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Fastest Way Up Hills: Zigzag

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:43:29 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but on a steep slope, a zigzagging path is the fastest way to go, a new study confirms.

On flat terrain, a straight line is typically still the best way to get from point A to point B. But climbing up a steep hill is a whole different ballgame; the mechanics and energy costs of walking up a hill alter the way we negotiate the landscape.

"You would expect a similar process on any landscape, but when you have changes in elevation it makes things more complicated," said study author Marcos Llobera of the University of Washington. "There is a point, or critical slope, where it becomes metabolically too costly to go straight ahead, so people move at an angle, cutting into the slope. Eventually they need to go back toward the direction they were originally headed and this creates zigzags. The steeper the slope, the more important it is that you tackle it at the right angle."

Tags: zigzag

Israeli MP Blames Gays for Earthquakes

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 03:15:54 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: blog.washingtonpost.com

Forget tectonic plates. According to Shlomo Benizri, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish member of the Knesset, homosexuality causes earthquakes.

During a committee hearing on disaster preparedness, Benizri, a member of the Shas Party, reportedly urged lawmakers to "stop passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity in the state of Israel, which anyway brings about earthquakes."

Benizri was referring in part to a decision last week by Israel's attorney general granting adoption rights to same sex couples. Israel which decriminalized homosexuality in 1988, experienced at least two tremors measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale last week.

"God says you shake your genitals where you are not supposed to and I will shake my world in order to wake you up," Benizri reportedly explained to the parliamentary committee on disaster preparedness.

Tags: gay, rights, israel, earthquake, homosexuality

Oxford to Study Faith in God

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:25:46 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: news.wired.com

LONDON (AP) -- University of Oxford researchers will spend nearly $4 million to study why mankind embraces God. The grant to the Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion will bring anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other academics together for three years to study whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankind's makeup.

"There are a lot of issues. What is it that is innate in human nature to believe in God, whether it is gods or something superhuman or supernatural?" said Roger Trigg, acting director of the center.

He said anthropological and philosophical research suggests that faith in God is a universal human impulse found in most cultures around the world, even though it has been waning in Britain and western Europe.

"One implication that comes from this is that religion is the default position, and atheism is perhaps more in need of explanation," he said.

Tags: faith, god

On this day: die Weiße Rose

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 02:04:37 GMT

clipped by: mickfinn
clipper's remarks: The White Rose (German: die Weiße Rose) was a non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of a number of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor. The group became known for an anonymous leaflet campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, that called for active opposition to German dictator Adolf Hitler's regime.

The six core members of the group were arrested by the Gestapo, convicted and executed by beheading in 1943. The text of their sixth leaflet was smuggled out of Germany through Scandinavia to England, and in July 1943 copies of it were dropped over Germany by Allied planes, retitled "The Manifesto of the Students of Munich."

Today, the members of the White Rose are honored in Germany as great heroes who opposed the Third Reich in the face of deadly danger for such resistance.

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes ... reach the light of day? — From the first leaflet of the White Rose

Members of the White Rose, Munich 1942. From left: Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst. Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way ... The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals ... Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty! — From the second leaflet of the White Rose

Tags: the white rose, hans scholl, sophie scholl, christoph probst.

The Day the Seas Died -A Galaxy Classic

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:25:45 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: And I thought they had just missed the boat.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

The "Great Dying" at the end of the Permian period, some 250 million years ago, was the most catastrophic of the five mass extinctions in Earth’s fossil record. More than half of the families of living things died out, and as many as 95 percent of the planet’s marine species were lost. At the same time, perhaps 70 percent of the land’s reptile, amphibian, insect, and plant families became extinct.

This mass-extinction event may hold clues to current global carbon-cycle changes, according to Jonathan Payne, assistant professor of geological and environmental sciences at Stanford University.

What caused the calamity has long been a source of scientific controversy, due both to the extreme remoteness of the event, and to an absence of geological evidence – the world’s seas retreated at the same period, reducing the amount of sedimentary rock entering the geological record.

Tags: earth, history