Clipmarks |

Does this remind you of anything?

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:47:01 GMT

clipped by: bignosemousie
clipper's remarks: Am I the only one that thought of Clipmarks?

Clip Source: dilbert.com

Tags: dlibert, clipmarks

10ft 'photographs' drawn with a ballpoint pen

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:50:43 GMT

clipped by: michellezm

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

They may look like pin-sharp photographs - but these amazing pictures are actually drawings created with the humble ballpoint pen.

The stunning pictures, measuring up to 10ft high, were drawn by a rising star of the art world, Juan Francisco Casas.

Casas, 31, can use up to four 14p ballpoint pens for a canvas and his works are already a sell-out at exhibitions.

Formerly a traditional painter, Juan began the drawings three years ago based on photographs of nights out with his friends.

Bic money: Casas can use up four 14p ballpoints on one picture, but his prizewinning works already fetch up to £3,750 each

Speaking from Rome yesterday, he said he admires the "simplicity" of the ballpoint pen, invented in 1938 by Hungarian Laszlo Biro.

Casas said: "I guess it started off as a joke, to try and make something so realistic that people would think is a photo.

"I also wanted to create it with something that everyone has - a Biro. I don't think it has ever been done before.

Torture of cows...WTF is wrong with people!?!?!?

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:42:59 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: Honestly, the human race really depresses the shit out of me sometimes. People actually torture cows in the name of making a buck. Makes me sick.

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

The video shows Hallmark Meat Packing Co. workers administering repeated electric shocks to downed cows -- animals that are too sick, weak or otherwise unable to stand on their own. Workers are seen kicking cows, jabbing them near their eyes, ramming them with a forklift and shooting high-intensity water up their noses in an effort to force them to their feet for slaughter.

"This must serve as a five-alarm call to action for Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture," said Wayne Pacelle, Humane Society president. "Our government simply must act quickly both to guarantee the most basic level of humane treatment for farm animals and to protect America's most vulnerable people -- our children, needy families and the elderly -- from the potentially dangerous food."

Tags: cows, hallmark meat packing, wtf, sad

Scientists discover way to reverse loss of memory

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:29:28 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: A remarkable piece of luck for many.

Clip Source: richarddawkins.net

Scientists performing experimental brain surgery on a man aged 50 have stumbled across a mechanism that could unlock how memory works.

The accidental breakthrough came during an experiment originally intended to suppress the obese man's appetite, using the increasingly successful technique of deep-brain stimulation. Electrodes were pushed into the man's brain and stimulated with an electric current. Instead of losing appetite, the patient instead had an intense experience of déjà vu. He recalled, in intricate detail, a scene from 30 years earlier. More tests showed his ability to learn was dramatically improved when the current was switched on and his brain stimulated.

Scientists are now applying the technique in the first trial of the treatment in patients with Alzheimer's disease. If successful, it could offer hope to sufferers from the degenerative condition, which affects 450,000 people in Britain alone, by providing a "pacemaker" for the brain.

Tags: science, medical

Giant Particle Accelerator Discovered In The Sky

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:46:04 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman
clipper's remarks: Galaxy clusters colliding! This is the physics of the truly colossal.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

ESA’s orbiting gamma-ray observatory

has made the first unambiguous discovery of highly energetic X-rays coming from a galaxy cluster. The find has shown the cluster to be a giant particle accelerator

The Ophiuchus galaxy cluster is one of brightest in the sky at X-ray wavelengths. The X-rays detected are too energetic to originate from quiescent hot gas inside the cluster and suggest instead that giant shockwaves must be rippling through the gas. This has turned the galaxy cluster into a giant particle accelerator

This image shows shockwaves traveling through hot gas (in red) as two galaxy clusters collide and merge

detection of highly energetic X-rays, coming from the Ophiuchus cluster of galaxies. These X-rays can be produced in two ways, both of which involve high-energy electrons.

The shockwaves are set up when two clusters collide and merge. The question is how recently Ophiuchus swallowed its companion cluster

Netscape: The Browser That Started it All Dies a Quiet Death

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 12:28:17 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Netscape: The Browser That Started it All Dies a Quiet Death

It birthed the web as we know it. But tomorrow, February 1, marks the demise of Netscape Navigator, the first commercial web browser.

Navigator will continue to function should you happen to have a recent copy stashed away. But American Online, which has been Netscape’s guardian during its long, downward slide in popularity, will no longer support the browser and will stop releasing updates. Support for all versions of the software will be off-loaded to the Netscape community forum. Netscape.com will continue to live on as a web portal.

How did it come to this? In two words, Internet Explorer.

When Netscape arrived back in 1994, the screeching wail of the dial-up modem was not yet a household sound. But the browser changed that and ignited the growth of the internet by making it easy for anyone to use.

Tags: netscape, internet, internet explorer, firefox, history

New languages evolve in sudden bursts

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:16:40 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Stephen Pincock

New languages often evolve quickly, in a sudden burst of new words coined as groups of people strive to describe the world around them, says an international team of researchers.

One group's desire to differentiate itself from another may have prompted the suddden development of new languages

Dr Quentin Atkinson from the UK's University of Oxford and colleagues report their findings today in the journal Science.

Scientists debate the evolution of language in a way that parallels arguments in biological evolution.

Do most changes come about slowly and gradually or rapidly within relatively short spans of time?

In Bantu languages from Africa, for example, more than 30% of vocabulary differences between languages arose at or around the time that they split off from each other, say the researchers.

In the languages of Indonesia, Polynesia and Papua New Guinea, the rush of new words accounted for about 10% of differences.

"We're probably talking generations,

maybe around 100 years."

Words and images

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:21:14 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth

Clip Source: www.dragonpack.com

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.

Clip Source: blog.libero.it

Clip Source: www.dragonpack.com

If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.

Clip Source: blog.libero.it

Clip Source: www.dragonpack.com

Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements.

Clip Source: blog.libero.it

Clip Source: www.dragonpack.com

Lock it up save in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

Clip Source: blog.libero.it

Clip Source: www.dragonpack.com

But in that casket --safe, dark, motionless, airless --it will change.

Clip Source: blog.libero.it

Clip Source: www.dragonpack.com

It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

Clip Source: blog.libero.it

Clip Source: www.dragonpack.com

To love is to be vulnerable.

Clip Source: blog.libero.it

Clip Source: www.dragonpack.com

C.S. Lewis

May I? My little girl recently turned 2!

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 04:24:28 GMT

clipped by: willhelm

Clip Source: www.facebook.com

Pill makes you autistic, pill changes you back

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:02:38 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: need to think about this one

Clip Source: io9.com

One Pill Makes You Autistic -- And One Pill Changes You Back

Need to finish that work project, and wish you had the mental intensity to do it? Just take a synapse-regulating inhibitor, induce temporary autism, and you'll want to ignore your friends and do nothing but number-crunching for days. Autism-inducers could become as popular as Provigil among the geek set by 2020. Last night, in fact, a group German researchers announced they'd perfected the method for inducing autism. (They can also cure it.)

Over the past year, researchers have demonstrated several times that they can turn mice autistic by messing with brain chemistry -- and then "cure" them using the same techniques.

The discoveries could lead to a scenario similar to the one in Vernor Vinge's novel A Deepness in the Sky, where people are given a brain treatment called "focusing" that essentially turns them autistic and makes them obsessive, detail-oriented workers.

Tags: autism, concentration, brain

Tool Use Is Just a Trick of the Mind

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:39:06 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: The findings "fairly clearly show that monkey tool use involves the incorporation of tools into the body schema, literally as extensions of the body,"

Clip Source: sciencenow.sciencemag.org

Don't take that hammer for granted. Using tools may seem like second nature, but only a few animals can master the coordination and mental sophistication required. So how did primates learn to use tools in the first place? A new study in monkeys suggests that the brain's trick is to treat tools as just another body part.

Primates, with their four flexible fingers and opposable thumbs, have a highly evolved ability to grasp and manipulate objects. Previous research has shown that many of these actions are controlled by an area of the brain called F5. As the hand opens and closes to grasp an object, neurons in area F5 fire in a predictable sequence. In the parlance of neuroscientists, the neurons are "coded" to control the hand movements. When a primate learns to use a tool, its brain must code neurons not only to move the hand but also to make the tool manipulate an object, a much more cognitively complex task.

Tags: brain, tool use, neuroscience

Iraq Through the Eyes of Soldiers

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:53:47 GMT

clipped by: Bluephoenix4

Clip Source: you.presscue.com

A lost soul

What I really want

Exporting democracy

The Truth

To sleep, perchance to dream

Hi Tutsie

No pull-ups

Sorry for the inconvenience

Soldier's Cross

Love in times of war

Tags: war, war on terror, iraq, photography, soldiers

Scientists Race To Save The Tasmanian Devil

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 10:30:05 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: Is there time?

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Scientists try to save the Tasmanian devil

U.S. scientists are racing to save the Tasmanian devil from extinction from a unique, transmissible and rapidly spreading cancer.

The process by which the cancer spreads -- physical contact -- has only been seen once before and represents a new field in cancer biology. Once an animal is afflicted, tumors appear on its face and neck, restricting the ability to eat. Within approximately three months, the devils succumb to the disease, often through starvation. Officials project that within 20 years the species could become extinct.

Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, led by native Tasmanian Elizabeth Murchison, are attempting to determine how the tumors work at a molecular level.

"Once the cancer genes are fully sequenced, we will have a better chance to identify the cause and genetic makeup of this unique cancer," said Murchison.

"A cure for the devil may have applications for humans as well."

Tags: extinction, is, forever