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Baby Elephant Adopted by a Sheep

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:30:29 GMT

clipped by: xpersianx
clipper's remarks: Another unbelievable but adorable relation among creatures !

This baby elephant’s name is Themba. His mother died in a fall down a cliff. This sheep is Albert, and he has become Themba’s best friend. The pair are now inseparable and spend every hour together at their home in the Shamwari Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Sounds unbelievable? See more photos below.

Tags: sheep, elephent, adoptation, animals, creatures, relation

19 Ways to Enhance Your Sense of Humor

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:14:03 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: Focus humor on yourself

Clip Source: www.rd.com

19 Ways to Enhance Your Sense of Humor

Research finds that humor can help you cope better with pain, enhance your immune system, reduce stress, even help you live longer

Here are 19 tips for getting -- or growing -- your sense of humor

First, regain your smile

Treat yourself to a comedy festival

Recall several of the most embarrassing moments in your life

Anytime something annoying and frustrating occurs, turn it on its head and find the humor

Read the comics every day and cut out the ones that remind you of your life

When a person offends you or makes you angry, respond with humor rather than hostility

Clip Source: www.rd.com

Focus humor on yourself

Create a humor environment

Develop a silly routine to break a dark mood

Exaggerate and overstate problems

When you run into friends or coworkers, ask them to tell you one funny thing

Read the activity listings page in the newspaper and choose some laugh-inducing events to attend

Find a humor buddy

Experiment with jokes

What will happen in the next 5 years? read it here :)

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:09:21 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus

Clip Source: www.networkworld.com

The Next Five in Five is based on market and societal trends expected to transform our lives, as well as emerging technologies from IBM's Labs

1. Solar power will be built into asphalt sidewalks, driveways, siding, paint, rooftops and windows

2. You will have a crystal ball for your health -- not a real crystal ball, but sophisticated analyses of your own DNA will tell you what types of health risks you face in your lifetime and the specific steps you can take to prevent them. DNA analyses will cost less than $200

3. "You will talk to the Web . . . and the Web will talk back

Clip Source: www.networkworld.com

4. Digital technology will enhance your in-store shopping experience, with "digital shopping assistants" inside fitting rooms, touchscreen and voice-activated kiosks that will help you choose clothing items to complement or replace what you've already chosen

5. "Forgetting will become a distant memory

everyday details will be recorded, analyzed and "provided at the appropriate time

stationary smart appliances

Tags: future, technology, health

He's Not Black

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:59:05 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: Progress has outpaced vocabulary.

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

He is also half white.

Unless the one-drop rule still applies, our president-elect is not black.

We call him that -- he calls himself that -- because we use dated language and logic. After more than 300 years and much difficult history, we hew to the old racist rule: Part-black is all black. Fifty percent equals a hundred. There's no in-between.

That was my reaction when I read these words on the front page of this newspaper the day after the election: "Obama Makes History: U.S. Decisively Elects First Black President."

The phrase was repeated in much the same form by one media organization after another. It's as if we have one foot in the future and another still mired in the Old South. We are racially sophisticated enough to elect a non-white president, and we are so racially backward that we insist on calling him black. Progress has outpaced vocabulary.

Barack Obama is not our first black president. He is our first biracial, bicultural president.

Tags: race, biracial, "one-drop-rule", obama

New Dolphin Species Discovered

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:30:37 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken

Clip Source: www.smh.com.au

DNA discovery shows dolphin one of a new breed

AUSTRALIA has a new mammal. Scientists have discovered a previously unknown dolphin swimming in the nation's southern waters.

Until now it had been thought the world had just two species of bottlenose dolphins. The common bottlenose, generally at home in offshore waters, and the more coastal Indo-Pacific species, are both found near Australia.

However, Macquarie and Monash university researchers, collecting genetic samples from what they thought were coastal dolphins, made an unexpected find. After DNA testing about 200 mammals off Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania for a population study, the scientists realised they were not coastal bottlenose dolphins at all.

Such finds, said Dr Moller, were "pretty rare". "Large mammals are not discovered very often. It shows we still have a lot to learn about how many marine species are out there.

Dr Moller said she believed the limited range of the new species meant it deserved special protection.

To see our behavior from different perspective

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:40:39 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: Creating a “body swapping” illusion that could have a profound effect on a range of therapeutic techniques

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Standing in Someone Else’s Shoes, Almost for Real

Clip Source: content.clipmarks.com

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

From the outside, psychotherapy can look like an exercise in self-absorption. In fact, though, therapists often work to pull people out of themselves: to see their behavior from the perspective of a loved one, for example, or to observe their own thinking habits from a neutral distance

Now, neuroscientists have shown that they can make this experience physical, creating a “body swapping” illusion that could have a profound effect on a range of therapeutic techniques

Swedish researchers presented evidence that the brain, when tricked by optical and sensory illusions, can quickly adopt any other human form, no matter how different, as its own

You can see the possibilities, putting a male in a female body, young in old, white in black and vice versa,

One important goal of therapy in such cases, Dr. Doyle said, is to get people to generate alternative explanations for others’ behavior — before they themselves react.

Atheists Want God Out Of Ky. Homeland Security

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:28:47 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.google.com

A group of atheists filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to remove part of a state anti-terrorism law that requires Kentucky's Office of Homeland Security to acknowledge it can't keep the state safe without God's help.

American Atheists Inc. sued in state court over a 2002 law that stresses God's role in Kentucky's homeland security alongside the military, police agencies and health departments.

Of particular concern is a 2006 clause requiring the Office of Homeland Security to post a plaque that says the safety and security of the state "cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon almighty God" and to stress that fact through training and educational materials.

Kentucky isn't the only state dealing with religious issues, but Ed Buckner, president of American Atheists, said it's alone in officially enlisting God in homeland security.

Tags: atheism, homeland security, god, religion, government

A New Picture of the Early Earth

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:05:52 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: In a new analysis, published in the current issue of the journal Nature, the zircons, the only bits of earth older than 4 billion years definitively known to have survived, provide another tantalizing hint about the Hadean period. Dr. Harrison and two U.C.L.A. colleagues, Michelle Hopkins, a graduate student, and Craig Manning, a professor of geology and geochemistry, report that minerals trapped inside zircons offer evidence that the processes of plate tectonics — the forces that push around the planet’s outer crust, forming and shaping the continents and oceans — had already begun.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

AGES AGO Analyses of crystals in rocks in Australia, left, have formed a new picture of the early Earth, depicted with young oceans in the painting at right.

The first 700 million years of Earth’s 4.5-billion-year existence are known as the Hadean period, after Hades, or, to shed the ancient Greek name, Hell.

That name seemed to fit with the common perception that the young Earth was a hot, dry, desolate landscape interspersed with seas of magma and inhospitable for life. Even if some organism had somehow popped into existence, the old story went, surely it would soon have been extinguished in the firestorm of one of the giant meteorites that slammed into the Earth when the young solar system was still crowded with debris.

That is no longer thought to be true.

Tags: earth, life, history, evolution, geological, time, geology, science

Rare Albino Raccoon

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:44:51 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly

Clip Source: www.floridatoday.com

The pale-furred mutant likes to munch on grapes and cat food, said a woman who feeds and photographs the elusive animal.

Fearful for the albino creature's safety, the woman asked Brevard Zoo officials to trap it and put it on public display. She asked FLORIDA TODAY to withhold her identity so hunters would not converge on the raccoon's territory.

This white raccoon lives in the woods near a Rockledge subdivision. Brevard Zoo officials say they cannot capture and display the rare animal because it is healthy. (For FLORIDA TODAY)

"I'd hate to see him get shot as a trophy," she said. "This is something kids would love to see. He is so unique."

Michelle Smurl, Brevard Zoo's director of animal programs, said the zoo is not at liberty to trap an adult animal that is thriving in the wild. She viewed photos of the animal and confirmed that it is a white raccoon.

Jupiter, Venus, Moon To Converge

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:40:48 GMT

clipped by: carrerinyes
clipper's remarks: Quit a sight

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Jupiter, Venus, Moon to Converge

Nov. 26, 2008 -- It's not just families that are getting together this Thanksgiving week. The three brightest objects in the night sky -- Venus, Jupiter and a crescent moon -- will crowd around each other for an unusual group shot.

Starting Thanksgiving evening, Jupiter and Venus will begin moving closer so that by Sunday and Monday, they will appear 2 degrees apart, which is about a finger width held out at arm's length, said Alan MacRobert, senior editor at Sky and Telescope magazine. Then on Monday night, they will be joined by a crescent moon right next to them, he said.

Look in the southwestern sky around twilight -- no telescope or binoculars needed. The show will even be visible in cities if it's a clear night.

The moon is the brightest, closest and smallest of the three and is 252,000 miles away. Venus, the second brightest, closest and smallest, is 94 million miles away. And big Jupiter is 540 million miles away.