Exercise changes your DNA ?

Exercise changes your DNA:

The genetic heredity a person is born with isn't that impossible to change as one might think. In a new study in Cell Metabolism, researchers of Karolinska Institutet show that when healthy but inactive men and women are made to exercise it actually alters their DNA—in a matter of minutes.

Wind farms can cause atmospheric warming

Supreme irony:

Supreme irony: wind farms can cause atmospheric warming, finds a new study


 by Anthony Watts

While ironic that something designed to reduce CO2 emissions (and presumably warming)is actually producing warming around it, this isn’t really any big surprise. Orchardists and vineyard operators in California have been using motor driven wind turbines to elevate local temperatures to save crops from frost for over half a century. What is different here is the scale of nighttime warming, large enough to be visible on MODIS satellite imagery thanks to large scale wind farms.

Pioneering Engineers

D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form documents how animals adapt physically to their environment. Examples include how the top of a human leg bone deals with the stresses involved in supporting the weight of the body.

a global warming consensus?

Why there cannot be a global warming consensus | Watts Up With That?: " many of the climate-extremists’ commonest arguments are instances of logical fallacies codified by Aristotle in his Sophistical Refutations 2300 years ago. Not the least of these is the argumentum ad populum, the consensus or head-count fallacy.

The fallacy of reliance upon consensus, particularly when combined with the argumentum ad verecundiam, the fallacy of appealing to the authority or reputation of presumed experts, is more likely than any other to mislead"

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Free Computing Courses

Sign Up:    by rob.schifreen
Udacity is a web-based college/university that offers free courses in various computer-related subjects.  Courses typically last 7 weeks, and you can follow at your own pace in your own time.  At the end of the course there's an exam, so that you can be awarded a grade.

The courses are free to access, and cover a variety of topics, with more due to be added soon.

Check out www.udacity.com to find out more.

Claim Your Cash

Since it is tax time make sure to make your way over to the NAUPA site here and start your search for any unclaimed property. As always I’ll post if anyone finds anything big and juicy.

A Hard Look at the NYTimes

Hard Look at  NYTimes

By Its Own Ombudsman

Based on conversations with Times reporters and editors who cover the campaign and Washington, I think they see themselves as aggressive journalists who don’t play favorites. Still, a strong current of skepticism holds that the paper skews left. Unfortunately, this is exacerbated by collateral factors — for example, political views that creep into nonpolitical coverage.

To illustrate, Faye Farrington, a reader from Hollis, N.H., wrote me earlier this year in exasperation over a Sunday magazine article about “Downton Abbey,” the public television series, in which the writer slipped in a veiled complaint about Mitt Romney’s exploitation of the American tax code.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/downton-abbey.html

"presidential candidates who aren’t concerned about the very poor and who pay less in taxes proportionally than does Warren Buffett’s secretary."


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Assume a Can Opener

Assume : A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, "Let's smash the can open with a rock." The chemist says, "Let's build a fire and heat the can first." The economist says, "Let's assume that we have a can-opener."

Financial Magical Realism

Business Insider:

The Spanish banks are lending their own government the money it needs to bail out... the Spanish banks.

How to Beat Global Warming … Or a New Ice Age | ZeroHedge

How to Beat Global Warming … Or a New Ice Age | ZeroHedge:


Whether you are worried about global warming, a new ice age, or just want to save on your electric bill … here’s a big part of the answer.

We know that dark colors get warmer than light ones.Light colors reflect sunlight, while dark ones absorb it. That’s why solar panels are always black: it helps collect the sun’s energy.

***

A team of recent MIT graduates has developed roof tiles that change color based on the temperature. The tiles become white when it’s hot, allowing them to reflect away most of the sun’s heat. When it’s cold they turn black and absorb heat just when it’s needed.

The team’s lab measurements show that in their white state, the tiles reflect about 80 percent of the sunlight falling on them, while when black they reflect only about 30 percent. That means in their white state, they could save as much as 20 percent of present cooling costs, according to recent studies. Savings from the black state in winter have yet to be quantified.

***

They use a common commercial polymer (in one version, one that is commonly used in hair gels) in a water solution. That solution is encapsulated — between layers of glass and plastic in their original prototype, and between flexible plastic layers in their latest version — with a dark layer at the back.

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“Will you read my manuscript?”

“Will you read my manuscript?”:
- by Laura Resnick

No, I won’t.

I don’t read or critique manuscripts. And, no, it’s not because I’m mean. (I am mean; but that’s not the reason I don’t read manuscripts.)

My skill is writing, not editing. I haven’t the faintest idea how other writers can make their work “good.” I’m fully occupied with learning how to make my work “good.” So I just write. I don’t critique or edit.

When you ask a professional writer to read your manuscript, you’re wildly underestimating just how big a favor you’re requesting. Critiquing a manuscript is work and it’s very time-consuming; and critiquing it tactfully is exhausting. (Most writers, having been on the receiving end of vicious reviews and harsh editorial notes, try to make the medicine easier to swallow when commenting on an aspiring writer’s manuscript. This is perhaps misguided, though, since it doesn’t prepare you for enduring editors and agents, let alone critics.)

More to the point, though, the belief that my reading your manuscript will have any effect whatsoever on your fate is a complete misconception of how the publishing industry works.

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Marriage, a High Tech House - Slashdot

Slashdot:

Ask Slashdot: Shortcuts To a High Tech House

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday April 01, @09:10AM
from the whoever-has-the-most-toys dept.

First time accepted submitter phaedrus9779 writes"I'm a recently married man about to take on the next big adventure: home ownership! .....  how can I build a high tech house that will be the envy of my friends, provide lots of useful gadgets, and not break the bank? 

Aren't you supposed to ... (Score:4, Funny)

by Tim Ward (514198) on Sunday April 01, @09:15AM (#39540173) Homepage

... grow out of thinking that stuff is important when you get married?

Re:Aren't you supposed to ... (Score:5, Funny)

by oztiks (921504) on Sunday April 01, @09:24AM (#39540231)

From experience its just the opposite.

From the lack of sex, you find that you spend most of your time secluded in your shed. As such you have one of two choices

a) accrue a large collection of adult material
b) find a hobby ...

I went with hobby.

Money for nothing and the chicks for free....

Fed Access for All ! | The Big Picture:

Why should just banks have all the fun? Former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair proposes EVERYONE get access to the Fed window for free loans and 0% money.

Under my plan, each American household could borrow $10 million from the Fed at zero interest. The more conservative among us can take that money and buy 10-year Treasury bonds. At the current 2 percent annual interest rate, we can pocket a nice $200,000 a year to live on. The more adventuresome can buy 10-year Greek debt at 21 percent, for an annual income of $2.1 million. Or if Greece is a little too risky for you, go with Portugal, at about 12 percent, or $1.2 million dollars a year. (No sense in getting greedy).

Think of what we can do with all that money. We can pay off our underwater mortgages and replenish our retirement accounts without spending one day schlepping into the office. With a few quick keystrokes, we’ll be golden for the next 10 years. 

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Male Fruit Flies, Spurned by Females, Turn to Alcohol - NYTimes.com

Spurned by Females:

Young males on the make, and they struck out not once, not twice, but a dozen times with a group of attractive females hovering nearby. So they did what so many men do after being repeatedly rejected: they got drunk, using alcohol as a balm for unfulfilled desire.



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NASA Scientists Dispute Climate Change

Some prominent voices at NASA are fed up with the agency's activist stance toward climate change.  49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a  letter asking the agency to move away from climate models and to limit its stance to what can be empirically proven.

Click to see article and letter Climate Change
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Priest's PC Autoplays Gay Porn Slideshow to Congregation

Priest's PC Autoplays Gay Porn Slideshow

Father Martin McVeigh was giving a talk to 26 parents and one 8-year-old kid when computer disaster struck. He connected his USB drive into a PC to start his Powerpoint presentation and, instead of the word of God, a hardcore gay porn slideshow started—thanks to Windows' autoplay.

The Folly of Intellectuals

dailyreckoning: "Both Schumpeter and Sowell write about “intellectuals” who have academic credentials of some sort but are lacking in knowledge that would make them particularly valuable to the market. Incapable of commanding significant wealth and status through voluntary market mechanisms, these intellectuals resent the wealth of more-successful people. As a result, they envy and resent the entire market system that has failed to reward them as they believe they deserve to be rewarded."

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This too shall pass

The Face of Authoritarian Environmentalism

 ZeroHedge:

An Oregon University professor has controversially compared skepticism of global warming to racism.

Sociology and environmental studies professor Kari Norgaard wrote a paper criticising non-believers, suggesting that doubters have a ‘sickness’.

The professor, who holds a B.S. in biology and a master’s and PhD in sociology, argued that ‘cultural resistance’ to accepting humans as being responsible for climate change ‘must be recognised and treated’ as an aberrant sociological behaviour.

Really? Doubters have an illness? Isn’t pathologising dissidents a hallmark of authoritarianism? Weren’t dissidents under the Soviet Union often sent to psychiatric hospitals to be “treated” for their behaviour? Hasn’t Norgaard read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago?

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Sitting down all day is killing you

The Register:

A study of more than 220,000 people aged 45 or more has come to a startling conclusion: sitting down all day is killing you.

The 45 and Up study compared mortality rates among those who sit for many hours a day and those who spend less time perched on their posterior.

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Despair.com

Buy at despair.com

Despair.com

Buy at despair.com

Despair.com

Buy at despair.com

Despair.com

Buy at despair.com

Reverend Pat Robertson is a flower child.

Pat Robertson Backs Legalizing Marijuana - NYTimes.com:

Of the many roles Pat Robertson has assumed over his five-decade-long career as an evangelical leader — including presidential candidate and provocative voice of the right wing — his newest guise may perhaps surprise his followers the most: marijuana legalization advocate.

"I believe in working with the hearts of people, and not locking them up,” he said.


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