's cyclical travels take it above the galactic plane.

NASA's Climate TimeMachine

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:11:13 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: From the people who know what they are about. Very scary if you want to keep living here on Earth.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

NASA's Climate TimeMachine visualization shows the changes in annual Arctic Sea ice, sea surface height, carbon dioxide emissions, and global surface temperatures.

Arctic sea ice minimum is shown from 1979 to 2007. At the end of each summer, the sea ice cover reaches its minimum extent, leaving what is called the perennial ice cover. The area of the perennial ice has been steadily decreasing since the satellite record began in 1979.

Sea surface height variations are shown, observed by the TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 missions from January 1996 through December 2005. These variations between what we see and what is normal for different times of year and regions are called anomalies, or residuals.

Annual carbon dioxide emissions produced by the top 12 nations or regions from 1980-2004 is graphically illustrated. Units are given in thousand metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuel consumption.

NASA Climate TimeMachine

Scientists Create a "Law of War"

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:00:20 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: These guys must have found their degrees in a box of crackers.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

An international team of scientists have bravely taken time away from fusion research, curing cancer and solar power to announce some truly staggering results: in war, sometimes some people get killed. But other times, more people get killed. It's amazing stuff

In a complexity study more staggeringly misleading than a blind guide dog that's just been spun in a centrifuge, their discovery of a "Law of War" was announced at the European Consortium for Mathematics

"Regardless of the origins and locations of modern conflicts, the insurgent groups in each case are operating in the same way. In short, it is effectively the same enemy on all fronts", he says, and if you can see the words "pseudoscientific backing for concept of the War on Terror here, PLEASE FUND ME" swimming between the lines, then congratulations on having basic cognitive ability

if I told some troopers we spent the money on this instead of body armor, would they punch me in the face?

HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE PHOTOGRAPHY.

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:22:14 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: Go to the site to see how it's done.

Clip Source: stuckincustoms.com

The Deepest Swimming Pool In The World

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:58:41 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: It's in Belgium near Brussels.

Clip Source: braingoodbye.com

Large Hadron Collider: "This machine will not blow up the universe."

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:09:15 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: Einstein won't let it happen!

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

The LHC has been plagued by doom-sayers since it entered the public eye, though "irritated" would be a more suitable word. The volume of the fearmongers is surpassed only by their utter lack of evidence or even the most fundamental understanding of probability.

These claims are always popular, but suffer from the slight flaw that the people telling you that the planet will be dissolved into a strangelet soup don't actually know what strangelets are. The people building the LHC? They know that they are; they discovered them, wrote the library of books on them, and you'll notice that when they have something to say it comes in the form of refereed journal papers and not tabloids that have to start with "A black hole is like a vacuum cleaner...."

That CERN have been forced to patiently explain to the scientific community equivalent of a toothless man screaming on streetcorners is tragic, but a sign of their maturity that they will address any statement as if it wasn't retarded.

Automated Buoys Predict Climate Change from Land & Ocean Links

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:48:55 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Oceans are an equal partner with the atmosphere in producing the weather, and the dominant partner with regard to long-range weather patterns.

The oceans play an important role in heat storage and transport, and are vital to the transportation of heat from the equator to the poles. They are essential to the hydrological cycle as well. Covering 70% of the Earth's surface, the oceans have 1,100 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere. They contain 97% of the free water on the planet—90,000 times as much water as the atmosphere. And they receive 78% of global precipitation. Unfortunately, oceanic processes have not been studied nearly so well as atmospheric processes; even environmentally crucial properties such as salinity and heat transference at depth have been relatively neglected until recently. Abrupt climate change has everything to do with “thermohaline” dynamics in the ocean depths; that term is a compound of two ancient Greek roots meaning “heat” and “salt.”

Extraterrestrial Climate Change - A Message for Earth?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:44:25 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: But will we heed the warnings!

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

“It seems that both and Venus started out much more like Earth," says David Grinspoon, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and one of the Venus Express interdisciplinary scientists. "They both hold priceless climate information for Earth."

The atmosphere of Venus is much thicker than Earth’s. Nevertheless, current climate models can reproduce its present temperature structure well. Now planetary scientists want to turn the clock back to understand why and how Venus changed from its former Earth-like conditions into the inferno of today.

Climate scientists believe that the planet experienced a runaway greenhouse effect as the Sun gradually heated up. Astronomers believe that the young Sun was dimmer than the present-day Sun by 30 percent. Over the last 4 thousand million years, it has gradually brightened. During this increase, Venus’s surface water evaporated and entered the atmosphere.

As Earth warms in response to man-made pollution, it risks the same fate