Speak English

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk A billion people speak English worldwide, making it the third-largest language, behind Chinese and Spanish. But how well do we understand its idiosyncrasies?

Starving snakes devour their hearts

clipped from www.abc.net.au Jennifer Viegas Discovery News Some snakes can survive without food for two years at a time by digesting their own hearts, a new study shows. Other snakes survive by growing bigger heads to broaden prey options during periods of famine. The US study, published in the latest issue of the journal Zoology, is the first to examine starvation physiology in snakes. McCue says the snakes were usually sedentary, wrapped up in provided "hide boxes", and only explored their environments when they thought a potential food source was around. "Larger head bones mean that they can choose from a wider range of potential prey items," he says, noting that snakes cannot chew and therefore must swallow whole animals. The heart breakdown initially surprised McCue, but he says it is reasonable given that "the lower energy expenditure allows lower circulatory demands, and therefore permits the heart organ to shrink". Immediately following a nutritious meal, snake hearts can quickly rebuild themselves.

At 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."

clipped from www.globalresearch.ca It's a new level of absurdity for America. "Specially trained security personnel" will be watching passengers for "micro-expressions" that will reveal treacherous agendas and insidious intentions at airports around the country. These agents, who may literally hold your fate in their hands have been given a lofty, Orwellian name: "Behavior Detection Officers." In the study of "micro-expressions"-yes, it is actually a field of study and there are some who are arrogant enough to call it a science- it has been decided that when people wish to conceal emotions, the truth of their feelings is revealed in facial flashes. The face police, in place at more than a dozen U.S. airports already, aren't identified as such. But the watcher could be at curbside baggage, the ticket counter or near the metal detectors and X-ray machines. The Transportation Security Administration hopes to have as many as 500 Behavior Detection Officers on the job by the end of 2008.

Zen Sarcasm

Words to live by…

clipped from phunkyou.com Zen Sarcasm Words to live by… 1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me the hell alone.

Dark Matter: All Wrong?

clipped from dsc.discovery.com Dark Matter: All Wrong? Aug. 3, 2007 — The mysterious dark matter that's been called on to make sense of the ways galaxies twirl through space may not exist, if an alternative theory is right. The surprising way galaxies rotate — as if they are much larger and heavier than they appear to be — has long implied to astronomers and astrophysicists that there is more matter out there holding things together than we see. That unseen and unseeable matter has fallen under the catch-all term "dark matter." These days, the most likely candidate for what makes up dark matter is some sort of weakly interacting particle that we've so far failed to detect. But there is another radically different possibility: What if gravity itself doesn't work quite the way we think? Maybe at the outer edges of galaxies where the gravitational acceleration — the g — of a galaxy is extremely small, gravity tugs just a tad bit more.

Detecting Dark Matter: The Race is On

clipped from dsc.discovery.com Aug. 13, 2007 — In deep underground laboratories around the globe, a high-tech race is on to spot dark matter, the invisible cosmic glue that's believed to keep galaxies from spinning apart. Whoever discovers the nature of dark matter would solve one of modern science's greatest mysteries and be a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize. Yet it's more than just a brainy exercise. Deciphering dark matter — along with a better understanding of another mysterious force called dark energy — could help reveal the fate of the universe. Previous hunts for the hypothetical matter have turned up nothing, but that has not deterred some two dozen research teams from plumbing the darkness of idled mines and tunnel shafts for a fleeting glimpse. Dark-matter detecting machines today are more powerful than previous generations, but even the best has failed so far to catch a whiff of the stuff. Many teams are now building bigger detectors or toying with novel technologies to aid in the hunt.

Dark Matter Caught Behaving Strangely

clipped from dsc.discovery.com Aug. 21, 2007 — Dark matter detected in the midst of a galactic slam dance is acting badly, say astronomers who made the discovery using space and ground-based telescopes. Instead of hanging out with the stars, as it was found doing in another collision of galactic clusters a few months ago, it’s mingling with the dust and gases — which is unbecoming of the mysterious stuff. "That’s weird because according to current theory, stars and dark matter should stay together," said astronomer Andisheh Mahdavi of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. "But here they didn’t." Mahdavi and his colleagues will be publishing their discovery about the galactic cluster known as Abell 520 in the October issue of The Astrophysical Journal.