Clipmarks |

Earth's hum more mysterious than ever

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:18:42 GMT

clipped by: kkcapricorn
clipper's remarks: Everything in the universe is connected and has it's own unique form of communication.

Clip Source: www.unexplained-mysteries.com

Earth gives off a relentless hum of countless notes completely imperceptible to the human ear, like a giant, exceptionally quiet symphony, but the origin of this sound remains a mystery.

unexpected powerful tunes have been discovered in this hum

The planet emanates a constant rumble far below the limits of human hearing, even when the ground isn't shaking from an earthquake.

discovered a decade ago, is one that only scientific instruments - seismometers - can detect

his murmur could originate from the churning ocean, or

the roiling atmosphere

In the past, the oscillations that researchers found made up this hum were "spheroidal"

oscillations have been discovered

that, oddly, are shaped roughly like rings

spheroidal oscillations might be caused by forces squeezing down on the planet - say, pressure from ocean or atmospheric waves - the twisting ring-like phenomena might be caused by forces shearing across the world's surface, from the oceans, atmosphere or possibly even the sun

Tags: earth, hum, unknown

Nature's Best Photo Awards 2007

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:33:01 GMT

clipped by: Sheroug

Clip Source: photowebs.blogspot.com

Nature's Best Photo Awards by National Geographic

Angola Miss Landmine Beauty Pageant

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:04:00 GMT

clipped by: syncopath
clipper's remarks: The joint winners of the Angolan contest, Augusta Urica, 31, and Maria Restino Manuel, 26, were the embodiment of Traavik's ideal at the finale in the capital, Luanda, swathed in designer gowns, sashes and silver tiaras that crowned them Miss Landmine 2008.

With 10 women representing their provinces, she hobbled up the platform on crutches to collect her prize - a golden, state-of-the-art prosthetic limb to replace the leg blown off 10 years ago.

In Cambodia there should be no shortage of contenders for the 2009 title. There are 25,000 amputees among the country's 63,000 victims of landmines and blasts from unexploded ordinance left after 30 years of civil war.

Up to 1m landmines remain buried, out of the estimated million mines planted along the border with Thailand after the invading Vietnamese left in 1989

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Miss Landmine: exploitation or bold publicity for the victims?

Norwegian theatre director defends what aid agencies dismissed as a freak show

In the realm of beauty pageants it is not the stuff of little girls' dreams. Yet after the success of the inaugural Miss Landmine competition in Angola, the
organisers plan to take the contest to Cambodia next year.

Both countries rank alongside Afghanistan as among the world's most heavily mined places, with a correspondingly high number of victims who suffered the terrible effects of the weapons left festering after years of conflict.

It was the plight of the victims that prompted a Norwegian theatre and film director, Morten Traavik, to come up with the challenging - some would say tasteless - contest to spotlight the ongoing tragedy

"I'm a great believer in counterpoint - a good old theatre trick," he said. "Here the counterpoint is to put 'landmine' and 'miss' together

Clip Source: www.miss-landmine.org

Miss Cunene

Severina Cuhiela

Clip Source: www.miss-landmine.org

Miss Benguela
Ana Diogo

Clip Source: www.miss-landmine.org

Miss Moxico

Maria da Fatima

The Green Ad Effect

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:29:11 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth

Clip Source: www.divinecaroline.com

The Green Ad Effect

A recent survey from Burst Media revealed that green advertising has a stronger than average impact with consumers. Good, right? Well they have higher recall, but they aren’t necessarily buying into the messages. Maybe that’s due to the overwhelming amount of green claims consumers have been hit with.

The survey showed the most popular online green content is recycling information and healthy recipes. These are followed by information on alternative energy sources, natural remedies, eco-friendly cleaning products, green technologies, nature/outdoor recreation, tips for simple living, gardening/organic gardening, and organic foods.

Some of the most powerful ads have come from environmental organizations like the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace. Some retailers have also decided to take a stand with their brands with strong green messaging. Here are number of my favorites.

Clip Source: www.divinecaroline.com

Tags: environment

Global Food Crisis: Rice

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:53:39 GMT

clipped by: kmcolo

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The international price of rice - a staple food for half the world - has risen about 68% since the beginning of the year.

Tags: food, prices, poverty, rice

"We have never been less secure" about wheat

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:29:04 GMT

clipped by: willhelm

Clip Source: www.nebraska.tv

Agriculture Secretary Edward Schafer says the world has never been less secure about the near-term future of wheat.

Schafer told the International Food Aid Conference meeting in Kansas City on Wednesday that global wheat stocks are at a historic 30-year low. U.S. wheat stocks are at unprecedented 60-year low.

Against this background is the emergence of the highly virulent African stem rust that is spreading quickly.

Schafer said that 75% of U.S. wheat acres are planted to varieties that are highly susceptible to that disease.

You walk wrong

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:23:31 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: “It took 4 million years to develop our unique human foot and our consequent distinctive form of gait, a remarkable feat of bioengineering. Yet, in only a few thousand years, and with one carelessly designed instrument, our shoes, we have warped the pure anatomical form of human gait, obstructing its engineering efficiency, afflicting it with strains and stresses and denying it its natural grace of form and ease of movement head to foot.”

Clip Source: nymag.com

You Walk Wrong

It took 4 million years of evolution to perfect the human foot. But we’re wrecking it with every step we take.

it’s not your fault

It’s your shoes.

Last year, researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, published a study titled “Shod Versus Unshod: The Emergence of Forefoot Pathology in Modern Humans?” in the podiatry journal The Foot.

concluded that, prior to the invention of shoes, people had healthier feet

Among the modern subjects, the Zulu population, which often goes barefoot, had the healthiest feet while the Europeans—i.e., the habitual shoe-wearers—had the unhealthiest.

But does that really mean we don’t walk correctly? (Yes.) I mean, don’t we instinctively know how to walk? (Yes, sort of.) Isn’t walking totally natural? Yes—but shoes aren’t.

Clip Source: nymag.com

“Natural gait is biomechanically impossible for any shoe-wearing person,” wrote Dr. William A. Rossi in a 1999 article in Podiatry Management.

Brain reacts to fairness as it does to money and chocolate

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:42:29 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

The human brain responds to being treated fairly the same way it responds to winning money and eating chocolate, UCLA scientists report. Being treated fairly turns on the brain's reward circuitry.

"We may be hard-wired to treat fairness as a reward," said study co-author Matthew D. Lieberman, UCLA associate professor of psychology and a founder of social cognitive neuroscience.

"Receiving a fair offer activates the same brain circuitry as when we eat craved food, win money or see a beautiful face," said Golnaz Tabibnia, a postdoctoral scholar at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and lead author of the study, which appears in the April issue of the journal Psychological Science.

"Fairness is activating the same part of the brain that responds to food in rats," she said. This is consistent with the notion that being treated fairly satisfies a basic need, she added.

Tags: brain, fairness

Ouroboros: the serpent eats its tail

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:08:59 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: www.dragon.org

The Serpent biting its own tail is first seen as early as 1600 years BC in Egypt. From there it moved to the Phonecians and then to the Greeks, who called it the Ouroboros, which means devouring its tail.

Clip Source: teek.artspots.com

Clip Source: altreligion.about.com

Clip Source: z.about.com

Clip Source: www.wilsonsalmanac.com

Clip Source: www.wisdomportal.com

V838 Monocerotis: Hubble Space Telescope/NASA
(February 8, 2004)

Clip Source: users.ucom.net

Clip Source: www.xzentradi.com

Clip Source: www.groundzeromedia.org

The serpent locked on its tail represents immobility and yet coils around the earth demonstrating perpetual movement. It represents the confusing message of your end being your beginning, your disintegration becoming reintegration. It is death before the spark of creation. It is believed to be the representation of the grand eternal cycle.

Tags: ouroboros

Junk Mail Revenge

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:25:05 GMT

clipped by: AcesLucky
clipper's remarks: No postage necessary!

Clip Source: officeofstrategicinfluence.com

Use "Postage Paid" Envelopes to mail a brick to junk mailers!

	Step one: Get the "No Postage Necessary" envelope out of the junk mail.
	Step two: Put a brick (or anything) in a box.
	Step three: Tape the "No Postage Necessary" envelope neatly to the box
	Step four: Put it into those blue mail boxes, the parcel dump at the post office, or in your mail box.

Dear Bulk Mailer,

Please find attached to your no-postage-necessary envelope, this brick. I figured with all these great junk mails you send me every month, you'd like something in return! I know it costs twenty cents for every ounce I mail to you, so I hope it doesn't weigh too much more than an ounce.

-Resident or Homeowner

Q: How much does this cost the recipient?
A: Junk mailers PAY about twenty cents an ounce. That means an eight pound package COSTS THEM about $25. And all of the proceeds go directly to the United States Postal Service.

Q: Can you do this with email spam?
A: Sure can! http://officeofstrategicinfluence.com/spam/

Tags: junk mail, usps, postage, revenge

Regulating Evolution

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:15:08 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

Because genes encode instructions for building animal bodies, biologists once expected to find significant genetic differences among animals, reflecing their great diversity of forms. Instead very dissimilar animals have turned out to have very similar genes.

Mutations in DNA “switches” that control body-shaping genes, rather than in the genes themselves, have been a significant source of evolving differences among animals.

If humans want to understand what distinguishes animals, including ourselves, from one another, we have to look beyond genes.

At first glance, the list of animals could suggest any zoo. There’s an elephant, an armadillo, an opossum, a dolphin, a sloth, a hedgehog, big and small bats, a couple of shrews, some fish, a macaque, an orangutan, a chimpanzee and a gorilla—to name a few of the more familiar creatures. But this menagerie is not at all like any zoo that has been constructed before

It is a “virtual” zoo that contains only the DNA

sequences

of those animals

Tags: genomes, diversity, variety, nature, mutations

Do we want a truly liberal society?

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:40:36 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: A liberal society embraces pluralism, in the sense that it does not seek to impose any one vision of what it means to be virtuous or to lead a good life. Within such a society, approval is commonly expressed for John Stuart Mill’s view that “experiments in living” should not be merely tolerated, but actually welcomed and celebrated (Mill 1974: 120).

As Max Charlesworth writes, “In a liberal society personal autonomy, the right to choose one’s own way of life for oneself, is the supreme value.” He adds that this includes what he calls ethical pluralism: members of the society are free to hold a wide range of moral, religious, and non-religious positions, with no core values or public morality that it is the law’s business to enforce (Charlesworth 1993: 1). Accordingly, a liberal society makes a sharp distinction between the sphere of personal moral views and that of the law; no one can use the law to impose their beliefs on others (16-20).

Clip Source: ieet.org

The goal of a liberal society puts obligations on its citizens, that we practice reasonableness and openness to ideas, that we do not just tolerate one another but support one another to our fullest flourishing. A liberal society is not neutral about values like disease and health, sloth and effort, deceit and integrity, cowardice and courage. There are excellences that citizens of a liberal society must promote to survive.

Commentators on new biomedical technology often appear to believe that we are faced with Frankensteinian possibilities that cry out for a regulatory response. This, however, is getting things exactly back to front. On the contrary, the problem that we currently face is that widespread fear of new technologies has created an atmosphere in which liberal tolerance is under challenge. In the field of bioethics, what we need right now is a truly liberal response.

identify genuine dangers and concerns, but deal with them strictly in accordance with liberal values

Tags: liberal society, bioethics