Following myself

I just did it to see if I could, honest. I clicked on Google Followers to check out the widget functionality, and was promptly invited to befriend my own site. Sure - one can't have too many friends.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Australia coping best with global recession

Top 10 recession refuges:

The top countries best surviving the global recession, according to a survey of 7500 businesspeople from 24 nations.

1st - Australia
2nd - China
3rd - India and Singapore (equal)
5th - Hong Kong
6th - Canada
7th - Japan and Qatar (equal)
9th - New Zealand
10th - Malaysia, Sweden and Vietnam (equal)

Source: Servcorp International Business Confidence Survey.

Well, there you go, who would have thought it? It's not like we didn't binge out on credit like the rest of the world. One saving grace is our system of prudential banking regulations. Another, the four pillar policy, I dare say.

I don't know if it's too early to claim that Rudd's stimulus has worked or not, but there have been signs to encourage this thinking... retail figures are holding steady, the housing market is holding, and we have yet to experience mass sackings. Though my company they are trimming the sails here and there, so to speak.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

The history of the politics of the theory of evolution

Darwinania: n. If your "interests include Darwin, politics involving Victorian-Era scientists, public perceptions of evolution, anti-evolution movements, and the history of paleontology, especially the presentations of dinosaurs in museums and scientific literature from the 1800s on", you have Darwinania.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

This isn't Funk — it's the Flying Spagetti Monster

Heathens! What's this, a creepy schism?

The full Old Greg (minus ending)


Old Greg -- The Ending

Woah there Putin, woah, easy boy

Michael Tobias explores Sarah Palin's ability to portray foreign leaders in animal terms, and her appreciation of geography.

Palin:"it's very important when you consider even national security issueswith Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of theUnited States of America, where, where do they go? It's Alaska. It'sjust right over the border."

...

Tobias: But if Putin were to actually visit Washington DC or the UN in NewYork, he would pass near or over Iceland and then enter US airspace inNew England, no doubt rearing his head menacingly all the while.

I guess never having had a passport means you are not really the type to pour over air corridor maps in your free-time. Or even appreciate where your country's main airports are. Didn't America just re-elect a President who had never or hardly been out of the country before? And look at the mess he made.

ratS delgnapS rennaB

Unbelievable.


Rice looks shocked.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Happy Friday the 13th

The modern reason why Friday the 13th is considered unlucky is said to come from Friday October the 13th, 1307. On this date, the Pope of the church in Rome in conjunction with the King of France, carried out a secret death warrant Against "the Knights Templar". The Templars were terminated as heretics, never again to hold the power that they had held for so long. The Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay, was arrested and before he was killed, was tortured and crucified. The destruction of the Templar Knights was so complete and terrible that it will always be remembered as an unlucky day.
Wikipedia.org

It was also unlucky for the pope and the king of France. When Jacques DeMolay was burned at the stake in front of the Pope Clement V and King Philip the Fair, he cursed them wiz 'ees dying breath. They both died the next year.

clipped from dictionary.reference.com Word of the Day: Friday July 13, 2007 triskaidekaphobia \tris-ky-dek-uh-FOH-bee-uh\, noun: A morbid fear of the number 13 or the date Friday the 13th. Thirteen people, pledged to eliminate triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13, today tried to reassure American sufferers by renting a 13 ft plot of land in Brooklyn for 13 cents . . . a month. -- Daily Telegraph, January 14, 1967 Past disasters linked to the number 13 hardly help triskaidekaphobics overcome their affliction. The most famous is the Apollo 13 mission, launched on April 11, 1970 (the sum of 4, 11 and 70 equals 85 - which when added together comes to 13), from Pad 39 (three times 13) at 13:13 local time, and struck by an explosion on April 13. -- "It's just bad luck that the 13th is so often a Friday", Electronic Telegraph, September 8, 1996 Triskaidekaphobia is from Greek treiskaideka, triskaideka, thirteen (treis, three + kai, and + deka, ten) + phobos, fear.

Consumerism — Nature's survival strategy

Howard Bloom has pinged consumerism as a trend or fashion that may appear to be an excessive waste of time, and folly as a survival strategy for all species — from bacteria (our ancestors, as the author explains) to bees to humans.

We see how the human 'generation-gap' is echoed by bacteria, where the young, anti-establishment generation eschews the ways of their boring parents in search of their own lifestyle. Non-conformity as a survival strategy:

In Praise Of Consumerism - Bees, Bacteria And The Value Of Wasted Time

Bacteria survive by swings in fashion - they survive by consumerism. One generation grows a stalk like the stem of a mushroom cap and roots itself to its food. That generation specializes in homesteading - in sucking all the nuutrition it can out of the territory it’s born in. The next generation rebels against the fashion of its parents, forgets about a stalk, seems to snicker at the very notion of riveting itself to the ground, and grows a biological propeller--a long, whip-like tail. Then it sets off for adventure. In groups of 10,000, it spreads from the colony’s heart, racing into the unknown to literally find its fortune, to find new territory with new food.

When these rebellious pioneers trip across a bonanza of delectables, their kids rebel against their parents’ ways. They shun travel and once again grow stalks, stubbornly rooting themselves to the new food source.

It’s all a part of a survival strategy or, more specifically, of a search-and-swallow strategy. The generation with a stalk specializes in staying at home. The generation with the propeller specializes in exploration. Explorers find new sources of food. Homesteaders mine the new food source for all it’s worth—and they do it very efficiently. By the time the old food source
runs out, the explorers have found a new one.

Does this mean the waste of a lot of material goods? You bet. Not every group of 10,000 explorers finds a treasure trove. Some die in the desert with nothing new to eat. Some die even more catastrophically, as victims of bacterial war or as victims of bacteria-eaters like the larvae of corals, rotifers, sea anemones, and jellyfish. But even the failures teach lessons to the colony. The dying bacteria send out molecular signals that say, “Beware. This is not a safe place to go. This is not a safe path to follow.”

And in looking at bees, it could pay to hug a hippy.

Things get even worse if the fashionable flower patch of the moment is running out of pollen and nectar. When a worker bee sets off to follow the crowd and comes back with her cargo-pouches
nearly empty, the unloaders pass her by as if she were dirt. Attention means everything in a world of fashion. The whole reason we go with the trend is to get others to look at us admiringly. That’s true of you and me. And it’s equally true of bees.

Bees who are shunned at the loading dock stagger around as if they are stunned - or more as if they have lost their sense of purpose, their sense of meaning. That’s when the self-indulgence of the hippie explorer bees shows its worth. Crowds of discouraged forager bees wander around inside the hive looking for some way to lift their spirits, some way to entertain themselves. And they find it. Four or five of the explorer bees have accidentally bumbled into new flower patches or new water puddles.

And they are not shy about advertising their discoveries. Like street buskers or soapbox preachers, they dance their news. Four or five of them compete on the inside wall of the hive like break dancers vying for your attention at Times Square. You’ve heard about these dances - the famous figure eights that spell out direction, distance, and wind speed on the way to the flower
patch and back. It’s a very complex language for a bee with only a tiny number of brain cells.

But the discouraged foragers gather round to watch the dancers flash and flaunt. Some explorers dance more enthusiastically than others. The most outrageous enthusiasts attract the biggest crowds. If the dance is sufficiently persuasive - which means if the bee dancing the message dances longer than her competitors, if she just won’t give up - a few of the conformists will catch a bit of the dancer’s enthusiasm and go out and check her report. If they’re impressed with what they find, they come back and join the dance. If they’re not impressed, they don’t.

Eventually one bee manages to gather the biggest audience and the largest number of background dancers. That’s when the hive makes up its mind. The conformists go off in a pack to mine the flower patch the winner of the dance contest advertised. When the foragers come back home with pouches full of stuff the hive needs, the unloaders rush to them, make a fuss over them, and unload them as quickly as they can. The foraging conformists get what they need most, attention. They sharpen up as if they have a sense of purpose, a sense of mission, and a sense of meaning again.

Meanwhile the explorer bees - the bee world’s Henry David Thoreaaus - go off on their self-indulgent flights and buzz off the beaten path, selfishly pursuing their trend-bucking rambles again.

The hive survives thanks to wastes of time and energy. It survives thanks to the explorer’s useless consumption of fuel. It survives thanks to self-indulgence. It survives thanks to a hippie luxury.

If I've started a trend (I have for me) here's another patch of Bloom: In Praise Of Consumerism — It Appeals To The Thoreau In You

7 Thinking Errors You Probably Make

Common thinking errors explained, each backed by a scientific study. Food for thought!

clipped from www.lifehack.org The brain isn’t a flawless piece of machinery. Although it is powerful and comes in an easy to carry container, it has it’s weaknesses. A field in psychology which studies these errors, known as biases. Although you can’t upgrade your mental hardware, noticing these biases can clue you into possible mistakes The entire domain of the scientific method has largely been an effort to overcome the natural inclination towards bias in reasoning. Common thinking errors 1) Confirmation Bias Tendency to seek information to prove, rather than disprove our theories 2) Hindsight Bias See past results as appearing more probable than they did initially 3) Clustering Illusion See patterns where none actually exist 4) Recency Effect Give more weight to recent data 5) Anchoring Bias A well-known problem with negotiations 6) Overconfidence Effect People tend to grossly overestimate their abilities 7) Fundamental Attribution Error Mistaking personality and character traits for differences caused by situations

Having Sex without Gravity

Only four positions?

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk US and Russian astronauts have had sex in space for separate research programmes on how human beings might survive years in orbit, according to a book published yesterday. Pierre Kohler, a respected French scientific writer, says in The Final Mission: Mir, The Human Adventure that the subject is taboo both at Nasa and at mission control in Moscow, but that cosmic couplings have taken place. "The issue of sex in space is a serious one," he says. "The experiments carried out so far relate to missions planned for married couples on the future International Space Station, the successor to Mir. Scientists need to know how far sexual relations are possible without gravity." He cites a confidential Nasa report on a space shuttle mission in 1996. A project codenamed STS-XX was to explore sexual positions possible in a weightless atmosphere. four positions were found possible without "mechanical assistance" six needed a special elastic belt and inflatable tunnel, like an open-ended sleeping bag

10 year old boy masters 10 languages using CD-Roms

One boy's amazing gift keeps on giving — for ten countries so far.

clipped from www.mirror.co.uk A boy genius of 10 has stunned teachers by learning to speak 10 languages. Arpan Sharma taught himself French, Spanish, German, Italian, Swahili, Mandarin, Polish, Thai and the difficult Lugandan language of Uganda. He also learned Hindi from his mum and dad. The gifted primary school pupil from Oldbury, West Mids, studied using CD-roms. He learned Italian fluently at seven, German at eight, and Spanish when he was nine. But he admitted: "Learning Swahili was probably one of the biggest challenges I've faced and Mandarin Chinese was hard too." Deputy Headmaster Richard Lynn, of Blue Coat School, Edgbaston, Birmingham, said: "Arpan is a language genius, a natural when it comes to listening to an exact pronunciation and repeating it perfectly." Arpan wants to be a surgeon and work in hospitals abroad and speak each country's tongue.

Things we can learn from flies

A fly goes into a barn and sees a fresh cow pat on which he immediately begins to gorge himself, to extent that he is unable to fly. Seeing a rake leaning against a wall he reasons that if he climbs up the handle and flies off he should become airborne. He does this but crashes to his death.

Moral of story: Don’t fly of the handle when you’re full off shit!

Right Brain vs Left Brain test

I can only see her moving clockwise!

clipped from www.news.com.au THE Right Brain vs Left Brain test ... do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise? If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa. Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it. LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS uses logic detail oriented facts rule words and language present and past math and science can comprehend knowing acknowledges order/pattern perception knows object name reality based forms strategies practical safe RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS uses feeling "big picture" oriented imagination rules symbols and images present and future philosophy & religion can "get it" (i.e. meaning) believes appreciates spatial perception knows object function fantasy based presents possibilities impetuous risk taking

It's not the first time we've almost died out

Have you ever wondered why people are fundamentally similar world over?

clipped from trakker.typepad.com All humans on the Earth today - over 6,000,000,000 of us - are homo sapiens. While homo sapiens appear to have emerged 200,000 years ago, in Africa, the population grew slowly and was subject to many setbacks. One such setback about 50,000 years ago or so, reduced the entire population of homo sapiens to just 2,000 individuals! Think about that. We were THAT close to extinction!

Internet literally global, topographically speaking

clipped from www.cosmosmagazine.com Internet is spherical with a dense core SYDNEY: The internet is not web-shaped after all. Instead, it's more more like a globe, made up of a dense core and sparsely connected outer regions, according to a mathematical analysis of its structure. Visual representation of the topology of the internet. Data was collected by thousands of world-wide volunteers through a distributed computing project called DIMES. Color code indicates a relative measure of node importance, with nodes in the most inner shell (red) forming the nucleus of the Internet. "A better understanding of the internet's structure is important in many ways," said Shavitt. "We can track the internet's evolution in time and generate predictive models to its growth [which will] help us understand how the Internet will look a few years from now so we can plan ahead." the Internet consists of a dense, heavily connected nucleus of about 100 nodes, including Google and U.S. telecommunications giant ATT WorldNet.

The world's top ten trees

clipped from www.neatorama.com 10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World 10. Lone Cypress in Monterey 9. Circus Trees 8. Giant Sequoias: General Sherman 7. Coast Redwood: Hyperion and Drive-Thru Trees 6. Chapel-Oak of Allouville-Bellefosse 5. Quaking Aspen: Pando (The Trembling Giant) 4. Montezuma Cypress: The Tule Tree 3. Banyan Tree: Sri Maha Bodhi Tree 2. Bristlecone Pine: Methuselah and Prometheus, the Oldest Trees in the World. 1. Baobab Bonus: Tree That Owns Itself Bonus 2: The Lonely Tree of Ténéré