| |
| "...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like the fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..."
- Jack Kerouac |
|
Philip K. Dick's Mind-Bending, Film-Inspiring Journeys |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Arts |
10:50 pm EDT, Jun 16, 2002 |
To call Philip K. Dick, whose 1954 story "The Minority Report" is the basis for the new Steven Spielberg movie, a science-fiction writer is to the underscore the inadequacy of the label. Dick, who died of a stroke in 1982 at 53, was fascinated by the scientific future largely as a vehicle for examining his own anxieties, longings and unstable perceptions. It would be more accurate to call him one of the most valiant psychological explorers of the 20th century. ... Thinking about these ideas can make your head hurt, which is true of virtually all of Dick's 36 novels and more than 100 short stories: mind-bending was almost his religion. Calling himself a "fictionalizing philosopher," he began with an assumption that causality is a shared delusion and that even concepts like space and time have a limited basis in reality. "Minority Report" (opening Friday) stands as the most fluid and conventionally exciting of all the Philip K. Dick adaptations. Philip K. Dick's Mind-Bending, Film-Inspiring Journeys |
|
Key Senator Bends on Cloning |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Politics and Law |
2:17 am EDT, Jun 16, 2002 |
"Under legislation by Brownback and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) human cloning for all purposes, including medical research, would be outlawed." If this happens...America could lose some of its great scientists. If scientists can't do the research they want to do/think needs to be done in one place, they will move to a place where they can do it. For example...I don't agree with cloning just to clone. But I do think that therapeutic cloning may be important, and its something that I may choose to do research in. If I can't do it in America, I will do it elsewhere. Key Senator Bends on Cloning |
|
Evolution: Retrospective -- Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) | _Science_ |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Science |
2:13 am EDT, Jun 16, 2002 |
In an eloquent retrospective, Richard Fortey reminisces about the many accomplishments and endearing qualities of his colleague, the essayist, historian, and paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould. [Gould] was one of the few scientific intellectuals to whom the overworked phrase "Renaissance man" could be applied without blushing. As essayist, historian, and author, his influence on the wider cultural scene was exceptional. ... A few months before his death his last, massive work, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, appeared, summarizing his thoughts on evolution (the mere thought of reading its 1400 pages is intimidating). It is almost as if the reappearance of cancer was held in check by force of will until this book, his magnum opus, was completed. Subscription required for access to full text. Evolution: Retrospective -- Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) | _Science_ |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Biology |
12:39 pm EDT, Jun 15, 2002 |
I walk into the humid goat shed in my Tyvex suit and sterilized boots. I look around the pen. Hundreds of sly-looking, inquisitive goats are staring at me intently. They seem unexceptional enough, but ... this is a so-called "transgenic farm" owned and run by Nexia Biotechnologies. Nexia CEO: "Oh, it's not that weird. What we're doing here is ingeniously simple. We take a single gene from a golden orb-weaving spider and put it into a goat egg. The idea is to make the goat secrete spider silk into its milk. ... We're going to make biodegradable fishing lines out of it. Or maybe tennis racket strings. We call our product BioSteel." Got Silk? |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Miscellaneous |
11:14 pm EDT, Jun 14, 2002 |
Decius: This is an off shore site that is using a form of steganography to hide itself from record industry web spiders. Looks like they've had the domain since 1999. This is real crime. I definately don't recommend that you use this site. However, its existence and method of operation is interesting nonetheless. Islands in the net.... Rattle: Tell all your friends! Download like mad! Nanochick:
This looks shady as hell!!:) simplemp3s.com |
|
Yahoo! News - Pimps and Gangs Subtracted From Math Test |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Humor |
11:10 pm EDT, Jun 14, 2002 |
A Canadian teacher has been suspended after shocking a small northern Manitoba school by distributing a math exam that included questions about pimps, prostitutes, machine guns, cocaine trafficking and getting "knocked up." The math proficiency test included questions such as: "Rufus is a pimp for three girls. If the price is $65 per trick, how many tricks per day must each girl turn to support Rufus' $800 per day crack habit?" And then there was the trouble with Hector. "Hector knocked up three girls in his gang. There are 27 girls in his gang. What is the exact percentage of the girls in the gang that Hector knocked up?" Parents of the 13-year-old and 14-year old students who attend Juniper ( news - web sites) School in Thompson, Manitoba, said they were outraged. And the province's minister of education, Drew Caldwell, said he was "disturbed." The exam, which asked students for their name, gang name and home room, was fast becoming the talk of this nickel-mining community of 15,000 people 800 kilometers (500 miles) north of Winnipeg. Supplied with the exact speed of travel and the number of seconds it takes to load a shot gun, another test question asked students to calculate the distance, Billie, a skateboard thief, would be able to flee before getting "whacked." Newspaper reports said that board members at the Mystery Lake School District stripped the veteran teacher of her classroom duties at a meeting earlier this week. She was also suspended without pay for three days. The test appeared to be modeled after an exam called "The City of Los Angeles High School Math Proficiency Exam," found on an Internet joke site. Yahoo! News - Pimps and Gangs Subtracted From Math Test |
|
Found: Solar System Like Our Own |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Science |
11:30 am EDT, Jun 14, 2002 |
"There's another solar system like ours, and it's very close by. Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and the Carnegie Institution announced Thursday that they've found the first planetary system that closely resembles our own." Found: Solar System Like Our Own |
|
The Recent Annular Solar Eclipse [RealVideo] |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Science |
4:13 pm EDT, Jun 12, 2002 |
The year's first solar eclipse, a partial blackout, was visible Tuesday across the Pacific Ocean. Here's a short RealVideo clip of the eclipse, from Associated Press. The Recent Annular Solar Eclipse [RealVideo] |
|
Human Genome Sequence Has Errors, Scientists Say |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Science |
3:09 pm EDT, Jun 11, 2002 |
"...Dr. Willard said the draft human genome sequence, though "extraordinarily useful," was a long way from complete. Referring to leaders of the rival efforts to sequence the human genome, he said: "As much as Francis Collins and Craig Venter and others like to call the sequence complete, it is still sketchy in places and likely to remain so for some time. To call it complete, as will happen next April to match the 50th anniversary of the Watson-Crick paper, is a bit of a sham." Jeremy sent me this link...its interesting because I hadn't heard alot about how accurate they thought they were, but it doesn't really suprise me that they are finding large errors. If they had wanted accuracy, they shouldn't have made it a race, but then again, research science is a very competitive field. Human Genome Sequence Has Errors, Scientists Say |
|
Reuters | Using Booze and Breasts to Get Voters |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Humor |
10:57 pm EDT, Jun 10, 2002 |
""This is something completely new. And it's nice," the daily Pravo quoted one eyewitness as saying. The paper did not say which party the man would vote for." HAHAHA Reuters | Using Booze and Breasts to Get Voters |
|
