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'The Grid' Could Soon Make the Internet Obsolete

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:54:05 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

The Internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said.

110 best books:The perfect library

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:42:04 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

110 best books: The perfect library

From classics and sci-fi to poetry, biographies and books that changed the world… we present the ultimate reading list. Illustrations by David Juniper

CLASSICS

The Illiad and The Odyssey
Homer

Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen

Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë

POETRY

Sonnets
Shakespeare

Divine Comedy
Dante

Odes
John Keats

Paradise Lost
John Milton

Songs of Innocence and Experience
William Blake

LITERARY FICTION

The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James

For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway

One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez

ROMANTIC FICTION

Rebecca
Daphne du Maurier

Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell

Dr Zhivago
Boris Pasternak

CHILDREN'S BOOKS

The Lord of the Rings
J.R. R. Tolkien

The Railway Children
E. Nesbit

SCI-FI

Frankenstein
Mary Shelley

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne

The Time Machine
H.G. Wells

Brave New World
Aldous Huxley

1984
George Orwell

2001: A Space Odyssey
Arthur C. Clarke

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick

CRIME

Tags: book, writing, history, literature, lists

Freaky roads

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:33:14 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.night4joy.com

The blog post that wouldn't die

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 10:35:44 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: I want to talk about atheists and anger.

This has been a hard piece to write, and it may be a hard one to read. I'm not going to be as polite and good-tempered as I usually am in this blog; this piece is about anger, and for once I'm going to fucking well let myself be angry.

But I think it's important. One of the most common criticisms lobbed at the newly-vocal atheist community is, "Why do you have to be so angry?" So I want to talk about:

1. Why atheists are angry;

2. Why our anger is valid, valuable, and necessary;

And 3. Why it's completely fucked-up to try to take our anger away from us.

So let's start with why we're angry. Or rather -- because this is my blog and I don't presume to speak for all atheists -- why I'm angry.<<

http://gretachristina.typepad.com/

Clip Source: gretachristina.typepad.com

I'm angry that children get taught by religion to hate and fear their bodies and their sexuality.

I'm angry at preachers who tell women in their flock to submit to their husbands because it's the will of God, even when their husbands are beating them within an inch of their lives.

I'm angry that women are dying of AIDS in Africa and South America because the Catholic Church has convinced them that using condoms makes baby Jesus cry.

I'm angry that almost half of Americans believe in creationism.

I'm angry that so many parents and religious leaders terrorize children

with vivid, traumatizing stories of eternal burning and torture to ensure that they'll be too frightened to even question religion.

I'm angry that I have to know more about their fucking religion than the believers do.

But perhaps most of all, I get angry -- sputteringly, inarticulately, pulse-racingly angry -- when believers chide atheists for being so angry.

"Why do you have to be so angry all the time?"

October 15, 2007

Tags: blogs, atheism, religion

The color of plants on other worlds

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:16:55 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: What color will alien plants be? The question matters scientifically because the surface color of a planet can reveal whether anything lives there—specifically, whether organisms collect energy from the parent star by the process of photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis is adapted to the spectrum of light that reaches organisms. This spectrum is the result of the parent star’s radiation spectrum, combined with the filtering effects of the planet’s atmosphere and, for aquatic creatures, of liquid water.

Light of any color from deep violet through the near-infrared could power photosynthesis. Around stars hotter and bluer than our sun, plants would tend to absorb blue light and could look green to yellow to red. Around cooler stars such as red dwarfs, planets receive less visible light, so plants might try to absorb as much of it as possible, making them look black.<<

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

On other worlds, plants could be red, blue, even black

What color will alien plants be?

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

VARIOUS TYPES OF F-STAR FOLIAGE

If it isn't easy being green on Earth, where chlorophyll is well tuned to absorb most of the energy in our sun's yellow light, imagine the difficulties elsewhere in the galaxy. Plants growing on worlds around cooler, brighter or more tempestuous stars would need to rely on red, blue or even black pigments to survive.

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

EARTH PLANTS

For our plants, it's easy to be green.

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

TYPE M STARS

Type M stars (red dwarfs) are feeble, so plants on an orbiting Earth-like world might need to be black to absorb all the available light.

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

YOUNG M STARS

Young M stars fry planetary surfaces with ultra-violet flares, so any organisms must be aquatic.

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

TYPE F STAR

Around F stars, plants might get too much light and need to reflect much of it.

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

SUPERGIANT TYPE F STAR

A shiny, blue-pigmented plant awaits the scorching assault of its supergiant F-type sun.

Charlton Heston, RIP

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:27:40 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator

Clip Source: www.powerlineblog.com

April 6, 2008

Charlton Heston, RIP

The death of Charlton Heston represents a great loss for American art. It's possible to imagine other fine actors of his era playing the roles Heston made unforgettable, but it's not possible to imagine the other actors making them unforgettable. From Moses to Judah Ben-Hur to George Taylor and all the rest before and after, Heston uniquely combined physical grace, a superb physique, that resonant voice, a commanding presence, and a great actor's total commitment to the part.

I think it's fair to say that we shall not look upon his like again.

Tags: actor, activist, charlton heston, rip

New Zealander Uses Hedgehog as Weapon

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 13:13:39 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A man in New Zealand has been charged with using a hedgehog as a weapon, the New Zealand Herald has reported.

Police said William Singalargh, 27, had hurled the hedgehog about 5m (16ft) at a 15-year-old boy.

"It hit the victim in the leg, causing a large, red welt and several puncture marks," said Senior Sgt Bruce Jenkins, in the North Island town of Whakatane.

It was unclear whether the hedgehog was still alive when it was thrown, though it was dead when collected as evidence.

The police spokesman said the suspect was arrested "for assault with a weapon, namely the hedgehog."

Tags: new zealand, hedgehog