February 2012
10 posts
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John Fairfax and Sylvia Cook
After adventurer John Fairfax became the first person in recorded history to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean, he said he couldn’t have done it without the help of “a great teacher,” a pirate. The navigational skills needed for his six-month trip in 1969 from the Canary Islands to Florida had been honed during Fairfax’s three years as a buccaneering smuggler, he...
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The Politics of Dead Children / Have sanctions...
Two weeks after the hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I began looking in earnest for trustworthy sources of information about the effects of sanctions on Iraq. I was joined in my search by a half-dozen or so e-mail acquaintances who approached the question from a broadly similar viewpoint: If sanctions are killing Iraqi babies, then Osama Bin Laden has a...
Remains of runaway Ohio girl missing since 1999...
The skeletal remains of a 14-year-old Ohio runaway missing since 1999 have been found while the home where she was last seen was being demolished.
Lima police said Saturday the remains of Nicholle Coppler were found in a crawl space as the home’s foundation was being dug out. Lima Police Chief Kevin Martin announced the remains found earlier this month at the Lima home were identified...
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Female Utopias
Another important subgenre is feminist utopias and the overlapping category of feminist science fiction. Writer Sally Miller Gearhart calls this sort of fiction political: it contrasts the present world with an idealized society, criticizes contemporary values and conditions, sees men or masculine systems as the major cause of social and political problems (e.g. war), and presents women as equal...
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Parthenogenesis
On June 26, 2007, International Stem Cell Corporation (ISCC), a California-based stem cell research company, announced that their lead scientist, Dr. Elena Revazova, and her research team were the first to intentionally create human stem cells from unfertilized human eggs using parthenogenesis. The process may offer a way for creating stem cells that are genetically matched to a particular woman...
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White People
The main hypotheses which attempt to account for white skin suggest it is an adaptation to inadequate ultraviolet radiation. As humans moved out of the tropics, a conspicuous latitude gradient of skin tones follows the out of Africa dispersion, it is argued natural selection for sufficient ultraviolet penetration to enable vitamin D production gave rise to the evolution of skin pigmentation by the...
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The Worst Disease You Can Get: Fatal Familial...
FFI has been discovered in only 28 families worldwide; it is an autosomal dominant gene mutation, meaning that a parent with the disease has a fifty percent chance of passing it on to his or her child (2)… the hallmark of FFI, which the aforementioned conditions don’t necessarily show, is the complete inability to sleep. The brain wave patterns that appear on FFI patients’...
January 2012
5 posts
1 tag
Dualisms in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
(http://www.thecultureclub.net/2010/10/13/dualism-shakespeare-hamlet/)
Dualisms in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
by ttucker23 on October 13, 2010
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David Tennant playing the title role in the 2009 RSC production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
In a central episode in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the hero defines to a group of visiting actors the ‘purpose’ of drama:
‘…whose end, both at the first and...
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Don't Mess With The Holy Fool
Mike Goode, in his recent essay “Blakespotting” recalls a 2003 article of the New Yorker which describes a penthouse owned by Donald Trump decorated with proverbs from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
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There is a…sect of Sufism dedicated to Blake called the Blaketashi Derwishes, and a church headed by Aethelred Eldrige who engages in daily readings of Milton. Blake’s influence is...
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CELEBRITY as COMMODITY FETISH: Recycle Those...
The digital age has created a content void, a black hole and landfill brimming with gossip and inanity that nonetheless is a reflection of who we are.
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If we want to understand ourselves, if we want to understand the civilization to which we belong, we have to understand celebrities, because the modern world of freedom, alienation and loneliness has produced them as the primary communal...
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Shibboleth
A shibboleth (/ˈʃɪbəlɛθ/[1] or /ˈʃɪbələθ/)[2] is a custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important. It usually refers to features of language, and particularly to a word whose pronunciation identifies its speaker as being a member or not a member of a particular group.
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Recorded in...
December 2011
17 posts
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Maternal Relationship and Weight Gain
The study, published in Pediatrics, tracked 977 children who were born in 1991 and enrolled in the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Researchers found that those who had poor emotional bonds with their mothers in toddlerhood were more than twice as likely to become obese by age 15, compared with children who had healthy relationships — the less secure the children’s early bond...
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Only In San Francisco: Cops Can't Force Naked Men...
On Black Friday, Rusty Mills and Lloyd Fishback stripped off all their clothes and headed down to Union Square with their genitalia flapping in the stiff winter wind. Mills wore only an Indian headdress and Fishback donned a pilgrim hat (Fishback says the hats tip off people that you’re intentionally nude, not insane). They’d come to amuse or shock the shoppers — depending...
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National Defense Authorization Act
Are Americans in Line for Guantanamo?
Saturday 3 December 2011
Ambiguous but alarming new wording, which is tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and was just passed by the Senate, is reminiscent of the “extraordinary measures” introduced by the Nazis after they took power in 1933.
And the relative lack of reaction so far calls to mind the oddly calm indifference with which...
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Dopamine and Serotonin
bibliosbird:
Toothpaste For Dinner - 2,600+ comics by Drew - Updates daily at midnight
(http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/index.php?date=013111)
Dopamine
The five known types of dopamine receptors—D1, D2, D3, D4, and D5—and their variants.
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Dopamine was first synthesized in 1910 by George Barger and James Ewens at Wellcome Laboratories in London, England. It was named dopamine because...
Watchasymetrix:
robert williams forfreedom caravan Plus d’infos
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November 2011
24 posts
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Srivijaya
Srivijaya (also written Sri Vijaya, Indonesian: Sriwijaya, Thai: ศรีวิชัย or Ṣ̄rī wichạy) was a powerful ancient thalassocratic Malay empire based on the island of Sumatra, modern day Indonesia, which influenced much of Southeast Asia.[1] The earliest solid proof of its existence dates from the 7th century; a Chinese monk, I-Tsing, wrote that he visited Srivijaya in 671 for 6 months.
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The...
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Piss
Cellular metabolism generates numerous by-products, many rich in nitrogen, that require elimination from the bloodstream. The resulting urine contains high concentrations of urea and other substances, including toxins.
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Urine is an aqueous solution of greater than 95% water, with the remaining constituents, in order of decreasing concentration urea 9.3 g/L, chloride 1.87 g/L,...
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Catacombes de Paris
The Catacombs of Paris or Catacombes de Paris are an underground ossuary in Paris, France. Located south of the former city gate (the “Barrière d’Enfer” at today’s Place Denfert-Rochereau), the ossuary holds the remains of about 6 million people[1] and fills a renovated section of caverns and tunnels that are the remains of Paris’ stone mines.
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Residues resulting...
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Gao Xingjian
Gao was the recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature “for an œuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama”.[1] Gao’s drama is considered to be fundamentally absurdist in nature and avant-garde in his native China. His prose works tend to be less celebrated in China but are highly...
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Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager
Yeager was the first man to break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, flying the experimental Bell X-1 at Mach 1 at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13,700 m).
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Yeager had two brothers, Roy and Hal, Jr., and two sisters, Doris Ann (accidentally killed by Roy with a shotgun while still an infant)[2] and Pansy Lee.
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The name “Yeager” (/ˈjeɪɡər/) is an Anglicized form of the...
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Ambrose Bierce
His short stories are held among the best of the 19th century, providing a popular following based on his roots. He wrote realistically of the terrible things he had seen in the war in such stories as “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, “The Boarded Window”, “Killed at Resaca”, and “Chickamauga”.
In addition to his ghost and war stories, he also...
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Fine Arts
Fine arts, “those which appeal to the mind and the imagination” first recorded 1767. Expression art for art’s sake (1836) translates Fr. l’art pour l’art. First record of art critic is from 1865.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=art&allowed_in_frame=0
Big Love: The "I want to fuse your cells with mine...
Big Love: The “I want to fuse your cells with mine for the rest of eternity” kind of love.
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Eat Like A Caveman
Dr. Linda Frasetto, MD. and her team selected people who were unhealthy in one way or another. They were given a specific diet of lean meat, fish, fresh fruits and vegetables. The diet includes only healthy fats, such as those in nuts and seeds, as a caveman faced with an entire carcass and no refrigerator would have been likely to go only for the best cuts in as much quantity as he could...