Clipmarks |

How Were These Amazing Photographs Even Possible?

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:43:45 GMT

clipped by: Newfman
clipper's remarks: Take a moment from your day to appreciate the immense beauty that surrounds us, and enjoy these astounding photos!

Clip Source: articles.mercola.com

Tags: photo

Ants have a sense of their own mortality

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:00:25 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Ants have a sense of their own mortality

WORKER ants accurately gauge their life expectancy, regardless of their actual age, and take on riskier tasks as they feel their days ebbing away.

In social insects such as ants, bees and wasps, workers change tasks depending on their age. Older workers do the relatively risky foraging outside the nest, while younger ones engage in safer maintenance tasks within it. By extending the workers' average life span, this fine-tuning helps to maximise the fitness of the colony. However, no one knew whether the division of labour in ants was activated by age-related physiological changes or through some other mechanism.

To find out, Dawid Moron and his colleagues at Jagiellonian University in Poland set up 11 lab-based colonies of the ant Myrmica scabrinodis, made up of young worker ants. Within each colony, half of the ants had their life expectancy artificially reduced, either by exposure to carbon dioxide, which acidifies their ...

Tags: ants, biology, mortality

Why hate Gore?

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 05:52:22 GMT

clipped by: ouyangwulong
clipper's remarks: Granted, giving Gore the Nobel Prize may well be a political stunt somewhat out of proportion with the relevance of his actions. On the other hand humorless extreme conservatives have even more distorted notion of Gore. Their obsessive hatred of him is even more surreal than the hype.

Why do they care so much about him? Why froth at the mouth over just one politician? Klugman provides some interesting answers, but also seems a little to simplistic. I have long been puzzeled on the vhemence with which conservatives react against environmentalism, and I don't think its as simple as pure greed.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

What is it about Mr. Gore that drives right-wingers insane?

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right.

In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, “the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam.” And so it has proved.

But Gore hatred is more than personal.

For the truth Mr. Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the climate isn’t just inconvenient. For conservatives, it’s deeply threatening.

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said F.D.R. “We know now that it is bad economics.” These words apply perfectly to climate change. It’s in the interest of most people (and especially their descendants) that somebody do something to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but each individual would like that somebody to be somebody else.

Tags: environment, gore, nobel, peace prize

What would YOU do in the final hour? Pray?

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:29:01 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: friendlyatheist.com

An asteroid is on a collision course with the earth and you have one hour left to live. What would you do in your last 60 minutes?

Most Britons (54%) said they’d talk to their loved ones.

13% said they “would sit back, accept the inevitable and reach for a glass of champagne.”

9% — Sex.

3% — Prayer. (Just 3%?!)

2% — Eat fatty foods.

2% — Loot.

I wonder what the stats would be here in the much more religious US? Would more people “turn to prayer” in such a situation, or would the reality of immanent death show up their real priorities?

Talking the loved ones is a realistic, safe answer. But it’s not that surprising…

I’m sure we could be more creative with our second choices.

What else could you do in the final hour?

Tags: prayer, religion, endtimes

Tell The Damned Truth Already

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:52:05 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: news.neilrogers.com

Lately I've been wondering what might have happened if President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had just told the truth.

And it would have helped if Bush had clearly explained our "special relationship" with the Saudis, and how for more than 60 years we've been shoring up a dictatorship in exchange for some control over our oil supplies. In the light of the fact that 15 hijackers came from there, I mean.

Mostly, I'm thinking about the mess in Iraq. What if Bush and Cheney had leveled with us from the beginning?

"My fellow Americans," they would have said, "Saddam Hussein hates our guts. He has tons and tons of oil. The world's oil resources are dwindling and the competition is fierce. Our economy would collapse if oil went up to, say, $120 a barrel. Now, how many American lives would you spend to get our good American hands on that good Iraqi oil? Oh, and by the way, Saddam Hussein's an evil man."

Tags: yeah, right

Tell me again why this isn't child abuse

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:53:55 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

Pint-Size Preachers

Young Preachers Say They Save Souls, but Should Someone Save Their Childhoods?

Seven-year-old Samuel Boutwell is an outgoing and well-spoken second grader.

Samuel is a Baptist preacher at a church in his home town

Like many, Samuel said he became a preacher after he was "saved" by Jesus -- he just happened to be 3 years old at the time.

Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest and preacher and a professor of religion at Barnard College, wondered if Samuel's words truly come from divine inspiration. "Is he merely parroting some line…that he gets from a parent, or from a minister, or is it something that comes from the wellspring of the soul?" Balmer asked.

Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

Another child minister, 9-year-old Terry Durham bills himself as the "little man of God.

grandmother, Pastor Sharone Monroe, said that "ever since he was a baby he was layin' hands and praying for people.

Terry calls himself a prophet, not a healer

When asked if he knows how babies are made, Samuel said that he doesn't

Tags: religion, children, abuse, indoctrination, superstition, preaching, gullible

U.S. General: Iraq War is about Oil, Arab World "One Big Gas Station"

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:52:18 GMT

clipped by: BobbyRutan

Clip Source: thinkprogress.org

‘We’ve Treated The Arab World As A Collection Of Big Gas Stations’

During a round table discussion on “the Fight for Oil, Water and a Healthy Planet” at Stanford University on Saturday, Gen. John Abizaid (Ret.), the former CENTCOM Commander, said that “of course” the Iraq war is “about oil“

“We’ve treated the Arab world as a collection of big gas stations,” the retired general said. “Our message to them is: Guys, keep your pumps open, prices low, be nice to the Israelis and you can do whatever you want out back. Osama and 9/11 is the distilled essence that represents everything going on out back.”

“Of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that,” Abizaid said of the Iraq campaign early on in the talk.

Though Abizaid says that Bush’s Iraq policy seeks to keep oil “prices low

the per-barrel cost of oil has risen dramatically since the U.S. first invaded. In March 2003, the price of oil was roughly US$35 a barrel. Today, prices reached “above $85 a barrel for the first time

Tags: lies, bush, cheney, conservatives, republicans, iraq, oil, islam, 9/11, death

God save America ... "fundagelism"

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 18:12:56 GMT

clipped by: syncopath
clipper's remarks: Oh, Gosh ......

Clip Source: www.newsfrombabylon.com

The word "fundagelism" has never appeared in the columns of this newspaper. The term is, however, current in the blogosphere - that cyberforum which nowadays carries the most interestingly paranoid political debate. "Fundagelism" is not a word that trips easily off the tongue. It's a crunching together of the even more mouth-boggling compound "fundamentalist evangelism".

George W Bush is a fundagelist. Dad wasn't. George H Bush (not renowned for his Wildean wit) delivered his most memorable wisecrack on walking into a room full of fundagelists: "Gee! I'm the only person here that's only been born once."

The journalist Bob Woodward, as he recalls, asked the current president if he ever turned to the ex-president for help. "Well, no," replied Bush Jr: "He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength. There's a higher father that I appeal to."

Tags: god, bush, america, fundagelism, twice born