Clipmarks | Darwin Clips

Illustrated History of the Nerd

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:59:19 GMT

clipped by: William Hung

Clip Source: www.purpleslinky.com

Where did the nerd originate, both as a word an individual and, possibly, a species? What were the original societal perceptions of the nerd? How have these changed over the decades? Enter the world of the nerd and discover for yourself this fascinating and light hearted illustrated history of the origin of the species. Darwin, eat your heart out.

One Last Jobs

Drag and Drop

Disrespect to Nerds

Nerd Sex

The Nerd of July

The Nerd Bathroom

Nerd Army

Nature or Nurture?

Clip Source: www.purpleslinky.com

Nerd Pride

Nerd Day Cake

Nerds Give the Finger

Motivational Poster Nerds

Nerd Tattoo

Nerd Pet

Spell-It-Out Nerd

Nerd Art

Clip Source: www.purpleslinky.com

Nerd Love

Nerdtivity

The Nerd Evolution Timeline

Nerd in ad kitchen

So, the nerd has come a long way in the sixty or so years since the word made its first appearance. What the next sixty years holds is anyone's guess, but it promises to be more than interesting. Where the nerd herd goes next may well determine the future progress of humanity. Only time - and the internet - will tell.

Tags: humor

do animals feel greif?

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:12:25 GMT

clipped by: silvanaraihane
clipper's remarks: according to my dog, they do! you should see the way she reacts if I leave her for more then my working day!

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Do animals feel grief?

Photographs of Gana, an 11-year-old gorilla in Munster Zoo, holding the lifeless body of her three-month-old infant, are doing the rounds of the world's media. The pictures have prompted headlines such as "Heartbreaking" and "A Mother's Grief". Gana certainly looks inconsolable at the loss of her child. But is she? Are we too quick to project human feelings onto animals, particularly our closest ape relatives?

But, as anyone who has been watching Richard Dawkins' Channel 4 series The Genius of Darwin will recall, evolution favours any species with strong enough parental instincts to see their young through infancy. Animals invest time, energy and genetic material into their young, just as we do, and they naturally want them to survive. Is it too much of a stretch to imagine that they would also feel loss when their young die?

Kite Surfer Slammed Into Building.

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:13:11 GMT

clipped by: zippunkygirl
clipper's remarks: Darwin Award Candidate?

Clip Source: www.wkrg.com

Caught On Tape: Wind Blows Kite Surfer Into Building

FORT LAUDERDALE ― Emergency officials have been warning South Floridians to seek shelter during Tropical Storm Fay but a man in Fort Lauderdale seeking some thrills on the rough surf didn't heed that warning and ended up in the hospital after being hurt in an astonishing kite boarding accident that was caught on camera.

A CBS4 news crew was on Fort Lauderdale beach at A1A and east Las Olas Boulevard when a huge gust of wind from Fay blew down the beach and took the kite boarder by surprise.

The kite boarder was harnessed into his sail when the wind violently picked him up and slammed him onto the sandy beach. Then, he was dragged across the sand before being lifted up into the air again and blown across the street where the wind slammed him into a building.

Culture versus Biology: the Darwin Legacy

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:59:00 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: This is a very good article, succinctly describing the ideological structures underlying the uses and interpretations of science; also on the humanities-sciences dichotomies. I have highlighted a short section as there is a contemporary championing of technological innovations especially in neuroscience towards a utopian future eugenically designed to eliminate the 'inferior' : such dangerous rhetoric is severed from all human values, history and ideology.

Clip Source: walrusmagazine.com

social Darwinists believed a society could evolve in the span of a lifetime if superior individuals were allowed free rein to exercise their natural gift for survival at the expense of their inferiors.

It is impossible to overestimate eugenics’ chilling effect on the application of evolutionary ideas to human psychology and society. If biology does in fact influence how we feel, think, and behave, the fear went, evil rulers could engineer, through genetic manipulation, a population tailored to their unscrupulous agendas.

Tags: eugenics, darwin, social engineering

Big-brained Animals Evolve Faster

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 02:35:22 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: a substantial body of evidence has confirmed that animals with larger brains, relative to their body size, have more developed skills for changing their behavior through learning and innovation, facilitating the invasion of novel environments and the use of novel resources. Despite the progress, the role of the brain in the adaptive diversification of animals has remained controversial, mostly due to the difficulties to demonstrate that big-brained animals evolve faster.

Now, ecologist Daniel Sol of CREAF-Autonomous University of Barcelona and evolutionary biologist Trevor Price of the University of Chicago, provide evidence for such a role in birds in an article in The American Naturalist. Analyzing body size measures of 7,209 species (representing 75% of all avian species), they found that avian families that have experienced the greatest diversification in body size tend to be those with brains larger than expected for their body size.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Ever since Darwin, evolutionary biologists have wondered why some lineages have diversified more than others.

A classical explanation is that a higher rate of diversification reflects increased ecological opportunities that led to a rapid adaptive radiation of a clade.

This and other examples have led some to think that the progenitors of the major evolutionary radiations are those that happened to be in the right place and at the right time to take advantage of ecological opportunities.

However, is it possible that biological diversification not only depends on the properties of the environment an ancestral species finds itself in, but also on the features of the species itself?

Now a study supports this possibility, suggesting that possessing a large brain might have facilitated the evolutionary diversification of some avian lineages.

Tags: animal life, evolution, diversity, brain

Banco del Mutuo Soccorso

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 06:28:16 GMT

clipped by: bazzarin
clipper's remarks: discografia

Clip Source: it.wikipedia.org

Discografia [modifica]

1972 - Banco del Mutuo Soccorso

1972 - Darwin!

1973 - Io sono nato libero

1975 - Banco

1976 - Garofano rosso

1976 - Come in un'ultima cena

1976 - As in a Last Supper

1978 - ...di terra

1979 - Canto di primavera

1979 - Capolinea (live)

1980 - Urgentissimo

1981 - Buone notizie

1983 - Banco

1985 - ...e via

1989 - Donna Plautilla

1989 - Non mettere le dita nel naso (pubblicato con la denominazione Il Banco presenta Francesco Di Giacomo)

1991 - Da qui messere si domina la valle (nuova incisione dei primi due album)

1993 - La storia (raccolta)

1993 - I grandi successi (raccolta)

1994 - Il 13

1996 - Le origini (1996)

1996 - Antologia (raccolta)

1997 - Nudo

1997 - Nudo (edizione giapponese)

2003 - No palco (live)

2005 - ...Seguendo le tracce (live 1975)

2007 - Banco Live 1980 (DVD)

" . . Lincoln or Darwin?"

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 05:38:42 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly
clipper's remarks: Full story: http://www.newsweek.com/id/143742

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

Who Was More Important: Lincoln or Darwin?

How's this for a coincidence? Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year, on the same day: Feb. 12, 1809. As historical facts go, it amounts to little more than a footnote. Still, while it's just a coincidence, it's a coincidence that's guaranteed to make you do a double take the first time you run across it. Everybody knows Darwin and Lincoln were near-mythic figures in the 19th century. But who ever thinks of them in tandem? Who puts the theory of evolution and the Civil War in the same sentence? Why would you, unless you're writing your dissertation on epochal events in the 19th century? But instinctively, we want to say that they belong together. It's not just because they were both great men, and not because they happen to be exact coevals. Rather, it's because the scientist and the politician each touched off a revolution that changed the world.

THE ORIGIN OF BIOLOGICAL INFORMATION

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:13:40 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Yet Muller and Newman insist that population genetics, and thus evolutionary biology, has not identified a specifically causal explanation for the origin of true morphological novelty during the history of life. Central to their concern is what they see as the inadequacy of the variation of genetic traits as a source of new form and structure. They note, following Darwin himself, that the sources of new form and structure must precede the action of natural selection (2003:3)–that selection must act on what already exists. Yet, in their view, the “genocentricity” and “incrementalism” of the neo-Darwinian mechanism has meant that an adequate source of new form and structure has yet to be identified by theoretical biologists. Instead, Muller and Newman see the need to identify epigenetic sources of morphological innovation during the evolution of life. In the meantime, however, they insist neo-Darwinism lacks any “theory of the generative”

Clip Source: www.answertheskeptic.com

In a recent volume of the Vienna Series in a Theoretical Biology (2003), Gerd B. Muller and Stuart Newman argue that what they call the “origination of organismal form” remains an unsolved problem.

In making this claim, Muller and Newman (2003:3-10) distinguish two distinct issues, namely

(1) the causes of form generation in the individual organism during embryological development and

(2) the causes responsible for the production of novel organismal forms in the first place during the history of life.

To distinguish the latter case (phylogeny) from the former (ontogeny), Muller and Newman use the term “origination” to designate the causal processes by which biological form first arose during the evolution of life.

They further argue that we know more about the causes of ontogenesis, due to advances in molecular biology, molecular genetics and developmental biology, than we do about the causes of phylogenesis–the ultimate origination of new biological forms during the remote past.

Tags: theoretical biology, evolution, phylogeny, ontogeny

The Genius of Charles Darwin

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:23:04 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

It's on the internets. The opening is something that I can't imagine flying by on American television: he simply says that evolution is a vastly superior explanation to anything religion has ever provided.

[Video]

Tags: science, biology, evolution, darwin, dawkins

Smell Ya Later?

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:06:08 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "Knowing this makes me want to run outside, capture a butterfly, and inhale its scent. •

Clip Source: www.thesmartset.com

Who out there knows that butterflies are scented? Their aroma can be that of flowers like honeysuckle or jasmine, herbs and spices like lemon verbena or cinnamon, or confections like vanilla or chocolate, depending on the species.

Gilbert’s new book examines why the sense of smell is so underappreciated, and why it should be valued at least as much as seeing or hearing.

Darwin thought smell was important to our early ancestors, but of only minimal service to modern man. Freud believed that the smell became obsolete when humans started walking upright and no longer had their noses close to the ground. He asserted that repression of smell led to the repression of wild sexual impulses, which was a vital condition of civilization.

Scientific research has found that while humans can detect thousands upon thousands of distinct scents, our brains quickly reduce that sensitivity. “

But words cannot recapture a scent once it is gone and forgotten

Driver filmed himself masturbating at 150km/h, court told

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:10:05 GMT

clipped by: Smoke TNT

Clip Source: www.ntnews.com.au

July 31st

Brendon Alan Erhardt, 39, was granted bail so he could marry his girlfriend of six months before he goes to jail.

Prosecutor Sergeant Melinda Edwards said in court the father-of-three told police he "had masturbated while driving'' just before he was stopped for speeding on the 130km/h stretch of the Stuart Hwy.

"(He) also video recorded himself masturbating while travelling at a speed of 150km/h.''

It is alleged that officers found 4.96kg of cannabis hidden in a blue esky in the boot, two cannabis plants on the back seat, two drug pipes and a loaded .22 rifle.

Mr Erhardt was arrested and told officers he had "found'' the drugs at a rest stop 100km north of Coober Pedy -- and he intended to smoke all of it at his Noonamah home.

Mr Erhardt also told police he had used the rifle to shoot "kangaroos from the vehicle whilst driving north''.

The court heard the cannabis was worth $136,000 if sold by the gram in Darwin -- or double that in indigenous communities.

Tags: weird, driving, australia

Scientists find unexpected key to flowering plants' diversity

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:25:04 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: "As these plants gained the ability to grow pollen tubes faster and over longer distances," said Williams, "It gave them the ability to develop the much larger and more complex flowers as well as deeper ovaries with more seeds -- that is to say, larger fruits -- that we see around us today."

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

What began with an off-the-cuff curiosity eventually led Joe Williams to hang from the limbs of a tree 80 feet above the soil of northeastern Australia.

The things Williams, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, researcher found there may help explain the amazing diversity in the world's flowering plants, a question that has puzzled scientists from the time of Charles Darwin to today.

findings

show that the ability of flowering plants -- known as angiosperms -- to quickly and efficiently move sperm from pollen to egg through a part of the plant was the key to their evolutionary diversity.

In non-flowering plants, the pathway is usually short, because the pollen tube must destroy cells in its path, which is a time-consuming process. In flowering plants, though, pollen tubes are able to cover longer distances to the egg by essentially "squeezing" between cells. It is a trait that Williams says is vital to their diversification.

Tags: flowers, biological diversity, fertility

First Electronic Ink Magazine Cover Expected

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:04:21 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: “The possibilities of print have just begun. In two years, I hope this looks like cellphones did in 1982, or car phones.”

Science fiction readers have been looking forward to this development for a long time, and can give us an idea of what this technology will look like in coming years. For example, writer Greg Bear had a very clear view of the Esquire E-ink cover in 2003 in "Darwin's Children." He wrote about e-paper covers with speaker chips.

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

The first E-ink cover for a magazine will come out with the September issue of Esquire, according to Editor-in-Chief David Granger. Electronic ink paper is created by coating a surface with millions of tiny microcapsules; they have about the same diameter as a human hair.

Each of the microcapsules contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a very small electric charge is applied, the black particle will move to the top surface; that makes a little black dot in that space. In this way, text characters and even graphic elements can be displayed.

The cover display will flash "the 21st Century Begins Now." The cover will have enough energy to run for about 90 days.

“Magazines have basically looked the same for 150 years,” Mr. Granger said, showing a prototype e-ink cover. “I have been frustrated with the lack of forward movement in the magazine industry.”

Tags: e-ink, technology, future, magazine

I second the nomination

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:00:18 GMT

clipped by: bmeuppls
clipper's remarks: Totally appropriate...

Clip Source: watchmanswords.blogspot.com

You're probably familiar with the Darwin Awards, handed out each year to the people who do humanity the service of removing themselves from the gene pool in creative ways. I think it's time for a new one, named after one of Isaac Asimov's characters in the brilliant Foundation. Lord Dorwin comes to Terminus representing the Galactic Empire.

I hereby nominate Barack Obama for the First Annual Lord Dorwin Award. A better description of his campaign will never be penned. In two years of campaigning, he hasn't said one serious, meaningful thing, and said it so the electorate never noticed.

Lonesome George - first time father at 80?

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:45:04 GMT

clipped by: Socratoad

Clip Source: www.earthtimes.org

Galapagos tortoise Lonesome George - first time father at 80?

ture Environment News | Home

Quito - After 30 years of waiting, the most famous tortoise on the Galapagos Islands, Lonesome George, may finally become a father and promote his robust genes for another generation. Six healthy-looking eggs were found in the compound where the 80- year-old tortoise lives with females of his species, national media in Ecuador reported Tuesday, citing national park officials.

George, said by scientists at the Charles Darwin Research Station to be one of the last known of his tortoise subspecies, was found in 1972 on the islands, but has not fathered any hatchlings.

To ensure some female offspring, scientists have taken some of the eggs and put them in a brooder set at 29.5 degrees Celsius known to favour females. The others are being kept at 28 degrees, to favour male offspring.