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Girl, 7, shot 6 times saving mom

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:18:24 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

A 7-year-old-girl is being hailed as an "angel from heaven" and a hero for jumping in front of an enraged gunman, who pumped six bullets into the child as she used her body as a shield to save her mother's life.

Alexis Goggins, a first-grader at Campbell Elementary School, is in stable condition at Children's Hospital in Detroit recovering from gunshot wounds to the eye, left temple, chin, cheek, chest and right arm.

The girl's mother, Selietha Parker, 30, was shot in the left side of her head and her bicep by a former boyfriend, who police said was trying to kill Parker.

She said she pleaded with him but he pointed the gun at her and shot her in the side of the head. She told police she was shot in the arm as she lunged at Tillie.

Before Tillie could fire again, Alexis jumped over the seat between her mother and the gunman and begged him not to shoot her mother.

The police report said Tillie "without hesitation" pumped six shots into the child.

Tags: mother, daughter, child, hero, life

10 WORDS THAT DON'T EXIST, BUT SHOULD

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:59:20 GMT

clipped by: swampfoxz

Clip Source: pages.videotron.com

10 WORDS THAT DON'T EXIST, BUT SHOULD

1. AQUADEXTROUS
(ak wa deks'trus) adj. Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub tap on and off with your toes.

2. CARPERPETUATION
(kar'pur pet u a shun) n. The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string or a piece of lint at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.

3. DISCONFECT
(dis kon fekt') v. To sterilize the piece of confection (lolly) you dropped on the floor by blowing on it, assuming this will somehow 'remove' all the germs.

4. ELBONICS
(el bon'iks) n. The actions of two people maneuvering for one armrest in a movie theater.

5. FRUST
(frust) n. The small line of debris that refuses to be swept onto the dust pan and keeps backing a person across the room until he finally decides to give up and sweep it under the rug.

9. PUPKUS
(pup'kus) n. The moist residue left on a window after a dog presses its nose to it.

Tags: words

Northern Lights - pics 6

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:41:00 GMT

clipped by: righthand

Clip Source: www.iww.is

Northern lights

the spectacular auroras or the the volcanic eruption in Mt. Hekla. Siggi got both

Clip Source: www.iww.is

Northern lights

When solar activity is high the sun releases solar particles. These particles travel with solar winds towards the Earth and are drawn into the atmosphere by the earth's magnetic field.

Clip Source: www.iww.is

Northern lights

When the electrically charged particles hit the outer layers of the atmosphere it causes them to glow. Different gases in the atmosphere cause different colors as can be observed from Earth in the many color variations of the auroras.

Clip Source: www.iww.is

Northern lights

Iceland is within that belt and the auroras are very common

Clip Source: www.iww.is

Northern lights

the auroras at dusk

manages to bring out this lovely blue color, a perfect background for the dancing auroras rippling through the arctic sky.

Clip Source: www.iww.is

Northern lights

Nobody connected the auroras to either the Earth's magnetic field or the Sun until 1774 when french scientist, Jean Jacque Dortous de Mairan, figured out that the auroras are connected to solar activity

Tags: photos

No, science does not 'rest on faith'

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:23:36 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

IN A recent opinion piece in The New York Times, physicist Paul Davies asserts that it is a mistake to distinguish science from religion by describing the former as based on testable hypotheses while the latter is based on faith. "The problem with this neat separation," he says, "is that science has its own faith-based belief system."

Davies does not seem especially clear about what he means by this. He begins by describing scientific faith as "the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way", but soon shifts to describing it as "belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like... an unexplained set of physical laws". Either way, the failure or refusal to explain the source of physical laws is, he says, to regard nature as "rooted in reasonless absurdity".

If the assumption of nature's orderliness frequently or haphazardly failed to be borne out we would register the fact, supposing we survived the mistake in the first place

Tags: science, faith, commentary

Funny clips (nice collection)

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 22:14:49 GMT

clipped by: vickybaranwal

Clip Source: picasaweb.google.com

Tags: funny, clips, pics, photos

AI Singularity: The Next Stage of Human Evolution?

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:02:10 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "Technology is heading here. It will predictably get to the point of making artificial intelligence," Yudkowsky said. "The mere fact that you cannot predict exactly when it will happen down to the day is
no excuse for closing your eyes and refusing to think about it."

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

"We and our world won't be us anymore," Rodney Brooks, a robotics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the audience. When it comes to computers, he said, "who is us and who is them is going to become a different sort of question."

The idea is that since intelligence is the foundation of human technology and all technology is ultimately the product of our intelligence—it stands to reason that technology can then turn around and enhance intelligence, thereby “closing the loop” and creating a positive feedback effect. According to these futurists, these improved, “smarter” minds will be more effective at building still smarter minds. They point out how this “loop” is self evident in the example of an Artificial Intelligence improving its own source code.

advocates argue it is plain irresponsible to ignore the possibilities with a “wait and see” attitude. Autonomous robots are already getting close to making life and death “decisions” on the battlefield

Tags: singularity, ai, technology, human, future, its here

How Far Would You Go for a Hug?

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:54:11 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

For 30 years Indian spiritual leader Mata Amritanandamayi, to give her her real name, has been hugging people, leading some to give her a saintly nickname.

The time it takes and money it costs to fly over from Australia is worth it for a hug with Amma

Suraj Vagjiani

This really is as simple as it sounds.

Australian Suraj Vagjiani is testament to the sort of devotion that Amma commands. When he heard she was appearing in London he scraped together £650 for a one-way ticket just to see her

Hugging all over the world: Amma in New York, Santiago, Zurich, Rio

But there's more than just a cuddle being dished out here. Her charity, the Mata Amritanandamayi Math, has UN consultative status and claims to have built more than 36,000 homes and several hospitals for India's poor.

While continuing to hug, she explains through a translator that "everything in this world has a vibration".

"Every emotion that you can think of has a vibration," she says. "Love is a very special, very uplifting vibration.

Tags: mata amritanandamayi

Attractiveness Is Its Own Reward

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:03:44 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: physorg.com

Studies of the snap judgments we often make about people are shedding new light not only on social behavior, but also on drug abuse, gambling addiction, and other disorders in which our ability to make decisions is impaired, say scientists at the California Institute of Technology.

An emotional decision, such as forming an immediate like or dislike upon a first encounter with a new person, often occurs abruptly and automatically-and that impression can be difficult to change. To decipher the neurological underpinnings of those decisions, which will help explain the unique neurological characteristics of emotion, Hackjin Kim, a former postdoctoral scholar at Caltech who is now an assistant professor at Korea University--along with Ralph Adolphs, a professor of psychology and neuroscience, John O'Doherty, an associate professor of psychology, and Shinsuke Shimojo, a professor of biology--used a novel technique to monitor the activation of two brain regions during decision-making tasks.

Tags: brain, mind, science, attractiveness, emotions, decision

How to destroy a Giant Planet

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:44:15 GMT

clipped by: Oortcloud
clipper's remarks: I bet this would be something to see

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Among many questions about all this, one has just been answered: How close can a giant planet get to a star before its atmosphere becomes unstable and the planet is doomed to catastrophe?

The study involved comparing Jupiter to other giant exoplanets.

"If you brought Jupiter inside the Earth's orbit, to 0.16AU, it would remain Jupiter-like, with a stable atmosphere," Koskinen said. "But if you brought it just a little bit closer to the sun, to 0.14AU, its atmosphere would suddenly start to expand, become unstable and escape."

"We found that 0.15AU is the significant point of no return," said study co-author Alan Aylward. "If you take a planet even slightly beyond this, molecular hydrogen becomes unstable and no more H3+ is produced. The self-regulating, 'thermostatic' effect then disintegrates and the atmosphere begins to heat up uncontrollably."

"This gives us an insight to the evolution of giant planets,

Tags: jupiter, planet, astronomy, space

Man in moon 4 billion years old

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:52:37 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

The plains of solidified lava that give the moon its quirky human-like face were created more than 4 billion years ago, a new study says.

Lunar volcanoes spewed out lava that eventually solidified into the dark plains that early skywatchers mistook for a face

The evidence comes from an unearthly silvery-grey stone that was blasted off from the face of the moon, perhaps by an impacting asteroid, and was then captured by earth's gravity, prompting it to fall to ground in Botswana.

An international team of researchers publish their study today in the journal Nature.

In 1999, local people near the village of Kuke, in the grasslands of the Kalahari Nature Reserve, found the 13.5 kilogram remnant of this roving rock.

Scientists have since confirmed that the rock, named Kalahari 009, came from the moon.

A new analysis of fragments of phosphate in Kalahari 009 puts the rocks at the whopping old age of 4.35 billion years, give or take 150 million years, the study says.

Tags: man, moon, asteroid, astronomy, human, face

Another Sexually Charged House Page Scandal

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 13:02:42 GMT

clipped by: jatfla
clipper's remarks: Washington DC and our schools...a cesspool of sexual obsession. I remember, years ago, Time Magazines cover-story "Whatever Happened to Shame?"

Clip Source: blog.washingtonpost.com

Another Sexually Charged House Page Scandal

two GOP members of Congress have resigned from the House Page Board, protesting that they were not informed of two pages caught shoplifting and two others busted for engaging in public oral sex.

the alleged public sexual indiscretions were "not an isolated incident."

Two other pages were expelled for shoplifting. Brown-Waite and another source said one of the shoplifters was charged with a felony.

"In at least one vitally important incident, we were intentionally kept in the dark about dismissals for more than a week, and were only given the details after personally confronting the clerk

Capito said the "problems with communication between board members that plagued the program in the past have only continued under new House leadership."

Tags: housepageprogram, washington