Clipmarks | Corpus Clips

Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 11:59:33 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly.

And if you've got a problem, don't be such a crybaby (formerly cry-baby)

Researchers examined a corpus of more than 2 billion words, consisting of full sentences that appeared in newspapers, books, Web sites and blogs from 2000 onwards.

For the most part, the dictionary dropped hyphens from compound nouns, which were unified in a single word (e.g. pigeonhole) or split into two (e.g. test tube)

Formerly hyphenated words split in two:

fig leaf

hobby horse

ice cream

pin money

pot belly

test tube

water bed

Formerly hyphenated words unified in one:

bumblebee

chickpea

crybaby

leapfrog

logjam

lowlife

pigeonhole

touchline

waterborne

Tags: hyphens, language, dictionary, words, english

The Biggest Threat to the West Lies Within Itself, Not with Islam

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:32:52 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Simon Jenkins on threats to peace and democracy.

This defeatism led the American Congress to allow its president to authorise torture and detention without trial in what Senator Robert Byrd called “the slow unravelling of the people’s liberties”. It enabled a British Home Office to curb free speech and habeas corpus. It arms police, fortifies buildings and impedes the free movement of citizens. It makes every Christian suspicious of every Muslim.

Clip Source: www.timesonline.co.uk

The biggest threat to the West lies within itself, not with Islam

The chief threat to world security at present lies in the capacity of tiny groups of political Islamists to goad the West into a rolling military retaliation.

Extremists on each side feed off the others’ frenzied scenarios so as to garner money and political support for their respective armies of the night. Each sees the other as a cosmic menace and abandons communal tolerance and peaceful diplomacy to counter it.

To portray Islam as a whole as a concerted threat to western security, and to imply that the West’s democratic institutions and freedoms are not proof against that threat, is absurd and close to treason. Then to demand that western freedoms be dismantled and stored away for the duration of a “war on terror” is to wave the flag of surrender.

I believe in the robustness of the democracies created in the West over the past half-century. I am not sure that our leaders do.

Tags: terrorism, islam, christianity, religion, freedom, war, peace, democracy, west, torture

Words in your brain

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:36:35 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.sharpbrains.com

Brain Teaser: Words in your brain, learn as you exercise!

Do you know where words are stored in your brain...?

In your temporal lobe! Here is a drawing of the brain so you can see where your temporal lobe is (in green) on a profile view of the right side of your brain.

As you know your brain has two sides (two hemispheres) connected by the corpus callosum. So you have one temporal lobe on each side of the brain.

Words in the brain are not stored randomly. They seemed to be quite organized. Research has shown that words that are often heard together (such as salt and pepper) or words that share some meaning (such as nurse and doctor) are connected or associated in the brain. Once you hear one, the other is activated.

Here is a brain exercise whose aim is to stimulate the connections or associations between words in your temporal lobe.

Ready to stimulate connections in your temporal lobe(s)? Enjoy! (Solutions are below. Please don't check them until you have trid to solve all the pairs!)

Tags: brain, words, training

When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:59:27 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: The 300 apes in Spanish zoos would not be freed, but better conditions would be mandated.

Meanwhile, even in democracies, the law accords diminished rights to many humans: children, prisoners, the insane, the senile. Teenagers may not vote, philosophers who slip into dementia may be lashed to their beds, courts can order surgery or force-feeding.

Spain’s Catholic bishops attacked the vote as undermining a divine will that placed humans above animals. One said such thinking led to abortion, euthanasia and ethnic cleansing.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

If you caught your son burning ants with a magnifying glass, would it bother you less than if you found him torturing a mouse with a soldering iron? How about a snake? How about his sister?

Does Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — the Guantánamo detainee who claims he personally beheaded the reporter Daniel Pearl — deserve the rights he denied Mr. Pearl? Which ones? A painless execution? Exemption from capital punishment? Decent prison conditions? Habeas corpus?

Such apparently unrelated questions arise in the aftermath of the vote of the environment committee of the Spanish Parliament last month to grant limited rights to our closest biological relatives, the great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans.

The committee would bind Spain to the principles of the Great Ape Project, which points to apes’ human qualities, including the ability to feel fear and happiness, create tools, use languages, remember the past and plan the future.

Tags: human rights, animal rights, ethics

The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:12:11 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "Speaking at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference this past March, Peter Norvig, Google's research director, offered an update to George Box's maxim: "All models are wrong, and increasingly you can succeed without them."

Clip Source: www.wired.com

"All models are wrong, but some are useful."

So proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago, and he was right. But what choice did we have? Only models, from cosmological equations to theories of human behavior, seemed to be able to consistently, if imperfectly, explain the world around us. Until now. Today companies like Google, which have grown up in an era of massively abundant data, don't have to settle for wrong models. Indeed, they don't have to settle for models at all.

Sixty years ago, digital computers made information readable. Twenty years ago, the Internet made it reachable. Ten years ago, the first search engine crawlers made it a single database. Now Google and like-minded companies are sifting through the most measured age in history, treating this massive corpus as a laboratory of the human condition. They are the children of the Petabyte Age.

Tags: theory, data, scientific model, computation cloud, google

Stephen Hawking to unveil strange new way to tell the time

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 06:01:45 GMT

clipped by: hitchhiker08

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Stephen Hawking to unveil strange new way to tell the time

Prof Stephen Hawking is to unveil a remarkable £500,000 clock with no hands that pays tribute to the world's greatest clockmaker.

The Corpus Clock will be unveiled by Prof Stephen Hawking

One clock made by the legendary John Harrison, the pioneer of longitude, took 36 years to build and he was still calibrating it when he died at his home in London on March 24, 1776, his 83rd birthday.

The Corpus Clock has been invented and designed by Dr John Taylor for Corpus Christi College Cambridge for the exterior of the college's new library building.

Dr Taylor, an inventor and horologist who studied at the College in the 1950s has put £500,000 of his own money and seven years into the project.

"One of my heroes is John Harrison," he says.

The Corpus Clock, which is wound up by an electric motor, has no hands. "It is a new way to show time, with light," said Dr Taylor.

Tags: corpus clock, prof. stephen hawking, corpus christi college cambridge, horologist, invention, john harrison

Hang in there Texans!

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:31:36 GMT

clipped by: bignosemousie
clipper's remarks: I'm staying put, but for those that need to evacuate, stay safe.

Clip Source: www.click2houston.com

All of the forecast models predict Ike will hit somewhere north of Corpus Christi to near the Texas-Louisiana border.

Hurricane force winds extend 115 miles from Ike's center and tropical storm force winds extend 255 miles.

"About 1 a.m. Saturday it's going to begin to make landfall as a Category 3 -- it wouldn't surprise me at all if it's a Category 4," Yanez said. "It is going to spend much of Saturday moving out of here."

A 15- to 22-foot storm surge is expected wherever Ike makes landfall.

"That's the most dangerous part of a hurricane," Yanez said.

Isolated tornados are expected on the east side, commonly called the "dirty side," of the storm. Some wind gusts in Houston could reach 100 mph.

Tags: hurricane, ike

Sir Winston Churchill, Quote about Nazis

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 03:55:32 GMT

clipped by: sahara

Clip Source: quotes.liberty-tree.ca

The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.

Tags: totalitarian, government, habeus corpus

What Will George W. Bush's Legacy Be?

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:54:07 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: One phrase sums it up for me... anti-American.

Clip Source: www.theinformationparadox.com

How will the history books salvage anything positive from the last eight years of the George W. Bush presidency? With other presidents, scandal and success seem to be mixed, and if not mixed, an administration is usually labeled ineffective at worst. With G.W.B there is little from his time in office that can held up as a success or accomplishment, and more than a fair share of items that can be viewed as complete and utter failures. George W. Bush and his administration seem to have caused nearly irreparable damage on the world stage and unfortunate regression in domestic policy.

So what will we remember of George Walker Bush?

September 11, 2001

The Patriot Act

The Afghan War

The Iraqi Quagmire

Torture

Water Boarding

Abu Ghraib

Falsified intelligence

Suppression of climate science

Sinking economy

Soaring gas prices

Sinking public opinion

The Katrina debacle

Cheney shooting someone in the face

Wire Tapping

Loss of Habeas Corpus

Firing of U.S. Attorneys

Alberto Gonzalez

Scooter Libby

Enron

Blackwater

We Are At War!...and don't you forget it!....clipable

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 08:11:39 GMT

clipped by: schreibe
clipper's remarks: A summation of Bush's "State Of The Union" address that gives a well thought out critique of the deeper meaning of his words and statements. One thing that I didn't notice was his refusal to use the word "Democratic" instead of "Democrat"...may sound trivial, but this is exactly how this administration operates.

Clip Source: www.consortiumnews.com

Bush's War on the Republic

From the beginning of the “war on terror,” George W. Bush has lied to the American people about the goals, motivation and even the identity of the enemy – a propaganda exercise that continued through his 2007 State of the Union Address and that is sounding the death knell for the Republic.

Since 2001, rather than focusing on the al-Qaeda Sunni fundamentalist terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks, Bush has expanded the conflict exponentially – tossing in unrelated enemies such as Iraq’s secular dictator Saddam Hussein, Shiite-led Iran, Syria and Islamic militants opposed to Israel, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

In effect, Bush has transformed what began as a definable military objective – the defeat of “terrorist groups with global reach” – into an endless war against what he regards as evil, a conflict so vague that it is claiming as collateral damage America’s “unalienable rights” and the Founders’ checks and balances on the powers of the Executive.

In Bush’s State of the Union speech on Jan. 23, there could be heard a requiem for the Republic.

“The evil that inspired and rejoiced in 9/11 is still at work in the world. And so long as that’s the case, America is still a nation at war,” Bush told Congress.

But that “evil” will always be “at work in the world,” so America will always be “a nation at war” and thus, under Bush’s theories of unlimited Commander-in-Chief powers, the American Republic will be banished permanently.

Bluntly put, Bush and his neoconservative legal advisers don't believe in the “unalienable rights” guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, including ones as fundamental as the habeas corpus right to a fair trial and protections against warrantless searches and seizures. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com's "Gonzales Questions Habeas Corpus."]

Tags: bush, politics, war

Alien Hand Syndrome

Sat, 19 May 2007 08:57:19 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: Another totally weird syndrome! I find these disorders fascinating. So much can be learned about the human mind and consciousness if we ever learn to understand these disorders. I have heard of several cases where that hand is aggressive and tries to choke or hit and harm the *owner* constantly. Creepy...
The Anarchic Hand

Clip Source: www.damninteresting.com

Alien Hand Syndrome

There is a very real, very disturbing, and very rare medical condition called "Alien Hand Syndrome" (AHS). An individual with this neurological disorder has full sensation in the rogue hand, but is unable to control its movements, and does not feel that it is a part of their body. The hand becomes personified, as if it has a will of its own, and its owner will usually deny ownership of the limb.

As a side effect of brain surgery, or an injury to the corpus callosum (the area of the brain which connects the two halves of the brain), the movements are usually grasping motions in the non-dominant hand. When caused by head trauma, similar grasping and groping motions will often involuntarily occur in the dominant hand.

the alien hand may also engage in complex purposeful behavior, such as compulsive manipulation of tools, undoing buttons, or tearing clothes. Sometimes the sufferer is completely unaware of what the hand is doing

There is currently no treatment

Tags: psychology, consciousness, neurology, brain, body, disorder, syndrome

Bush: War Criminal's Crimes; Mass Murderer; WarMonger,

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 23:22:24 GMT

clipped by: righthand
clipper's remarks: Bush wants to murder more. We have to kill Iranians "over there," Bush says, "before they come over here." There is no possibility that Iranians or any Muslims who have no air force, no navy, no modern military technology are going to "come over here," and no indication that they plan to do so. The Muslims are disunited and have been for centuries. That is what makes them vulnerable to colonial rule. If Muslims were united, the US would already have lost its army in Iraq. Indeed, it would not have been able to put an army in Iraq.

Lacking US troops with which to invade Iran, the Bush administration has decided to bomb Iran "back into the stone age." Punishing air and missile attacks have been designed not merely to destroy Iran’s nuclear energy projects, but also to destroy the public infrastructure, the economy, and the ability of the government to function.

... http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts222.html

Clip Source: www.lewrockwell.com

US Special Forces teams are conducting terrorist operations inside Iran

US government is financing terrorist and separatist groups within Iran

B-2 stealth bombers have been refitted to carry 30,000-pound "bunker buster" bombs

Air Force jets and missile systems are deployed in bases in countries bordering or near to Iran

Navy aircraft carrier strike forces are deployed off Iran

The media is silent

Congress is absent,

Americans are distracted

Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran.

US war doctrine has been altered to permit first-strike nuclear attack on Iran and other non-nuclear countries

Pew Foundation’s world polls show that despite all the American and Israeli propaganda against Iran, the US and Israel are regarded as no less threats to world stability than demonized Iran

Bush has discarded habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions, justified torture and secret trials, damned critics as anti-American

is responsible

puts Bush high on the list of mass murderers of all time

Tags: bush, criminal, murder, crimes, iran, war

24 hours in pictures - May 11

Mon, 12 May 2008 20:30:33 GMT

clipped by: righthand
clipper's remarks: BEWARE: Big COCK in one, DEAD child in another

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Gifu, Japan: Fishermen control their trained cormorants from traditional wooden boats on the opening day of the fishing season. Cormorant fishing has been the traditional way of catching sweetfish in Japan for 1,300 years

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Serbian parliamentary elections

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Switzerland

Battle of the Queens

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Shanghai, China: A senior citizen plays the accordion in a park

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Haiti: A child walks past a hardware store at the Cite Soleil slum

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Cocoa, Florida

100-acre brush fire

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

China: Visitors check out the ancient sex artifacts on display at an exhibition

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Philippines: A worker arranges crates of beer

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Irrawaddy, Burma: A man finds the body of a child

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Macedonia:

electoral rally

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Melbourne, Australia: Residents at the Corpus Christi Catholic home embrace the physical and mental sides of swordplay in an effort to stay healthy

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Jakarta

protest in front of the presidential palace

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Burma: A young survivor

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

traditional Bavarian costume

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Shwayfat, Lebanon: Pigeons fly over the town

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Shwayfat, Lebanon

Druze activist

executed

Tags: photos

Attorney General Gonzales Suspends The Constitution!

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 06:40:27 GMT

clipped by: schreibe
clipper's remarks: Read the entire article for a real thrill!

Clip Source: www.consortiumnews.com

Gonzales Questions Habeas Corpus

In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales questioned whether the U.S. Constitution grants habeas corpus rights of a fair trial to every American.

Responding to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, Gonzales argued that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights; it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales’s remark left Specter, the committee’s ranking Republican, stammering.

“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.

“You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense,” Specter said.

While Gonzales’s statement has a measure of quibbling precision to it, his logic is troubling because it would suggest that many other fundamental rights that Americans hold dear also don’t exist because the Constitution often spells out those rights in the negative.

That Attorney General Gonzales would express such an extraordinary opinion, doubting the constitutional protection of habeas corpus, suggests either a sophomoric mind or an unwillingness to respect this well-established right, one that the Founders considered so important that they embedded it in the original text of the Constitution.

Other cherished rights – including freedom of religion and speech – were added later in the first 10 amendments, known as the Bill of Rights.

Tags: bush, politics, constitution, habeas corpus

Are you a Patriot or a Loyalist?

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 16:47:12 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: For anyone who dares to call peaceful protesters wackos or delusional, I would dare to differ and perhaps even call them cowards or traitors. The whole article is worth a read. These considerations would aptly apply to anyone, anywhere and in any country. Always.

Clip Source: www.news-journalonline.com

Patriot, loyalist or worse yet in assault of liberty

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is eerily similar to Germany's Enabling Act of 1933, the passage of which followed Germany's own "Sept. 11" in the burning of its parliament building, the Reichstag, on Feb. 27, 1933. The 1933 Enabling Act allowed Germany's own "Decider," Adolf Hitler, to take that country from one of a people's parliamentary government into one of a dictatorship and into the horrors of Nazism that spread throughout Europe for the next 12 years. The rationale given to the German people in 1933 for the removal of their liberties was that dictatorial powers were necessary to protect them from terrorism.

Our own liberties have been removed for the very same reason. Shouldn't we be paying attention here?

I encourage the reader to turn off your television set and learn about the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the Patriot Acts, the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act of 2007, which now allows our "Decider" to declare martial law without states' consent, and then take a few minutes to read the Bill of Rights, if not the entire U.S. Constitution.

Those who refuse to listen to anything unless it's from a member of the "Party of Lincoln," might consider the following from President Lincoln himself: "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

And to those sycophants masquerading as "love it or leave it" Americans living in our "land of the free and home of the brave," Lincoln had this to say: "To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men."

Being a loyalist is easy. Being a patriot takes the courage to speak out in protest, albeit courage that any one of us can muster. Mark Twain wrote, "In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."

Tags: bush, freedom, habeus corpus, human rights, mca, politics