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POPSAre the Holy Grail and Ark of the Covenant Hidden...in Denmark?!? "It is undeniable that those who planned and built the churches of Bornholm knew exactly what they were doing and why they did it,'' the authors say. The authors point to a find of nearly 3,000 tiny, intricately carved golden figures unearthed in a 1985-86 excavation of a Bornholm field as lending credibility to their claim of a Bornholm connection. The golden figures have been dated to AD 400-600 when the Merovingians -- a clan of Frankish kings who claimed to be, like Jesus, of the house and lineage of the Bible's King David -- were at the height of their power. Descendants of the Merovingians later settled in Burgundy. In medieval times, the island was known as Burgunderland or Burgunderholm. The book also quotes a AD 417 work by Spanish historian Orosius, which says the Burgundians came from Bornholm. http://www.rense.com/general6/baltic.htm *LOL* I love stuff like this. .:p
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POPSHenry's Brain Lives On "Last week, a year after Molaison's death, Annese and his team began cutting the brain into thousands of slices, the first phase of a project that will use new technology to preserve the 83-year-old brain. The work will produce both highly magnified images of the brain that will be available on the Internet and a collection of tissue slices that can be used by researchers worldwide. It will offer a digital map of Molaison's brain in extremely fine detail, a way to re-examine theories based on examinations of him in life, perhaps leading to new insights into the mind responsible for so much of what we know about memory."
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POPSTwitter and the Global Brain In fact, judging by Twitter's Trending Topics, the re-tweeting process does not point to either good, or important content. Of course, it may not be right to assume that a global brain will be smarter, and real significance will be lost in the tsunami of celebrity drivel.
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POPSNonviolence As Their Weapon "It was 2001. Khatib watched in horror as Israeli soldiers shot an unarmed friend at a checkpoint. Two weeks later, the militant Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade made a revenge attack on the checkpoint, killing seven soldiers. "My first reaction was 'Good for Al Aqsa!' " Khatib said. Then he realized the dead soldiers belonged to a different unit, not the one on duty when his friend was shot. "It made me wonder: This cycle of death, of violent action and reaction, how we can break it?"
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POPS45th Mersenne Prime Revealed As for the next prime number record waiting to be crunched, the EFF will award $150,000 to the first person or group who discovers a prime with at least 100 million digits and $250,000 for a prime with at least a billion digits. You can download the GIMPS distributed computing software and join the hunt here .
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POPSThe Importance of Having Friends Who Disagree Many people make the mistake of surrounding themselves with people who think exactly like them and reinforce every idea or prejudice they have. This is a bad mistake and will often end up distorting the reality you see. One may end up with a "fan club" that just reinforces your prejudices. So do a quick test right now. Make a list of your closest friends/acquintances/advisors. Then make a separate list of those who think totally differently from you, but are worth listening to anyway. Look at the intersection of these lists. You may be surprised.
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POPSWe can feel without seeing... This study really amazes me. It seems to suggest that blind people are able to react to something that is shown to them even though they don't 'see' it. I suggest reading the entire article to try to understand - though i must admit i still don't really get it.
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POPSEndless Oil Kutcherov's technique involves dividing the world into a fine-meshed grid that maps cracks (or migration channels) under the Earth's crust, through which the hydrocarbons can bubble up to the surface. His advice: Drill where the cracks meet. Doing this, he predicts, will dramatically reduce the likelihood of dry wells. Kutcherov expects the success rate of drillers to more than triple, from 20% to 70%, saving billions in exploration costs while opening up vast new areas of the planet --most of which has never been deemed to have promise -- to exploration. Good news for oil-dependent humans, I guess. Not so good for the environment and climate change.
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POPSThe Next Hacking Frontier: Your Brain? As neural engineering becomes more complex and more widespread, the potential for security breaches will mushroom. For example, the next generation of implantable devices to control prosthetic limbs will likely include wireless controls that allow physicians to remotely adjust settings on the machine. If neural engineers don’t build in security features such as encryption and access control, an attacker could hijack the device and take over the robotic limb.
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POPSIs being an expert a key to good leadership? Clipped this from an interesting article that uses General Electric as an example of a company that doesn't prioritize expertise or understanding of how things work or how they're made in or to manage their development. From my personal experience with Clipmarks and Amplify i can definitely say that i wish i had greater knowledge of how things work technically and have often felt that i would help us make better decisions if i did. That said, i also think my lack of knowledge about how things work has allowed me to have an open mind about things, because i'm not burdened with the knowledge of how difficult things may be.
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POPSFive-Second Touch Can Convey Specific Emotion, Study Finds The researchers also recorded a complex vocabulary of touch — a shake, a rub, a pat or a squeeze, small changes in the amount of pressure applied, variations in the abruptness of the stroke, changing rates at which the fingers moved across the skin, and differences in the location and duration of the contact. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrKKcxB5MwY
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POPSPentagon Planning Deployment of Troops in Support of Nationwide Vaccination It is worth noting that this involvement of the military is not being decided by the President, but by the Secretary of Defense, which suggests that the Pentagon is, in a key issue of of national interest, overriding the President and Commander in Chief. The US Congress has not been consulted on the issue. This decision to mobilise the Armed Forces in the vaccination campaign is taken in anticipation of a national emergency. Although no national emergency has been called, the presumption is that a national public health emergency will occur, using the WHO Level 6 Pandemic as a pretext and a justification.
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POPSMonsanto GM-corn Harvest Fails Massively in South Africa "One can't see from the outside whether a plant is unseeded. One must open up the cob leaves to establish the problem,' he said. The seedless cobs show no sign of disease or any kind of fungus. They just have very few seeds, often none at all. Corn is the main staple food for South Africa's 48-million people. The three maize varieties which failed to produce seeds were designed with a built-in resistance to weed-killers, and manipulated to increase yields per hectare.
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POPS"Space Internet" to Link Worlds by 2011? DTN is already used for earthbound projects. Scientists, for instance, are using the system to tag and track wildlife with a data-delivery capacity far more reliable than past satellite-based networks. DTN can also bring broadband Web to remote areas with few communication structures, connecting remote humans such as the Arctic's Sami people via satellite with far shorter time lags. The U.S. military has also embraced the technology to help keep lines of communication open in remote areas—or when other infrastructure is destroyed. So far, DTN doesn't seem to have a catch, experts say.
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POPSDanger of taking a shower while it's lightning So, it's lightning outside here in NJ and i was just going to take a shower. remembered being told that it's dangerous to shower while it's lightning...wasn't sure, so looked it up. Figured this would be good info for others to know, so Amplify'd it...
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POPSThe Incredible Disappearing Sonic Clothes Washer Now a "new" washer appears that replaces most of the water with "reusable nylon polymer beads" ???? http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/B051B3FE-C8A7-4B61-82B9-B738C3D74966/ I saw a TV demo of this machine long ago but for some reason it has become almost impossible to find information on this Japanese invention. Ask yourself why?
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POPSGoogle's death grip on Microsoft Not necessarily anything we didn't already know, but this is clipped from an article that clearly articulates the stranglehold Google has over Microsoft as a result of their core philosophies. Management at Microsoft are certainly aware of this - will be very interesting to see how they try to counter it over the next several years.
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POPSUS Brain-Plug Interface Gets Live Human Trials []iInitially the tech will be strictly for medical uses, of course. But if it ever becomes truly safe and convenient to use, it isn't hard to imagine people choosing voluntarily to have a BrainGate interface implanted into their heads simply for convenience. It would confer abilities roughly equivalent to telepathy and clairvoyance right off, particularly if combined with some kind of feedback mechanism - video specs, perhaps, or an equivalent of BrainGate attached to the optic nerve instead. In a sufficiently wired and automated world, it would also be effectively telekinetic: unlocking doors, turning lights or machines on and off, handling computers etc.
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POPSThe Invisible Machine - Electromagnetic Warfare This was really interesting, though scary. Microwave weapons for crowd control, etc. Electromagnetic warfare is how wars will be fought in the future. Here's something related: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/04/abl_first_flight_blasts/
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POPSSpace storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe This is science warning of a 2012 solar event -- NASA and the New Scientist. Nobody is listening, yet. The only way to prepare is to decrease dependency on electricity, fast. Too bad for the electric car enthusiasts.
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POPSNo cash? Barter for services with "dibits"
In the First Great Depression, the use of local community currencies ("script") exploded across the United States. Roosevelt sent a senior member of his Cabinet (I think it was John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of the Interior) to tour the country to find out what was going on. After a few months research, the Secetrary returned to report that the local "script" currencies were thriving and were starting to turn things around. But then he told the President that if the Federal Government lost control of the money system, it would lose control of the country. Local currencies were then outlawed and the New Deal, according to which the Federal Government borrowed and dispersed all monies, was hatched. Obama is trying the same trick in his new New Deal. If it does not succeed -- and our findings indicated that success is unlikely -- then he might be open to letting people create and trade in their own local bartar currencies, as well as give each other interest-free credits. One lesso
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POPSFormer Yahoo CEO was wrong to the tune of $billions Aside from the great extent to which this perspective proved to be wrong, there is a great lesson here...that people who see business models as black and white, or who try to force a model prematurely, can be missing the big picture. Imagine if Google had listened to everyone else who said search will never be a lucrative business. Fast forward to today...I believe that the current excitement about real-time, human filtered search is real and justified. However, i don't necessarily think people have yet figured out exactly how it will be monetized. I also don't think the right solution has yet been introduced. One thing i do know for sure is that amplify is going throw it's hat in the ring and make a run at it.
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