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Heartbreaking Nature Story

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 22:41:50 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: We know that whales are intelligent. Whether they are self aware is another matter. Yet, there is something very poignant about this story.

Clip Source: www.kuro5hin.org

The Loneliest Mystery of the Deep

For the last 12 years, a single solitary whale whose vocalizations match no known living species has been tracked across the Northeast Pacific. Its wanderings match no known migratory patterns of any living whale species. Its vocalizations have also subtly deepened over the years, indicating that the whale is maturing and ageing. And, during the entire 12 year span that it has been tracked, it has been calling out for contact from others of its own kind.

It has received no answer. Nor will it ever.

Whatever the identity of this strange unidentified alien whale, it is, for now, the very definition of poetic, existential loneliness, in both time and space. The whale is somewhere wandering the Northeast Pacific, right now, in a rudderless, aimless track. And right now the lonely beast could be calling out for others of its kind, and finding none, for over 12 years and counting.

Tags: nature, whale, lonely, sad

Steal my content, please!

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 14:09:31 GMT

clipped by: ericskiff
clipper's remarks: I completely agree with Scoble on this one, although I can understand why people who make their living directly from their creations have a hard time letting go of the fear of giving away at least some of the rights to their content.

Cory Doctorow began releasing all of his literary work under creative commons licenses years ago, allowing people to freely download and distribute his work under some light provisos. I downloaded and read "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" on my palm pilot, freely and legally, and was hooked.

Because of that, I've read a huge amount of his writing, become a mammoth fan, and will likely purchase every book he publishes. I've also published everything I've written, shot, and produced under a similar license.

While that certainly hasn't brought me traditional commercial success, it has definitely accelerated serendipity countless times for me, and if you trace out the effects of those 'lucky' events, it's helped shape both my career and life.

Clip Source: scobleizer.com

I was just reading feeds before heading to the second day’s events at LeWeb3 conference in Paris. Along comes Susan Mernit’s blog, who quotes Lane Hartwell, who is pissed that people steal her photographs. She’s decided to take all of her Flickr photos out of the public eye.

Me? I’m the opposite of Lane. I WANT YOU to steal my content. In fact, next year I’m going to do stuff to make all my content available via Creative Commons license so you can use it whereever and whenever, including my video shows. I’d like a credit, yes, but don’t demand it. I’d rather just add to the human experience and if that means that other people make money off of my work, so be it.

I’ve found that the more I give away my content, the more magical stuff happens to me anyway and if that means my photos or writings or videos get used in some way that I don’t really like, well, that’s a risk I’m willing to take. Lane obviously is not.

Volvo Removes the Weakest Link — You

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:20:40 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Volvo Safety Tech Removes the Weakest Link — You

Volvo's not kidding about safety. Apparently out to set some sort of record, the Swedish automaker has announced three new experimental vehicle safety systems at the same time:

Automatic braking to avoid pedestrians;

Automatic steering to stop head-on collisions; and

Communication between cars to reduce traffic pile-ups

The first system (above left), which builds on Volvo's existing Collision Warning with Auto Brake system (designed to mitigate vehicle-to-vehicle collisions), uses wide-angle radar to detect objects in front of and around the car, helping the driver "see" pedestrians. When it spots one, a red warning light flashes on the windshield to alert the driver. If the driver still doesn't react to avoid our hapless pedestrian, the car will take matters into its own hands and apply the brakes automatically.

Collision Avoidance by Auto Steering

Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication

Tags: cars, safety, volvo, you, the weakest link, technology

Reasons to like ClipCast according to ouyangwulong...

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 04:24:33 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: I've done a lot of writing about my perspective on ClipCast, but i just read some really insightful comments by ouyangwulong that said it better than i have been able to. Wanted to share them with everyone by clipping them.

Thank you ouyangwulong. Not just for having such a positive perspective on it, but for truly tapping into and expressing the essence of what it's all about. It was truly a great feeling to read your comments.

By the way, i'm eric goldstein on facebook. Would love to see the "other side" of your clips...friend me if you like

Clip Source: clipmarks.com

Here's why I like clipcast: it broadens the clipmarks community. I love my clip-friends, but I have other friends out there in the real world. I also like talking with them about what I read, and although I have convinced some of them to come over to clipmarks, I have to say this makes clipmarks much more accessible and a useful tool for communication with people in the outside world.

Using the clipcast, we can spread this thoughtful medium to other sites on the web, and hopefully bring a little bit of civility as we go!

Another reason to put clipcasts on your websites is that it helps you manage your different internet identities.

Clip casts are the solution. I can create a separate clipcast for Facebook, one that reflects the part of my clips that fit with the social aspect of my persona that is established there.

Clipmarks brings out the best in the internet, but a few well organized clip casts will bring out the best in Clipmarks

Tags: clipcast, clipmarks

Top 10 Archaeological Discoveries of 2007

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 04:31:47 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: This is Archaeology Magazine's Top 10 list - mine would be a little different. If you visit source site, there are more discoveries of 2007 which didn't make it into the magazine's list but proposed by scholars.

Clip Source: www.archaeology.org

Solar Observatory at Chankillo, Peru

Nebo-Sarsekim Cuneiform Tablet

New Dates for Clovis Sites

Early Squash Seeds, Peru

Ancient Chimpanzee Tool Use

Urbanization at Tell Brak, Syria

Lismullin Henge, Tara, Ireland

Polynesian Chickens in Chile

Homo habilis & Homo erectus

Greater Angkor, Cambodia

The gods in colour

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 02:11:22 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.archaeology.org

Leave your preconceived notions of ancient art at home. A groundbreaking exhibition

shows how marble statues actually looked in antiquity: covered from head to toe in vibrant paint.

The exhibition corrects a popular misconception,

people generally associate classical art with white marble sculpture. "What you would have seen when you walked through an ancient city, cemetery, or sanctuary," she explains, "would have been colorful sculpture: painted marble, colorful bronze, gold and ivory cult images.

Original (not on view in the exhibition): Greek, ca. 320 B.C.; marble, height of friezes 58 cm; Istanbul, Archaeological Museum

Above: Alexander Sarcophagus, color reconstruction of part of one long side (Courtesy Stiftung Archäologie, Munich)

Caligula

Athena

Original (not on view in the exhibition): Greek, ca. 490-480 B.C.; marble, overall height ca. 340 cm; Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich

Aristion

Quality of Sleep = Memory storage

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:57:23 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: the Belgian study shows that getting a good night’s sleep the night after learning a new fact has a direct impact on the transfer process between the hippocampus and the medial prefrontal cortex.

Clip Source: physorg.com

Quality of Sleep Determines Where the Brain Stores Memories

As time passes, our memories are transferred to different parts of the brain in order to ideally store our past experiences. While scientists have known that sleep plays an important role in helping consolidate memories, a new study investigates the role of sleep a step further, and shows how one night of sleep can lead to changes in brain activity six months after an event has occurred.

Their research shows that a good night’s sleep after learning word pairs enhances memory processing in the hippocampus, and also induces information transfer between the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). This transfer serves to consolidate memories, helping new memories become stable and immune to interfering stimuli.

Our work shows how the development of a trace left by new memories depends on sleep

This is the first time we could confirm in humans a number of predictions based on animal research.

Tags: brain, mind, memory, sleep, science, health

Execution as human sacrifice

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 13:23:13 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo
clipper's remarks: A very interesting interview with historian Thomas Cahill where he argues that execution, which shows no deterrent qualities, is not punishment but is likely a deeply held, ancient behavioral need to kill that was acted out in ancient societies as human sacrifices.

Clip Source: www.pbs.org

BILL MOYERS: I'll introduce you now to someone I've long wanted you to know. He's steeped himself in thousands of years of history trying to figure out who we are in the 21st century.

Thomas Cahill.

But what actually happened was-- and it's in an instance of how badly this is done in Texas, there were four kids. One of them was white. He was not charged with anything. Ever. And you cannot interview him til this day.

THOMAS CAHILL: I'm saying that there are certain people in our society that we are willing to offer up. And not others. And they're the people who have no power. We're not killing Dominique Green because he committed murder. We're killing Dominique Green because we want to kill somebody.

I think that there are many things within the human soul or within the human character that we ignore. There's a tendency to violence in all of us. There's even, I believe, a prehistoric desire for human sacrifice. We see it in all ancient cultures.

Tags: podcast, interview, death penalty, bill moyers

Living People Outnumber the Dead- fact or fiction

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 12:15:06 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

The human population has swelled so much that people alive today outnumber all those who have ever lived, says a factoid whose roots stretch back to the 1970s. Some versions of this widely circulating rumor claim that 75 percent of all people ever born are currently alive. Yet, despite a quadrupling of the population in the past century, the number of people alive today is still dwarfed by the number of people who have ever lived.

In 2002 Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, a nongovernmental organization in Washington, D.C., updated his earlier estimate of the number of people that have ever existed. To calculate this, he studied the available population data to determine the human population growth rates during different historical periods, and used them to determine the number of people who have ever been born.

For most of history, the population grew slowly, if at all

in the Middle East in 9000 B.C., Earth held an estimated five million people.

Tags: life, human, population, demography

Radical Life Extension and Religious Evolution

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:27:47 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "Technology will inject competition into religion and force religious authorities to clarify what they mean by immortality." This is important, according to Cole-Turner because "there is currently a lot of evasiveness about what immortality means."

Clip Source: www.technewsworld.com

Professor Ron Cole-Turner of the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary discussed how life extension could benefit many religious orders. "Technology will inject competition into religion and force religious authorities to clarify what they mean by immortality." This is important, according to Cole-Turner because "there is currently a lot of evasiveness about what immortality means."

to clarify what radical life extension means, biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey showed up to repeat his well-covered prediction that there is a 50/50 chance that in 25 to 30 years it will be possible to continually repair humans so they can live indefinite life spans. Of course, even if de Grey's predictions are off, it is still the case, as Professor Mercer points out, that researchers working on areas such as genetic and tissue engineering, stem cells, telomere research, and nanotech will be pushing the human life span into the triple digits, making this particular conversation a matter of "urgent public debate

Tags: life extension, science, religion, evolution, immortality, a worthy debate

Baghdad museum's slow recovery

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 08:02:30 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The Assyrian Hall at the Iraqi National Museum is breathtaking

The Assyrians once ruled a large empire

Stone panels from the royal palace at Khorsabad run along the walls.

The carvings on the friezes depict daily life in the Assyrian royal court, which at its height about 3,000 years ago controlled a region stretching across much of the modern Middle East.

Recent work in the hall has included the addition of a modern arch, which is flanked by ancient bulls with eagle wings and human heads.

It forms the entrance to the hall, which gives you the sense of walking into an Assyrian palace.

Perhaps the Assyrian gallery is so stunning because it is so unexpected in Baghdad.

Many of Iraq's ancient treasures have been looted since 2003

That collection was devastated in the days following the US-led invasion in 2003, when looters emptied the vaults.

Some important artefacts have been returned, including the Warka vase, which is over 5,000 years old.

Iraqis are fiercely proud of their cultural heritage.