I got a bunch of questions about “water-striders”, the life-span of turtles, and the function of tails. Frankly, I loved responding, liked my response, and love sharing this biological awesomeness.
Water striders are some of the coolest organisms imho.
This is such a cool biological adaption. They utilize COHESION TENSION. this is so frickin cool I love this stuff.
I think this WAS a step backward in the ruling. In the usa it’s the other unhealthy extreme, you touch someone the wrong way and you’re jailed for 50 years. in australia, police are running around naked and euthanasia, if you want to off yourself, that’s apparently legally “okay” (which it really isn’t). I think britain and europe strikes a fine healthy balance between these two unhealthy extremes, but if I had to choose one of the unpleasant ones, I’d choose the australian over-liberality instead of the usa dictatorship ubiquitous illegality. But, as usual, UK ftw.
Gotta love aus news though (it may not be as topnotch as uk, but it’s much more worthy than an american news). A cat somehow ends up in Tasmania and safely arrives back at home in Queensland another cat was shot 13 times and survived. What’s with bizarre cats surviving the worst?
Also, this epic sandstorm (worst in 70 years apparently so since 1939 roughly) hits Sydney. Interesting. Also the pizza ransom row was ludicrous, absurd, but amusing. Obviously the pizza delivery dude on low wage couldn’t handle not getting paid probably.
Sure there’s a few rare incidents of them attacking humans
but the same is true of lightning
and lightning strikes are actually more frequent than shark bites. If Spielberg had created Zappers instead of Jaws, about how frequently people get struck and killed by lightning would there be a greater fear irrational fear of the atmospheric discharge of electricity and indifference to our cartilaginous friends? I think so.
Sharks are beautiful. (more…)
safe plastics healthy ocean article. My questions. what plastics are safe? Other than buying unwrapped produce, how can I as a consumer not contribute to ocean toxic waste and help the environment? If I have to buy plastic-wrapped items is there any kind that’s “safer”? I’m a HUGE fan of reusing containers and I do. yogurt containers, coffee cans, protein containers I rarely ever discard and reuse around office-work-homespace as a recepteacle for something else. How do we not become plastic paranoid?! I like buying strawberries from the grocery store but they come in that clunky plastic container that I’ll discard! There should be a cool way to get solid good inexpensive food and items without resorting to plastic. Like a BYOB method. At grocery stores I simply don’t ask for bags because they’r clunky and cumbersome. NOT having plastic is smoother easier and simply…for you as an individual and with the external ecology check it’s MUCH healthier for hte environment. The fact that that ratio of plastic-to-fish-weigh had skyrocketed so much was frightening and saddening. We’ve got to seriously change this and the interviewer dude is right, I think it does start with “not-marketing” not doing outrageous prepackaging stuff. It’s actually a cool feeling ot get back from grocery shopping and having got primarily almost all produce, and to reuse the peanut butter containers, and maybe some plastic wrapped around fish, but it’s simpler and much safer for the environment. Everyone should have to read that awesome, harrowing, but poignant Earth Island article interview with the chemist-captain dude. Just to get a sense of where we’ve got to start moving for environmental conservation and healthy environmental experiences to cherish our Nature!
Like I have to go pick up a printer ink cartridge and that has plastic wrapped in it. I like Hansen’s soda, but it comes in a can. I need to pickup this xyz product and it only comes wrapped in plastic. I feel pretty unsettled and think this “scare” articles are Great. Hey, it worked. I’m scared and saddened by the amount of plastic infestation in our oceans, but they need to attach a solution to this. All these articles always end with the tone of :”This is royalled F$@%ed up..and we’re working on a solution.” There needs to BE a solution attached to these articles because when a normal person (like me) reads them, they want to do something but can’t really take any kind of action except feel saddened, frightened, and maybe frustrated by the foul pollutants in our oceans, in our fish, in our very food. So where’s the solutions man? The solutions that individual can take on their own? This is a group endeavor but everyone can contirbute. I mean I can avoid purchasing plastic-wrapped items but sometimes it’s a necessity and reusing plastics, too. But yeah, freaky stuff.
Also from a global POV yeah this a MASSIVE dangerous, harrowing, freak-out-city problem! But from a consumer POV. Where are the people marketing CHEAP, INEXPENSIVE products that have no environment-contaminating plastic wrapper and such? I know there’s tuna brands that don’t harm dolphins…great. But where’s the equivalent of that kind of product that I can purchase instead that doesn’t contain harmful plastics (that will ultimately recirculate back into our own body! Plastic goes into ocean, eaten by small fish, eaten by larger fish, we eat the larger fish that contains the plastic. F$@!ed up!)
I seriously thought the reporter was acting. how could she be so serious and controlling and almost hostilely reprimanding?? wtf?!!! lol. have people become so foully political that a good party is severely scolded? WHERE the hell do you have raging good parties where you can be LOUD (and everyone’s safe, all good stuff, etc.) did people forget how … Read Moreimportant actually having fun is? Is everyone like this? Where are the people who embrace the occasionally extremely lively party?!! IF there’s so much time for hush hush, there has to be time for loud, uproarious good solid awesome parties too! 
lol.
Sure, doing this every night would be too much simply because people couldn’t sleep. So a little discretion there, but really, it’s something that should be heralded in many respects.
While calling this kid a savior, may be a teeny bit far-fetched, he’s damn close to it! Due to conformity, fear, lack of identity, and subversion into politics, people have completely forgotten and neglected the meaning and the act of a good party. I thought the parents and the reporters were seriously “actors” because their reactions (shock and outrage) appeared so unnecessarily inflated. haha… Read More!! Thank god there still exists people like corey in the world who choose to listen to their inner voice and their own “iron string” instead slipping into delusions of what you’re supposed to do. This kid is a walking example of Emersonian self-reliance. Long live aussie corey!! haha! Self-reliance!
Obama is a story of a person inspiring and leading a disillusioned country. I’m adamantly a supporter of Obama.
Man he definitely has tremendous words of hope, unfathomably inspiring hope, but they aren’t hollow; you can tell what Obama says is authentic and originates from a source of true belief.
Great News: Man, amazing passion speech. It was really wise to speak of unity, a topic that gets people charged, instead of complex policies from the get-go of his opening speech. Obama appears extremely intelligent, honest, good, and unlike his predecessor, Obama truly understand and most importantly believes the words that he communicates. Obama should be awesome. Hope reigns in america again.
Legal Crap and Frightening News: There’s a lot of lame crap going on in the legal world. The attorney general of California sued three small trucking companies for violating labors to avoid paying payroll taxes. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was convicted on 7 counts of corruption and should serve 5 years for each count, but apparently may serve much less. On a much scarier note, the Alchohol, Tobacco, Firearms bureau successful stopped anotehr school killing spree before it started. Some idiot neo-nazis had some heinously inhuman plan to decapitate African Americans and assassinate Barrack Obama. Wow. It’s times like these where corruption, illegal earning, and racist brutality seem to clog the news that you feel pretty pathetic calling yourself American. At the very least it certainly doesn’t make you feel safe! In fact, the news in America has gotten so foul and disturbing (I can’t believe there’s still racist neo-nacist hate group buffoons still around), there’s really no point in continuing to cover it. But just the fact that dangerous hate-group racism still exists in America really causes you to scrutinize that irrationality. The opinions on slavery from the Civil War really might have left a scar and some racist people remain dangerously confused and primitive, but this chunk of news just reeks of a lot of fear. Jeez, just the thought that if Obama gets elected he could be under the threat of a racist assassination is, well, a sad sign that maybe some haven’t evolved as much as they should have. Fortunately, tomatoes have evolved!
Bottom-line: Sometimes current events are so atrocious, at times it’s good just to not pay attention to the news.
Athletics: Roger Bannister, born almost 80 years ago, in 1929, was the first human ever to run a mile in under four-minutes. He accomplished this amazing feat in 1954 during a track meet in Oxford, UK. The winds were high at first, died down, Bannister ran, and when the announcer announced his time of “3…” the crowd went mad. His official time was 3:59.4.
That’s a great achievement but what was even more fascinating that the psychological barrier was shattered. Instantly after Bannister did a sub-4, other runners believed it was possible and consequentially more and more sub-4 miles were accomplished. John Walker went on to run 129 sub-4 miles, alone, and Daniel Komen of Kenya, in 1997, doubled up Bannister’s original record to run a sub-8 minute 2-mile (two sub-4 miles back to back). So all this “breaking the barrier” business in athletics — or any arena of accomplishment — has a big emphasis.
Certainly, three sub-4 miles back to back resulting in a sub-12 minute 3-mile race is certainly a goal for some, but an even more prominent goal is the sub-2-hour marathon barrier. People have gotten close, but no one has ever run a marathon in an amount of time that begins with “1-hour”…x minutes, x seconds. Right now, the person to do that most likely is Gebrselassie, an amazing Ethiopian runner. You can read the full article, but basically prior to Haile Gebrselassie’s race in Berlin about 2 weeks ago a 2-hour 4-minute marathon was a barrier. Gebrselassie went on to break that with a 4:44 mile pace to get 2:03:59. There are skeptics and optimists of the 2-hour marathon barrier, but if anything, Gebrselassie brought the world a whole lot closer to the accomplishment of shattering such an outstanding barrier.
Bottom-line: Gebrselassie pushes the sub-2-hour marathon record.
Technology: Apple’s innovation cease to amaze. The cutting edge rumor is that they intend to release a special laptop known as “the brick”. Doing its name justice, “the brick” is supposedly carved out of a solid “brick” of titanium, making it seamless and screwless! The price for such water-blasting crafted item sounds like it would be extraordinary. While it may not be 100% indesctructible, the durability of Apple’s new laptop technology will be a practically unprecedented release sturdy portability. Here are some cool factoids about it:
Macenstein had the best prediction of its bizarre codename:
“it is likely that it is simply a name for an upcoming product (or group of products) that Apple thinks will be sexy enough to pull a huge marketshare away from Microsoft. After all, how do you break “Windows”? You throw a brick through them!”
The Large Hadron Collider was such massive news that it definitely needs its own article.
LHC will reveal to us details about dark and antimatter. It’s like an opportunity to replicate some never before-seen conditions, and answer millions of unknown questions; doing that, sometimes scares people! haha.
It excites me and most scientists, too, though.
Basically it gives us an inside look into how the universe was created, re-manufacturing some big-bang like instances that will answer jumbles of of scientific questions, clarify models (like the Stand Model) that were purely theoretical practically, and illuminate a lot of “shaky and uncertain” areas of science. Basically the LHC will provide is with a “Director’s Cut Edition” on the making of the movie of the “Universe”. haha!
Here’s the breakdown of what the components will do. They basically track different things, some of which we haven’t ever known about until now.
Anti-matter tracking — LHCb is in charge of this. We’ve got a TON of matter in the universe, but can’t seem to find the anti-matter! The big bang had equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, but all we’ve been able to put our fingers on is matter. LHCb will track where the anti-matter goes in the miniaturized, microscopic Big Bang replica.
Transportation: Interestingly enough, local Californians and many other commuters have grown a liking to the public transportation method of commuting they adopted to deal with outrageous gas prices not too long ago. Now that gas prices have dropped, many commuters still prefer the public transportation method. Hey, better for the environment, less pollution, and cheaper; they just have to make sure they get a good bus driver!
Entertainment: Hollywood does it again, with the inverse relationship between entertainment and economy — if the economy slumps, movie ticket profit soars — Hollywood has made $4.2 billion from May to Labor Day. Interesting to note that the big box-office sellers were super-hero movies like “The Incredible Hulk”, “Batman”, “Hancock”, and “Iron man”. Who knew that some adventure action movies would be the big box office hits?
Humorous: Talk about your ultimate typos, The Bloomberg News accidentally released an obituary of Steve Jobs, despite the fact that he is still very much alive to this day. The multiple-paged obit, apparently “hold for release”, got out of the bag and wasn’t held. You can view it here. And here is actually a list of the embarrassing history of many untimely obituaries of the past, some of the most astonishing are Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and Mark Twain on two accounts! The painter, James Whistler, read his accidentally published premature obituary and said it actually made him feel better: “”tender glow of health”!
California: Good ol’ Scharzeneggar has created a temporary solution to get moving with the california budget. No one could decide how to close the 15.2 billion deficit. Republicans disliked the idea of tax raises, while democrats vied for tax increases and cuts to clear the deficit. Likely using a trusty math calculator, Arnie crafted a temporary budget to short-term raise sale taxes and make a few cuts to make back $4 billion toward the budget and a little more then next to years. It likely would be a miracle, but then the $15.2 billion deficit would be cleared in three years and and the current sales taxes could rebound back to lower than its current amount.
I like Arnie’s words with respect to the amount of state funding from taxes already. Californians make a lot of money and that helps out the state:
“I think the people of California are sending to Sacramento plenty of dollars, 130-some billions of dollars they are sending every year for us to function. If we cannot function with that money, then there is something wrong with the system rather than with the people”
