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POPSSeeing in four dimensions The videos are all available free at www.dimensions-math.org. The videos go on to show how we can visualize imaginary numbers geometrically, how fractal patterns emerge in the Mandelbrot set and Julia sets, and how beautiful and complex shapes can be built up from circles.
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POPSAt The Airport, You Better Smile... We now know the sound of George Orwell rolling in his grave. "Here's where it gets really absurd. Apparently, these Behavior Detection Officers work in pairs. One scenario is that an officer might move in to "help" a passenger retrieve their belongings after they've been screened. And then the officer will ask where the passenger is headed. If the passenger's reaction sets off alarm bells in the officer's well-trained mind, another officer will move in and detain them." "So while TSA employees are confiscating our scissors and water bottles, they're going to secretly be staring at us, looking for some telltale sign of terrorist intent in a grimace, a sigh, a crinkled nose? Who knows what? In the end, the Behavior Detection Officers are the ones who are really acting suspicious. Which is the truth of the matter anyway."
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POPSScientists Find a Second Code Hidden in DNA How cool is this? A secondary DNA meta-code has been discovered superimposed on top of the same "genetic code" whose transcription it influences! (Douglas Hofstadter would have had a field day with this!) Highly efficient from an information science point of view. There are so many wonders to be discovered within our very selves!
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POPSThe QuiverFull movement: having babies -- lots of babies -- for God Newsweek on the "QuiverFull" movement ("Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them." Psalm 127.4f.), which campaigns against birth control, espouses a relatively fundamentalist version of evangelical Christianity, and advocates having at least six children per family.
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POPSSwitching it up: How memory deals with a change in plans The answer is "both," according to researchers at The Johns Hopkins University, who have learned that two different areas of the brain are responsible for the way human beings handle complex sets of "if-then" rules. "This discovery may eventually lead to enhanced understanding of psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention deficit disorder, all conditions in which a person's ability to remember and change such rules is impaired," "This indicates that different parts of our brains store different kinds of memories and information," Courtney said. That, she said, "provides clues about how the human brain accomplishes complex, goal-directed behaviors that require remembering and changing abstract rules, an ability that is disrupted in many mental illnesses."
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POPSWords that lead to a head butt of Zidane I clipped this mostly because of the comment made by the French coach. How can he compliment Materazzi for behaving like such an ass!? Is this what we want kids to learn from their idols? That you should do whatever you have to do to win the game, even if it means saying such horrible things to someone. I hope not. Adults really need to start acting in a way that sets a better example for kids.
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POPS14 free vertical CSS menus Sometimes it's better not to bother reinventing the wheel. :) Here's some great CSS menu designs to give a solid navigation element to your site using only ul and li in the html.
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POPSHow the Personal Genome Project Could Unlock the Mysteries of Life ...You would very quickly begin to see meaningful and powerful correlations between particular genetic sequences and particular physical characteristics, from height and hair color to disease risk and personality. Church has done more than imagine such an undertaking; he has launched it: The Personal Genome Project, an effort to make those correlations on an unprecedented scale, began last year with 10 volunteers and will soon expand to 100,000 participants. It will generate a massive database of genomes, phenomes, and even some omes in between.
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POPS1 billion people are threatened by starvation.
Interview with Erwin Wagenhofer_____ From article: In contrast to people who have too little and starve, we in the industrialized nations should be the happiest people since we have never really suffered from hunger and thirst. Yet we are actually far from being happy and content. What is it that hinders us? When I look around I do not see many happy people, even though we today have such immeasurable wealth. My mother and father, for example, experienced hunger; I am the first in our family who comes from a generation that has not known hunger. Maybe this is due to our considerable need for time to learn to deal with such material wealth. I believe that we need more time than we think is required. A human lifespan is not very long, even if we do live to a ‘ripe old age’. In comparison to the world’s history it is really very short. Maybe we should also be more modest and do everything somewhat more slowly. The pace of life today is killing us. ...
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