Archive for March 3rd, 2008
Climate Scientist James Lovelock: We're All Doomed
James Lovelock [wiki] is a climate scientist (he was the first to detect widespread presence of CFCs in the atmosphere) and a maverick (he proposed the Gaia Hypothesis, which proposes that earth, and everything living and non-living on it are part of a complex interacting system that can be though of as a single organism).
In 1965, James Lovelock predicted that environment will be the biggest challenge in the 21st century. And in general, he was right.
In an interview by Decca Aitkenhead of The Guardian, Lovelock explains why global warming had passes a tipping point, catastrophe is inevitable, and we are all doomed:
"It’s just too late for it," he says. "Perhaps if we’d gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don’t have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing. I get an awful lot of people coming to me saying you can’t say that, because it gives us nothing to do. I say on the contrary, it gives us an immense amount to do. Just not the kinds of things you want to do."
He dismisses eco ideas briskly, one by one. "Carbon offsetting? I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s just a joke. To pay money to plant trees, to think you’re offsetting the carbon? You’re probably making matters worse. You’re far better off giving to the charity Cool Earth, which gives the money to the native peoples to not take down their forests." [...]
He saves his thunder for what he considers the emptiest false promise of all – renewable energy.
"You’re never going to get enough energy from wind to run a society such as ours," he says. "Windmills! Oh no. No way of doing it. You can cover the whole country with the blasted things, millions of them. Waste of time."
Link (Photo: Eamonn McCabe)
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Is Your Child a Tagger?
Is your child a tagger? The City of Santa Ana, California, published this handy-dandy guide for parents to determine whether your kid is a graffiti vandal. Tips include:
Your child has large quantities of “Hello My Name Is” stickers, priority mail stickers, or number or letter stickers. These stickers may have drawings or a tagging moniker written on them. These stickers are used to “slap tag.” They are slapped upon a surface and are difficult to remove and generally leave a residue.
Your child has or carries a black artist notebook that contains tagging or drawings. These books are called “bibles” or “piece books.”
Link – via ectoplasmosis
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Scientists Figured Out Why Winter is Flu Season
Ever wonder why winter is flu season? Well, scientists finally found the answer:
Experts have long pondered why flu and other respiratory viruses spread more in winter. No one explanation, such as people staying indoors more, or the destructive effect of the sun’s radiation in summer, has fully explained it. [...]
Influenza viruses coat themselves in fatty material that hardens and protects them in colder temperatures — a finding that could explain why winter is the flu season, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.
This butter-like coating melts in the respiratory tract, allowing the virus to infect cells, the team at the National Institutes of Health found.
"Like an M&M in your mouth, the protective covering melts when it enters the respiratory tract," said Joshua Zimmerberg of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), who led the study.
Link (Photo: tanjila [Flickr]) – via Blue’s News
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Donald Rust's Camouflage Art
Credit: Donald "Rusty" Rust
Donald "Rusty" Rust is a prolific painter and an excellent camouflage artist. See if you can find the lion in the zebra picture above.
For more of Rusty’s art, check out his website: Link – via Fresh Pics and AQFL
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Krakelingen Festival: Drinking Live Fish
Ever heard of the late 1930s swallowing live goldfish fad that swept the nation (well, okay, colleges)? Turns out it’s a centuries-old tradition in a rural area of Belgium:
Taking a deep breath, Rudy Van Acker raises a silver chalice to his pursed lips, hesitates ever so slightly, then takes a sip before downing the contents in a couple of swift gulps.
Van Acker, the senior Roman Catholic priest in this rural area of Flanders, is undertaking one of his more unusual pastoral duties: drinking live fish, washed down with red wine.
For centuries, thousands of revelers in this part of Belgium have celebrated the Krakelingen festival – named after the bread that will be thrown to the townspeople. The pageant, commemorating the onset of spring, combines pagan and Christian symbols and culminates in the consumption of tiny live fish immersed in red wine at a ceremony presided over by three men dressed as druids.
Link (Photo: Jock Fistick/International Herald Tribune)
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Star Wars titled Saul Bass style
(YouTube link)
If Star Wars was filmed two decades earlier and Saul Bass did the opening title sequence, it might look like this…
This was a school project. The song is “Machine” by the Buddy Rich Band off the album Big Swing Face (1967).
Saul Bass designed title sequences for 60s movies Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus, and It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, among others. -via Cynical-C
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Sea Monsters
National Geographic currently has a movie playing in IMAX theaters called Sea Monsters, A Prehistoric Adventure. In conjunction, they have the Sea Monsters Interactive Timeline online. Click on a time period, then on different areas of the world map to see prehistoric sea monsters, some with 3D views. Link -via the Presurfer
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Kunstbar
(YouTube link)
Be careful what drink you select at the Kunstbar! It means “Art Bar” in English. This surreal animated short was produced by The Petrie Lounge. -via Ursi’s Blog
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Hypothetical Planets
Throughout history, astronomers have observed heavenly bodies or some evidence of them that later “vanished”. Or did they? Hypothetical planets include:
* Vulcan, the intra-Mercurial planet
* Mercury’s Moon
* Neith, the Moon of Venus
* The Earth’s Second Moon
* The Moons of Mars
* The 14th Moon of Jupiter
* Saturn’s Ninth and Tenth Moons
* Six Moons of Uranus
* Planet X
* Nemesis, the Sun’s companion star
* References
Each has a story. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend
(image credit: NASA)
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Close call for an A320
On March 1st 2008, passengers aboard an A320 had a close call when their plane nearly crashed landed during severe crosswinds as they approached a Hamburg airport.
Link: LiveLeak
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Where Are They Now: M*A*S*H Characters
What happened to the cast of M*A*S*H? Miss Cellania wrote this neat post on YesButNoButYes:
Although the Korean War only lasted three years, the cast of M*A*S*H was with us every week for eleven years. The final episode on February 28, 1983 was the most watched episode in American TV ever, drawing 106 million viewers, or 77% of the audience that night. It’s been twenty-five years since we said Goodbye, Farewell and Amen; let’s see what the gang has been up to since then.
I just found out that Jamie Far, who played Klinger in the TV series, published a children’s book and sponsored a golf tournament; and Wayne Rogers who played Trapper John McIntyre is now in stock investment field.
Link – via Miss Cellania
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The Dyatlov Pass Accident
Photo: infodjatlov.narod.ru
In 1959, nine experienced cross country skiers, led by Igor Dyatlov, were trapped in a snowstorm and decided to set camp and sleep it out.
Later that night, something made all nine people leave their tents in such a hurry that they ripped them open from within. These people stumbled down the slope, in subzero weather, only in their underwear with no socks or shoes. All nine were discovered dead and frozen by a search party about a month later.
Here’s where it gets really creepy: three of the nine suffered massive chest and head injuries that could only be caused by forces akin to that of a car crash, but without any external wounds. There were high doses of radioactivity. And if those weren’t weird enough: one victim was missing her tongue.
Read more about the Dyatlov Pass Accident, including how mysterious "bright flying spheres" were seen nearby and why the findings of the investigation were classified as secret: Link | Photo Gallery (in Russian) | Wikipedia entry – via SF Gate and Super Punch
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Surveillance Light
That’s actually a light that looks like the ubiquitous surveillance camera. It’s designed by Per Emanuelsson and Bastian Bischoff of HDK school of design and crafts in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Link – via GeekAlerts
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Crouching Chinese Man, Hidden Toilet
Photo: Xinhuanet
Genius: a "hidden toilet" in China that remains out of sight until you plunk in a coin. Then it’ll rise up to the surface so you can use the bathroom.
Evil Genius: 1 yuan to enter …. 1,000 yuan to exit before the toilet goes down with *you* in it. Bwahahahahaha!
(Okay, I added that last part): Link | Original Source (in Chinese)
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Trivia: One-Pack-a-Day Smoking Habit = 2 Teeth/10 Years
One-pack-a-day smoking habit will cost you at least 2 teeth every 10 years.
According to 30-year studies at Tufts University, chain smokers lost an average of 2.9 teeth after 10 years of smoking one pack a day. Non-smokers lost an average of 1.3 teeth after 10 years. A smoker that quit will reduce his or her toothloss to 1.7 teeth. (Source)
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Black Fungus Uses Radiation as Energy Source
Arturo Casadevall of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and colleagues have discovered a strain of black fungus capable of utilizing nuclear radiation as a source of energy.
The fungus, Cladosporium sphaerospermum, was growing on the walls of the damaged and radioactive Chernobyl nuclear reactor and was collected by robots:
The fungus was rich with melanin, the same pigment that gives human skin its color, protecting the skin from solar and ultraviolet radiation. Melanin is found in many, if not most, fungal species. [...]
"Just as the pigment chlorophyll converts sunlight into chemical energy that allows green plants to live and grow," so might melanin help fungi make use of ionizing radiation, said nuclear medicine specialist Ekaterina Dadachova at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
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Insane Architectural Geniuses
I think we’ve posted about all or nearly all of these buildings on Neatorama, but it’s nice to see ‘em all in one neat post. Here’s WebUrbanist’s 5 Incredible Works of Insane Architectural Genius: Wooden Skyscrapers to Recycled Wonderlands.
The one on the upper right hand corner is Forevetron (previously on Neatorama here):
Tom Avery (aka Dr. Evermore) is responsible for the world’s largest scrap-metal architectural sculpture known as Foreverton. Weighing in at over 300 tons this amazing structure climbs 50 feet in the air and reaches 60 to 120 feet in either direction. Once the owner of a salvage business, Avery began turning his talents to this bizarre architectural pursuit over two decades ago and (supposedly) believes a spaceship contained within will launch him eventually into supernatural world beyond our own and bring him into contact with the Divine.
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Funny Celebrity Tombstones
Say what you will about celebrities (especially comics), at least they have a great sense of humor … even in death.
The one to the left is Mel Blanc’s tombstone. Mel’s catch phrase, "That’s All Folks," the tag line of every Looney Tunes cartoons, just happens to fit in this instance.
Here’s a neat post at mental_floss: 10 Celebrity Tombstones Worth a Laugh
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Is Single-Sex Education Better Than Coeducation?
Biological differences lead boys and girls to learn in a different manner, according to Dr. Leonard Sax, a family physician turned author. Because of neurological differences, Sax advocates that classrooms are segregated by sex.
As you can imagine, It’s a controversial idea (one of the main opponents to same-sex education is the ACLU). Here is a report by Elizabeth Weil of The New York Times about an intermediate school that had began offering separate classes for girls and boys and the positive (though biased) results that it achieved:
Sax comes off as a true believer and describes his conversion experience like this: In 2000, one of his patients, a 12-year-old boy, came to his medical office. For several years before then, the boy had been withdrawn, uninspired and on multiple medications, but he had recently made a big turnaround, which his parents credited to having enrolled him in an all-boys school. Upon hearing this, Sax said to the boy’s mother, “With all due respect, I regard single-sex education as an antiquated relic of the Victorian Era.” To which he says she replied, “With all due respect, Dr. Sax, you have no idea what you’re talking about.” After visiting a handful of single-sex schools, Sax threw himself into studying neurological differences between males and females, eventually focusing on how to protect boys from a syndrome he calls “failure to launch,” which Sax often characterizes as caring more about getting a Kilimanjaro in Halo 3 than performing well in high school or taking a girl on a date.
Link (a bit long, but very interesting)
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Quote: Kissinger on the Battle of the Sexes
"Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy."
– Henry Kissinger, diplomat (b. 1923)
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The BigMacChicken
What do you get when you replace McDonald’s Big Mac’s bread with McChicken patties? An "Atkins-friendly" masterpiece: behold the Big MacChicken!
Link – via metafilter
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Fly me off the Handel
(YouTube link)
The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain cannot agree on what song to perform. But it doesn’t really matter, as long as the songs all have the the same basic structure. -via Metafilter
Previously: Smells Like Teen Spirit
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