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POPSSome updates to Clipmarks We've got a lot of great projects in the pipeline that we'll be rolling out over the next few weeks and months. We introduced some of these changes this week. If you click the source URL in this clip you'll see the blog post that outlines some of them. In addition to some new features, our work will primarily focus on accomplishing 3 things: (i) make the user interface of the site more intuitive and user friendly; (ii) strengthen the social aspects of the site (iii) make the site much faster and more reliable
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POPSThink Animals Don't Think Like Us? Think Again "By implication, a vast world of animal cognition exists out there, not just in African Grey parrots but in other creatures, too. It is a world largely untapped by science. Clearly, animals know more than we think, and think a great deal more than we know. That, essentially, was what Alex (and a growing number of research projects) taught us. He taught us that our vanity had blinded us to the true nature of minds, animal and human; that so much more is to be learned about animal minds than received doctrine allowed. No wonder Alex and I faced so much flak!" From Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence—and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process, by Irene Pepperberg.
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POPSWomen trafficking, horrible also in numbers Some more horrifying statistics: In the region of South Eastern Europe, comprising Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, FYR Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, 90% of foreign women in the sex business are alleged victims of trafficking, 10% to 15% of these women and girls are under the age of 18 years. The majority of victims are recruited in Albania, Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania. The women and girls are often initially trafficked on the local market. They are being moved from one place to another and after a while sold abroad. following a movie i saw, thought to look into figures and was amazed. this is one of the lowest levels that human is reaching. and i say human because putting it away, shoving it aside, excusing oneself from that sight will not do. it is something in within human capabalities, and we should acknowledge that, also the strive to undo it.
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POPSThe Last Victorian Leviathan Steam Ship Alas, the end of the Eastern came with more of a whimper than bang. After suffering far too many accidents, and far too many money troubles, the Eastern passed from one hand to another until eventually the largest ship in the Victorian world came to a humiliating end, first as a floating billboard in Liverpool and then finally broken up and sold as scrap. - It took two full years just to dismantle this ship (gives you an idea how big it was). - A mysterious dead body was found inside the special double hull (one can only imagine the desperate story of that stowaway...) At least Brunel didn't see the sad and pathetic end to his magnificent Great Eastern, though he didn't live to see its majesty either. Brunel died only four days after the great ship's first sea trial.
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POPSGoogle Chrome is here This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust. We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.
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POPSBeauty and the Brain Future work may elucidate the long-term effects of one's surroundings on brain function and the relationship between aesthetically pleasing spaces and their functionality. What one considers beautiful is, of course, influenced by culture, learning, and experience, and not everything we find beautiful will ultimately be traceable to the structure and function of our brain. The larger question "What is beauty?" still poses a major challenge, but answering it no longer seems so impossible.
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POPSThe end of Death The psychologist Ernest Becker wrote in his pulitzer prize winning book, “The Denial of Death,” that in the face of an acute and agonizing awareness of his mortality, man has developed three main devices to sustain his sanity.These illusions act as temporary solutions to the problem of death. The Religious Solution The Religious Solution invents the concept of God and projects onto him the power to grant us what we all really want: the ability to bestow eternal life on ourselves an our loved ones; to be freed from disease, decay and death. The Romantic Solution The second illusion Becker identifies - when we no longer believe in God, we then turn our lovers into gods and goddesses.When in love, man can “forget himself in the delirium of sex, and still be marvelously quickened in the experience”. We are temporarily relieved from the drag of “the animality that haunts our victory over decay and death.” When in love, we become immortal gods.
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POPSSolar Sailing in Space The concept of solar sailing was invented in the 1920s by two Russian scientists, and it has been the subject of a few projects over the years, says Louis Friedman, the executive director of the Planetary Society, a public space organization based in Pasadena, CA
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POPSThe Courage to Live Consciously I wasn't sure which was better, Steve Pavlina's article on living your live with courage, or the quotes he used to illustrate his ideas. Either way, worth reading. How would you live if you had no fear at all? You'd still have your intelligence and common sense to safely navigate around any real dangers, but without feeling the emotion of fear, would you be more willing to take risks, especially when the worst case wouldn't actually hurt you at all? Would you speak up more often, talk to more strangers, ask for more sales, dive headlong into those ambitious projects you've been dreaming about? What if you even learned to enjoy the things you currently fear? What kind of difference would that make in your life?
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POPSVulberability of the power grid It's incredible to me that more isn't being done to make the United States power grid more state of the art. That means the ability to transfer greater amounts of electricity over larger distances with more reliability and security. It seems to me that this is just a disaster waiting to happen.
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POPSSarah Palin: More Earmark Hypocrisy The earmarks that Palin apparently will accept could also be ridiculed in a McCain-ish fashion. They include $475,000 to construct a "heritage center" in the Chilkat Indian Village; $150,000 to support private industry participation in two international fishery groups; $200,000 for investigating and prosecuting bootlegging; $200,000 for researching the king crab; and $855,000 for building fairgrounds. The Alaska earmarks also include $1.2 million for construction work on an airport on Akutan, a tiny island that relies on seaplane for contact with the Alaskan mainland. (The Coast Guard handles medical emergencies.) The island has roughly 800 residents. Could this be dubbed the Airport to Nowhere?
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POPSCan the all-seeing, all-knowing Google be trusted to rule the world? Many of Google’s brightest ideas come from the attempt to fulfil its almost hopelessly ambitious mission: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Upcoming projects will go some way to achieving this goal. Amongst them is Google Book Search. For the past few years, Google have been scanning the pages of books in order to eventually release them online and make them fully searchable. Professor Angell argued that Google’s track record is admirable, but problems could come in the future. He said: “If it is a choice between Google holding my details and the British Government holding my details, I’d give them to Google every time. I see more nuisance value than evil intent.” But he added: “The moment any organization gets too vast, hubris takes over and then they fail.”
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POPSTop ten green architecture projects of 2008 From LEED platinum superstructures to innovative recycled and reclaimed buildings to ground-breaking monuments that integrate incredible new technologies, read on the year’s best and brightest developments!
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