Thursday, July 7, 2011
A physics joke
"Newton, Pascal, and Einstein are playing hide-and-go-seek in heaven.
Einstein closes his eyes and starts counting.
Pascal goes and hides behind a cloud.
Newton stays where he is, and draws a 1mx1m square on the floor around him.
Einstein finishes counting and turns around.
'Ah ha, Newton! I found you!'
'No you haven't, you've found one Newton over 1m2 . . . You found Pascal.'"
reddit
(1 Newton over 1 meter squared = 1 Pascal)
Einstein closes his eyes and starts counting.
Pascal goes and hides behind a cloud.
Newton stays where he is, and draws a 1mx1m square on the floor around him.
Einstein finishes counting and turns around.
'Ah ha, Newton! I found you!'
'No you haven't, you've found one Newton over 1m2 . . . You found Pascal.'"
(1 Newton over 1 meter squared = 1 Pascal)
Portraits of the Insects Among Us
TIME
Amazing amateur video of Arizona sandstorm
These storms are also known as haboobs and they occur in arid and semi-arid regions of the world.
Haboobs are usually caused by collapsing thunderstorms which cause gusts of wind to travel out from the area of precipitation and downward towards the ground.
When these down draughts hit the dry, loose sand of desert regions like Arizona they blow up large volumes of dust which then travel as a cloud or wall of sediment.
The sandstorm captured in these videos is the first major haboob of the monsoon season which usually runs from June to September.
Haboobs are usually caused by collapsing thunderstorms which cause gusts of wind to travel out from the area of precipitation and downward towards the ground.
When these down draughts hit the dry, loose sand of desert regions like Arizona they blow up large volumes of dust which then travel as a cloud or wall of sediment.
The sandstorm captured in these videos is the first major haboob of the monsoon season which usually runs from June to September.
G doodle: Miroslav Krleža's Birthday
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Facebook Introduces Video Chat in a Partnership With Skype
"PALO ALTO, Calif. — Hoping to give its users a more intimate, real-time way to stay in touch, Facebook introduced video chat on Wednesday in a partnership with Skype, the Internet calling service.It’s a way to connect with friends other than just posting messages, said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, who announced the service on Wednesday here at the company’s headquarters. Facebook’s foray into video chatting comes a week after Google introduced Google+, its latest and most serious challenge yet in social networking. That service, which had its debut last week in a limited test, includes video chatting for up to 10 people in an area of the site called Hangouts.
To a certain extent, Facebook is playing catch-up. The new Facebook service does not allow for group video chats, for example. It also is not available on mobile phones, unlike Skype’s ordinary service. At Wednesday’s event, Mr. Zuckerberg also announced that Facebook now had 750 million users worldwide.
Details of how the new video chatting will work are posted on Facebook’s blog. It will be available to all users in the next few weeks, the blog says."
via NYTimes.com /continue reading
To a certain extent, Facebook is playing catch-up. The new Facebook service does not allow for group video chats, for example. It also is not available on mobile phones, unlike Skype’s ordinary service. At Wednesday’s event, Mr. Zuckerberg also announced that Facebook now had 750 million users worldwide.
Details of how the new video chatting will work are posted on Facebook’s blog. It will be available to all users in the next few weeks, the blog says."
via NYTimes.com /continue reading
How animals think
The behaviour, recorded in a study led by Joanna Wimpenny, in Alex Kacelnik's lab at the University of Oxford, certainly looks smart. You or I might well behave in a similar way were we to come across something strange and potentially dangerous. But what's really going on behind those beady eyes? A deliberate thought process or mere animal instinct?
The question of whether other animals can think has troubled some of the greatest minds throughout the ages. Aristotle and René Descartes believed that animal behaviour is governed purely by reflexes, while Charles Darwin and the 19th-century psychologist William James argued that animals might have complicated mental lives.
We are now closer than ever to settling this debate. Taking into account a wealth of reports of ingenious animal behaviours, including those of the New Caledonian crows, many biologists have come to believe that certain creatures really do have rudimentary thoughts. Meanwhile, the latest brain-imaging experiments are helping us understand what kind of anatomy might be necessary for a thinking brain. Although it's unlikely that their mental lives are quite as complex as ours, there's much more going on in their heads than you might think."
via New Scientist / continue reading
Me and my egg
Dictionary of Dating
ATTRACTION..... The act of associating horniness with a particular person.
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT ..... What occurs when two extremely horny, but not entirely choosy people meet.
DATING..... The process of spending enormous amounts of money, time and energy to get better acquainted with a person whom you don't especially like in the present and will learn to like a lot less in the future.
BIRTH CONTROL..... Avoiding pregnancy through such tactics as swallowing special pills, inserting a diaphragm, using a condom, and dating repulsive men.
EASY..... A term used to describe a woman who has the sexual morals of a man.
EYE CONTACT..... A method utilized by one person to indicate that they are interested in another. Despite being advised to do so, many men have difficulty looking a woman directly in the eyes, not necessarily due to shyness, but usually due to the fact that a woman's eyes are not located in her chest.
FRIEND..... A person in your acquaintance who has some flaw which makes sleeping with him/her totally unappealing.
INDIFFERENCE..... A woman's feeling towards a man, which is interpreted by the man to be "playing hard to get".
INTERESTING..... A word a man uses to describe a woman who lets him do all the talking.
IRRITATING HABIT..... What the endearing little qualities that initially attract two people to each other turn into after a few months together.
LAW OF RELATIVITY..... How attractive a given person appears to be is directly proportionate to how unattractive your date is.
NYMPHOMANIAC..... A man's term for a woman who wants to have sex more often than he does.
SOBER..... Condition in which it is almost impossible to fall in love.
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT ..... What occurs when two extremely horny, but not entirely choosy people meet.
DATING..... The process of spending enormous amounts of money, time and energy to get better acquainted with a person whom you don't especially like in the present and will learn to like a lot less in the future.
BIRTH CONTROL..... Avoiding pregnancy through such tactics as swallowing special pills, inserting a diaphragm, using a condom, and dating repulsive men.
EASY..... A term used to describe a woman who has the sexual morals of a man.
EYE CONTACT..... A method utilized by one person to indicate that they are interested in another. Despite being advised to do so, many men have difficulty looking a woman directly in the eyes, not necessarily due to shyness, but usually due to the fact that a woman's eyes are not located in her chest.
FRIEND..... A person in your acquaintance who has some flaw which makes sleeping with him/her totally unappealing.
INDIFFERENCE..... A woman's feeling towards a man, which is interpreted by the man to be "playing hard to get".
INTERESTING..... A word a man uses to describe a woman who lets him do all the talking.
IRRITATING HABIT..... What the endearing little qualities that initially attract two people to each other turn into after a few months together.
LAW OF RELATIVITY..... How attractive a given person appears to be is directly proportionate to how unattractive your date is.
NYMPHOMANIAC..... A man's term for a woman who wants to have sex more often than he does.
SOBER..... Condition in which it is almost impossible to fall in love.
The Mystery of the Phantom Pyramid That Never Existed
So why does its shadow look like a perfect ghost pyramid rising over the horizon?
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Baby Otters
Split evenly with three males and three female pups, this litter is the second for the zoo's breeding pair, Jillian and Bob. Their first litter of five pups, born last year, was also the first litter to be born at the zoo in more than 20 years."
Discovery News /read more
Woman tries to sneak partner out of prison in suitcase
A spokesman for police in the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo says staff at the prison in Chetumal noticed the woman seemed nervous and was pulling a black, wheeled suitcase that looked bulky.
Spokesman Gerardo Campos said on Monday that prison guards checked the bag of 19-year-old Maria del Mar Arjona and found inmate Juan Ramirez Tijerina curled up inside in the foetal position.
Ramirez is serving a 20-year sentence for a 2007 conviction for illegal weapons possession.
Arjona was arrested and charges are pending."
guardian.co.uk
Amazing photos capture split-second movements of animals leaping and flying... in a single frame
more here
Bananas will need sex if they are to survive into ripe old age, research concludes.
The standard yellow banana currently found on most supermarket shelves are mass cultivated as infertile clones and are therefore genetically identical.
But this makes them particularly susceptible to disease, pests and ecological challenges, writes a team of European and Australian scientists in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Co-author Mark Donohue, from the Australian National University in Canberra, said 85 per cent of cultivated bananas are for local consumption.
"This means that any disruption to the supply of bananas will have immediate consequences ... possibly leading to famines," he said.
read more
Zoo Chimps' Mental Health Affected by Captivity
The documented behaviors, which included self-mutilation, repetitive rocking, and consumption of feces, are symptoms of compromised mental health in humans, and are not seen in wild chimpanzees, the authors say. The study found that even chimps at very well regarded zoos displayed the disturbing behaviors."
via Discovery News / continue reading
Monday, July 4, 2011
Snowball the dancing cockatoo whose sense of rhythm has amazed scientists
Snowball is a phenomenon because he is the first non-human animal documented as dancing to a synchronised beat.
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