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Seven amazingly beautiful winter photos

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 18:54:24 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn

Clip Source: www.linkinn.com

Tags: pics

Creative Staircases

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:18:01 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken

Clip Source: www.bspcn.com

stairs are generally pretty boring.

don’t get me wrong: if the staircase gets me from one level to another, it’s succeeded as a design. i just wish they were a bit more exciting.

1. storage staircase

2. musical stairs

3. crooked stairs

4. slide staircase

5. internal log staircase

6. retractable staircase

7. steel ribbon stairs

8. suspended stairs

9. ‘impossible’ spiral staircase

there are many mysteries surrounding the construction of the spiral staircase at loretto chapel and many believe the appearance of it to be a miracle. design-wise, the staircase is extremely impressive - there is no visible central beam to hold the staircase up and no nails have been used during its creation. however the central spiral is so narrow that it does indeed act as a support beam for the staircase.

Tags: architecture, stairs, staircases, design

Social Networking for Zebras

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 16:00:03 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Ecologists have turned to computer scientists to develop dynamic graphs of social behavior among Zebra populations, revealing why some are thriving while others are endangered:

The difference showed that the Grevy's zebras tended to hang out in cliques, whereas the onagers spent time with different buddies on different days.

The methods developed turn out to applicable to human networks, too:

In the meantime, Berger-Wolf is testing her methods on other datasets, including the records of e-mails exchanged at Enron that became available after they were subpoenaed. She has found some surprising connections between the two kinds of networks.

"We can see that our method to detect when a lion was in the area of zebras detects very well when the subpoena was issued at Enron," she says. When faced with a lion, the zebras flee and follow one lead zebra. Similarly, after the subpoena was issued, e-mail traffic to the lawyers increased dramatically.

Clip Source: www.sciencenews.org

Facebook hasn't yet opened up a site for zebras. Even so, social networking is taking off for them, too. By using social network theory to understand how zebras interact, scientists hope to explain why the plains zebra is thriving while the Grevy's zebra is endangered.

This graph depicts the social relationships among zebras in a group. Each circle represents a zebra, and the lines connect zebras that spent time together. The graph reveals that many of the zebras hang out together in a single group, while a few of the zebras form smaller communities.

This graph shows a dynamic version of the network graphed in the first image. Each row shows all the zebras that have been detected at a particular moment, with each circle representing an individual zebra. The vertical lines connect an individual zebra to itself over time. Zebras in the same community appear in the same color.

This zebra is wearing a wireless GPS tracking collar.

Tags: zebra, zebras, network, networking, social, behavior, ecology, biology, africa, graph

Ways of Seeing Time

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 21:32:28 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: www.unilan.net

Visualization is one of the first steps in coming to know an object. When we say the word "chair," for example, the first thing that comes to mind is a mental visualization of a chair – not as a single, concrete thing, but as a conglomeration of visual ideas of what the chair should look like. Such an image is a visual metaphor. But what is our visual metaphor of time?

TIME AS A CLOCK

Frequently, it is the clock

sundials, sandglasses, water clocks and candles.

A RIVER OF TIME

AN ARROW OF TIME

the Uroboros – a depiction of a snake eating its own tail.

a "life trajectory"

circular and elliptical shapes

an ocean

"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana."
Groucho Marx

Tags: time, visualisation, artistic representations of time

Worlds Most Famous Uncracked Codes and Ciphers

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:52:16 GMT

clipped by: constantskeptic
clipper's remarks: wow... can any of you solve these?

Clip Source: historycus.blogspot.com

This is a list of the ten most famous ciphers and writing systems that are still unsolved.

1.Kryptos

2.Linear A

3.The Phaistos Disk

4.Shugborough Hall Enscription

5.Chinese Gold Bar Cipher

6.Beale Ciphers

7.Voynich Manuscript

8.The Dorabella Cipher

9.Chaocipher

10.D’agapeyeff Cipher
75628 28591 62916 48164 91748 58464 74748 28483 81638 18174 74826 26475 83828 49175 74658 37575 75936 36565 81638 17585 75756 46282 92857 46382 75748 38165 81848 56485 64858 56382 72628 36281 81728 16463 75828 16483 63828 58163 63630 47481 91918 46385 84656 48565 62946 26285 91859 17491 72756 46575 71658 36264 74818 28462 82649 18193 65626 48484 91838 57491 81657 27483 83858 28364 62726 26562 83759 27263 82827 27283 82858 47582 81837 28462 82837 58164 75748 58162 92000

Sources: Wikipedia, IACR

Clip Source: historycus.blogspot.com

I just solved them all and they pretty much say nothing important. You can skip solving them yourself.

Tags: codes, ciphers, unsolved

No Thanks To You

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 13:15:22 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The stunning announcement by Japanese and American research teams that they have obtained highly promising stem cells without having to destroy an embryo could help free scientists from shackles that have long hobbled their efforts. It is especially important for a critical field of research that is far behind where it could have been if the Bush administration and Congressional conservatives had not thrown up so many roadblocks.

Many of those same people are now lavishing praise on President Bush for supposedly spurring this advance through his adamant opposition to destroying embryos. That claim is so far-fetched that it needs closer scrutiny.

To understand the administration’s deleterious impact on this promising research, one has to recall the political landscape of the late 1990s

Tags: you, sociopath

A lecture about English

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 03:43:00 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: www.joppeluiten.nl

A lecture about English

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day.

"In English," he said, "A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."

A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."

BACK TO THE FUNNY ENGLISH MENU

Tags: laguage

On Nothing and nothingness (from The Cyberiad)

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:11:30 GMT

clipped by: Fast T friend
clipper's remarks: "Klapaucius, don't pretend to be a greater idiot than you are," said the machine. "Had I made Nothing outright, in one fell swoop, everything would have ceased to exist, and that includes Trurl, the sky, the Universe, and you - and even myself. In which case who could say and to whom could it be said that the order was carried out and I am an efficient and capable machine? And if no one could say it to no one, in what way then could I, who also would not be, be vindicated?"

Clip Source: www.lem.pl

But now here's the third command: Machine, do Nothing!"

The machine sat still. Klapaucius rubbed his hands in triumph, but Trurl said: .

"Well, what did you expect? You asked it to do nothing, and it's doing nothing."

"Correction: I asked it to do Nothing, but it's doing nothing."

"Nothing is nothing!"

"Come, come. It was supposed to do Nothing, but it hasn't done anything, and therefore I've won. For Nothing, my dear and clever colleague, is not your run-of-the-mill nothing, the result of idleness and inactivity, but dynamic, aggressive Nothingness, that is to say, perfect, unique, ubiquitous, in other words Nonexistence, ultimate and supreme, in its very own nonperson!"

"Omigosh!" said Trurl. "If only nothing bad comes out of all this . . ."

"Don't worry," said Klapaucius. "You can see it's not producing Universal Nothingness, but only causing the absence of whatever starts with n. Which is really nothing in the way of nothing, and nothing is what your machine, dear Trurl, is worth!"

Tags: the cyberiad, stanislaw lem

Street Sculptures

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 21:56:01 GMT

clipped by: righthand
clipper's remarks:

Clip Source: haha.nu

Photo2:

Photo4:

Photo1:

Photo5:

Photo3:

"Das Wahlversprechen" Marktplatz

Fri, 04/13/2007

Location:

Harrislee/Flensburg

Tags: culture

What the Beatles Gave Science

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 17:50:09 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

Their visit popularized the notion that the spiritual East has something to teach the rational West.

Like millions of others who believed there must be more to life than the libertine exuberance of the '60s, the Beatles hoped that the Hindu teacher Mahesh Yogi—known as the Maharishi, or "great saint"—would help them "fill some kind of hole," as Paul McCartney put it years later. So in the spring of 1968, the Fab Four traveled to the Maharishi's ashram overlooking the Ganges River in northern India, where they meditated for hours each day in search of enlightenment, as Bob Spitz recounts in his exhaustive 2005 biography, "The Beatles." The high-profile visit still echoes 40 years later—in, of all places, science, for the trip popularized the notion that the spiritual East has something to teach the rational West. Soon the Maharishi was on Time magazine next to the line "Meditation: The Answer to All Your Problems?"

Tags: beatles, science, east, spiritual?, more, to, life

Photos of South Africa

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 09:41:24 GMT

clipped by: michellezm

Clipmarks |

Seven amazingly beautiful winter photos

Creative Staircases

Social Networking for Zebras

Ways of Seeing Time

Worlds Most Famous Uncracked Codes and Ciphers

No Thanks To You

A lecture about English

On Nothing and nothingness (from The Cyberiad)

Street Sculptures

"Das Wahlversprechen" Marktplatz

What the Beatles Gave Science

Photos of South Africa

disappearing ink

It Mimics Red Wine

Paris 1900 Exhibition - Photos 3

FOX Blows It