Clipmarks | Human time line Clips

An Open Letter to Closed Minds

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:58:23 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: A challenge to orthodoxy tends to be ignored at first. But if it gains popular support, the first move is to discredit and silence the challenger.

“Belief” is the crux of the matter. No amount of evidence will change the consensus view until a sufficient number “convert” to a belief in the new theory.

“It gets worse. As the evidence accumulates, the two camps will not only fail to reach consensus but actually be driven further apart - propelled by their different views ..And worst of all, there is no prospect of such a consensus unless the two sides can agree about the cause of the data.” Such a conclusion bodes ill for any attempt to change the status quo.

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the new ideas from the beginning.”

Applicable to both science and religion, I reckon.

Clip Source: www.holoscience.com

An Open Letter to Closed Minds

A widely-accepted foundation stone of scientific logic involves a process of elimination, requiring all available possibilities to be considered with incorrect ideas discarded when they fail to predict experimental results.

a leading group of concerned scientists

questions a core belief – the belief in the so-called big bang theory.

Already, the first line of defense – censorship – has held. The journal Nature rejected the letter for publication

"You could write the entire history of science in the last 50 years in terms of papers rejected by Science or Nature." – Paul C. Lauterbur, winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine, whose seminal paper on magnetic resonance imaging was originally rejected by Nature.

That scathing commentator on errant human behavior, John Ralston Saul, has compared the scientific community to the medieval church

setting up organizations – political, religious, and scientific – that with time become authoritarian, exclusive and dogmatic.

Hobbits are a seperate species

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:50:40 GMT

clipped by: rainsong111
clipper's remarks: more deatails at the link

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Hobbits 'are a separate species'

The one metre

tall, 30kg

humans roamed the Indonesian island of Flores, perhaps up to 8,000 years ago.

Two papers in the journal Nature now support the idea they were an entirely new species of human.

The team, which discovered the tiny remains in Liang Bua cave on Flores, contends that the population belongs to the species Homo floresiensis - separate from our own grouping, Homo sapiens.

One team

analysed remains of the Hobbit foot

The group found that, in some ways, it is incredibly human. The big toe is aligned with the others and the joints make it possible to extend the toes as the body's full weight falls on the foot, attributes not found in great apes.

But in other respects, it is incredibly primitive

that resembles that of a chimpanzee.

So unless the Flores Hobbits became more primitive over time - a rather unlikely scenario - they must have branched off the human line at an earlier date than Homo sapiens.

Tags: anthroplogy, history, discoveries

Early Pottery

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:20:04 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly
clipper's remarks: videos at source

Clip Source: www.environmentalgraffiti.com

Jomon Hand-Patterned, Hachi Vase / Gunma Prefecture

Only a few inventions have changed the course of history and set human culture upon a new trajectory. Some of these inventions are ancient and hardly dramatic at first glance. Such quiet creative breakthroughs of the human mind stand in contrast to the march of empires, kings and wars that often dominate the historical time line. The invention of pottery is one of these paradigmatic changes. The craft of making objects from fire hardened clay created a paradigm shift in culture after which history could never be the same.

Fire hardened vessels don’t leak unless cracked, and they often last a very long time. The evolution of diet and cooking dramatically accelerated when pottery vessels were available. New methods for food preservation and storage, cooking baking, boiling, and brewing fostered a great diversity in food preparation.

Venus Dolni Vestonice

Pottery from Niigata Prefecture

Jomon / Stone Axes – Niigata Prefecture

Dangers of NeuroBabble

Wed, 27 May 2009 13:01:14 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: A very important point is being made in this article.While the materialist reduction of identity is as philosophically risible as it has always been, the ideological aspects of the discourses which see so much hot- eyed enthusiasm for popularised neuroscience require attention. The article concludes: "Hard-line identity theorists, and eliminativists above all, don’t appreciate how much they would change things if indeed we could come to believe and implement their theories. Our world would increasingly be leeched of meaning, morality, dignity and freedom, and if we rejected folk psychology in favour of scientific terminology about brain states, not only would we know less, not more, about ourselves; we would also have less to know about, because we would be less."

Clip Source: www.opendemocracy.net

‘Can a machine read your mind?’ – the title of a recent (February 2009) article in the Times -- is meant to be sensational but is similar to hundreds of other articles appearing with increasing frequency, and merely repeating a story that has been familiar for the last 50 years. ‘It’s just a matter of time’ is the assumption behind such articles – just a matter of time before the gap between physical brain-stuff and consciousness is bridged. The Times article plays up the social interest angle of its story by describing experiments in which people’s brain activity is taken as proof of their guilt or innocence of crimes, or in which a computer ‘could tell with 78 per cent accuracy’ which of a number of drawings shown to volunteers was the one they were concentrating on ...

The new neuro-social-sciences are the latest of many attempts to naturalise the human---to make every aspect of our lives and selves comprehensible merely as subjects of scientific explanation.

Tags: humanity

How absurd is this; A patent on a human gene?

Fri, 22 May 2009 12:43:59 GMT

clipped by: thinkingblue
clipper's remarks: How absurd is this; A patent on a human gene? I believe the patent law is way out of line. You would not believe what has been patented, from seeds, conventional plant varieties and ANIMAL SPECIES to herbs, spices, oils and sugarcane, they never got around to PATENTING marijuana for entertainment or medicinal purposes, they just outlawed that altogether. It wouldn't surprise me that sometime in the future the air we breathe will have a patent owned by some corporation who can thus charge a fee for BREATHING. I've got a good idea, why don't some big corporation take out a patent on GREED, they would own the whole GD world if they could do that. Please watch the video and sign a message of support to stop BIG PHARMA from taking patents out on human genes. http://thinkingblue.blogspot.com

Clip Source: www.thethinkingblue.com

PATENT LAW

A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or his assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention.

Liberate the Breast Cancer Genes

[Video]

There is something fundamentally wrong with companies being able to own the rights to pieces of the human genome. Yet more than 20% of the human genetic code has been patented.

For the past 20 years, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been issuing patents on human genes -- the segments of DNA that we all have in our cells -- giving private corporations, individuals, and universities the exclusive rights to those genetic sequences, their usage, and their chemical composition. There is something fundamentally wrong with companies being able to own the rights to pieces of the human genome.

Watch the video and learn why it is important that we stop the government from allowing companies like Myriad to own our genes.

Take Action: Sign a message of support.

Tags: aclu, genetics, patent, law, politics

Why is the Sky Blue?

Tue, 19 May 2009 23:55:19 GMT

clipped by: wiganfootie

Clip Source: math.ucr.edu

A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red and orange colours because the blue light has been scattered out and away from the line of sight.

The white light from the sun is a mixture of all colours of the rainbow. This was demonstrated by Isaac Newton, who used a prism to separate the different colours and so form a spectrum. The colours of light are distinguished by their different wavelengths. The visible part of the spectrum ranges from red light with a wavelength of about 720 nm, to violet with a wavelength of about 380 nm, with orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo between. The three different types of colour receptors in the retina of the human eye respond most strongly to red, green and blue wavelengths, giving us our colour vision.

Tyndall Effect

Dust or Molecules?

Why not violet?

Sunsets

Blue Haze and Blue Moon

Opalescence

NRA's big convention

Sat, 16 May 2009 22:02:18 GMT

clipped by: doodleicious
clipper's remarks: more at source including video-couldn't figure out how to clip it right-yadayada.....

Clip Source: crooksandliars.com

The National Rifle Association is having its big annual convention in Arizona this week, which means we'll see the usual parade of fearmongering and liberal-bashing on steroids that these affairs always are -- with a special emphasis on President Obama, that scary Muslim left-wing radical who wants to take all our guns away.

It's all paranoia, all the time. As you can see from clips above, all the raging talk at the convention is about how gun sales are through the roof because everyone's afraid Obama is going on a gun-grabbing spree. (Side note: Was that a Freudian slip on Larry Kudlow's part, calling the NRA the "IRA"?)

Pretty typical is Ted Nugent, who's blogging the affair from Arizona for Human Events and coming up with some prime bon mots ("Write this down: Gun Free Zones are a felon’s playgrounds. Ban Gun Free Zones now. Join the NRA.") while drawing a bead on the bottom line: Keep your hands off my guns, you dirty stinking liberals:

Tags: guns

Tweenbots – silly, sweet... and heartening

Thu, 07 May 2009 20:09:41 GMT

clipped by: Lexica
clipper's remarks: Sweet in a non-cloying way, and a reminder of the basic inherent generosity and goodness of people.

More:

The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, "You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”

Clip Source: www.tweenbots.com

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.
[Video]
Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination.
I built them with minimal technology
had no way of tracking the Tweenbot’s progress
I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse
walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot––a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary––bumped along towards his inevitable fate.

Tags: robots, experiments, new-york-city, tweenbots, sweet

Splenda causes weight gain, impairs digestion, and affects chemotherapy & other drugs

Tue, 05 May 2009 22:20:28 GMT

clipped by: Lexica
clipper's remarks: More:

As of 2006, only six human trials have been published on Splenda. Of these six trials, only two of the trials were completed and published before the FDA approved sucralose for human consumption, and the two published trials had a grand total of 36 total human subjects.

36 people sure doesn’t sound like many, but wait, it gets worse: only 23 total were actually given sucralose for testing, and here is the real kicker — The longest trial at this time had lasted only four days, and looked at sucralose in relation to tooth decay, not human tolerance.

Even more shocking, the absorption of Splenda into the human body was studied on a grand total of six men! Based on that one human study, the FDA allowed the findings to be generalized as being representative of the entire human population. Including women, children, the elderly, and those with any chronic illness — none of whom were ever examined.

Clip Source: www.impactlab.com

In animals examined for the study, Splenda reduced the amount of good bacteria in the intestines by 50 percent, increased the pH level in the intestines, contributed to increases in body weight and affected P-glycoprotein (P-gp) levels in such a way that crucial health-related drugs could be rejected.

The P-gp effect could result in medications used in chemotherapy, AIDS treatment and treatments for heart conditions being shunted back into the intestines, rather than being absorbed by the body.

It’s very important to realize that Splenda (sucralose) is actually NOT sugar, despite its marketing slogan “Made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar”. Rather it’s a chlorinated artificial sweetener in line with aspartame and saccharin, and with detrimental health effects to match.

They also found unmistakable evidence that Splenda is absorbed by fat, contrary to previous claims.

published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health

Splenda Has NEVER Been Proven Safe for Human Consumption

Tags: health, research, artificial-sweeteners, never-eat-this

2002 military memo: CIA tactics "torture," ineffective

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:25:31 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: Cont....

However, the reliability and accuracy information must be questioned.

Clip Source: www.salon.com

An excerpt from the full document, which can be downloaded here:

The requirement to obtain information from an uncooperative source as quickly as possible -- in time to prevent, for example, an impending terrorist attack that could result in loss of life -- has been forwarded as a compelling argument for the use of torture. Conceptually, proponents envision the application of torture as a means to expedite the exploitation process. In essence, physical and/or psychological duress are viewed as an alternative to the more time consuming conventional interrogation process. The error inherent in this line of thinking is the assumption that, through torture, the interrogator can extract reliable and accurate intelligence. History and a consideration of human behavior would appear to refute this assumption.

The application of physical and or psychological duress will likely result in physical compliance. Additionally, prisoners may answer and/or comply as a result of threats of torture.

Tags: memo, cia, torture, ineffective, illegal

torture good.information bad. uggh

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 04:38:16 GMT

clipped by: poodle

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

But the JPRA's two-page attachment, titled "Operational Issues Pertaining to the Use of Physical/Psychological Coercion in Interrogation," questioned the effectiveness of employing extreme duress to gain intelligence.

"The requirement to obtain information from an uncooperative source as quickly as possible -- in time to prevent, for example, an impending terrorist attack that could result in loss of life -- has been forwarded as a compelling argument for the use of torture," the document said. "In essence, physical and/or psychological duress are viewed as an alternative to the more time-consuming conventional interrogation process. The error inherent in this line of thinking is the assumption that, through torture, the interrogator can extract reliable and accurate information. History and a consideration of human behavior would appear to refute this assumption."

our missing chromosomes

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:57:47 GMT

clipped by: doodleicious
clipper's remarks: we have 46- our nearest ape relatives have 48- which led to the question- how could we have a common ancestor with great apes, but fewer chromosomes?
They are not missing....they just fused, and have been found

Clip Source: www.boingboing.net

Our "Missing" Chromosomes

This evidence laid the groundwork for a brilliant discovery. Rather than falling apart, the two missing chromosomes had fused together. Their format changed, but they didn't lose any information, so the mutation wasn't deadly. Instead, scientists now think, the fusion made it difficult for our ancestors to mate with the ancestors of chimpanzees, leading our two species to strike out alone. In the two decades since the original study, more evidence has surfaced backing this up, which leads us to 2005, when the chimpanzee genome was sequenced around the same time that the National Human Genome Research Institute published a detailed survey of human chromosome 2. According to Kenneth Miller, we can now see extra centromeres in chromosome 2 and trace how its genes neatly line up with those on chimpanzee chromosomes 12 and 13. It's a great example of evidence supporting the common descent of man and ape.

Tags: chromosomes

The seeing hand

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:42:11 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: A nice experiment into the way the neural system operates. An autonomous internal dynamics, an autonomous environment, and a meeting line.

Clip Source: www.zmescience.com

Touch and sight - more connected than previously thought

Clip Source: www.zmescience.com

What you see may be very much related to what you’ve just felt. Even though we were taught at school that each sense is processed in another area of the brain it seems that this theory may be wrong and that there is a lot more to understand about the way human brain works.

As an example, a light ripple of pins moving up the fingertip tricked the subjects of a study into perceiving some lines moving on a screen as moving down, and the other way around. So, there is something going on.

In order to take the theory even further, a trick of perception named aftereffect was used by scientists, a phenomenon that occurs for example when watching a waterfall. Staring at it for some time will eventually make one perceive the stationary rocks as moving up. This happens because the neurons which are in charge of the “down” get tired while the “up” ones are still fresh and create this impression.

quite clear that sight and touch are connected

Media Hype on Climate Change Is Nothing New

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:37:05 GMT

clipped by: amgumen
clipper's remarks: "America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-year Rise" stated an article in the New York Times on March 27, 1933. The media of yesteryear was also not above injecting large amounts of fear and alarmism into their climate articles.

An August 9, 1923 front page article in the Chicago Tribune declared: "Scientist Says Arctic Ice Will Wipe Out Canada." The article quoted a Yale University professor who predicted large parts of Europe and Asia would be "wiped out" and Switzerland would be "entirely obliterated."
December 29, 1974 New York Times article on global cooling reported that climatologists believed "the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade."

Clip Source: www.heartland.org

Time magazine in 1951 pointed to receding permafrost in Russia as proof that the planet was warming.

In 1952, the New York Times noted that the "trump card" of global warming "has been the melting glaciers."

There are many more examples of the media and scientists flip-flopping between warming and cooling scares.

Here is a headline from the New York Times reporting on fears of an approaching ice age: "Geologists Think the World May be Frozen Up Again."

That sentence appeared over 100 years ago in the February 24, 1895 edition of the New York Times.

Let me repeat. 1895, not 1995.

A front-page article in the October 7, 1912 New York Times, just a few months after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, declared that a prominent professor "Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age."

The very same day in 1912, the Los Angeles Times ran an article warning that the "Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold." An August 10, 1923 Washington Post article declared: "Ice Age Coming Here."

Competitive Instinct and Team Spirit Can Get You a Long Way

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:45:02 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

In every race I run, I always manage to end up just behind my arch nemesis. It doesn't matter that I've never met this person before. Nor that this person knows absolutely nothing about our intense feud. Nor that it's a different person each time. All I know is I'm not letting Ms. Purple Shorts get to the finish line before me.

According to Ed Acevedo, president of the American Psychological Association's division of exercise and sports psychology, that behavior doesn't make me crazy. It makes me human.

"They say the difference between a jogger and a runner is an entry form," he says. "It's the competition that keeps you motivated to train."

What gets that adrenaline pumping is not some abstract goal of improving strength, but the immediate thrill of tackling opponents, swiping the ball, scoring -- and risking a bloody nose along the way.

So competition is awesome, right? Except when it's not,

The problem becomes the person who feels hostility in comparing themselves to other people,"