Video: Nuclear Weapons, Who Has Them and How Much?

From Denny: Thanks to bestontube.com who brought this video to my attention over at the Blogged Directory and GoodMagazine.com who produced it! This video is a couple of years old from 2007 so the numbers might be slightly off. Who knows how many nukes Russia may have sold to bolster its flagging bad economy? For those who don't know the actual numbers this video is a real eye-opener!

This is the promo text: "Nuclear weaponry is the most devastating technology on the planet, and has brought us to the brink of civilization-ending conflagrations. In 2007, who has them? Who is beefing up their arsenal? Who is scaling down? And what would a single nuclear weapon do to Manhattan?"




Russia, Nuclear weapon, Dmitry Medvedev, United States, Nuclear, North Korea, Barack Obama

Bloggers Unite: Global Human Rights Abuses

From Denny: This is a post I ran over at The Social Poets Friday evening for the Bloggers Unite Human Rights Day post on 17 July 2009. Bloggers everywhere are all blogging on the same day about human rights.

***

Humanity is at a crossroads in our world history where we must make a profound decision. It’s time to live better.

Currently, human rights abuses are no longer exclusive to certain regions of the globe. There is a sharp increase in human rights abuses worldwide for decades now and situations are increasing in violence yearly.

Stories abound globally of the most heinous crimes to humanity. Nothing good is accomplished by mankind trying to annihilate mankind. Just what is going on in the world? Here are just a few areas:

• Hamas and Taliban Islamic terrorists and other terrorist groups worldwide are on a bloodthirsty killing spree with bombings of civilians, women and children in many places in the world.



Photo by azrainman @ flickr

• Rogue unstable governments, covertly cozy with terrorist groups, working feverishly to acquire the nuclear bomb so they can kill off their neighbors they don’t like because they are another religion, a different economic or another kind of social system – or just plain won’t give them what they want.

• Genocide in Africa because people of different tribes can’t work out their differences like civilized people.



• Jailing journalists - trying to report the truth - as political temper tantrums to get their own way: North Korea and Iran.

• Tortured prisoners worldwide with the most notable recent heinous acts perpetrated during the Bush years on terrorist suspects never given trials, mainly because there was no real hard evidence.



• Under Taliban Islamic law and culture women are still regarded as subhuman and not deserving of first class treatment like men.

• Here in the United States, during the Bush years, women were raped, often savage gang rapes, at our military universities yet went unreported.

• Then there are battered women worldwide from Islamic to Christian countries whose husbands will not stop pummeling them.



We, the majority, are allowing the few to terrorize us, our neighbors and our loved ones. We must mobilize to stop it. How? Education for starters.
In the end, in order for humanity to not come to an end, we must consider a working alternative to what exists today in the way of abuses. It is a basic human right to be loved. Loved, you say? Yes, loved. We all have the right to be loved.

Love comes in many forms. We have the human right to certain expectations of basic decency and civility. We have the human right to healthy drinking water and sanitation and affordable housing. We have the human right to expect our political leaders that are guardians of our country to be honest and get serious about addressing pressing social and economic issues.



Photo by alicepopkorn @ flickr

Human rights abuses worldwide, in our own countries, in our homes will continue until the average person stands up and says "No!" to it all. Human rights abuses will continue until we all get serious about connecting up to create a tsunami force to push humanity along until we all do better, choose better and, in the end, start living better. Now that’s Love in action! We all have the human right to be loved. Let’s give Love.

A few places you can go for education and plug in to help:

Bloggers Unite where you can help by blogging

Youth Movement For Human Rights - worldwide

Human Rights Watch

Amnesty International, dedicated to bringing world attention to human rights abuse


North Korea, United States, denny lyon, Human rights, Nuclear weapon, Africa, Amnesty International, Human Rights and Liberties, Sharia, The Social Poets

Coming Soon: Photographic Memory in a Pill?

From Denny: This sounds too good to be true! The only problem I ask is this: So, do you have a pill for extra capacity brain storage? :) Because you know people would go wild with this, testing it by reading whole Oxford Dictionaries, encyclopedias, going to the Library of Congress and reading through the entire library - the largest in the world - just to find out how much they could retain.

From the folks over at Popular Science. Here's an excerpt:

"Scientists isolate a protein that significantly increases visual recall

"Wish you had a photographic memory? Well, Encyclopedia Brown, drugs may amp your brain up to that point soon. A group of Spanish scientists claim to have singled out a protein that can extend the life of visual memory significantly. When the production of the protein was boosted in mice, the rodents' visual memory retention increased, from about an hour to almost 2 months.

"Unlike the long-term memory creation that was imaged recently, this memory extension only applies to memories made through the poorly-understood visual cortex of the brain."

For the rest of this brief article just click on the title link to get you there! Thanks for visiting!

Video: Independence Day Trivia

From Denny: This is well worth the watching! While I knew most of the dry facts - what I didn't know were some of the ancedotal stories that went along with those historical facts that spoke a lot to the personalities and conflicts of that time.


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Independence Day Fourth of July America Thomas Jefferson George Washington Declaration of Independence people and society holidays United States CBS videos American history

Video: The Crown of Liberty

Then First Lady Nancy Reagan reopens Statue of Liberty on 100th birthday Image via Wikipedia

From Denny: This is a really good video on the updates to and the history of visiting the Statue of Liberty AND you get an inside view from the top looking out over the harbor - best video I've seen on the recent renovation project. It's nice to see we have an administration who promotes freedom instead of fear by reopening the Statue of Liberty and other federal buildings like the White House to the viewing from the public!


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CBS Statue of Liberty freedom America United States travel renovation video Obama tourism New York Manhattan Society and culture

Fourth of July Quotes: Serious and Funny

Photo by Morgan Frederick @ flickr

From Denny: I just love the fireworks on this day. I also like to remember all the soldiers over the centuries who lost their lives preserving our freedom, whether they voted Democrat, Republican or not at all.

Courage is always to be respected and admired. We may not agree on whether there should be a war at all, how to conduct a war once started or how to end it. What we can agree on is to respect those who were sent to fight as our first line of defense. They paid a hefty price for the rest of their lives for those wars were always with them.

Here are some very serious awesome quotes and a few light-hearted ones as well to give you pause and a grin on this solemn national holiday.

Serious Quotes

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.” – President John F. Kennedy

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." ~ Thomas Paine

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself." ~ Thomas Paine

"This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave." ~ Elmer Davis

"Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have." ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Let freedom never perish in your hands." ~ Joseph Addison

Image by photobunny via Flickr

"Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die." ~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower

"In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved." ~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt

"May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country!" ~ Daniel Webster

"We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls." ~ Robert J. McCracken

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." ~ Abraham Lincoln

"If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace." ~ Hamilton Fish

"I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery." ~ Author Unknown

"Without freedom, no one really has a name." ~ Milton Acorda

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." ~ Benjamin Franklin

Funny Quotes

The United States is the only country with a known birthday. ~ James G. Blaine

“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.” ~ Erma Bombeck

"There, I guess King George will be able to read that." -
John Hancock, after signing the Declaration of Independence with a huge signature well flourished to stand out from the crowd!

Stay safe this holiday; Happy Fourth of July! Thanks for visiting!

Tested: Bedside Brainwave Scanner Grades Your Ability to Sleep

From Denny: Here's something interesting over at Popular Science. People have trouble sleeping because of stress, worry about paying the bills, job loss, and now the extreme summer heat.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

"What's it like sleeping with a new device that scores your slumber quality, minute by minute, night by night?

A new device called the Zeo promises to help stamp out bad sleep and wasted time in bed, by bringing deep analysis of sleep patterns, formerly the province of professional sleep laboratories, into the home.

The Zeo comes in two parts: a bedside unit that looks like an alarm clock, with a handsome blue-on-black vacuum-fluorescent display; and a headband with a fairly low-profile black box mounted on its front. Strap on the headband before bed, and as you sleep, it wirelessly transmits data about your brainwaves to the bedside unit.

In the morning, the Zeo gives you a "ZQ" rating -- a score for your night's sleep ranging from 0 to 120. The concept is simple, but having a quantitative measure of sleep quality that you can keep an eye on over a period of time is a boon to those who want to keep an eye on their nights; one of the traditional problems with sleep, of course, is that you're not conscious to observe it firsthand."

For the rest of the article just click on the title link! Thanks for visiting!

Brain: Our Culture Influences How Our Brains Function

From Denny: This is the first time a brain imaging study about this question of culture has been done. It was reported in the Psychological Science January 2008 issue.

What did the MIT researchers find?

People from different cultures around the world actually use their brains differently to solve the same visual perceptual tasks.

What are the differences in the cultures?

American culture values greatly the individual which in turn “emphasizes the independence of objects from their contexts.”

Asian cultures “emphasize the collective and the contextual interdependence of objects.”

Studying an impersonal brain scan is far different than behavioral studies researchers have done. Behavioral studies learned that memory and perception can be influenced by cultural differences. What scientists wanted to know: But can this be proven in brain activity patterns?

The Study

Organizing the team was John Gabrieli, professor at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. It was a very small study of 10 East Asians recently arrived in the USA (I guess so they would not be tainted by their now new culture) and 10 Americans. Researchers asked the subjects to make quick perceptual judgments while they were being scanned in an fMRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). An fMRI is a new technology that while a person’s brain is responding to a test, this machine starts mapping the blood flow changes in the brain, corresponding to the brain’s responses.

What were those mental tasks?

They were abstract stimuli like lines within squares. People were shown a progression of this kind of stimuli and then asked to compare to the last one given. In some of these trials, people were being asked for an absolute judgment of individual objects that were independent of context. Researchers accomplished this by asking if the lines were the same length regardless of the surrounding squares.

In other trials, researchers were looking for relative judgment of interdependent objects. They accomplished this by asking people to decide whether the lines were in the same proportion to the squares, regardless of absolute size.

What happened during these tests?

Different brain activation patterns were present for these two groups when performing these tasks. Apparently, Americans find it more difficult to make relative judgments. What happened to them is that these tasks activated the brain regions involved in attention-demanding mental tasks. Americans fared better in more culturally familiar absolute judgments and there was less activation of these regions.

East Asians proved to show the opposite tendency. They had to engage the attention-demanding part of their brains more so for making absolute judgments. Relative judgments were easier for them.

Trey Hedden was a lead author of the paper and also a researcher scientist at McGovern. Hedden remarked, “We were surprised at the magnitude of the difference between the two cultural groups, and also at how widespread the engagement of the brain’s attention system became when making judgments outside the cultural comfort zone.”

What else did they find that was significant?

The effect was greater in individuals who identified more closely with their culture. It was shown that a stronger cultural association presented a culture-specific pattern of brain-activation. A bit of how researchers went about being able to identify this was by the use of questionnaires. They asked about preferences and values in social relations – like do you think an individual is responsible for the failure of a family member? This helped gauge cultural identification.

Researchers have long wondered how these differences came to be

Gabrieli thinks, “Everyone uses the same attention machinery for more difficult cognitive tasks. They are trained to use it in different ways. It’s the culture that does the training. It’s fascinating the way the brain responds to these simple drawings, reflects, in a predictable way, how the individual thinks about independent or interdependent social relationships.”

Summary

Society does affect our brains; that much is established both in behavioral and now brain scan studies. Perhaps we need to be careful what we teach…

Brain: Free Printable Brain Teasers Are Used In Business As Motivational Tools

Free Printable Brain Teasers Are Used In Business As Motivational Tools: "Printable brain teasers are being used more often in today's business as motivational tools for an incentive to encourage their employees and students."

By Dottie1 @ HubPages

Photo of brain management center @ free-puzzles.net

From Denny: Another fun article about brain teasers from my friend over at HubPages, enjoy!

Video: CIA Secret Experiments

From Denny: The National Geographic is airing this program on June 20th. I've long complained about America's and other world governments' inhumane medical experiments.

The American military and spouses and children of CIA officers have carried the brunt of suffering in these decades long illegal experiments. "Volunteers" were routinely lied to about the true nature of the experiments. Many, like children of CIA officers, were volunteered by their fathers wishing to advance their careers up the ranks by pleasing their superiors.

While this film does not discuss the children in experiments it does cover the horrors done to unsuspecting military personnel. Mind control is easier than the public believes as too many people have either weak minds or weak wills to stand up to what is wrong in society.

Please watch this program when it airs as it is important to stop this madness in all society around the world! This is the promotional video for the program.

Video: Update on Swine Flu Stats

From Denny: The health folks are claiming this swine flu is milder than expected - that's the good news. The bad news? It is spreading rapidly. One day it's 400 cases and the next day it's up to 700, almost doubling here in America.

What's a bit disconcerting is to look at the USA map showing the flu has spread all across the country. Then view the world map and all of North America is engulfed in this outbreak.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Brain: How Forgiveness and Revenge Are 2 Sides to the Same Coin

From Denny: First news report I've seen on this health phenomenon properly examined to validate the viewpoint of many, me included. No one has ever claimed that forgiveness is an easy attitude to adopt, learn and practice. The alternative to not learning to do so is amazingly devastating on your own health!

"Are people more apt to seek revenge or offer forgiveness when they've been wronged? Sunday Morning's Martha Teichner examines our capacity to forgive."


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Weather: Cool Satellite Photo of Washington, D.C. Flowering in the Spring!

From Denny: Popular Science online magazine featured this photo recently. It's from the GeoEye-1 satellite, orbiting at four miles per second, passing over Washington, D.C. during the Cherry Blossom season this April 4th to "admire the view." ;)

The view was shot from the height of 423 miles as the spacecraft moved from north to south along America's eastern seaboard. Along the tidal basin the cherry trees are in full bloom. The huge number of cherry trees were all a gift from Japan to America decades ago.

Washington, D.C. in bloom Image via Wikipedia

Someone left this comment on their site:

"Can anyone tell me the time of day that the image was taken?

The Washington Monument makes a fantastic sundial, it's almost a shame the builders didn't insinuate analematic features into the monument-scape of the Mall."

Now there's an interesting idea!

For a larger view of this satellite photo, go here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Cherry Blossoms Are Back in DC (takepart.com)
• National Cherry Blossom Festival in D.C. (gadling.com)
• Thousands flock to D.C. for cherry blossoms (cnn.com)
• Washington's Cherry Blossoms - 2009 (boomercafe.com)
• Cherry Blossom Festival in bloom in Washington (cnn.com)

Video: Erasing Painful Memories

From Denny: Says CBS, “Very early research that might prove promising for addition and PTSD. Too early for selective memory erasing.”

Sounds like early sci-fi and a bit unethical. Reminds me of reading science history when psychiatrists were enthralled with electrical shock therapy and lobotomies for depression. This sounds unethical and a bit spooky to me no matter how much they market it to the contrary. There are just too many ways this could be used to harm others - and easily: military torture, medical malpractice, divorce, easy way to get a hold of multi-million dollar estates and wealthy businesses. Con artists could have a field day with this research.

This video news segment makes it appear benign when clearly this could be used for great abuse of power. The real question is: Just who is behind this research AND why is it so important to them?


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Historical April Fools Day Funnies

April Fools Day

At the Museum of Hoaxes are collected some amusing funnies through the decades played by scientists and mathematicians!

Alabama Changes the Value of Pi

Happened in 1998:

The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the American Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0.

Soon the article made its way onto the internet, and then it rapidly spread around the world, forwarded by email. It only became apparent how far the article had spread when the Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of calls from people protesting the legislation.

The original article, which was intended as a parody of legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was written by physicist Mark Boslough.

***

Especially like this one as it has timeless appeal:

Drunk Driving on the Internet

Happened in 1994:

An article in PC Computing magazine written by John Dvorak described a bill going through Congress that would make it illegal to use the internet while drunk, or to discuss sexual matters over a public network.

The bill was supposedly numbered 040194 (i.e. 04/01/94), and the contact person was listed as Lirpa Sloof (April Fools backwards). The article said that the FBI was going to use the bill to tap the phone line of anyone who "uses or abuses alcohol" while accessing the internet.

Passage of the bill was felt to be certain because "Who wants to come out and support drunkenness and computer sex?" The article offered this explanation for the origin of the bill: "The moniker 'Information Highway' itself seems to be responsible for SB 040194, which is designed to prohibit anyone from using a public computer network (Information Highway) while the computer user is intoxicated. I know how silly this sounds, but Congress apparently thinks being drunk on a highway is bad no matter what kind of highway it is. The bill is expected to pass this month."

The article generated so many outraged phone calls to Congress that Senator Edward Kennedy's office had to release an official denial of the rumor that he was a sponsor of the bill.

***

Here's a good one for the wonderfully gullible:

Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers

Happened in 1995 (the 90's were great!):

Discover Magazine reported that the highly respected wildlife biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had found a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer.

These fascinating creatures had bony plates on their heads that, fed by numerous blood vessels, could become burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speeds. They used this ability to hunt penguins, melting the ice beneath the penguins and causing them to sink downwards into the resulting slush where the hotheads consumed them.

After much research, Dr. Pazzo theorized that the hotheads might have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of noted Antarctic explorer Philippe Poisson in 1837. "To the ice borers, he would have looked like a penguin," the article quoted her as saying. Discover received more mail in response to this article than they had received for any other article in their history.

***



This one must have really brought out the overly impressionable.

Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity

Happened in 1976:

The British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity.

Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.

***



The Discovery of the Bigon

Happened in 1996 (how do they come up with these things?):

Discover Magazine reported that physicists had discovered a new fundamental particle of matter, dubbed the Bigon. It could only be coaxed into existence for mere millionths of a second, but amazingly, when it did materialize it was the size of a bowling ball.

Physicist Albert Manque and his colleagues accidentally found the particle when a computer connected to one of their vacuum-tube experiments exploded. Video analysis of the explosion revealed the Bigon hovering over the computer for a fraction of a second.

Manque theorized that the Bigon might be responsible for a host of other unexplained phenomena such as ball lightning, sinking souffles, and spontaneous human combustion. Discover received huge amounts of mail in response to the story.

Brain: Sensation versus Perception - Visual Illusions

Sensation versus Perception - Visual Illusions -

"We are not aware of objects themselves but of neural signals about them that are transmitted through our nerves. Perception is a dynamic cognitive process of interpreting information.

It is also learned and is an interpretative process which is subject to influence of other psycho-physiological processes such as emotion, motivation and culture."

By rumelphones @ HubPages