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A kiss will never miss

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:23:17 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: ~ How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said. ~
Victor Hugo

~It will be the kiss by which all others in your life will be judged...and found wanting.~
Hearts in Atlantis

Clip Source: www.finestquotes.com

~ [T]hen I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down... and kissed him. And the world cracked open. ~

Agnes de Mille

Clip Source: www.finestquotes.com

~ Ancient lovers believed a kiss would literally unite their souls, because the spirit was said to be carried in one's breath. ~

Eve Glicksman

Clip Source: www.finestquotes.com

~ When [he] kisses you he isn't doing anything else. You're his whole universe..and the moment is eternal because he doesn't have any plans and isn't going anywhere. Just kissing you...it's overwhelming. ~

Anon

Clip Source: www.finestquotes.com

~ A man's kiss is his signature. ~

Mae West

Clip Source: www.finestquotes.com

~ I wasn't kissing her, I was whispering in her mouth. ~

Chico Marx

Clip Source: www.finestquotes.com

~ Always remember this: 'A kiss will never miss, and after many kisses a miss becomes a misses'. ~

John Lennon

Clip Source: www.finestquotes.com

~ There's this place in me where your fingerprints still rest, your kisses still linger, and your whispers softly echo. It's the place where a part of you will forever be a part of me. ~

Gretchen Kemp

Clip Source: www.finestquotes.com

~ Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt. ~

William Shakespeare

Tags: quotes

Mystery of String Theory Unravelled

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:59:12 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Bloody unreal. We live and learn. (Actually, I learn more than I live, or do I?)

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

To listen to people speak about string theory is a lesson in ambiguity. No one is willing to commit to a solid opinion, on either side of the coin, and they dance on the fence as if they were auditioning for a Garfield strip.

Wikipedia follows suit, describing it as ‘an as-yet incomplete mathematical approach to theoretical physics, whose building blocks are one-dimensional extended objects called strings, rather than the zero-dimensional point particles that form the basis for the standard model of particle physics.’

I mention this because a recent discovery hints towards the possibility that cosmic strings do actually exist.

For another example of the sheer inability people have of taking a side, we turn to Martin Kunz, a scientist at the University of Geneva; “At the moment, what we have found slightly prefers, or at least does not disfavor, cosmic strings.”

Tags: science

When we die, we die online too. Then what?

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 03:02:13 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: The complications of life on the 'net.

Clip Source: mashable.com

No one likes to think about it, but death is inevitable. After it happens, you won’t have to care about paying the electricity bill anymore, but what’ll happen to your blog, e-mail, online profiles? The fact that you’re, well, dead, is no excuse for slouching online; therefore we bring you over 20 tools that will take care of your online stuff after you’re gone.

Data & Blog Maintenance After Death

With everyone having so many accounts and data out on the web now, you have to consider what will happen with it when you are no longer amongst the living. These are some checklists and ideas of how to keep things going, or giving a trusted individual access so they can take care of things for you after you’ve gone.

An article about questions you should as yourself before you choose a “lifetime hosting” solution.

A very detailed and lengthy article about how to prepare your online email accounts for the inevitable.

E-Mails To Be Delivered After Your Death

Genetic 'telepathy'? A bizarre new property of DNA

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:47:42 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: life stranger than sci fi

Clip Source: physorg.com

Scientists are reporting evidence that intact, double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. And then like friends with similar interests, the bits of genetic material hangout or congregate together. The recognition — of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits — occurs in a way once regarded as impossible, the researchers suggest in a study scheduled for the Jan. 31 issue of ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

This recognition may help increase the accuracy and efficiency of the homologous recombination of genes — a process responsible for DNA repair, evolution, and genetic diversity. The new findings thus may shed light on ways to avoid recombination errors, which underpin cancer, aging, and other health problems.

“Amazingly, the forces responsible for the sequence recognition can reach across more than one nanometer of water separating the surfaces of the nearest neighbor DNA,” said the authors.

Tags: dna, telepathy, recognition at a distance

China To Be New Driver Of World's Economy

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:33:24 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

China To Be New Driver Of World's Economy And Innovation

ScienceDaily (Jan. 28, 2008) — A new study of worldwide technological competitiveness suggests China may soon rival the United States as the principal driver of the world's economy -- a position the U.S. has held since the end of World War II. If that happens, it will mark the first time in nearly a century that two nations have competed for leadership as equals.

China will soon pass the United States in the critical ability to develop basic science and technology

Chart shows the change in technological standing for several nations from 1993 to 2007.

"It's like being 40 years old and playing basketball against a competitor who's only 12 years old -- but is already at your height," Newman said. "You are a little better right now and have more experience, but you're not going to squeeze much more performance out. The future clearly doesn't look good for the United States."

Tags: economy, china

Right Brain Smarts: Creative People’s Brains Function Differently

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:52:11 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Good article about the different trains of thought on this issue

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

A new study has ended the controversy (or perhaps just stirred up more) by demonstrating that creative people do think in a fundamentally different way than everyone else. The study showed that non-creative types versus creative types do indeed exhibit quite different patterns of brain activity while going about solving problems, and even just while daydreaming.

Scientists have wondered for some time if people who think “creatively” are able to somehow think differently from those who seem to think in a more methodical fashion. However, many researchers have argued that what we call “creative thought” and “noncreative thought” are really not two different things. If that were true, then people who are thought of as “creative” would not actually think in a fundamentally different way from those who are thought of as uncreative.

Lost Egyptian City Reveals Horrors of Lives of Pharoh's Builders

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:28:37 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Evidence of the brutal lives endured by some ancient Egyptians to build the monuments of the Pharaohs has been uncovered by archaeologists at Amarna, a new capital built on the orders of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, 3,500 years ago.

Archaeologists from a British-based team made a breakthrough when they found human bones in the desert, which had been washed out by floods.

Skeletal remains from a lost city in the middle of Egypt suggest many ordinary people died in their teenage years and lived a punishing lifestyle with common spinal injuries, poor nutrition and stunted growth. The temples and palaces required thousands of large stone blocks. Working in summer temperatures of 40C (104F), the workers would have had to chisel these out of the rock and transport them 1.5 miles (2.5 km) from the quarries to the city.

Even Akhanaten's son, Tutankhamen, died aged just 20; and archaeologists are now beginning to believe that there might also have been an epidemic here.

Tags: ancient egypt, pharaohs, archaeology

The beauty of patterns

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:09:09 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Graham Farmelo reviews Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician's Journey Through Symmetry by Marcus du Sautoy

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Like painters and poets, mathematicians are pattern-makers. But mathematicians' patterns are special as they are made purely from ideas valid for all time. As the Cambridge mathematician G.H. Hardy pointed out, while human languages die, mathematical ideas are immortal, so 'Archimedes will outlive Aeschylus'.

Patterns woven from ideas are difficult for most of us to understand but everyone can appreciate the power of one of the most fundamental ideas in mathematics - symmetry. This is the theme of Finding Moonshine, an ambitious new book by the Oxford University mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, one of the subject's most accomplished popularisers.

It seems that humans are hard-wired to regard symmetry as central to our idea of aesthetic pleasure. This is why Gothic cathedrals, perfectly formed flowers and the symmetric, movie-star features of Nicole Kidman or Brad Pitt are so often praised for their beauty.

Symmetry can be useful, too

Tags: beauty, patterns, math, hard wired

Human skin cells hide circadian clock

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:11:18 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

An internal clock hidden in human skin cells could reveal whether your body clock is out of sync with your lifestyle, say researchers.

Steven Brown of the University of Zurich in Switzerland and his colleagues knew that the brain’s circadian clock causes a gene called Bmal1 to be more active in the body’s other cells during the daytime.

To find out how closely matched this activity was, they used a virus to equip skin cells taken from 11 early-rising people dubbed "larks" and 17 late-rising "owls" with a firefly gene that would produce a visible glow whenever Bmal1 was active. “The result is light coming out of the cell in a 24-hour rhythm,” says Brown.

By monitoring the times when the cells glowed, they demonstrated that skin cells showed the same sleep-wake patterns as those reported in questionnaires by at least half the donors.

“Knowing that skin clocks ‘tick’ in the same way as brain clocks provides a nice tool to address whether a person is likely to be an early or late riser,”

Tags: internal clock, skin cells

Is Homosexuality an Evolutionary Step Towards the Superorganism?

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:10:38 GMT

clipped by: sylviadafox

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Only by conceiving of evolution as acting upon entire populations rather than individual organisms can we understand eusociality -- the mysterious, seemingly "altruistic" behaviors exhibited by insects who forego reproduction in order to care for a colony's young.

eusociality has perplexed researchers unable to explain

how entire insect castes could have evolved not merely to refrain from reproducing, but to care for genetically distant larva.

So with all necessary caveats against reductionism and misappropriation, we can ask: should human societies conceive of themselves in terms of group-level selection? Have we already developed aspects of eusociality? And -- just to make matters really interesting -- could non-reproducing humans, such as (most) gays and lesbians, as well as heterosexuals who choose not to have kids, actually be a manifestation of this emergent eusociality?

But at least it suggests that certain unorthodox lifestyles might not be so "unnatural" after all.

Don't ruin your life by pushing against

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:16:47 GMT

clipped by: tidbit2

Clip Source: abraham-hicks.com

There is a big mix out there, and there's lots of different things going on, and there is not one way that was intended to be the right way. Just like there's not one color or one flower or one vegetable or one fingerprint. There is not one that is to be the right one over all others. The variety is what fosters the creativity. And so you say, "Okay, I accept that there's lots of variety, but I don't like to eat cucumbers." Don't eat cucumbers. But don't ask them to be eliminated and don't condemn those who eat them. Don't stand on corners waving signs trying to outlaw the things that you don't like. Don't ruin your life by pushing against. Instead, say, "I choose this instead. This does please me.

'The Kiss' by Auguste Rodin

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 08:39:19 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Now on display in the Tate Gallery, Liverpool, European Capital of Culture. Come all you Woolybacks to tingle in the pool of life.

Clip Source: www.ekoses.com

Tags: rodin, liverpool

It's In The Kiss

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:06:40 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: Is not a kiss the very autograph of love? ~Henry Finck

'Twas not my lips you kissed
But my soul
~Judy Garland

Kissing is like drinking salted water. You drink, and your thirst increases. ~Chinese Proverb

A kiss seals two souls for a moment in time. ~Levende Waters

Ancient lovers believed a kiss would literally unite their souls, because the spirit was said to be carried in one's breath. ~Eve Glicksman

Gawd, I love this stuff!!!!!

Clip Source: www.dailycolonial.com

"I recently saw a woman on TV talking about how women who don't kiss enough can experience a lowered libido. What is that all about?"

The first evidence of kissing dates back to 1500 B.C., when historians began finding pictorials.

studies have shown that couples that kiss first thing in the morning get sick less frequently, have fewer car accidents, have lower stress levels, sleep better, and are happier overall.

When you are kissing, particularly during erotic kissing, you are as close to another person as you can get. You are able to feel their mouth with your mouth, and using the mouth as a means to explore surroundings is something we have done since infancy.

When you stop kissing, your body starts to shut down. So pucker up if you want to stay happy.

Flush the Prozac and Hack Your Own Happiness

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:16:17 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: self-engineering carpentry?

Clip Source: www.wired.com

Sometime in the 1990s, the concept of better living through chemistry turned a corner, thanks to drug companies' efforts to synthesize antidotes for every possible mood swing. So writes Yale lecturer Charles Barber in his new book, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation. An OCD sufferer himself, Barber spent a decade working in places like New York City's Bellevue Hospital.

"Then I'd go to cocktail parties and find out that the people there were on the same medications."

He proposes that we just say no to multinational drug peddlers and heal ourselves with cognitive and dialectical behavioral therapies — "talk therapy" techniques that minimize pill pushing, dispense with Freudian dream analysis, and engage patients in actively reprogramming their own brains. It's like "a highly selective carpentry of the soul," Barber writes — therapy as self-engineering.

Tags: brain, happiness

"Frak off!" Sci-Fi Swear Words

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 03:21:19 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: Shazbot!

Clip Source: io9.com

They say that swearing is the tool of the unintelligent, but swearing in an alien language? That has to make you cool, especially since it'll perplex the hell out of most people. If you want to win that hard-to-get geek street cred, we've got just the thing: A list of the best scifi cusses in the frakkin galaxy. Check it out, you floops.

Frak, Battlestar Galactica

Frell, Farscape

Gorram, Firefly

Shazbot, Mork & Mindy

Poodoo, Star Wars

Smeg, Red Dwarf:

Farathoom, Don't Bite The Sun:

Shock, Spiderman 2099

"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle", The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Smurf, The Smurfs