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Tapping the Vortex for New Green Energy

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:24:22 GMT

clipped by: syncopath
clipper's remarks: "We're where cars were 100 years ago," Bernitsas said. "Hopefully it won't take us 100 years to get where we need to be."

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Tapping the Vortex for Green Energy

By tapping the natural motion of slow-moving water, a new hydrokinetic generator could open vast new swaths of the ocean for energy production.

"About four years ago, it dawned on me that we should enhance the vibrations and try to harness the energy," said ocean engineer Michael Bernitsas, who has founded Vortex Hydro Energy to commercialize his idea. "No one has ever thought of patenting this idea, even though vortex induced vibrations were first observed in 1504 by Leonardo da Vinci."

Energy experts consider the movement of water in oceans a vast untapped source of clean energy that could provide up to 10 percent of U.S. demand

"There is a huge amount of hydrokinetic energy in currents but a lot of that we cannot harness with the present technology and that's where my device comes in, to extract energy at speeds down to 1 knot

"It taps into a new energy source."

Living jewels

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:18:36 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

This picture shows a predatory tiger beetle

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Close-up of tiger beetle "skin" - the surface of the wing case.

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

This electron micrograph of the tiger beetle shows a reflector band (arrow) - where thin layers of tissue with different refractive indices have been laid on top of each other. The spacing of the layers causes different colours to be produced by constructive interference.

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Weevils (such as this Pachyrrynchus beetle) have a different method. The scale patches are made of photonic crystals, as seen in the next image...

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

The three-dimensional crystalline structures in the wing cases of pachyrrynchine weevils are arranged hexagonally, in a similar way to how crystals are arranged in opals.

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

A beetle from the Amarygminae family

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Eupholus, a weevil

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Phanaeus, a scarab beetle - considered sacred by the ancient Egyptians

Tags: insects, natural art

"Chance favors the prepared mind"

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:11:20 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: More from JANET RAE-DUPREE one of my favorite writer ...

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work

WE’VE all heard the tales of the apple falling on Newton’s head and Archimedes leaping naked from his bath shrieking “Eureka!” Many of us have even heard that eBay was created by a guy who realized that he could help his fiancée sell Pez dispensers online.

As humans, we want to believe that creativity and innovation come in flashes of pure brilliance,

Innovators and other creative types, we believe, stand apart from the crowd, wielding secrets and magical talents beyond the rest of us

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Successful entrepreneurs do not wait until ‘the Muse kisses them’ and gives them a ‘bright idea’: they go to work," Peter F. Drucker says in “Innovation and Entrepreneurship.” “Altogether they do not look for the ‘biggie,’ the innovation that will ‘revolutionize the industry,’ create a ‘billion-dollar business’ or ‘make one rich overnight.’ Those entrepreneurs who start out with the idea that they’ll make it big — and in a hurry — can be guaranteed failure.”

'If he wins, it means my country has agreed to grow up'

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 04:10:49 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Maya Angelou, novelist

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

Maya Angelou, novelist: 'If he wins, it means my country has agreed to grow up'

I never thought I'd see a black president in the White House in my lifetime. I didn't even dare dream it. I feel like a child approaching Christmas, you can't believe election day is finally here. It's been so long since we've had people – Asian and black, white and Spanish-speaking – come together and say YES. Some did during the civil rights struggle but not as many as today. What it means if Mr Obama is voted in, is that my country has agreed to grow up, and move beyond the childish idea that human beings are different.

Tags: poet, obama

Obama's grandmother dies of cancer in Hawaii

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:45:56 GMT

clipped by: reimers
clipper's remarks: bet all the right-wingers on the radio who said that he visited her last week as a campaign ploy feel like dicks... then again, i doubt it

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's grandmother died of cancer, he said in a statement on Monday, a little more than a week after Obama interrupted the White House race to say goodbye to her in Hawaii.

"It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer," Obama said in a joint statement with his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. "She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility."

Dunham helped raise Obama from the age of 10 while his mother was working in Indonesia, and Obama took an emotional 22-hour trip to Hawaii to visit her on October 23 and 24.

After A Freezing Rain in South China

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:26:46 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: The wonders of nature never give up.

Clip Source: forums.keeptouch.net

Love is Changeless

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:15:33 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: www.shakespeares-sonnets.com

Clip Source: famouspoetsandpoems.com

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Clip Source: www.georgewashingtonmanor.com

Clip Source: www.angelfire.com

Clip Source: imagecache2.allposters.com

Clip Source: images.elfwood.com

Clip Source: www.kelticklankirk.com

Clip Source: www.illusionsgallery.com

Clip Source: inlinethumb47.webshots.com

Clip Source: www.blacksunjournal.com

Clip Source: sandstead.com

Clip Source: elizabethboswell.blogspot.com

Clip Source: www.eso-garden.com

Like a fair lady at her casement, shines
The evening star, the star of love and rest!

Clip Source: apod.nasa.gov

Clip Source: upload.wikimedia.org

Tags: shakespeare

Palin: Criticism of me threatens First Amendment

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:49:36 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Apparently, she thinks a free press to be unconstitutional. This woman is not qualified to graduate from high school.

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Palin: First Amendment Rights Threatened By Criticism

Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations

should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning

then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights

If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards

when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged

This isn't only about profound ignorance regarding our basic liberties, though it is obviously that. Palin here is also giving voice here to the standard right-wing grievance instinct: that it's inherently unfair when they're criticized. And now, apparently, it's even unconstitutional.

Tags: palin, constitution

Gratitude

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:44:46 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman
clipper's remarks: I don't usually re-clip, but thanks again all.

Clip Source: content5.clipmarks.com

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.
Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Buddha:

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

My wife made me canvas for Obama; here's what I learned

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:11:17 GMT

clipped by: reimers
clipper's remarks: more at source

Clip Source: www.csmonitor.com

I had the chance to view that organization up close this month when I canvassed for him. I'm not sure I learned much about his chances, but I learned a lot about myself and about this election.

Let me make it clear: I'm pretty conservative. I grew up in the suburbs. I voted for George H.W. Bush twice, and his son once. I was disappointed when Bill Clinton won, and disappointed he couldn't run again.

I encouraged my son to join the military. I was proud of him in Afghanistan, and happy when he came home, and angry when he was recalled because of the invasion of Iraq. I'm white, 55, I live in the South and I'm definitely going to get a bigger tax bill if Obama wins.

I am the dreaded swing voter.

So you can imagine my surprise when my wife suggested we spend a Saturday morning canvassing for Obama. I have never canvassed for any candidate. But I did, of course, what most middle-aged married men do: what I was told.

The Monks of Skellig Michael, Ireland

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:21:06 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: www.wildmind.org

…when most of western Europe was plunged into darkness and illiteracy, the Irish Celtic monks preserved classical learning…

Thirteen monks, living a life of prayer and contemplation in their tiny, round, rock-built huts 600 sheer feet above the rolling north Atlantic. Unbelievably, a small community flourished on that rock for six centuries. They fished, kept a tiny garden and maybe an animal or two. On the southern pinnacle, above a chimney of rock, a solitary hermit once passed his days in complete isolation.

Not only the Gospels, but Aristotle, Euripedes, Virgil, Ovid. Whatever they could find they copied, preserved and returned to the rest of Europe.

The smallness of the buildings is accentuated by the vastness of the space all around. Man, on this rock, is but a little thing.

Bound to none, one enjoys that happiness and contentment which even for a king is hard to find.

I am humbled by the commitment of those monks, by their single-minded devotion to the contemplative life

Tags: skelling michael

Native Tribes of Britain

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:49:13 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly
clipper's remarks: Key Tribal Regions

* 01: Caledones (Caledonii)
* 02: Taexali
* 03: Carvetii
* 04: Venicones
* 05: Epidii
* 06: Damnonii
* 07: Novantae
* 08: Selgovae
* 09: Votadini
* 10: Brigantes
* 11: Parisi
* 12: Cornovii
* 13: Deceangli
* 14: Ordovices

* 15: Corieltauvi
* 16: Iceni
* 17: Demetae
* 18: Catuvellauni
* 19: Silures
* 20: Dubunni
* 21: Dumnonii
* 22: Durotriges
* 23: Belgae
* 24: Atrebates
* 25: Regni
* 26: Cantiaci
* 27: Trinovantes

Clip Source: www.bbc.co.uk

This map shows the approximate location of the major tribes who lived in Britain at the time of the Roman Conquest of Britain in the First Century AD.

The sole source for the existence and location of these tribes are Roman writers who visited Britain.

One of the best observers of the tribes of Celtic Britain was Tacitus who wrote on historical events in Britain. Another was a Roman geographer called Ptolemy who wrote a description of Britain, listing the names of the many British tribes.

However, we must treat these writings with care as they are as much propaganda as impartial historical accounts. Furthermore, the Roman writers sometimes misunderstood British events or even the names of the tribes. This is especially true of their descriptions of tribes in the north where Roman knowledge was even more limited. Indeed, precise information about where these tribes lived is entirely absent from the contemporary Roman records.

The British Isles and First Century AD tribal regions.