http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/12/30/1716257/moscow-plane-crash-caught-on-passerbys-dash-cam
link to youtube
Filed under: Aviation, Incredible, Video | Leave a comment »
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/12/30/1716257/moscow-plane-crash-caught-on-passerbys-dash-cam
link to youtube
Filed under: Aviation, Incredible, Video | Leave a comment »
After much fiddling about I discovered there is indeed a way to get animated gifs to work in WordPress. No joy at Facebook, natch, about what I’ve come to expect from that broken fail.
Filed under: Animated Gifs, Birthday | Leave a comment »
I compiled this video from the weeklies posted to the Drought Monitor site, USDA. This is serious stuff if you like to eat; pretty serious for anything that likes to eat, plants wanting to grow…
Also see it at YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In7x4bjq6-0
Filed under: Environment, Food, Green, Nature, Weather Science | Leave a comment »
Consumer Health Digest #12-46
December 27, 2012
Current # of subscribers: 10,994
Consumer Health Digest is a free weekly e-mail newsletter edited by Stephen Barrett, M.D., with help from William M. London, Ed.D. It summarizes scientific reports; legislative developments; enforcement actions; news reports; Web site evaluations; recommended and nonrecommended books; and other information relevant to consumer protection and consumer decision-making.
Note: This issue is using software that embeds links into the text instead of showing them separately. It is also using styles instead of plain text. If these do not display properly in your computer, please send Dr. Barrett a message describing the problem and indicating what e-mail software you use.
###
Herbalife attacked as “pyramid scheme”
Billionaire hedge fund investor Bill Ackman has mounted an attack on Herbalife that he apparently hopes will drive it out of business. The attack was launched with a 3-1/2 hour presentation at the Sohn Conference Special Event on December 20th. During his presentation, Ackman noted:
**Herbalife recruits unwitting “distributors” with the promise they can achieve lofty incomes. However, fewer than 1 in 1,000 do so.
**Herbalife’s products are overpriced but sell because they are bundled with a perceived business opportunity. However, the vast majority of new distributors make nothing.
**Herbalife is a pyramid scheme because its participants obtain their monetary benefits primarily from recruitment rather than the sale of goods to consumers. Continue reading
Filed under: Medical, Public Health, Quackery | Leave a comment »
Professor Richard Dawkins Speaks at Fair Hills Kindergarten Regarding Santa Claus, December 2, 2006.
From an early point in your infancy, you people have been done a great injustice. Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, Father Christmas—the names may differ from country to country, but the idea always remains a constant. No doubt you’ve drawn pictures of him, watched films depicting him, sung songs about him. A benevolent jolly fellow whose sole purpose is to monitor your behavior year-round by inexplicable means only to separate children into two drastically oversimplified groups: naughty or nice. With the aid of elfin employees and flying reindeer, this Good Samaritan delivers gifts to all the nice children of the world in a single evening. You’ll know him by his long white beard and belly that jiggles like a bowl full of jelly, they say. On the contrary, you’ll know him as nonsense, because that’s precisely what he is.
As a scientist, I seek the truth. Do you understand? The universe is a highly complex place, ever evolving and changing, billions of years in the making. Darwinian evolution enables us to comprehend who we are and where we’ve come from. It is only science that can provide us with these answers. Blind faith, grand design, the belief that things “just happen” without any rational explanation or evidence are all part of an alternative nonscience. Santa Claus, with his long white beard and sack full of goodies, is a rather precise example of this. Continue reading
Filed under: Christmas, Humor, Mental Health | Leave a comment »
Corvids: The Birds Who Think Like Humans.
Annalee Newitz
Someday I will come up with a good reason why I am friends with the neighborhood crows. For now, I can say that it started when I looked up from my office window to see this big flock of crows hanging out on the roof of an apartment building nearby. I had heard that these creatures, part of a larger family of birds called corvids, were among the smartest animals in the world. If they were that intelligent, I wanted to meet them. How could I get those awesome animals to come visit me? I decided to find out.
Six months later, I have made friends with about seven crows and two small, brightly-colored corvids called scrub jays — one of whom eats out of my hand. Like many scientists who study these animals, I’ve become convinced that these creatures are not only smart, but also have a theory of mind.
When I started trying to make friends with the crows, I didn’t know much about these birds other than what I’d read in popular accounts. I thought they liked shiny things (which turns out not to be true), and I’d heard Cornell ornithologist Kevin McGowan say on NPR that they liked peanuts. So I took a big piece of shiny tin foil and wrapped it around the wooden railings on my balcony, stashing some peanuts underneath it. Whenever I saw the crows, I would whistle and wave and stand next to the foil. Yes, I’m sure I looked like an idiot, but apparently they noticed.
One morning while I was in bed, I heard a bunch of thunks and the sound of ruffling feathers. When I came out to the balcony, I could see that the crows had ripped open the foil and taken the peanuts. I continued with this routine for a while, and eventually they would come to get their peanuts when I was working. I’d watch them advance slowly down the railing, one eye on me, then snatch the peanut. Every day, a group of three would come to eat — two seemed to be a mated pair, and the third I nicknamed Whitey because he had a big white patch on one wing. He seemed to be quite old and feeble, and had a hard time landing and taking off. I left a lot of peanuts out for Whitey on a lower railing where it was easier for him to land. He and his two flock friends would pick up the peanuts in their beaks, then fly into the tree where they would hold the peanut against a branch with one claw and peck it open for the nuts inside.
Filed under: Cats, Crows, Dogs, Jays, Kindness of Animals | Leave a comment »
Climb Aboard Little Wog, Sail Away With Me | TBogg.
By: TBogg Wednesday December 26, 2012 9:18 am
During the holiday break (at least it was my holiday break, maybe not yours) snooty elitist New York magazine published an article by Joe Hagan about his adventures aboard the post-election National Review cruise on the S.S. Brutally Disappointed where he documented passengers – who ranged in color from alabaster to eggshell white as long as they stayed out of the noonday sun – commiserating with each other over the failure of the Republican party to woo enough of the dusky horde over to their side of the aisle in the previous weeks election.
So sad.
Some key scenes:
Then, at 3 p.m., the group gathered into the Showroom at Sea, a three-tiered amphitheater decorated in a bright-red Art Deco style, for the first of several sessions deconstructing the loss. Onstage were Reed, now in lime-green pants embroidered with pink swordfish and navy polo shirt with white piping on the collar; and Scott Rasmussen, the pollster who consistently overrated Romney’s chances of winning the election. Rasmussen blasted the assembled Republicans with one crushing statistic after another. The exit poll data, he said, “create a negative brand image of the Republican Party as a party that only cares about white people.”
The audience murmured unhappily.
“And that image is hurting among the youth,” he continued. “It is hurting across the culture. It is something that has to be addressed across the party. It has to be addressed. You can’t just wish it away.”
Reed expanded on the theme. “You can’t run and win a national election in an electorate that is becoming decreasingly white and increasingly minority and lose 80 percent of the minority vote,” he said. “That math just doesn’t add up.”
Rasmussen offered some friendly advice about approaching minorities. “You show them that you really care, you talk to them as grown-ups on a range of issues, you get them involved,” he suggested, “and you accept the fact that it’s a long-term investment. And you accept that you can learn as much from them as you can teach them.”
This was harsh medicine to reluctant patients, and afterward some of them made their discomfort known. “That depressed me!” one woman said. To my right, a man snapped, “That’s bullshit!”
The man was Bing West, former assistant secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan, a former Marine and a National Review contributor.
West, mocking Rasmussen, said: “If you stupid Republicans weren’t so goddamn bigoted you would have won the election!”
His wife, Betsy, who bears a resemblance to Nancy Reagan, patted him on the back and apologized on his behalf, saying, “I don’t know why he said that. He’s usually not like that.”
…and then:
I met a man near the railing who was there as a caregiver for a 70-year-old National Review cruiser from Palm Desert, California. He was gay and seemingly liberal and had come on the cruise only to push his boss around in a wheelchair. As he smoked a cigarette, he recounted a conversation the two had about the ship’s largely Indonesian and Filipino staff.
BOSS: You notice none of the workers are white.
CAREGIVER: Except the managers upstairs.
BOSS: Well, that’s the way it should be. [[More at Link]] Continue reading
Filed under: Beyond Dumb, Idiocy, Incredible, IOIYAR, Politics | Leave a comment »
2012 cultured meat highlights.
Scientific American ran a feature about how the company Modern Meadow is working to produce tissue-engineered leather for mass production by 2017. Wired published an article about Peter Thiel, who is the billionaire founder of PayPal, for investing in cultured meat technology.
UK’s Guardian posed the question to its readers “Could lab-grown meat soon be the solution to the world’s food crisis?” And in a contest for the best essay regarding the ethics of eating meat, New York Times readers chose this piece on cultured meat entitled, “I’m about to eat meat for the first time in 40 years,” as the winner.
On radio, our choice for the best piece of the year aired on National Public Radio’s, Kojo Nnamdi Show. The episode featured cultured meat scientist Mark Post and New Yorker writer Michael Specter. It’s a must listen!
And for video of the year? Check out what students at Beckmans College of Design produced to explain the importance of cultured meat research.
Filed under: Food, Green, Health, Vegetarian | Leave a comment »
Emilio DeGrazia
It’s quiet where I sit staring out.
A car turns the corner and is gone,
Carting axels, rivets and oil
To the wide plains of carelessness.
Here, in this solitude, renewal ages
Comfortably within sight of the tree
Cut from another winter of our discontent
Frozen into another new year of war.
Peace on earth roosts and broods here,
The few of us permitted this quiet
The overwhelming majority self-consoled,
Hands useless in our laps, hearts voting yes.
Filed under: Christmas, Holiday, Poets n Poems | Leave a comment »
Somebody sent me one of those email with a slug of pictures.
So, make a movie out of ’em.
And, to whoever sent these, thank you.
Amazing, these critters.
Movie’s here…
Filed under: Cats, Dogs, Mental Health | Leave a comment »