Random Thoughts

"He [the Poet] considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most interesting properties of nature. and thus the Poet, prompted by this feeling of pleasure, which accompanies him through the whole course of his studies, converses with general nature, with affections akin to those, which, through labour and length of time, the Man of science has raised up in himself, by conversing with those particular parts of nature which are the objects of his studies. The knowledge both of the Poet and the Man of science is…

The quality of entries in the world's largest open-access online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, depends on how authors collaborate, a study by University of Arizona researchers has found. The research, they say, is the first to explain why some articles on the site are of much better quality than others. Wikipedia has an internal quality rating system for entries, with featured articles at the top, followed by A, B, and C-level entries. The team randomly collected 400 articles at each quality level and applied a data provenance model they developed in an earlier paper. "We used data mining…

Letter recovered-21st August,2361 “17th Feb 2151My love,How are you? Ha ha!! I know you might be getting bored by now, reading this question every day for 750 days now, but you know how much I miss you and care about you…..Don’t ya worry sweetheart I am very fine here as the ‘billionaires’ are taking good care of us. By now we have successfully initiated terra-forming on two planets, established permanent bases there and you already know, it wasn’t easy. Yesterday, we landed on a new exoplanet comparatively smaller than the two before(endoplanets, MWSS-001), diameter approx. 1000 miles…

During the 2008 presidential campaign, approximately 20 percent of Americans believed that then-Senator Barack Obama was a Muslim despite news stories that attempted to debunk the rumor, according to a study in The Journal of Media and Religion. The study analyzed data from a survey of more than 2,400 people taken at three points during the campaign to see if exposure to news media helped correct misperceptions about Obama's faith. The findings are consistent with psychological studies on selective memory that show that people tend to discount facts that are inconsistent with their…

Will You Give Sheepswool Sheep? I'm no Dr. Seuss, or even Zseuss.  But encouraged by Becky's enjoyment of my Grasshopper Green, here's another few words.  I hope that, perhaps, my words may be of help to educators and to students of English as a foreign language. Will you give sheepswool sheep?My bones grow old,So make me a blanketTo keep out the cold. I wake at night cold, Getting old, as I am,But I'd sleep like a baby If I were a lamb. I'd sleep in the meadow if I was a sheepAnd count playing childrenAs I fell asleep. To display image full size, try right click and '…

Grasshopper Green Grasshopper green,Grasshopper green,Hippity hoppity munching machine -Are you enjoying your tasty leaf snack?Thanks for the visit -  Be sure to come back. To display image full size, try right click and 'view image'.  This should allow you to see it enlarged in most web browsers. Credit: Copyright free picture courtesy ofHarker Heights High School

This science cryptic crossword has been sitting on my computer for far too long and was yearning to see the light of day. It is in the tradition of cryptic crosswords but with a science edge to it. It isn't a science quiz masquerading as a crossword; it's a word game where I have expanded the conventions of cryptic clues to include references to the sciences and to mathematics. It is also an experiment. I have more of these and if people enjoy them I will make these science cryptic crosswords a regular feature. Please let me know of any teething problems such as whether the dimensions are OK…

Using data from two recent national surveys, University of Toronto sociologist Scott Schieman has found that most Americans believe God is concerned with their well-being and is directly involved in their personal affairs. The research, he says, uncovered  the ways these beliefs about divine intervention differ across education and income levels. The results are published in Sociology of Religion. Overall, the study found that most people believe that God is highly influential in the events and outcomes in their lives. 82 per cent say they depend on God for help and guidance in making…

The more heterogeneous the community of an online chat channel, the more chances the channel has to survive over time, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Haifa and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Previous research focused on group size and activity suggested that there are too many variables influencing the lifespan of such channels and there is, therefore no way of testing how long they will survive. But the current study included an analysis of social characteristics, such as the group's homogeneity and heterogeneity. A group is considered…

"Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something." Plato