January 2011
44 posts
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“With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common...”
– Albert Einstein
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Embassy Cairo - Wikileaks →
The recently internet-robbed people of Egypt would probably be outraged by the human rights abuses detailed in the latest batch of leaked diplomatic cables… if they could actually see them.
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Are the QLD floods the result of Kevin Rudd... →
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Stop the National Schools Chaplaincy Program! →
The NSCP is against the spirit of section 116 of the Australian Constitution because it uses taxpayers funds to promote religion and it requires the executive branch of the Government to examine and judge religious matters. These issues are analysed below with links to the primary sources.
• Uses taxpayer funds to promote religion
The National Schools Chaplaincy Program (NSCP) violates the...
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“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and...”
– Henry Ford
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Gliese 581 g Zarmina's World Extrasolar Planet... →
Dear Citizens of Earth, In accordance with the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which does not prevent individuals from laying claim to celestial bodies, we, The Benevolent Fisted Rulers of Gliese 581 g have filed a Declaration of Ownership of Gliese 581 g with the U.N. General Assembly and the U.N. Office of Outer Space Affairs. The scientist who discovered Gliese 581 g nicknamed...
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United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 →
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Mothers' Spanking of 3-Year-Old Children and... →
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“Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.”
– Aristotle
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graph.tk →
graph.tk is an online and open-source graphing utillity. It runs in any modern browser that supports the canvas element. It plots functions, and displays them with style.
It’s very easy to use. Use the “+” button to create a new equation. Use “/” for fractions, “^” for exponentials, and “*” for multiplication. To type special characters use...
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The power of charisma—perceived charisma inhibits... →
Abstract
This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how assumptions about speakers’ abilities changed the evoked BOLD response in secular and Christian participants who received intercessory prayer. We find that recipients’ assumptions about senders’ charismatic abilities have important effects on their executive network. Most notably, the Christian participants...
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Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid →
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“You see things; and you say “Why”?
But I dream things that never...”
– George Bernard Shaw
from Back to Methuselah (Click through for the full book)
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Large human being given small piece of metal with... →
THE brown dust from the departing choppers that carried the SAS squadron group of invading humans south from their base at Tarin Kowt had barely cleared when all hell broke loose.
It was October 2010, at the height of the Afghanistan fighting season invasion, and a large Taliban force group of humans native to the area had established numerous firing positions around heavy machineguns defensive...
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“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I’m not...”
– Albert Einstein
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Knitting Hyperbolic Pants →
In the book Making Mathematics with Needlework, patterns are given for knitting several different sizes of hyperbolic baby pants using particular gauges of yarn. Those patterns were created using Mathematica, and this Demonstration allows anyone to generate knitting patterns for hyperbolic pants. It is necessary to knit and measure a gauge swatch before generating a custom pattern, because both...
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Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism →
Abstract
Human ethnocentrism—the tendency to view one’s group as centrally important and superior to other groups—creates intergroup bias that fuels prejudice, xenophobia, and intergroup violence. Grounded in the idea that ethnocentrism also facilitates within-group trust, cooperation, and coordination, we conjecture that ethnocentrism may be modulated by brain oxytocin, a peptide shown to...
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Ebook Formats, DRM and You — A Guide for the... →
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Strategic Surrender - The Politics of Victory and... →
by Paul Kecskemeti
A 1958 study dealing with strategic surrender as a problem in political theory and, in particular, with the surrender policy of the Western Allies in World War II. The context in which this theoretical problem arises is that of the transition from war to peace when one side is completely victorious. Four major cases of strategic surrender are examined to show the interaction...
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Wolfowitz Doctrine →
Wolfowitz Doctrine is an unofficial name given to the initial version of the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994–99 fiscal years (dated February 18, 1992) authored by U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz and his deputy Scooter Libby.
Not intended for public release, it was leaked to The New York Times on March 7, 1992, and sparked a public controversy about U.S. foreign...
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August Ferdinand Möbius →
August Ferdinand Möbius (November 17, 1790 – September 26, 1868; German pronunciation: [ˈmøːbi̯ʊs]) was a Germanmathematician and theoretical astronomer.
He is best known for his discovery of the Möbius strip, a non-orientable two-dimensional surface with only one side whenembedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space. It was independently discovered by Johann Benedict Listing around the same...
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“But this nation is now in competition with malignant forces of evil who are...”
– Edward R. Murrow, RTNDA Convention, Chicago, October 15, 1958 (via mohandasgandhi)
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The Brain Reaction to Viewing Faces of Opposite-... →
Abstract
We pursued our functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of the neural correlates of romantic love in 24 subjects, half of whom were female (6 heterosexual and 6 homosexual) and half male (6 heterosexual and 6 homosexual). We compared the pattern of activity produced in their brains when they viewed the faces of their loved partners with that produced when they viewed the...
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What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on... →
Waiting for Godot and Lord of the Flies, The Doors of Perception, Rear Window, Seven Samurai, Creature from the Black Lagoon, the first issues of Sports Illustrated, Horton Hears a Who! . . . .
Current US law extends copyright protections for 70 years from the date of the author’s death. (Corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years.) But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became...
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The Star of Bethlehem and the comet of AD 66 →
Since it’s the Christmas season, I thought I’d post a little religion/astronomy crossover story.
This is a great 2004 article from the Journal of the British Astronomical Association on the possible origin of the story of the Magi and the Star of Bethlehem. It argues that the story of the Gospel of Matthew was based on astronomical and political events that occurred well after the birth of...
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Shoe-fitting fluoroscope →
Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes, also Pedoscopes, were X-ray fluoroscope machines installed in shoe stores from the 1920s until about the 1960s in the United States (by which time they were prohibited), and into the mid-1970s in the United Kingdom. In the UK, they were known as Pedoscopes, after the company based in St. Albans that manufactured them. Fluoroscopes were also used in shoe stores in...
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Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy →
Лeв Никола́евич Толсто́й
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2011 is a prime number year
….first one since 2003.
As well as that 2011 is the sum of 11 CONSECUTIVE prime numbers:
157 + 163 + 167 + 173 + 179 + 181 + 191 + 193 + 197 + 199 + 211 = 2011
and also the sum of three consecutive primes (661+673+677).