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Why we walk on two legs?

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:05:53 GMT

clipped by: syncopath

The truth about why we walk on two legs: it saves energy

Scientists compared the amount of energy expended by humans and chimps when walking on a treadmill and found that a two-legged gait is about 75 per cent less costly compared with walking on all fours.

The study suggests that it all comes down to energy expenditure and how costly it is to move around in terms of the food required.

Explaining why humans went from a four-legged gait to a two-legged, upright posture has proven to be one of the most difficult and contentious issues in evolution.

Rival theories

* Tree walking: A recent theory suggests that our tree-living ancestors walked upright on branches, using their arms for balance.

* A cooling effect: Another idea is that it was cooler to walk upright in savannah grasslands because by doing so there was less surface area of the body exposed to the Sun.

* Wading in water:

Modern-day chimps often adopt a two-legged gait when walking through water.

Clip Source: my.opera.com

Over half of Americans believe in guardian angels

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:04:01 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Also, political party was linked to religious beliefs, with 77 percent of Republicans saying they believed in heaven, compared to 54 percent of Democrats.

Those Americans who say they do not believe in God -- four percent -- as well as those who say they have no religion -- 11 percent -- were very close the figures in the 2005 survey.

In all 45 percent of Americans say they have had at least two religious encounters in their lives, the survey found, and conservative Protestants were more likely than Catholics or Jews to report religious or mystical experiences.

Clip Source: uk.news.yahoo.com

More than half of Americans believe they are protected by a guardian angel and two in three are certain that heaven exists, according to a study of US religious beliefs released Thursday.

The survey, conducted by researchers at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, asked 350 questions about religion to 1,648 adults across the country.

Fifty-five percent said they believed they were protected from harm by a guardian angel, a figure that researcher Christopher Bader said came as a surprise.

"To find out that more than half of the American public believes this was shocking to me. I did not expect that," he said.

Sixty-seven percent said they were "absolutely sure" heaven exists and 17 percent believed it "probably" does. Seventy-three percent of Americans believe in hell, it found.

Women are more likely than men to believe in heaven (68 percent to 56 percent), blacks more than whites (86 percent to 60 percent), southerners more than easterners (76 percent to 50 percent).

Tags: religion, angels, usa, belief

Glorious Glass Art

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:21:35 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.colourlovers.com

Dale Chihuly

chihuly.com

Marvin Lipofsky

Wikipedia: Marvin Lipofsky
marvinlipofsky.com

Dominick Labino

wikipedia: Dominick Labino
wexlergallery.com

Harvey Littleton

wikipedia: Harvery Littleton
more images

Bob Crooks

bobcrooks.com

More Inspiring Images of Glass Art

Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton

Feffef

Foto Twerp

Waiting for Sarah

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 04:20:32 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: 24 days after her nomination, Sarah Palin has yet to announce a news conference. Never before in modern American history have the American people, through the media, had so little access to a national candidate. Now why would that be?

Clip Source: www.truthdig.com

Waiting for Sarah

Daily Dish:

It is now 24 days since she was announced as a potential president of the United States next January and she still hasn’t given a news conference or has any plans to hold one. This black-out of all serious press access has never happened in modern American political history before.

If that doesn’t concern you, what will?

Read more

Tags: palin, mccain

A Conservative For Obama

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:34:56 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: I saw this clipped earlier, but I didn't realize the gravity of the endorsement. Wow, a publisher of the National Review saying, "But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. "

Clip Source: www.dmagazine.com

A Conservative for Obama

My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I later became its publisher.

But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

As a cause, conservatism may be dead.

I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

Tags: obama, mccain, conservative, liberal

Richard Dawkins' jaw-dropping talk on our bizarre universe

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:41:57 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Richard Dawkins discusses the question of limits on human understanding. As a species we evolved to cope with the world within a particular range of physical dimensions. These determine our common sense view of the world. How far can the plasticity of our brains transcend this limitation?

Clip Source: ovablastic.blogspot.com

[Video]

Tags: richard dawkins, universe, understanding

Obama leads in electoral count; CO turning blue?

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 04:39:50 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: 238-189 in e.v. Note CO graph - a small lead, but a pretty steady one, for Obama.

Clip Source: www.pollster.com

Rush Limbaugh Hates Mexicans - But in a Funny Way!

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:05:27 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks:

My problem with Rush is not that he's a bigot. Bigots are actually funny to me in the way that people who still wear parachute pants give me a chuckle. What bothers me about Rush's ilk is that they don't actually have the stones to be real racists or women haters or anti- Semites. Though they irresponsibly fan the flames of hatred, they don't own the strength of their convictions. When they are called on their stuff they run back to their bunker, which is heavily fortified for a reason, crying "but it was only a joke!"

Like when Rush joked that Obama was a "haf-rican," or when he jested that Obama was a "magical negro."

Oh, the hilarity.

Be a man, Rush. Be a hateful man, but be a man instead of a pasty- lookin' crackhead drug addict whose wives keep ditching him 'cause he's impotent.

That last bit was just satire, of course, so please don't take it out of context.

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Rush Limbaugh Hates Mexicans (But in a Funny Way)!

Rush is upset that the Obama camp is portraying him as being a bigot.

By quoting a bigoted statement he's made.

The Obama campaign is running new Spanish language ads in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico which quote Limbaugh as using the phrase "stupid and unskilled Mexicans" and telling Mexicans to "shut your mouth, or get out" of America.

In his WSJ piece Limbaugh doesn't deny making the statements. His issue is that the statements are taken out of context.

Context?

What is it with bigots that makes them think there is a context for bigotry? When much was made of that paragon of virtue Bill Bennett's assertion "if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose -- you could abort every black baby in this country,"

No one who wasn't wearing a white hood has ever fully explained to me what the context is for positing the extermination of black children to lower the crime rate.