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2013-05-18 17:37:33 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 16 +1s)

Omar Khayyám (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131)
A true Renaissance Man long before the Renaissance

Ghiyāth ad-Dīn Abu'l-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-Khayyām Nīshāpūrī was a Persian polymath, philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy, music, and Islamic theology.
(From Wikipedia: http://goo.gl/bI7k)

Here are a few choice excerpts from the Edward FitzGerald translation:

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám

Text of the First Edition

16
Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai
Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his Hour or two, and went his way.

21
Lo! some we loved, the loveliest and best
That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,
Have drunk their Cup aRound or two be... more »

2013-05-18 15:33:54 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Solomon's Seal (둥굴레)
Got troubles with menopause, skin irritation, or blood sugar? This is said to help. Many Koreans enjoy 둥굴레차 (doong-gul-lae-cha), or doonggullae tea, by boiling the dried roots. I have skin allergies, and my blood sugar is on the high side; I don't know how much this helps, but I just enjoy the taste of the tea, whatever its purported effects. I suppose the tea is doing something, since I haven't had to worry about menopause at all.

Rather than drink plain-tasting water (which, in my opinion, tastes like water), I like to boil up a huge pot of 둥굴레차, then keep in in the fridge to drink with meals. 보리차 (bori cha, or barley tea) and 옥수수차 (oksusu cha, or corn tea) using roasted grains are similar-tasting alternatives, but 둥굴레차 has a richer, "creamier" taste, with as much of the roasted goodness.
I thought I'd post this in response t... more »

2013-05-18 14:00:35 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

Volvo XC90 LEGO Replica 
10 most amazing LEGO creations ► goo.gl/0HHNY

2013-05-18 13:55:37 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

Good morning and Happy Saturday everybody :)

http://i.imgur.com/G1Ghfh7.gif

2013-05-18 13:52:11 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 17 +1s)

♣ Magnificent Castle Reflection ♣

2013-05-18 13:35:17 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 13 +1s)

Bertrand Russell (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970): The Conquest of Happiness
Quotes and pictures

I thought I'd put together some nice quotes from the book, along with some pictures of a truly brilliant, wise, and compassionate man of letters.

To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilization; but no such system has a chance while men are so unhappy that mutual extermination seems to them less dreadful than continued endurance of the light of day. To prevent the perpetuation of poverty is necessary if the benefits of machine production are to accrue in any degree to those most in need of them; but what is the use of making everybody rich if the rich themselves are miserable?
- The Conquest of Happiness, Chapter 1

Whoever wishes to increase human happiness must wish to increase admiration and to diminish envy.
- TheCo... more »

2013-05-18 11:48:16 (13 comments, 30 reshares, 33 +1s)

Bertrand Russell (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970)

One last question: Suppose, Lord Russell, that this film will be looked at by our descendants, like the Dead Sea scroll, in a thousand years' time. What would you think it's worth telling that generation about the life you've lived and the lessons you've learned from it?

I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed, but look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say.

Them... more »

2013-05-18 00:42:58 (18 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Blow away dandelion. . . .

As I was trying to figure out the answer to +nomad dimitri's picture riddle (http://goo.gl/TkU90), I thought I would take a pic of these dried dandelion flower heads, which sit in a jar in our cupboard awaiting their next incarnation as tea.

Earlier this morning (actually late last night), I did a quick post on Adam Johnson's 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning The Orphan Master's Son, an adventurous, sad, rollicking tale set in North Korea (http://goo.gl/mqaPL). In it, there is a famous North Korean actress named Sun Moon, who is so pure that she doesn't even know that some people eat flowers for food. Jun Do, the tunnel-digging, kidnapping and murdering protagonist, has a tattoo of Sun Moon on his chest. He eventually becomes Sun Moon's replacement husband, and at one point he forces her to eat a flower, presumably in hopes of foisting a... more »

2013-05-17 15:07:27 (5 comments, 4 reshares, 26 +1s)

We just can't get enough of FalconCam!
Here's mama Helen feeding her two Peregrine chicks this morning on the live stream around 9:15am. What are they up to now? Click and see!
http://1130falcon.click2stream.com/

2013-05-17 14:44:39 (12 comments, 0 reshares, 23 +1s)

I picked up this set of little cacti, along with the wood stand, while taking a drive near our place last weekend.

2013-05-17 14:03:17 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 12 +1s)

Blow away dandelion. . . .

As I was trying to figure out the answer to +nomad dimitri's picture riddle (http://goo.gl/TkU90), I thought I would take a pic of these dried dandelion flower heads, which sit in a jar in our cupboard awaiting their next incarnation as tea.

Earlier this morning (actually late last night), I did a quick post on Adam Johnson's 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning The Orphan Master's Son, an adventurous, sad, rollicking tale set in North Korea (http://goo.gl/mqaPL). In it, there is a famous North Korean actress named Sun Moon, who is so pure that she doesn't even know that some people eat flowers for food. Jun Do, the tunnel-digging, kidnapping and murdering protagonist, has a tattoo of Sun Moon on his chest. He eventually becomes Sun Moon's replacement husband, and at one point he forces her to eat a flower, presumably in hopes of foisting a... more »

2013-05-16 16:02:01 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

This recently won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I'm almost at the end and have been enjoying it quite a bit. Here is a nice review from The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/feb/17/orphan-masters-son-adam-johnson-review

2013-05-16 15:38:33 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 5 +1s)

Don't Blame the Sea: Fishing After the Tsunami
May 6, 2013 | A beautiful documentary about one family's determination to survive on the coast of Sri Lanka.

This is quite a poignant video short. As I get older, I feel as if I have a better understanding of our connection with nature, but it's still very hard to express it in words.

I was planning on rereading The Old Man and the Sea later this month, so this is a nice primer. While I'm at it, I may as well reread The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Via The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/275472/fishing-after-the-tsunami/

http://vimeo.com/65052872

2013-05-16 15:31:01 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Eadweard Muybridge, 1887 motion study of a cat running

Also via The Atlantic.

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2012/02/the-boxing-cats-1894/253134/
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/video/2012/02/15/motion_study_cat.jpg

2013-05-16 15:25:50 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

Thomas Edison's Boxing Cats

This may be my first cat video.

Via The Smithsonian (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/video/Thomas-Edisons-Boxing-Cats.html) and The Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/253134/the-oldest-cat-video-of-all-time/).

2013-05-16 15:17:59 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

This one is different. I can imagine a new genre of other videos like this but with different stories.

2013-05-15 15:32:39 (4 comments, 2 reshares, 12 +1s)

Earliest Reliably Dated Photograph of a Person

Boulevard du Temple, Paris, Spring 1838, by Daguerre. The image shows a busy street, but because the exposure time was at least ten minutes the moving traffic cannot be seen. However, two men at lower left, one apparently having his boots polished and the other the bootblack, remained motionless enough to be distinctly visible. The image is reversed (as were most Daguerreotypes) as is evidenced by the signage on a building in upper left.

#photography #technology #history
#tkkphotography #tkktechnology #tkkhistory


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boulevard_du_Temple_by_Daguerre.jpg

2013-05-15 15:24:30 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

First Correctly Exposed Photograph of a Solar Eclipse

The solar eclipse of July 28, 1851 is the first correctly exposed photograph of a solar eclipse, using the daguerreotype process.

#photography #technology #history
#tkkphotography #tkktechnology #tkkhistory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1851_07_28_Berkowski.jpg

2013-05-14 13:26:45 (4 comments, 1 reshares, 18 +1s)

2013-05-14 12:55:43 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 8 +1s)

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Want Scientifically Literate Children? Get Out of Their Way.

2013-05-11 14:16:48 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 15 +1s)

Richard Feynman - Ode to a Flower

I have a friend who’s an artist and he's sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “Look how beautiful it is,” and he says “You see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing.” And I think that he’s kind of nutty.

First of all, although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, I can appreciate the beauty of the flower.

At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I mean, it’s not just beauty at this dimension; there's also beauty at a smaller dimension. I could imagine the cells in there, also the processes, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty.

The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insectsto pollinate it i... more »

2013-05-12 02:26:57 (17 comments, 107 reshares, 203 +1s)

The world loves Richard Feynman. Richard Feynman is dead.

Richard Feynman would have turned 95 today. My favorite Feynman story is from his time at Los Alamos. As he was working on the Manhattan Project. He would spend his free time picking locks to alleviate his boredom. After he discovers a hole in the wall of the top-security compound one day, he would walk in through the front gate, go out through the hole, then walk in again through the front gate. After a few times doing this, he almost got himself arrested by the MPs.

The world doesn't know his address, but he'll be getting plenty of these kinds of tributes today.

In June of 1945, Arline Feynman — high-school sweetheart and wife of the hugely influential physicist, Richard Feynman — passed away after succumbing to tuberculosis. She was 25-years-old. 16 months later, in October of 1946, Richardwrot... more »

2013-05-06 00:00:46 (23 comments, 0 reshares, 23 +1s)

Questions about my phytopet

I bought this radish a couple of weeks ago with the intention of slaughtering it and eating it, but over time it started to grow on me, so I decided to raise it as a pet instead.

As I understand it, trees get most of their mass from the air. I can see that the growing stalk here is getting its mass from the root, but I'm curious how much help it's getting from the air. Can this plant, theoretically speaking, increase its mass from the time I bought it, even though I don't feed it anything myself? Also, given that it's not absorbing anything from soil, will the plant "suffer" from something akin to a vitamin or mineral deficiency?

#science #plants #food

2013-03-27 00:55:43 (13 comments, 1 reshares, 32 +1s)

Milky way Above Tre Cime di Lavaredo (Drei Zinnen) in Dolomites. Italy

Copy Credit : Roberto Sysa Moiola

2013-03-26 02:18:28 (20 comments, 0 reshares, 18 +1s)

Questions about Siesta

What other countries in Europe have a siesta besides Spain? For instance, does Portugal have a siesta?

Do school children in Spain have siestas as well? If so, what are the typical school hours?

Have the patterns of siesta begun to change as a result of economic pressures?

I was asked the second question recently, so I thought it might be a good idea to crowdsource responses.

2013-03-24 06:08:51 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

Would you like moderator privileges?

I will make all those plus the first comment below (not the post, but rather the comment) moderators.

*************

Dust Pillar of the Jar Jar Binks Carina Nebula

Explanation: Inside the head of this interstellar monster is a star that is slowly destroying it. The monster, actually an inanimate pillar of gas and dust, measures over a light year in length. The star, not itself visible through the opaque dust, is bursting out partly by ejecting energetic beams of particles. Similar epic battles are being waged all over the star-forming Carina Nebula (NGC 3372). The stars will win in the end, destroying their pillars of creation over the next 100,000 years, and resulting in a new open cluster of stars. The pink dots are newly formed stars that have already been freed from their birth monster. The above... more »

2013-03-22 15:42:37 (23 comments, 3 reshares, 27 +1s)

World Water Day 2013

This is a photo of the surface of a tub of water, with a bit of organic matter floating on top that became food for bacteria. My wife uses the tub to rinse out and salt the Chinese lettuce when she makes a batch of kimchi. After the tub was used about a month ago, the water just sat there and this is the bacterial party that resulted. In the last three photos, I kicked the bucket from the side, disturbing the surface of the water.

2013-03-22 15:17:45 (7 comments, 1 reshares, 9 +1s)

World Water Day 2013

This also came to mind for World Water Day.

2013-03-22 15:15:06 (2 comments, 3 reshares, 8 +1s)

World Water Day 2013

I came across a lot of World Water Day posts in my stream, so I thought I'd track this one down.

2013-03-21 01:58:13 (20 comments, 1 reshares, 13 +1s)

The links to videos of Canção Do Mar by +Sergey Andrianov (http://youtu.be/toLf0fojwzg) and +Kevin Clift (http://youtu.be/QCahD0M9cv4) on the comments to my post on Valentina Lisitsa's rendition of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata here (http://goo.gl/4K4nr) made me think of this piece by Emma Shapplin.

I only have one of her CDs, and this is the piece I enjoy the most, by far. It vaguely reminds me of the operatic solo by the blue alien woman in _The Fifth Element (http://youtu.be/4MR6D7tL38U). The piece was quite popular in Korea for a while, and I'm curious whether many others are familiar with her work.

2013-03-21 01:35:25 (16 comments, 0 reshares, 23 +1s)

Jeff Bezos Recovers Apollo Rocket Engines From Deep Ocean

Story and more photos here:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/03/jeff-bezos-apollo/

2013-03-21 01:25:50 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

2013-03-20 00:35:58 (4 comments, 1 reshares, 22 +1s)

2013-03-19 23:08:47 (24 comments, 10 reshares, 29 +1s)

Her performance made my hair stand on end. Read more about Valentina Lisitsa here:

http://goo.gl/Iiz7Q
The Classical Pianist With 55 Million YouTube Hits

2013-03-18 12:25:04 (3 comments, 7 reshares, 30 +1s)

How Beer Gave Us Civilization

. . . lifesaving social instincts didn’t readily lend themselves to exploration, artistic expression, romance, inventiveness and experimentation — the other human drives that make for a vibrant civilization.

To free up those, we needed something that would suppress the rigid social codes that kept our clans safe and alive. We needed something that, on occasion, would let us break free from our biological herd imperative — or at least let us suppress our angst when we did.

We needed beer.

[. . . .]

Current theory has it that grain was first domesticated for food. But since the 1950s, many scholars have found circumstantial evidence that supports the idea that some early humans grew and stored grain for beer, even before they cultivated it for bread.

Brian Hayden and colleagues at Simon FraserUnive... more »

2013-03-18 02:10:57 (9 comments, 0 reshares, 23 +1s)

My Day on the Hill

This week, several hundred scientists - astronomers, chemists, biologists and engineers from across the nation, descended on Capitol Hill to lobby for science. We asked for sustained and predictable federal funds for scientific research. We voiced our worry that deep cuts in grants would destroy a generation of scientists: that research is not a faucet that can be turned on and off, because the well at the source dries up. We brought a personal face to the projects we were working on.

What did I learn? Our visit began with a briefing at the AAAS auditorium in Washington, DC. The Office of Science and Technology from the White House gave us the executive branch perspective by breaking down the budget into entitlements and discretionary spending, and showing us the thin slice of pie that went to Federal R&D. Then we got a Congressional perspective... more »

2013-03-18 01:36:31 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 12 +1s)

The best thing you will see this weekend, I swear (FTPd) (... maybe ever!!!)

2013-03-17 03:39:24 (58 comments, 1 reshares, 14 +1s)

Can Google Plus help to change the English language?

When the average person writes something in English nowadays, qui will often find quiself experiencing English pronoun gender anxiety (EPGA): namely, that of having to write he or she, or some fair and balanced mix of the two, to alleviate that anxiety.

If a person who reads this post and agrees that EPGA should go the way of the appendix, qui should do qui's part by either sharing this post and/or advocating heavily for this new substitution everywhere qui goes speaks or writes, until enough rainmakers quistormers who can influence major print and spoken media can help to correct this horrendous deficiency.

Once there is enough common usage to make this new pronoun gain formal entry into a few respected dictionaries, qui can take pride in knowing that qui... more »

2013-03-17 02:33:32 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Social Sciences and Communication
This circle will give you exposure to Anthropology, Economics, Linguistics, Philosophy, Psychology/Neuroscience, Sociology, and it also contains K- 12 Science Teachers and Science Writers.

If you have a science related degree, you are a science journalist, you are a K-12 science teacher, or you curate a science page, then add your profile/page to the database by filling out this form (http://goo.gl/yEg7M). Active profiles and pages will be included in the next shared circle.

Science on Google+ community: http://goo.gl/mTTxX
View underlying database: http://goo.gl/Yz8KR
View most recent shared circles: http://goo.gl/nO7rB

#sciencesunday #science #publiccircles   #sharedcircles 

2013-03-17 01:46:15 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

2013-03-16 07:52:27 (22 comments, 4 reshares, 23 +1s)

Am I the only one who wishes I had a pair of gloves that look like this? They would look so nice for fancy parties.

This is also very interesting from the perspective of evolutionary biology because it suggests that evolutionary traits might not be irreversible, after all.

H/T to +Kerry Amburgy-Dickson and +Kyle Crider. [Also, sorry for not copying the original post, but I wanted to grab the image].

Irreversible Evolution? Dust Mites Show Parasites Can Violate Dollo’s Law

Our world is quite literally lousy with parasites. We are hosts to hundreds of them, and they are so common that in some ecosystems, the total mass of them can outweigh top predators by 20 fold. Even parasites have parasites. It’s such a good strategy that over 40% of all known species are parasitic. They steal genes from their hosts, take over other animals’ bodies, and generallyscrew ... more »

2013-03-16 06:31:08 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 12 +1s)

‎"We Didn’t Domesticate Dogs. They Domesticated Us."

Experts from the Duke Canine Cognition Center say early wolves first extended the paw of friendship. Learn how they think it happened in this National Geographic article: http://bit.ly/YoFIP8

2013-03-16 06:10:16 (15 comments, 4 reshares, 17 +1s)

MRI This

Happy birthday, Dr. +Chad Haney!

#HappyBirthdayChad #HappyBirthdayMrMRI #ScienceEveryday #ScienceSunday #FidoFriday  #MRIthis

2013-03-16 06:09:54 (2 comments, 5 reshares, 14 +1s)

MRI This

Happy birthday, Dr. +Chad Haney!

See also:
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/08/business/la-fi-tn-scientists-give-dogs-mri-20120507

#HappyBirthdayChad #HappyBirthdayMrMRI #ScienceEveryday #ScienceSunday #FidoFriday   #MRIthis  

2013-03-16 06:10:30 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 16 +1s)

MRI This

Happy birthday, Dr. +Chad Haney!

It's a dog's wife: Why female pooches are 'more intelligent' than males
http://goo.gl/gAjLT

#HappyBirthdayChad #HappyBirthdayMrMRI #ScienceEveryday #ScienceSunday #FidoFriday  #MRIthis

2013-03-16 05:47:53 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

Happy Birthday +Chad Haney!!!

Happy Birthday to our dear friend, from our family - me, +CK Feisal, and +Yasmin Athirah 

May this year bring the best for you... have a good one dude  :)

Let's duck the MRI!  MRI the duck!

so, this image is from here
http://chongma.zenfolio.com/beijing/h1525815E#h1525815e
but there's no accompanying text to explain how a duck happened to be MRIed. Would there be enough radiation to result in a Peking duck?

#HappyBirthdayChad   #HappyBirthdayMrMRI   #ScienceEveryday   #ScienceSunday    #duckathon   #mri  

2013-03-16 04:17:15 (13 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

I pulled off this fail in seventh grade, also using a patio umbrella from our roof (about the same height), with similar results.

2013-03-16 04:06:44 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

I pulled one of these in college. Everyone was dead drunk already, and someone came up with the bright idea to light a shot glass (most likely Bacardi 151) on fire. Everyone kept encouraging everyone else to drink the shot, but everyone refused.

Everyone, that is, except me, who was the only person brave (read: idiotic) enough to actually attempt it. I put the shot to my mouth, but I hesitated for two reasons: first, the drink had been on fire for some time, so the glass was hot, and second, I had a flicker of doubt right at the moment the shot was going into my mouth.

I "knew" intuitively that the flame would extinguish itself the moment I swallowed it, but the last remaining shred of doubt was enough to send me to the university hospital. That was probably around two or three in the morning, but we were used to partying until sunrise, so when I returned from the hospital... more »

2013-03-16 01:15:15 (10 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

Have you done stupid things that you are inwardly proud of even though everyone else will think, rightly, that you're a total idiot? Can you offer up valuable life lessons through your sheer stupidity? Do you have fun aphorisms to share about all the stupid things that people do?

This community may be for you.

2013-03-16 00:08:12 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

I've been rather sceptical of all this "DeExtinction" talk because I think that it is the wrong way to approach biological conservation. I fear that (i) it would make people become (even more) complacent about species going extinction, and (ii) you might be able to bring back an isolated species but not the ecosystem which it lived in. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but be excited at the prospect that a team of Australian scientists may be able to bring the gastric-breeding frog back from extinction. The gastric-breeding frog is an extraordinary amphibian, to find out more see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastric-brooding_frog
#conservationbiology   #herpetology   #deextinction   #amphibians   #scienceeveryday