Slashdot Mirror

Anyone familiar with the magazine will know that they do many pieces without pictures. And yes they also do occasional photo essays. But the written word is their forte.

Obviously, to answer your critique this should have appeared in National Geographic This is a matter of Taste.

The written word is preffered for many things.

For example, I doubt that you would want to see the linux kernel published as a picture book. You would need too many crayons.

The basic concept is that this is a magazine that specializes in the written word. Do not complain when the when there is a lack of pictures, because this is not the main audience they cater to.

The ability to read books and magazines without pictures is a rare and valuable commodity these days. Which shouldn't stop anyone from enjoying pretty pictures as well. Just know what you are looking at.

I think you meant this.

It's tragic that a significant portion of the private sector takes this kind of a stance. The Media Lab, in it's day, was a unique place where sometimes extremely disparate companies were able to work together, share ideas, and advance not only their businesses, but technology in a much more significant way than they would have separately.

What happens when Intel sits down with Lego and some creative, bright students? Lego gets Mindstorms... Intel gets an entirely new product line. This was the place where corporate R&D hit the academic cutting edge. It brought you HDTV, Mindstorms, Electronic Ink (which is turning very quickly into printable transistors). It's working on building automation with cooperation from both appliance companies and building companies. MEMS, Education, Agents, News Delivery... Hell, students there even had a part in remeasuring Mt. Everest. Worthless indeed.

As for "frivolous perks," the professors at the lab get paid academic salaries. Many of them, who consult with their sponsors as a condition of their sponsorship contracts, travel 150-200k miles /year. Have you tried logging that much travel in coach, without a cell phone?

Yes, there are significant parts of the Media Lab designed to make it "plush" for both sponsors and researchers, but you don't attract some of the brightest and most creative people on the planet by giving them a cinder block office $5.25 an hour.

The penguins are suffering this year because of the strange behaviour down there.

Malayalam is the language spoken in the state of Kerala located in the south eastern part of India. Kerala was selected as one of the 50 must see places by National Geographic. Malayalam is located from +U0D00 to +U0D7F in the Unicode.

In case their are any TeXis here, the TUG 2002 will be held in Kerala and is a nice time to come and visit Kerala.

raj

It can bunch its arms into a flattened oval and develop brown patches to resemble a toxic flatfish, curl and hang its arms and turn light blue to resemble a local jellyfish, elongate and develop stripes to look like a sea snake. Absolutely mindblowing.

Unfortunately the pictures they selected to put on the web don't begin to do it justice.

watch it swim

(requires realplayer)

Here is a Link with video. Didn't test it though as I don't have the required Realplayer at work.

There was an article on Malin Space Systems in the national geographic a few months back (This Page seems to suggest feb 01).

Anyway, basically it was all about how much evidence of water erosion they had found; quite a bit as I remember. Nice pictures too... worth reading if you happen to have the issue lying around

Ack! I thought you were kidding that such a thing existed for a moment, but a quick check of Google and it's clear that you aren't.

Cool. Now I know what I want for Xmas! Thanks!

I saw this on NGC.

I believe they said that many infected snails do survive, grow back their antennae, and actually have a longer lifespan than normal snails!

The August issue of the National Geographic magazine had a (what I thought to be interesting) article on spiders in general, and this larva in particular.

More information here.

Yellowstone Volcano
When the volcano in Yellowstone National Park blew 6,400 centuries ago, it obliterated a mountain range, felled herds of prehistoric camels hundreds of miles away and left a smoking hole in the ground the size of the Los Angeles Basin.
Volcanos come in all different sizes too, some of 'em pretty big.

First off, if you do professional photography, you don't use 35mm

Virtually all photojournalism that isn't shot digitally is shot on 35 mm film. Next time you watch a sporting event or news conference, take a look at what the photographers are using. You won't see Hasselblads and Toyos. Not that they don't have their place, too, but you're much more likely to find them in a studio than at the frontlines in Afghanistan or at a Formula 1 race. And National Geographic's photography FAQ says

Nearly all use 35mm transparency film, such as Fuji Provia 100, Fuji Velvia 50, Kodachrome 64, and Kodachrome 200.

I do agree that printing is a creative process, though it can also be true in the digital domain. Digital printing is different, though, in that once you get it "right", you can crank out print after print with identical dodging and burning, etc.

Here's a more complete story about it on National Geographic:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/supercroc/
The page has more photos, information about the paleontologists, and a link to a photo gallery.

Here's a more complete story about it on National Geographic:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/supercroc/
The page has more photos, information about the paleontologists, and a link to a photo gallery.

Check out more info at National Geographic

Some further information on Massoud:

http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/afl io.htm

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0103/l ife.html

Really, this isn't special knowledge. If you've taken an anthropology course you've seen nekkid dark-skinned pre-teens.

There was once a study done that showed every person in the world (this study was done between 1900-idon'tknow) could have a full acre in Texas. According to National Geographic, Texas is 267,277 sqare miles or 171,057,280 acres. At the Current World Population of about 6.16 Billion that works out to 0.0277 acres or about 1200 square feet per person.

The article is basically about Victor Maier. Since I knew Victor Maier (I got my doctorate from his deparment, not in Cinology, but in Indology), I guess I have a little personal feeling.

First of all, as other posters have pointed out, the European looking mummies have long been known. Especially one mummy of blond, blue-eyed young woman discovered by Stein had attracted people's attention. (The article mentions the Beuaty of Loulan). There was a popular novel written about her in Japan. I think they made a movie out of the novel.

The point of the article is not as quite simple as Europeans in China. But it seems to relate to the Aryan homeland. (The article talks about this toward the end.)

Since the discovery of Sanskrit (from the Westerners point of view), the disciplines of comparative linguistics, historical linguistics were formed. They theorized that languages of Europe and India (South Asia) had common origin.

I am sure that every linguist you meet will say that linguistic families and races/ethnicity do not have anything to do with each other. But many people confuse, and I do not think scholars of the 19th century and the early 20th centuries were as cautious as today. As such, the search of aryan homeland has been heavily debated, and having been attracting interests.

One of very early theory was that Indo-European speaking people came from North Europe that includes Germany. I guess everyone knows the implication of this in the history of the 20th century, so I will not touch this.

As notionalists and revisionists in all countries are in rage these days, it is not surprizing that the theory that Indo-European speaking people came from India is becoming popular in India.

But I think currently popular theory among linguists is that they came from somewhere around Black Sea. The problem has been that there has been not much archaelogical evidence that suggests a large settlement or a civilization in that area. For this reason, I have been paying attention to the outcome of this expedition.

Anyhow, Victor Maier wants to suggest again that Indo-European came from currently German speaking region. I am sure that his intention is purely academic, but it does have a huge politidcal implication.

For one thing, I have trouble understanding the whole situation. Humans with European features (physically) have been living in Europe for.. much more than 10,000 years? And the beginnning of the spread of Indo-European languages is postulated somewhere like 7,000BC, IIRC. So, the use of the word ``European'' in the article is not only vague, but quite misleading, especially it talks about ``the homeland'' later in the article. Finding peoples who lived in Central Asia, and share ancestors, does not make them Europeans. As I am not familiar with the date when Europe was Indo-Europeanized, the date 2,800BC of the earliest mummies could also mean that they conquered Europe. Were the residents of Europe Europeans if they did not speak any of Indo-European languages? Or, they and Europeans might have shared common cultures, and the Tocharians who spoke an Indo-European language might have been the decendents of those mummy people, there is no guarantee that they also spoke Indo-European language. Are they still Euroepans?

I would certainly avoid entering the mine field which is Aryan homeland problem. But I am not an Indo-European speaking person.

I also a little trouble about the use of the word China in the article. Although the area (vast) has been part of People's Republic of China, I would call that area Central Asia. As it may be noticed, the inhabitants of the area do not very much look like what you think of the Chinese. The area had traditionally been considered outside China. The use of the word China in the article seems to carry some unneccesary connotation to the discussion. (The article does talk about independent movement in the area.)

About two years ago, National Geographic released their version of the Virtual Solar System on their web site. It requires a Superscape plugin called Viscape (sorry, Windows and Mac only) to work properly. Download the Viscape plugin, install, and then visit National Geographics "Virtual Solar System" web site to check out a 3D-rendered tour of the solar system with information on all the planets and about 50% of the moons, some asteroids, some comets, and the sun (of course). It not only has a 3D-rendered environment to navigate, but also various information about those same heavenly bodies. Very in-depth and well done, and is a great resource for learning about the various bodies in our solar system and how they interact.

About two years ago, National Geographic released their version of the Virtual Solar System on their web site. It requires a Superscape plugin called Viscape (sorry, Windows and Mac only) to work properly. Download the Viscape plugin, install, and then visit National Geographics "Virtual Solar System" web site to check out a 3D-rendered tour of the solar system with information on all the planets and about 50% of the moons, some asteroids, some comets, and the sun (of course). It not only has a 3D-rendered environment to navigate, but also various information about those same heavenly bodies. Very in-depth and well done, and is a great resource for learning about the various bodies in our solar system and how they interact.

If the guy jumped over California and rode the Jet Stream, he would probably end up... in California!

The average speed of Jet Stream is 110 to 140 knots (source here). So let's take 140 knots, which is around 4 km/min (to give you a better idea, that's 260 km/h, or 160 mi/h). According to the article, the fall should last around 10 minutes. The horizontal drift of the guy would then be:

4 km/min * 10 min = 40 km (27 miles)

Note: I did not forget the guy's relative horizontal speed (horizontal speed within the wind, as the guy "surfs" on the airflow). That speed is just not significant compared to the speed of the Jet Stream.

This reminds me a lot about the JASON Project that Dr. Robert Ballard heads up. He's the guy who's team found the Titanic, Lusitania, Edmund Fitzgerald, and a slew of other underwater stuff.
The control panels for JASON look very similar to the ones for the mining 'bots.

Alright then, where would be get this infinite amount of data from???

• All the old National Geographics that everybody seems to have collected for some strange reason?
• Maybe the Congressional Record or Internal Revenue Code? About time we got some good use out of those... Yeah, I know that they're not quite infinite yet, but just wait 'til next year!
• Perhaps the phone numbers of all the girls who won't go out with me?
• We could always store the coordinates of all the points on the perimiter of the Mandelbrot set.
• Of course, we could just load it up with the digits of pi or e, but that's kind of boring.
• The authoritative compliation of all the troll postings on Slashdot?
• We could always use the lyrics to "Infinite Bottles of Beer on the Wall", but after the first few hundred thousand bottles we'd probably be slurring too badly for anybody to understand it.

Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears

A small girl fell sick in 1692. Her "fitts" -- convulsions, contortions, and outbursts of gibberish -- baffled everyone. Other girls soon manifested the same symptoms. Their doctor could suggest but one cause. Witchcraft.

That grim diagnosis launched a Puritan inquisition that took 25 lives, filled prisons with innocent people, and frayed the soul of a Massachusetts community called Salem.

300 years later, not much has changed.

Delmoi dun said:

I mean, if you look at the Talk.Origins FAQ you will see that while there have been things like a bird-dinosaur, the creationists always say things like "that's just a bird" or "that's just a dinosaur" or whatever. In actuality is more a smooth gradient, Point A and point B are different, but the line is blurry.

You can say that again... :)

First off, minor nit to pick--many (if not most) paleontologists are now firmly convinced that birds in fact are dinosaurs, specifically theropods (in fact, on lists that discuss dinosaurs, it is not uncommon to hear folks talk about "avialan theropods" [aka birdies]). This is because of a lot of fairly recent research into the matter (most of it only in the last ten to fifteen years, and possibly the most spectacular evidence only started coming to light around two years ago).

To give a good example of how the line gets real blurry...most paleontologists and others list Aves, that is, birds, as theropods closer to Archaeopteryx than to other dinosaurs. Well, there's now been found a wee problem with that--the closest relatives to Archaeopteryx turn out to be dromaeosaurs like Utahraptor and Deinonychus and Velociraptor, enough that some paleontologists want to make archaeopterygids and dromaeosaurs part of the same family. :) (This is partly from a lot of transitional fossils--which I'll get into in a bit--and partly because it's been found fairly recently that archaeopterygids have little sickle-claws on their feet and their body structure in general is amazingly similar to dromaeosaurs in general.)

Even worse, dromaeosaurs are actually younger in the fossil record than Archie is--there is the very real possibility that dromaeosaurs, which have traditionally been classified as dinos and NOT as birds, are actually secondarily flightless descendants of archaeopterygids or at the very least a sister group that evolved from a common ancestor.

The fact that a fair number of transitional fossils appearing to be transitional between Archie and dromaeosaurs (such as Rahonavis and some others) doesn't help, nor does the fact that it seems sicle-claws may have been a fairly common trait among early birds and dromaeosaurs.

It further yet doesn't help matters in sorting it out that feathers can no longer be used as a diagnostic characteristic of birds. For something like two years now, we have known about some amazing finds of dinosaurs with feathers (Greg Paul and Bob Bakker, who drew dinosaurs like Deinonychus and Compsognathus with feathers, were right all along and Jurassic Park was dead wrong with bare-nekkid dromaeosaurs)...the first non-avian dinosaur with protofeathers being Sinosauropteryx (thought to be a compsgnathid), Caudipteryx (thought now to be a basal oviraptor--incidentially, oviraptor clutching behaviour has now been proven in fossils--there is a fossil Oviraptor discovered that was covering its eggs exactly like a mother chicken), Protoarchaeopteryx,Archaeoraptor, and many others...the new Chinese dino fossils are really setting paleontology on its ear and pretty much have clinched that birds are theropods after all...

Which leads to one of the newest fossils found at the Chinese digs, Sinornithosaurus. This little fella is incredible--if he'd been found without the feathers he'd probably been classified as Velociraptor mongoliensis. But it was found with feather impressions, and so it is now recognised as the first definite feathered dromaeosaurid. (Yes, that's right. This proves, indirectly, that nearly all dromaeosaurs probably had feathers...I'll admit that seeing Deinonychus all naked BOTHERS me...if it's that bloody close to Archaeopteryx then by the gods it should have proper feathers, damnit! :) There's a neat little reconstruction of it at National Geographic's website, where a feature was done a few months back on the Chinese fossil dig (which is turning out to be giving stuff as amazing as the early discoveries of Archaeopteryx...which is only appropriate, as its cousin Deinonychus was the dino that first made men think (well, since the 1800's anyways) that maybe dinosaurs weren't slow and stupid :).

There are some other examples that muddy up the waters for birds, too...one group that was once thought to have spawned wading-birds is now recognised as the first radiation of ducks (chadriiforme ducks) and then there were the phorusracids...large, flightless birds that existed till around two million years ago in South America, which redeveloped fingers and sickle-claws as they became ground predators, just like their ancestors 70 million years ago (yes, even after toothed birds became extinct, there were still enough non-avian theropodian traits that a "neo-neo-theropod" could evolve in phorusracid birds...)...so often things aren't as cut and dried as we like them to be. I think it's neat as hell, though :)

(OK, so I have just a WEE bit of passing interest in theropods, especially dromaeosaurids. Partly because I like to draw 'em on occasion (to the point of having done a "furry" pic of a feathered dromaeosaurid ;) and partly because I think they're bloody neat animals. I also admit the idea of the momma-cardinal that visits my bird feeder being a dinosaur is neat; I'll also dare anyone who witnesses a mob of sparrows fighting over a bird-feeder to deny birds are dinosaurian :)