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Little arrow that rewrites history books

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:25:15 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Two researchers from Wits University believe that what they have discovered is a 60 000-year-old arrow that was fired from the earliest known bow. Their discovery has pushed back the origins of bow-and-arrow technology by 20 000 years.

The bow, probably made of wood and long since decayed, was used at a time when Neanderthals in Europe were using large spears in duels with woolly mammoths and other large prehistoric game.

The bone arrow, just 5cm long, was excavated by Wadley at the Sibudu cave, near the coastal town of Ballito in KwaZulu Natal, two years ago.

It's mystery who the people were who fashioned the arrow.

Also at this time, humankind was leaving an ever-increasing archaeological record of the first inklings of modern human behaviour. They were burying the dead, using coloured pigments and wearing jewellery.

"This at a time a few thousand years before they walked out of Africa, to become the ancestors of all humans," said Backwell.

Tags: archaeology, anthropology, south africa, prehistory, arrow, science

Polar bear shot dead after 200-mile swim !!!

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:40:29 GMT

clipped by: righthand
clipper's remarks: Do Iceland police like to kill too?

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

The polar bear lies dead after being shot

BST

Polar bear shot dead after 200-mile swim

A polar bear that swam more than 200 miles in near-freezing waters to reach Iceland was shot on arrival in case it posed a threat to humans

The bear, thought to be first to reach the country in at least 15 years, was killed after local police claimed it was a danger to humans, triggering an outcry from animal lovers

The operation to kill the animal was captured on film

The adult male, weighing 250kg, was presumed to have swum some 200 miles from Greenland, or from a distant chunk of Arctic ice

"There was fog up in the hills and we took the decision to kill the bear before it could disappear into the fog"

Iceland's environment minister, Thorunn Sveinbjarnardottir, gave the green light for police to shoot the bear because the correct tranquiliser would have taken 24 hours to be flown in

account was disputed by the chief vet in the town of Blönduó

he had the drugs necessary to immobilise the bear

Tags: iceland, animmal

41 Delicious Flower Photographs

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:26:23 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: digital-photography-school.com

Photographing flowers can be one of the hardest things to do. I have deep respect for any photographer who manages to do it well.

In these days I am trying different new things and shooting flowers is part of my adventure. To get myself inspired I collected some of the best photographs of flowers that I could find on flickr. I hope that you enjoy these 41 delicious flower photographs as much as I do. Enjoy and get inspired!

Tags: photography, photographs, art, flowers

A $45T Clean Energy Revolution

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:52:23 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: Oh yeah....this is huge! Bigger than the internet and telecommunications revolution...the energy revolution seems poised to be the defining innovation of this century.

In addition to creating a much more stable source of energy and helping the environment, the opportunity for investment and new jobs makes this the most exciting opportunity i've ever seen.

Clip Source: biz.yahoo.com

The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday

The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a "energy revolution" that would greatly reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth.

Environment ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and Russia backed the 50 percent target in a meeting in Japan last month and called for it to be officially endorsed at the G-8 summit in July.

"If industry is convinced there will be policy for serious, deep CO2 emission cuts, then these investments will be made by the private sector," Gielen said.

Tags: alternative energy, wind power, renewable

How Obama Did It

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:40:14 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad
clipper's remarks: "How did he do it? How did Obama become the first Democratic insurgent in a generation or more to knock off the party's Establishment front runner? Facing an operation as formidable as Clinton's, Obama says in an interview, "was liberating ... What I'd felt was that we could try some things in a different way and build an organization that reflected my personality and what I thought the country was looking for. We didn't have to unlearn a bunch of bad habits."

Clip Source: www.time.com

How Obama Did It

Obama and wife Michelle, surrounded by close aides and advisers, prepare to go onstage before his victory speech in St. Paul, Minn.

Barack Obama was campaigning last October in South Carolina when he got an urgent call from Penny Pritzker, the hotel heiress who leads his campaign's finance committee. About 200 of his biggest fund raisers were meeting in Des Moines, Iowa, and among them, near panic was setting in. Pritzker's team had raised money faster than any other campaign ever had. Its candidate was drawing mega-crowds wherever he went. Yet he was still running at least 20 points behind Hillary Clinton in polls. His above-the-fray brand of politics just wasn't getting the job done, and some of his top moneymen were urging him to rethink his strategy, shake up his staff, go negative. You'd better get here, Pritzker told Obama. And fast.

Mexican/American Border - war zone

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:26:34 GMT

clipped by: willhelm
clipper's remarks: Thousands have been murdered on the Mexican/American border - Over 6000. Why is this not in the Mainstream Media?

Clip Source: www.signonsandiego.com

To send a chilling message to their underworld rivals, Mexican drug cartels are adopting a method of intimidation made notorious by Middle Eastern terror groups.

Already this year, at least 26 people have been decapitated in Mexico, with heads stuck on fences, dumped in trash piles and – most recently – tossed onto a nightclub dance floor.

Although beheading goes back centuries as a form of execution, it has become the latest tactical escalation of an ongoing turf war that gets nastier all the time, with hit men looking for new ways to instill fear.

“Before, they tortured the hell out of people, but they didn't throw their heads out in public,” said James Kuykendall, a retired U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent. “Whatever they did, they did not do this – they did not impale them on the side of the road.”

Naguib Mahfouz - Quotation

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:03:25 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad

Clip Source: www.refdesk.com

"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions." - Naguib Mahfouz

Fideism

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:37:09 GMT

clipped by: Antara
clipper's remarks: I only learned about this "school of thought" recently Just passin on a link

Clip Source: plato.stanford.edu

Fideism

“Fideism” is the name given to that school of thought—to which Tertullian himself is frequently said to have subscribed—which answers that faith is in some sense independent of—if not outright adversarial toward—reason. In contrast to the more rationalistic tradition of natural theology, with its arguments for the existence of God, fideism holds that reason is unnecessary and inappropriate for the exercise and justification of religious belief. The term itself derives from fides, the Latin word for faith, and can be rendered literally as faith-ism. “Fideism” is thus to be understood not as a synonym for “religious belief,” but as denoting a particular philosophical account of faith's appropriate jurisdiction vis-a-vis that of reason.

2.2 The Usual Suspects

2.2.1 Pascal
2.2.2 Kierkegaard
2.2.3 James
2.2.4 Wittgenstein

Tags: faith, reason, religion, philosophy

Obama's Third Way

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:13:19 GMT

clipped by: willhelm

Clip Source: www.americanthinker.com

Obama, the student of Saul Alinksy, sees the necessity of reeling in those of faith, and making them part of the class struggle, while avoiding the harsher approach of demanding that the people give up their faith as a consequence of their commitment to revolutionary change. Americans have proven much more stubborn in the religious realm than the Europeans, who fell hook, line and sinker for Marx, Lenin and Stalin.

America might seem more amenable to the kind of Third Way socialism that Hitler brought to Germany, while cunningly using Christian jargon to wile his way into Aryan minds and hearts.

Black liberation theology, I have discovered (Read Part One here.), is yet another form of Third Way socialism, developed by Marxists seeking a way around the stubbornness of the ardently faithful, a way to hook folks on the revolution, without putting up a fight to eradicate their religion.