Clipmarks | Trick Clips

Brain Blasting Laser

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:26:39 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: In a world first, a man was strapped to a bed in Paris and had laser beams fired into his brain. He not only survived but, amazingly, wasn't James Bond.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

The revolutionary surgery was carried out at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital to destroy a brain tumor that wasn't responding to conventional treatment. Drilling a hole in somebody's skull and piping laser destruction into it, on the other hand, definitely counts as "unconventional treatment" and destroyed the tumor.

A laser's ability to vaporise things is widely known - thanks to movies it was known long before it was actually true. But in medical applications the trick isn't blowing things up, but convincing the laser to stop burning things up in a precisely controlled way. In this case fiber optic cabling (like copper wire for light) was used to direct the laser to the correct location, and constant Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) allowed surgeons to monitor its progress on a screen - like a very expensive videogame. And you only get one life.

Steam Devils

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:44:57 GMT

clipped by: mariana3

Clip Source: www.spaceweather.com

Steam devil season is underway. In late summer-early fall when waters are still warm but morning air is growing cold, little tornadoes of steam are often seen dancing across lake surfaces. Iowa photographer Mike Hollingshead caught this one at sunrise on August 29th:

"I saw these amazing devils on a small lake near DeSoto Bend," he says. "The rapid motion in them can be rather captivating if you can get a close enough view; my 400mm lens did the trick."

Steam devils appear when vapor released by a warm lake condenses rapidly in cooler air above. Light winds spin condensing plumes of steam into dancing columns. The bigger the lake, the bigger the devils. Steam devils on Lake Superior have been observed to rise 1500 ft tall!

"These steam devils really seem to prefer the morning shadow line of some trees along the lake shore," notes Hollingshead. "Differential heating must help them get started there."

Tags: earth, geoscience, earthscience, climate

Joe Biden, Change We Can Drink To!

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:09:16 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: About Biden’s obnoxious and public displays of drunkenness…

…If this is how he acts ON CAMERA when campaigning, imagine what might go on behind closed doors when he’s truly under pressure, like for instance, in the Oval Office during a crisis…

And as Team Obama takes aim at Sarah Palin for being a national security lightweight, more and more people are finding that charge to be hypocritical. First off, Obama himself (ya know, the candidate at the TOP of the ticket) has ZERO foreign policy creds. And now it’s becoming increasingly apparent that his VP choice is a lightweight in more ways than one.

Don’t you think it’s a little more important for the media to unearth whether Biden has an alcohol problem, than to worry about Sarah Palin’s 17 year old daughter and whether she is pregnant or not?

http://theconservativepost.com/WordPress/?p=540

Clip Source: texasdarlin.wordpress.com

Elect Obama, and THIS guy is but a heartbeat away…

[Video]

Yeah, I’ll take my chances with Sarah. In a heartbeat.

Clip Source: texasdarlin.wordpress.com

A couple of days ago we asked if Biden was drinking on the job, based on a video from the campaign trail in which he staggered on the stage and slurred his speech when introducing his wife Jill, and both Obamas.

Now, this second video has emerged, on No Quarter and elsewhere…

[Video]

You are NOT hallucinating and this is not a camera trick, the man singing and dancing above IS Joe Biden, and as can be easily assessed, he is disgustingly DRUNK.

After trying to paint Palin as an “inexperienced” candidate, a clearly ridiculous attempt since their main candidate fares far worse than her in this aspect, they are now trimming down their attack to only one complaint: “She doesn’t have ANY National Security experience!”

Tags: joe biden, obama, campaign trail

How to Disown a Body Part

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:09:17 GMT

clipped by: Smoke TNT

Clip Source: sciencenow.sciencemag.org

Here's a trick to make a rubber hand come to life. Hide your right hand under a cloth and stick the rubber hand where your right hand should be. Now have someone stroke your right hand and the fake hand at the same time. Before you know it, you'll begin to "feel" sensation in the rubber hand. But what happens to your real right hand? New research suggests that your body begins to disown it.

Enlarge Image

Hand fake. A volunteer with a fake right hand (middle).

Credit: Lorimer Moseley

Psychologists have used the rubber-hand illusion for years to study how people perceive body boundaries. How, for example, does your brain know where you stop and a bicycle begins? Brain scans reveal that the premotor cortex, the part of the brain that integrates vision and touch, helps the body adopt the rubber hand, but no one had looked at what was going on with the hidden, real hand.

Tags: science, human, body

Who's Behind Anti-Palin Smear Site?

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 08:01:49 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Suddenly appearing among the Google search results for “sarah palin gay,” a web site titled: Sarah Palin Supports Gay Rights.

Clip Source: littlegreenfootballs.com

Interesting. There’s nothing else on the page. This sure looks like the work of the dastardly right-wing anti-gay attack machine, doesn’t it?

But look who’s really behind this.

In the Linux console, if you enter the following commands, you can learn the secrets of a political dirty trick. First, look up the host of ‘sarahpalingayrights.com’ to get the site’s IP address.

host sarahpalingayrights.com
sarahpalingayrights.com has address 74.208.74.232

Then use the same command to look up the domain name pointer of that IP address.

host 74.208.74.232
232.74.208.74.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer obamadefense.com

Well, well. “Obamadefense.com,” eh?

And what happens if you enter obamadefense.com on your browser’s address line?

Why, you’re redirected to none other than FightTheSmears.com, the official Barack Obama site that’s supposed to be defending him against smears.

Looks like they may have a second purpose: to generate a few smears of their own.

(Hat tip: sk.)

Tags: gov sarah palin, smear site

“All I know is that I know nothing” - the visual illusion

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:58:22 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: "Long before scientists were studying the properties of neurons, artists had devised a series of techniques to “trick” the brain into thinking that a flat canvas was three-dimensional, or that a series of brushstrokes was actually a still life".

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

How tricking the eye reveals the inner workings of the brain

The Neural Correlate Society recently announced the winners of its annual Best Visual Illusion contest.

Clip Source: illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

It’s a fact of neuroscience that everything we experience is actually a figment of our imagination. Although our sensations feel accurate and truthful, they do not necessarily reproduce the physical reality of the outside world.

many experiences in daily life reflect the physical stimuli that enter the brain. But the same neural machinery that interprets actual sensory inputs is also responsible for our dreams, delusions and failings of memory. In other words, the real and the imagined share a physical source in the brain. So take a lesson from Socrates: “All I know is that I know nothing.”

One of the most important tools used by neuroscientists to understand how the brain creates its sense of reality is the visual illusion.

"Secret behind Indian Guru levitation revealed"

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:17:05 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly

Clip Source: mysterytopia.com

Secret behind Indian Guru levitation revealed

[Video]

Accounts of Indian Guru Yogis performing acts of levitation have been documented as far back as 1884, but when a report and pictures were published in 1936 of Yogi Subbayah Pullavar, an Indian Guru, levitating for 4 minutes in front of some 150 witnesses, a serious interest into Yogis and their power of levitation.

However, even when Yogi Pullavar performed his trick there was some questions into why he was hidden in the tent before and after actually levitating in the air.

“Yogi Pullavar’s attendants erected a small tent in an open area. Yogi Pullavar then entered the tent where he remained hidden from view for a few minutes. The attendants then removed the tent.

Yogi Pullavar was seen suspended horizontally several feet above the ground. He was in a trance, lightly resting his hand on top of a cloth covered stick.”

The Science of Magic: Turning Tricks into Research

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 13:59:42 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

The Science of Magic

There is a fascinating review in Nature Reviews Neuroscience this month about the cognitive science of magic tricks

The article attempts to list and describe in neuroscientific terms the techniques that magicians use to trick their audiences. The authors break down these into "visual illusions (after-images), optical illusions ('smoke and mirrors'), cognitive illusions (inattentional blindness), special effects (explosions, fake gunshots, et cetera), and secret devices and mechanical artifacts (gimmicks)." The use of visual illusions to study perception is certainly nothing new, but the emphasis on cognitive illusions -- illusions that trick higher order perceptions like attention and judgment -- is novel.

Clip Source: www.nature.com

Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Attention and awareness in stage magic: turning tricks into research

Box 1 | Pickpockets pick your brain

Table 1 | Types of conjuring effects^*

Box 3 | Magic techniques in the choice-blindness paradigm

Tags: science, magic, cognition, illusion, article, visual, neuroscience

Joan Baez: ‘I Was Right 40 Years Ago and I Am Right Now!’

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 08:37:09 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Great article on sister Joan!

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

Age has not wearied Joan Baez, the queen of protest, but it’s calmed her down ... a bit

These days, the warbling falsetto that Baez brought to We Shall Overcome and Babe I'm Gonna Leave You in the Sixties has been deepened by age, but she's still using the songs to get across her core messages of pacifism, social responsibility and, for the first time, party allegiance, saying of her endorsement of Barack Obama: "For years I chose not to engage in party politics. At this time, however, changing that posture feels like the responsible thing to do."

"Little by little it became clear that Bush was bizarre - and dangerous," she says. "I would do concerts where I would see people in the audience sitting with their arms crossed, looking angry as I said: ‘I was right 40 years ago and I am right now!' and throw my fist in the air. Now they're listening. Bush's great trick is to suggest that to go against him is to be unpatriotic. Slowly people realised that."

The Moral Instinct

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:40:36 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: "the science of the moral sense can advance it, by allowing us to see through the illusions that evolution and culture have saddled us with and to focus on goals we can share and defend. As Anton Chekhov wrote, “Man will become better when you show him what he is like.”

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The Moral Instinct

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them,” wrote Immanuel Kant, “the starry heavens above and the moral law within.” These days, the moral law within is being viewed with increasing awe, if not always admiration. The human moral sense turns out to be an organ of considerable complexity, with quirks that reflect its evolutionary history and its neurobiological foundations.

Morality is not just any old topic in psychology but close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is what gives each of us the sense that we are worthy human beings.

So dissecting moral intuitions is no small matter. If morality is a mere trick of the brain, some may fear, our very grounds for being moral could be eroded. Yet as we shall see, the science of the moral sense can instead be seen as a way to strengthen those grounds, by clarifying what morality is and how it should steer our actions.

Simple Trick to Stay Motivated When Times Get Tough

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:55:23 GMT

clipped by: mugofcoffee
clipper's remarks: It’s the everdayness of our lives, the daily minutiae that often gets us through the really hard times—the loss of family, illnesses, joblessness. So let that same principle work for you on a micro level by creating some structured everydayness with your projects.

Clip Source: www.onsimplicity.net

So there was this girl. She enjoyed writing, and was having moderate to middling success at it. Some days were long. Some were hard. Sometimes she felt simply tapped. But she kept writing with no changes for one reason, and one reason alone: she had the next step laid out for her.

So what’s the easy trick to staying motivated?

Schedule yourself in advance.

Here’s why: it’s too easy to let emotions dictate whether we continue to work on our dreams. When you have a bad day, it’s natural to want to take a break. But a break becomes a rest, a rest becomes a hiatus, and that becomes, well… the black hole of doom. Before you know it, you’re sucking your Doritos-dyed thumb, zombified out in front of Saved by the Bell reruns (or Walker, Texas Ranger—your call).

Create the Next Step When Times Are Good

So you had a bad day. It happens. Check your calendar and look ahead to tomorrow. As Scarlett O’Hara, my favorite procrastinor, would say, “Tomorrow is another day.”

Pelosi's Shameful Record of Voting Against Military

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:32:37 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Despite the calls for improved military absentee voting procedures by the people affected most, not a single Democrat crossed the aisle to co-sponsor a bill introduced by Rep. Roy Blunt that would have created a clearer path to having absentee military ballots counted in the 2008 election and beyond.

Democrats, led by Speaker Pelosi, ultimately killed efforts to improve GI suffrage instead of working to extend the most basic democratic right to the men and women serving our country overseas. America is not fooled by Pelosi's empty words.

Retired U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Charles Henry wrote in the July issue of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings: 'While virtually everyone involved...seems to agree that military people deserve at least equal opportunity when it comes to having their votes counted, indications are that in November 2008, many thousands of service members who try to vote will do so in vain.' (Washington Post, 7/24/08)

Clip Source: blog.nrcc.org

Last night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi took the podium and shamelessly pandered to members and veterans of America's military with empty lines intended to trick the American people into believing that the Democrat-controlled Congress might have accomplished something worthwhile over the course of the last two years. Unsurprisingly, Pelosi's words rang hollow, which is to be expected from the leader of the most unpopular Congress in the nation's history. Her tepid support for the military in last night's speech can't hide the Democrat majority's shameful record of voting against military members and veterans.

Though Pelosi would like veterans to think that, despite her previous record, she is now a great supporter of the American military, she refused to support a June 2008 bill that would have made overseas absentee voting easier for military members. According to a report in the Washington Post:

Tags: pelosi, u.s.troops, absentee voting, roy blunt's bill

Slave in Los Angeles: Maria Suarez

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:15:55 GMT

clipped by: bignosemousie
clipper's remarks: Read the entire interview with Maria Suarez at the source.

Clip Source: www.freetheslaves.net

For almost 28 years Maria Suarez was held against her will. First by a slaveholder and then imprisoned for a crime she didn’t commit.

She was tricked into slavery when she was 15 years old. Her captor abused her mentally, physically, and spiritually. He threatened to hurt her family so even when the police and her family tried to help, she told them everything was okay. Her dreams of a better life were fading. “

She offered me a job, and, uh, you know, coming from my country where it’s a village, and people offering you a job, it was like, wow! I’m gonna get a job! I’m gonna have a job, and uh, I believed her, I thought it was real, it was a job. But it was not a job. It was just um, a trick, a trap that I fell into. Um, she told me that, if I was wanting a job,

I said, “yeah, I’m coming tomorrow.” That tomorrow never came, never came til a year ago, a year ago I came home. Yeah.

Tags: slavery, us, freedom

Magic Windows Trick: Query and Reset Terminal Sessions

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:59:35 GMT

clipped by: travislaborde

Clip Source: geekswithblogs.net

Magic Windows Trick: Query and Reset Terminal Sessions

Have you ever tried to remote into a windows machine and couldn't because the machine had exceeded its available sessions? Can't RDP into a machine because there are already 2 active sessions? Want to play party tricks on your friends and wow them with your "techie-ness?!"

Say hello to my little friends qwinsta and rwinsta (AKA query session and reset session, respectively)

Tags: windows

Small Packages Trick People to Eat More

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:35:49 GMT

clipped by: hitchhiker08
clipper's remarks: A marketing gimmick that works...for the manufacturers, that is!

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Small Packages Trick People to Eat More

If you think buying junk food in small packages will help you eat less, look out —marketers know the truth.

Two new marketing studies found that some people tend to consume more calories when junk food portions and packages are smaller. For some, it's because they perceive small packages to be ... get this ... diet food.

For others, it's just the temptation of small sins.

Already in stores

Manufacturers are releasing more and more products in smaller packages

in smaller packages promoted as having just 100 calories. In terms of sales, the tactic has proven successful, past research shows.

Diet food?

In the other new study, Maura L. Scott at the University of Kentucky and colleagues at Arizona State University assessed people's perceptions and eating habits of M&Ms in regular and miniature packages.

The participants were sorted into two groups: restrained and unrestrained eaters.

restrained eaters

consume more calories

than unrestrained

Tags: diet, junk food, crisps, calories, marketing, packaging, sales

Clipmarks | Trick Clips

Brain Blasting Laser

Steam Devils

Joe Biden, Change We Can Drink To!

How to Disown a Body Part

Who's Behind Anti-Palin Smear Site?

“All I know is that I know nothing” - the visual illusion

"Secret behind Indian Guru levitation revealed"

Secret behind Indian Guru levitation revealed

The Science of Magic: Turning Tricks into Research

The Science of Magic

Box 1 | Pickpockets pick your brain

Table 1 | Types of conjuring effects*

Box 3 | Magic techniques in the choice-blindness paradigm

Joan Baez: ‘I Was Right 40 Years Ago and I Am Right Now!’

Age has not wearied Joan Baez, the queen of protest, but it’s calmed her down ... a bit

The Moral Instinct

The Moral Instinct

Simple Trick to Stay Motivated When Times Get Tough

Create the Next Step When Times Are Good

Pelosi's Shameful Record of Voting Against Military

Slave in Los Angeles: Maria Suarez

Magic Windows Trick: Query and Reset Terminal Sessions

Magic Windows Trick: Query and Reset Terminal Sessions

Small Packages Trick People to Eat More

Small Packages Trick People to Eat More

Table 1 | Types of conjuring effects^*