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Maybe not so tame.

Typically, most stories don't receive much press, save for local coverage or an occasional bit on NPR. The truth is that there's been disasters and disasters-in-the-making happening for years that are ignored if not covered up. Most of choose not to look, deciding life's just fine or the problem is not ours to worry about.

Iraq is not an Asian nation. It is in the middle east

Wrong. Look at any map of Asia. From dictionary.com: "A country of southwest Asia". The middle east is a region, not a continent. The middle east includes part of Asia and part of Africa. Many middle eastern nations (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and others) are Asian.

What kind of a crazy map are you looking at??

National Geographic Map of Asia. If they don't know where Asia is...who does?

The NASA plan calls for a Hubble servicing mission in 2006, possibly followed by another one a few years later, that could keep the Hubble in space far beyond even the launch of the new James Webb Space Telescope in 2011.

But after the crash of the space shuttle Columbia in February, the shuttle program has come to a grinding halt. Without servicing by the space shuttle, the Hubble is living on borrowed time.

See more here.

The domino effect is what people should be concerned about. Short term toxicity is probably not a problem but you are obviously more knowledgable about that than I am since I am not a chemist.

It isn't death from pesticides on food you should be concerned about. It is the huge and growing dead zone in Louisiana on the Mississippi Delta that you should be concerned about.

It isn't death from air pollution you should be concerned about. It is the rising rates of Asthma you should be worried about. Or the global dimming or how about the disappearing ice cap on Mount Kilimanjaro.

Australia already has Antarctic tourism with sight seeing flights via Qantas, including one that was timed to see the eclipse.

And you too can go on a ski trip to the Antarctic.

ps Its spelt Antarctica not Antartica (Something I just found out myself I might add)

Digital is the best choice for a beginner because you can do a lot more experimenting without spending a fortune on things like film and developing.

Sure, it may cost a few bucks to have your film developed (assuming you're not going to do it yourself, which isn't hard BTW). But, if you're really into experimenting with photography, then film is THE way to go.

Experimenting with photography isn't just about tricks with the shutter speed, light, aperature, etc etc. It's also about taking advantage of the characteristics of certain films. Some films are more sensitive to light, some are less. Some films are extremely sensitive to infrared light, and make for some truely awesome pictures.

Furthermore, certain films offer advantages when taking "normal" pictures. If you look at the requirements for a National Geographic photographer (professionals for sure), you'll see that they primarily use 35mm cameras. Here's a link: click!

Saying 'film is dead' is like saying that Apple is dying -- it just isn't true...

National Geographic
Sydney Morning Herald
Google News

Well, the Native American were the first people on your continent too. So we'll follow your example and let you build up a nice base and then we'll come and sell you some blankets with some neat virus as secret bonus.

There is strong evidence that the "native americans" you speak of were not the first people on the North American continent, either. The original peoples of the continent -- as far as we now know -- seem to be more closely related to Australian Aborigines, and were probably wiped out by the descendants of the modern "native americans", who crossed over the land bridge from Asia.

But I think some Fluorescent Mice would be neat-o keen!

In case someone wants to read some support for this assertion: National Geographic

For example its actually two new identified species since whales previously all considered Bryde's Whales are now considered to make up three distinct species - two known types previously thought to be the same species: Bryde's, and Eden, and this third species B. omurai.

I take this to be good news, because if there are three distinct species that cannot be visually distinguished from each other, and one of them is determined to be rare or threatened, the Japanese will have a much harder time arguing for an outright hunt of Bryde's. I just hope they don't take the now proven usefulness of DNA information collected through "scientific" whaling, to be evidence that that particular insult to science should be continued or even expanded.

see this national geographic article

if this thing blows in our lifetimes, the midwest will essentially become Mordor...I guess for some hardcore LOTRs fans that would be kind o' cool...

Then again, LOTR trilogy is hella better than any asteroid hitting the planet movie...

It should be visible tonight after the eclipse.

I don't know why they don't just farm all the fish we eat anyway, just like they do with cows.

Farming of fish has its downsides, too. In this article it is explained how escaping farmed salmon threaten the reproduction of wild salmon.

Also, farmed salmon are fed pellets which are made from other sea-living critters, moving the threat of overfishing down the foodchain.

Many have suggested photo.net, and I agree and second the commet to be sure to read the static content as well as the boards. I also like Usefilm, particularly as a place to post pictures and get comments. The three Ansel Adams books (The Camera, The Negative, and The Print are classics and loaded with useful information, and The National Geographic Photography Field Guide is hugely informative and inspirational as well.

Speaking of inspiration, spend time looking at the sorts of pictures that you like and thinking about what you like about them and how they might have been made.

Lastly, definitely shoot a lot of pictures. It's especially easy and cheap with digital. Taking pictures takes practice and the more you shoot the better you'll be.

BSD will simply evolve much slower than Linux, and eventually be forgotten except by a handful of zealots. Nothing wrong with that at all.

= 9J =

That's not what this article says about dogs. Unfortunately, the complete text isn't available online.

The reason why humans were able to create the huge variety in dogs so quickly was because the process at work wasn't evolution, it was direct human intervention. Evolution is a slow long process caused by random changes in genetic code and subsequent breeding (I'm not a geneticist, so this description is weak at best). Dogs, however, were intentionally crossed to enhance certain attributes. People do this with plants all the time, and dogs were no different in this respect.

Pilot Paul Howey and others will be in Ireland waiting for the plane to appear on the horizon. They will head out to the bog and, if the plane comes in, take over manual control and land it.

-- National Geographic

I'm reading the parent post in IE 6 on Windows XP, and the URL seems to be formatted wrong. The part from 2003/04/0414_030314 gets a space, and reads 2003/04/04 14_030314. Is this IE's fault, or does Slashcode mess up the formatting?

Anyway, here's a link you can click just in case you experience the same rubbish as me: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/04 14_030314_strangeape.html.

This National Geographic article got much better pictures of the new (?) species than CNN. Also it seems as if this story isn't so new at all (it started in 1908), and that the mystery species most probably is a chimpanzee, according to DNA tests.

Nevertheless it's an interesting story!

The picture in the article sucks, you can find one that looks much better in National Geographic website.

Yes, that was a bad picture. This one, however, is not.

At least that's what the National Geographic and the NPR articles conclude. It's easier to swallow than the idea of a chimp and a gorilla getting it on.

It was named after another great aviator...Beecher Butts, an 88 year-old aviation enthusiast.

Check out National Geographic article on it.

As beer was part of their salary, you might even say the pyramid builders worked for beer.

In fact, the workers who built the pyramids took their love of beer to their graves.

"Many workers were also buried with jars of beer, Hawass adds, picking up one such rough red-clay pot lying on top of a nearby grave. 'They made a beer from barley, and that was their daily drink. They didn't want to be without it even in the afterlife, so they often put in one of these jars.'"

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/ 11/01/html/ft_20011101.5.html

= 9J =

is found in new techniques involving brain scans. A brain wave pattern called P300 ( "positive wave" 300 ms after onset ) has been discovered to be activated when a person looks at a familiar object ( the P300 hypothesis has gained very solid evidence since a few years ). So you can display some pictures to the accused person and embed in these actual crime scenes pictures, and then tell if the accusee is familiar with crime scene pictures ( like what the place looked like, weapons involved, etc. ). Of course, you have to display pictures that has not been released to the media and whatnot, but the uniqueness of the combinations needed to figure out that someone is involved in the crime is pretty high. Links here, here and here.

This polygraph stuff got to be thrown away at some point anyway, since it's based on reaction patterns that many people just don't have so its accuracy isn't high enough for the important task it has to do.

A similar thing happened in 1999-2001. When, among other things, 50,000 Nike shoes drifted around the globe. This National Geographic's article discusses this incident and goes into more detail on the whole phenomena of drifting cargo.

A CARCASS OF GIANT SEA MONSTER FOUND ON A SHORE OF CHILE

Whale-Size Mystery Creature Washes Ashore in Chile

John Roach
for National Geographic News
July 3, 2003

A mysterious, 41-foot-long and 19-foot-wide (12.4-meters by 5.4-meters) gelatinous mass of flesh washed ashore in southern Chile serves as reminder that the sea may be full of creatures yet discovered by humankind.

The creature was first thought to be a dead whale when it appeared last week on the coast near the town of Puerto Montt, but scientists who went to inspect the creature determined it was an invertebrate, or spineless, creature

"It had a very particular smell, very different from a dead cetacean and from anything we have smelled before," said Elsa Cabrera, director of the Center for Cetacean Conservation in Santiago, Chile.

After showing images of the fleshy blob to an Italian zoologist and comparing them to reports from a stranding off the coast of Florida in 1896, Cabrera said that the decomposing fleshy blob is most likely a giant octopus (Octopus giganteus).

The Center for Cetacean Conservation in Santiago is sending skin samples to Chilean and international organizations to try and identify the species, which was originally discovered by the Chilean Navy floating alongside a dead humpback whale.

"If the analysis confirms the finding of a giant octopus, this will be a major scientific finding for the Chilean and international scientific community, and it will be one step forward to increase our knowledge about the incredible creatures that are still unknown to humans," said Cabrera.

Whale Skin?

Steve Webster, a marine biologist with the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, was one of the scientists contacted by the organization and shown a photograph of the specimen.

"Based on what I see in the picture, I would opt for whale skin since that is a part of world where whales are not uncommon," he said.

Webster also said that reports describing the specimen as both leathery and gelatinous were conflicting. If it is indeed leathery, he said, it is most likely a whale skin. But if it is more gelatinous, then it could be something else. One possibility is a giant salp, a deep-sea fish known as a pyrosome.

The possibility that it might be a giant squid does not make much sense to Webster.

"If it is skin of squid rather than a big intact sheet like that, you would expect to see some indication that it once had arms or tentacles--and I dont see anything that speaks to that," he said. "And for just a body of a squid to be that big, then you are talking about a squid that is larger than any known to man. That seems less likely to me than whale skin."

Cabrera said that she does not believe the blob is a whale because the texture, smell, and coloring are different from known decomposing whales.

"We also consulted experts from the National Museum of Natural History that confirmed to us that when a whale decomposes at sea, the smell and texture of its blubber and skin are still recognizable," she said.

Giant Squid?

William Gilly, a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who has studied the behavior and biology of squid for more than two decades, said that the creature as described in news reports was a mystery to him, but that it could be a giant squid.

"Over the last few years they've found several big sorts of new species of squid that were surprises or extra-colossal-size specimens of species previously known," he said.

There is much to be learned about giant squid, said Gilly. For example, little is known about their habits. Scientists with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC suspect that giant squid mostly live at depths of 660 to 2,300 feet (200 to 700 meters).

Eve

A CARCASS OF GIANT SEA MONSTER FOUND ON A SHORE OF CHILE

Whale-Size Mystery Creature Washes Ashore in Chile

John Roach
for National Geographic News
July 3, 2003

A mysterious, 41-foot-long and 19-foot-wide (12.4-meters by 5.4-meters) gelatinous mass of flesh washed ashore in southern Chile serves as reminder that the sea may be full of creatures yet discovered by humankind.

The creature was first thought to be a dead whale when it appeared last week on the coast near the town of Puerto Montt, but scientists who went to inspect the creature determined it was an invertebrate, or spineless, creature

"It had a very particular smell, very different from a dead cetacean and from anything we have smelled before," said Elsa Cabrera, director of the Center for Cetacean Conservation in Santiago, Chile.

After showing images of the fleshy blob to an Italian zoologist and comparing them to reports from a stranding off the coast of Florida in 1896, Cabrera said that the decomposing fleshy blob is most likely a giant octopus (Octopus giganteus).

The Center for Cetacean Conservation in Santiago is sending skin samples to Chilean and international organizations to try and identify the species, which was originally discovered by the Chilean Navy floating alongside a dead humpback whale.

"If the analysis confirms the finding of a giant octopus, this will be a major scientific finding for the Chilean and international scientific community, and it will be one step forward to increase our knowledge about the incredible creatures that are still unknown to humans," said Cabrera.

Whale Skin?

Steve Webster, a marine biologist with the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, was one of the scientists contacted by the organization and shown a photograph of the specimen.

"Based on what I see in the picture, I would opt for whale skin since that is a part of world where whales are not uncommon," he said.

Webster also said that reports describing the specimen as both leathery and gelatinous were conflicting. If it is indeed leathery, he said, it is most likely a whale skin. But if it is more gelatinous, then it could be something else. One possibility is a giant salp, a deep-sea fish known as a pyrosome.

The possibility that it might be a giant squid does not make much sense to Webster.

"If it is skin of squid rather than a big intact sheet like that, you would expect to see some indication that it once had arms or tentacles--and I dont see anything that speaks to that," he said. "And for just a body of a squid to be that big, then you are talking about a squid that is larger than any known to man. That seems less likely to me than whale skin."

Cabrera said that she does not believe the blob is a whale because the texture, smell, and coloring are different from known decomposing whales.

"We also consulted experts from the National Museum of Natural History that confirmed to us that when a whale decomposes at sea, the smell and texture of its blubber and skin are still recognizable," she said.

Giant Squid?

William Gilly, a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who has studied the behavior and biology of squid for more than two decades, said that the creature as described in news reports was a mystery to him, but that it could be a giant squid.

"Over the last few years they've found several big sorts of new species of squid that were surprises or extra-colossal-size specimens of species previously known," he said.

There is much to be learned about giant squid, said Gilly. For example, little is known about their habits. Scientists with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC suspect that giant squid mostly live at depths of 660 to 2,300 feet (200 to 700 meters).

Eve

This argument is flawed. We wont get humans to Mars (which really is interesting and exploratory) by building a battlestar galactica ship... we will get there using Lewis and Clark-style expeditionary means (pack light, make as much fuel as you can on Mars instead of bringing it with you, etc.). Bob Zubrin has a great book that shows how we could do this all for about $10 Billion... how much is the US buy-in to the hunk-of-shit space station? $60 Billion at least.

Although I disagree with the "disaster after disaster" sentiment -- most of NASA's missions are officially succesful, to my knowledge -- I agree that the money should be spend elsewhere.

Currently space travel/exploration/science costs a tremendous amount of money, but gives little back (although I do agree weather prediction has probably been incredibly important for 20th century progress). My general feeling is that it's a waste of money, there are better things in which to invest. And yes this includes homeless shelters, saving the environment and promoting healthy eating.

It could also mean spending more money on reducing the cost of space travel. Why don't they cancel all programs (or most of them, whatever) for the next few years and invest heavily in research for new, cheaper methods of getting up there. Surely this would be a better use for the money?

When it's cheaper to get into space we'll be able to gain serious benefits from space travel. Things like mining asteroids, teraforming mars and diverting on-coming asteroids. Most of the programs that I hear about are either very bad value for money (even if they are of useful scientific grounding) or stupid, like raising ant farms on a space station.

There is far more potential up there than we take advantage of currently and we're stuck until the the money is spent more wisely. What do people think?

It seems a strange thing that such a culture
lacked the wheel. In fact, the wheel was unknown to all the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans.

It's amazing they got so far without it.

Scientific? No. But interesting how different the responses are when the material is presented differently.

Of course gaming affects the user, so does everything else in life. To insist there there is no effect caused by gaming is downright asinine.

Effect doesn't have to be negative either, as one study shows.

The latest edition of National Geographic has a startling article on India's caste system. If you think US minorities have the hardest row to hoe, check out this article.

The latest edition of National Geographic has a startling article on India's caste system. If you think US minorities have the hardest row to hoe, check out this article.

Pics are here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/05 22_030522_earthmars.html

Here:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=62 4&ncid=753&e=10&u=/ap/20030522/ap_on_sc/earth_from _mars

Here:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=11583

Here:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030 522/168/45jfk.html

Here:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/05/22/earth.mar s.ap/

And Here:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/World/viewo fearth030522.html

Here is a pic of earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1991 from more than 4 billion miles away (showing only a dot):
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/to p10_images_010925-11.html

Posting as AC, I don't seek any karma. Mod up if you want to

Pics are here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/05 22_030522_earthmars.html

Here:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=62 4&ncid=753&e=10&u=/ap/20030522/ap_on_sc/earth_from _mars

Here:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=11583

Here:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030 522/168/45jfk.html

Here:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/05/22/earth.mar s.ap/

And Here:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/World/viewo fearth030522.html

Here is a pic of earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1991 from more than 4 billion miles away (showing only a dot):
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/to p10_images_010925-11.html

Posting as AC, I don't seek any karma. Mod up if you want to

It can be found here

From National Geographic:

Pics.

also has an interesting story. here

To clarify: it doesn't matter how long you live as long as you reproduce before you die. You can be either better adapted, or a better breeder to survive. The idea that a particular species flourished because it was better adapted to its environment is just as plausible as that of being a better breeder.

The better an individual is adapted to it's environment, the more offspring it will produce.. 'Better adapted' and 'Better breeder' are part of the same thing!

According to palentologists, humans didn't begin to use tools until sometime around 10,000 to 50,000 years ago

Perhaps you should learn to use Google before posting something so incorrect.. the first homonid tool use dates back to 2.6 or so Million years ago.

yet as a species we are supposedly 50 million years old

Again, this takes just seconds to check; the Genus Homo is around 2.3-2.5 million years old. The species Homo Sapiens is much younger than this. A cynic might suggest that you were just making up numbers to suit your argument and hoping no one would check them.

I doubt heat generation would be a problem - I can't really see such a train ever being built.

Consider the Channel Tunnel between the UK and France. It descends to a depth of less than 200m below sea level ( see this page or this picture from the same page).
Now consider the atlantic ocean. A cross section is shown on this page.

Firstly, the depth at the maximum is around 5000m below sea level (a cool 25 times deeper than the channel tunnel). A brief search on google for submarine maximum depth tends to suggest that maximum submarine depths (other than for specialised submarines) are typically less than 1000m. See 1, 2 and 3. I can therefore hardly see a commercial train operating at 5000m.

Also, the incline at the continental shelves is a significant factor - trains aren't noted for coping well with steep gradients so a long rise would be needed at either side. I can't comment on whether this is a problem because there is no X axis scale on the referenced atlantic ocean picture.

These are just my opinions and observations of course.

Cheers,

Roger

So with that in mind, I nominate the Great Wall of China, still standing after all these years. I think it qualifies whereas things like the Pyramids don't, in that they never served any real function. I bet the wall would still work pretty well today, if there was a war. Not perfect, but good.

Eh, whatever, I prefer Laura Greene myself.

In this column, you'll find my comments on both the "Computer Made from DNA and Enzymes" article, published by National Geographic News and "New DNA Computer Functions sans Fuel" story provided by Scientific American. But more importantly, you'll find the real *meat*, the abstract of the research conducted by the scientists of the Weitzmann Institute of Science. It is published in today's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Look at this picture of a girl whose parents were killed in the war - Stare at her penetrating eyes for 2 minutes and imagine what would you be like if your parents were killed in a war ?

Also, watch the video clip of Iraqi children who spend their free time in their room firing up their PlayStation while their stereo pumps in the background. They meet up with friends to play pool, or go online for networked gaming. (You have to click the link in Audio/Video section on the right)

Give peach a chance. Let UN inspectors finish their job first.

Every war is a shame on humanity and against the will of God.

WWJD ??

Look at this picture of a girl whose parents were killed in the war - Stare at her penetrating eyes for 2 minutes and imagine what would you be like if your parents were killed in a war ?

Also, watch the video clip of Iraqi children who spend their free time in their room firing up their PlayStation while their stereo pumps in the background. They meet up with friends to play pool, or go online for networked gaming. (You have to click the link in Audio/Video section on the right)

Give peach a chance. Let UN inspectors finish their job first

WWJD ??

Most of you probably couldn't find it.

The related article is here:

Survey Reveals Geographic Illiteracy

We Americans are smartest and the best !!

Wait now...
from this National Geogaphic survey,
"About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn't even locate the U.S. on a map... "

Full survey results on national Geographic

Highlights of survey (Sweden scored highest; Mexico, lowest. The U.S. was next to last):

Despite the daily bombardment of news from the Middle East, Central Asia, and other world trouble spots, roughly 85 percent of young Americans could not find Afghanistan, Iraq, or Israel on a map, according to a new study.
nearly 30 percent of those surveyed could not find the Pacific Ocean, the world's largest body of water;
more than half--56 percent--were unable to locate India, home to 17 percent of people on Earth; and
only 19 percent could name four countries that officially acknowledge having nuclear weapons.
More young U.S. citizens in the study knew that the island featured in last season's TV show "Survivor" is in the South Pacific than could find Israel (no wonder our administration can get by any actions using patriotism of ingnorant Americans. If they had found a better solution to Palestinian crisis, we wouldn't be hated so much in Middle east).
Rap/Hiphop music and the lives of singers of such type of music are so glorified that a big percentage of young Americans want to be thugs like them..