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Five Million People Annihilated: not news.

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 16:34:36 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: As ever, the government and mass media determine what we talk about.

"A human death toll that approaches the Nazi's annihilation of Jews in World War Two unfolds without a whiff of complaint from the superpower."

Possibly a quarter million people have lost their lives in Darfur, western Sudan, in ethnic conflict. The U.S. government screams its head off in denunciation of genocide, in this case. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as many as five million have died since 1994 in overlapping convulsions of ethnic and state-sponsored massacre. Not a word of reproach from Washington. A human death toll that approaches the Nazi's annihilation of Jews in World War Two - an ongoing holocaust - unfolds without a whiff of complaint from the superpower.

Why is

Congo unworthy of mention? The answer is simple: in Sudan, the U.S. has a geopolitical nemesis to confront: Arabs, and their Chinese business partners. In the Congo, it is U.S allies and European and American corporate interests that benefit from the slaughter.

Tags: congo, genocide, africa, news

Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 11:59:33 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly.

And if you've got a problem, don't be such a crybaby (formerly cry-baby)

Researchers examined a corpus of more than 2 billion words, consisting of full sentences that appeared in newspapers, books, Web sites and blogs from 2000 onwards.

For the most part, the dictionary dropped hyphens from compound nouns, which were unified in a single word (e.g. pigeonhole) or split into two (e.g. test tube)

Formerly hyphenated words split in two:

fig leaf

hobby horse

ice cream

pin money

pot belly

test tube

water bed

Formerly hyphenated words unified in one:

bumblebee

chickpea

crybaby

leapfrog

logjam

lowlife

pigeonhole

touchline

waterborne

Tags: hyphens, language, dictionary, words, english

Major biological discovery…inside the Chernobyl reactor

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 03:02:42 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: "That is to say, the melanin molecule gets struck by a gamma ray and its chemistry is altered. This is an amazing discovery, no one had even suspected that something like this was possible. Aside from its novelty value, this discovery leads to some interesting speculation and potential research. Humans have melanin molecules in their skin cells, does this mean that humans are getting some of their energy from radiation? This also implies there could be organisms living in space where ionizing radiation is plentiful."

Clip Source: unitedcats.wordpress.com

The abandoned town of Pripyat, the Chernobyl reactor in the background.

There has been an exciting new biological discovery inside the tomb of the Chernobyl reactor. Like out of some B-grade sci fi movie, a robot sent into the reactor discovered a thick coat of black slime growing on the walls. Since it is highly radioactive in there, scientists didn’t expect to find anything living, let alone thriving. The robot was instructed to obtain samples of the slime, which it did, and upon examination…the slime was even more amazing than was thought at first glance.

This slime, a collection of several fungi actually, was more than just surviving in a radioactive environment, it was actually using gamma radiation as a food source.

Samples of these fungi grew significantly faster when exposed to gamma radiation at 500 times the normal background radiation level.

The fungi appear to use melanin, a chemical found in human skin as well, in the same fashion as plants use chlorophyll.

Tags: radiation

the smallest known bird in the world

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 04:03:43 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: www.arthurgrosset.com

Bee Hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae)

The male Bee Hummingbird is the smallest known bird in the world. The female, pictured here, is slightly larger.

It is endemic to Cuba and classified as Near Threatened. It is found in dense forest and at woodland edges so is now confined to a few areas of suitable habitat.

The female has a blue-green back, pale grey underparts and white tips to the outer tail feathers. The breeding male has a bright red to pink head, chin and throat. The non-breeding male looks like a female but has black rather than white tips to the tail feathers.

It feeds on nectar and insects and this bird seems to have something, possibly pollen, stuck to the top of its bill.

Clip Source: www.arthurgrosset.com

Tags: animals, nature, science, interesting

'The Autism Whisperer'

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 13:09:08 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

Jenny McCarthy worried about finding a good man after her son, Evan, was diagnosed with autism two years ago. Then Jim Carrey came along.

"Beyond doubt it was written in the stars that Jim and Evan were a pair," the 34-year-old actress tells People magazine

"He's actually helped Evan get past some obstacles I couldn't. I sometimes call him the autism whisperer. He speaks a language Evan understands, and Evan feels safe with him."

Jim came into our life with an open heart and open arms. He's learned a lot about autism. He listens. The power of listening. It can move mountains.

McCarthy and film director John Asher filed for divorce in August 2005, after six years of marriage. Earlier that year, Evan, now 5, was diagnosed with autism.

She says Carrey was curious about Evan — in a good way. But she was nervous about introducing them.

"He was intrigued," she says. "He asked questions. Still, it took me about a few months to bring Evan over."

Tags: children, health, autism