Neal replied to Neal's discussion Texas Fires Shot Against The War On Christmas — In May in the group USA & WORLD NEWS
Davy replied to Neal's discussion Texas Fires Shot Against The War On Christmas — In May in the group USA & WORLD NEWSNeal replied to Neal's discussion Texas Fires Shot Against The War On Christmas — In May in the group USA & WORLD NEWSNeal replied to Neal's discussion Texas Fires Shot Against The War On Christmas — In May in the group USA & WORLD NEWS
Susan Stanko replied to Neal's discussion Texas Fires Shot Against The War On Christmas — In May in the group USA & WORLD NEWS
Lester Unega Waya replied to Neal's discussion Texas Fires Shot Against The War On Christmas — In May in the group USA & WORLD NEWSWe are a worldwide social network of freethinkers, atheists, agnostics and secular humanists.
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Permalink Reply by doone on These are two maps of the drainage basins in the world and the percentage of water in various sectors of the earth.
Permalink Reply by doone on New York City! The greatest city in the world, they say. But has anyone really figured out why? There are many moving parts that keep NYC at the top, and we have a good idea of what makes New York City work. What do you think works? Head over to Celebrate What Works and you could win $500. posted about 3 days ago
Guaranteed if you ask any New Yorker what works in NYC, the first thing they'll mention is the subway--after grumbling a bit and making a required sarcastic remark or two. We all have our issues with the trains now and again (have you RIDDEN the G recently?) but we all agree that for a relatively low price, the ability to zip around NYC without worrying about traffic, parking or weather is complete magic.
The rumors are true. Much like everything else in this city, NYC's water supply is also far superior to the rest. This isn't just an empty brag, it's an actual scientific fact. Not only does it taste great ("It goes down soft, without hints of tart-tasting minerals or chlorine like other public water systems.") but it also works perfectly, coming from a system of 19 reservoirs and three lakes in update New York--often flowing in from as far as 125 miles away. Those sources deliver our fair city with more than 1 billion gallons of fresh, clean water. Impressive, eh?
Don't even get us started. Other cities may claim to have the best coffee, but we think that it can be argued that NYC has the most coffee. There is literally a Starbucks on every corner (200+ to be exact!) and bodega coffee is cheaper than bottled water. From $1 hot coffee in "It's a Pleasure to Serve You" paper cups to espresso at the counter of Stumptown, coffee is one of NYC's finest working natural resources.
In New York, "closing time" is relative. Whatever it is, you can get it at any time. You just have to know where to look. It's the ultimate supply-and-demand situation, and it totally works when you're craving that 3AM cheeseburger or just need a roll of toilet paper.
Piles of garbage lying right next to the world's greatest collection of art? That's a New York thing. We keep close quarters, but guaranteed, there's always culture, art, film and anything your lil' creative heart desires (and often: for free!) in the big city. Walking tour not including, but you know what else works? Tagging alongside an existing tour. (But don't say we sent you!)
Craigslist exists for many cities, sure, but does it really work for them like it does for New York? As lots of New Yorkers already do, one can basically live offCraigslist.com in this city. Looking for housing? Check. Need a job? Got you. How about free EVERYTHING? There are thousands of people in NYC just begging you to come take their free stuff every single day--it's up to you (and Craig!) to seek them out.
NYC is the best and worst for finding all the things you could possibly want. You may have gone out looking to buy some ordinary, black socks, but if you're on St. Marks, you'll probably walk by The Sock Man and end up with a few pairs of socks with kittens, lobsters, spaceships—well anything you probably didn't know you wanted on your socks. You'll end up with a lot of stuff you didn't know you wanted and pay the price, but hey, sometimes you just gotta suffer for fashion. If your dream is selling waffles from a VW Bug? New York is your place. Dreams *do* come true.
In the rare case that you can't grab the subway relatively easily, there's no need to worry. Take a night in the downtown of any borough and you should never have to worry about trying to hail one for more than a couple minutes. Worst comes to worse, any New Yorker you're with will have a go-to service that'll be there in less than ten. Again: parking, traffic and weather? It ain't no thing in NYC.
Bridges across the globe are true modern marvel, but have you ever seen such a sight as the Brooklyn Bridge? Call us biased, but a structure so pleasurable to walk, bike and drive over that *also* gets you across a span of deep blue? We think that definitely works.
Despite that you're constantly surrounded by monolithic, often 1984-looking buildings, NYC is surprisingly green. For one thing, there's Central Park, which is sort of a big deal if y've seen any movie ever. Most of our fair streets, no matter how concrete they may feel sometimes, are lined with trees. Many neighborhoods even have a park! Did you know that Brooklyn's Prospect Park is 526 acres?
Permalink Reply by Adriana on Yay! NEW YORK CITY RULES! Come and visit and in addition to all those benefits you get to meet ME!
Permalink Reply by doone on From Starts with a Bang
But most spectacular to me, as you well know, is being able to scroll through the plane of the galaxy. We did it before in visible light here, now hang onto your hats and take a look at our home galaxy, in great detail, in the infrared!
That's the whole Universe, as you'd only be able to see it from outer space, with infrared eyes far superior to those of any living creature! And if you made it all the way down here, perhaps you want one more chance to download the entire infrared sky
Permalink Reply by doone on Popular commentators on evolution, such as Richard Dawkins, have become overly enamoured with the idea of the gene. Genetics is certainly the most powerful mechanism of evolution and was unknown in Charles Darwin's time but although we have learned much from sequencing DNA, the idea of the gene does not explain everything about the living world and certainly not about the human world. However, just as Herbert Spencer used the notion of the "survival of the fittest" to explain why some people are rich and others are poor, so Dawkins argues that culture has genes, too - self-replicating particles of information that he calls "memes" (think of the dumb jokes and "viral" videos that proliferate on the internet). If all evolution happens for the sake of proliferating selfish genes, then everything we see in living creatures has to be useful and practical. But that's not at all how Darwin saw it. He envisioned as at least two distinct processes: natural selection and sexual selection. The former concerns the survival of the fittest. The latter, however, is an aspect of evolution that is too often overlooked today.
more from David Rothenberg at The New Statesman here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 06:55 AM | Permalink
Permalink Reply by doone on Apr. 13, 2012
“To paraphrase an old saying, if it looks like a microbe and acts like a microbe, then it probably is a microbe,” says Joseph Miller. “The presence of circadian rhythmicity and a high degree of mathematical complexity most likely means Viking discovered microbial life on Mars over 35 years ago.”
Permalink Reply by Adriana on *Facepalm* science news if the day: a tobacco research who made billions of dollars for the Chinese tobacco industry gets nominated for the most prestigious Chinese science prize.
China's scientific community is up in arms again over tobacco. Last year, researchers protested the election of a tobacco scientist to the prestigious Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE); this month many are criticizing the nomination of a tobacco research project for the 2012 National Science and Technology Progress Award.
Candidates for the award were announced last month by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST). Among them is a research project titled "formulation and application of a theoretical system for Chinese cigarettes," nominated by the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (also known as the China National Tobacco Corporation). The cited achievements include improving quality and marketability of Chinese cigarettes and new sales revenue of about $27.5 billion over the last 3 years.
Read the rest here
Permalink Reply by doone on From Smithsonian:
While I was doing some research this week, I came across a hominid species I hadn’t heard of before: Homo helmei. The name was first given to a 259,000-year-old partial skull found in Florisbad, South Africa in 1932. The skull resembled early Homo sapiens but possessed many archaic features. Today some researchers think many of the African hominid fossils from around this time should be lumped in the H. helmispecies; others call them Homo heidelbergensis, considered by some anthropologists to be the last common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals. And then there are those who don’t really know what to call them. It turns out I should have known H. helmei. It’s mentioned once in my college human evolution textbook. I even underlined the passage. Still, it’s not a species name that’s frequently used. And it’s just one of several obscure species of Homo that anthropologists don’t universally accept. These unfamiliar members of our genus are often based on a few fossils—sometimes just one—that don’t fit neatly into existing hominid species. Here are a few examples:
Homo gautengensis (lived about 2 million to 820,000 years ago): Earlier this year, Darren Curnoe of the University of New South Wales in Australia announced the possible discovery of a new species of Homo found in China. It wasn’t the first time he had identified a new type of hominid. In 2010, he reanalyzed fossils from the South African caves of Sterkfontein, Swartkrans and Drimolen and decided that some of the specimens had strangely shaped molar teeth relative to the known South African hominids, such as Australopithecus africanus. He grouped the weird forms into their own species, Homo gautengensis, claiming it was probably the earliest member of the genus Homo.
More here.
Posted by Azra Raza at 04:37 AM | Permalink
Permalink Reply by doone on If you've got friends on the West Coast, your Facebook news feed was likely submerged in status updates about the lightning and thunder Thursday night. Here are 10 astonishing photos of the storm in action over San Francisco. posted about 21 hours ago
Lightning striking the Bay Bridge, from the abc7newsBayArea Twitter.
David Jones caught these two gorgeous, rain-swept photos of San Francisco's lightning storm from his apartment window at The Paramount.
Tom Robinson caught this impressive fish eye photo of lightning striking downtown San Francisco.
This stunning photo from Phil McGrew comes from 3 separate 20 second exposures, and catches more lightning than you can wobble a stick at hitting the Bay Bridge.
trophygeek caught this incredible photo of Sutro Tower being struck by lightning.
Chris Blain caught this photo of the Golden Gate Bridge being struck by lightning for the sfist.
The storm was so severe, it struck a plane bound for London last night, forcing it to return to SFO. No one was injured, but talk about a nightmare flight.
For those of you on the West Coast, if you have any stories or photos of last night's thunderstorm, share them in the comments below!
Permalink Reply by doone on 
A little over 30 years ago, a teenager named Jadav "Molai" Payeng began burying seeds along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in northern India'sAssam region to grow a refuge for wildlife. Not long after, he decided to dedicate his life to this endeavor, so he moved to the site where he could work full-time creating a lush new forest ecosystem. Incredibly, the spot today hosts a sprawling 1,360 acre of jungle that Payeng planted single-handedly.
The Times of India recently caught up with Payeng in his remote forest lodge to learn more about how he came to leave such an indelible mark on the landscape:
It all started way back in 1979 when floods washed a large number of snakes ashore on the sandbar. One day, after the waters had receded, Payeng , only 16 then, found the place dotted with the dead reptiles. That was the turning point of his life.
"The snakes died in the heat, without any tree cover. I sat down and wept over their lifeless forms. It was carnage . I alerted the forest department and asked them if they could grow trees there. They said nothing would grow there. Instead, they asked me to try growing bamboo. It was painful, but I did it. There was nobody to help me. Nobody was interested," says Payeng, now 47.
While it's taken years for Payeng's remarkable dedication to planting to receive some well-deserved recognition internationally, it didn't take long for wildlife in the region to benefit from the manufactured forest. Demonstrating a keen understanding of ecological balance, Payeng even transplanted ants to his burgeoning ecosystem to bolster its natural harmony. Soon the shadeless sandbar was transformed into a self-functioning environment where a menagerie of creatures could dwell. The forest, called the Molai woods, now serves as a safe haven for numerous birds, deers, rhinos, tigers, and elephants -- species increasingly at risk from habitat loss elsewhere.
Despite the conspicuousness of Payeng's project, Forestry officials in the region first learned of this new forest in 2008 -- and since then they've come to recognize his efforts as truly remarkable, but perhaps not enough.
"We're amazed at Payeng," says Assistant Conservator of Forests, Gunin Saikia. "He has been at it for 30 years. Had he been in any other country, he would have been made a hero."
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