Random Thoughts
"Every great man nowadays has his disciples, but it is always Judas who writes the biography."
Oscar Wilde
Research conducted at the University of Alberta confirms that fat people are often labeled lazy simply because of their size.
The new study found that when a thin person was seen laying down watching television, people assumed they were resting. But when an overweight person was relaxing, the same group assumed that the husky individual was lazy and unmotivated.
Study participants viewed a number of pictures that would flash on a computer screen. After each photo a sedentary word such as "lazy" would appear. After the participants looked at each picture they were asked to say the color of…
Some Observations On Book Learning
First you learn the rules of words,
But next you unlearn all that guff,
And wierd your words into absurds,
It's much more fun than grammar stuff.
Baby's First Wierd-Book.
The First Stage of Learning:
How baby loves bright coloured books!But do not give him any!Don't trust those sweet angelic looks,or he'll eat far too many!
The book of rag is fairly safefor baby has no fangs,but baby loves to feed the dog,(he thinks books are meringues),or else he'll throw them from his cot,so you can fetch them back.The book he'll grab with glee, you see,to him's a…
Eyjafjallajökull - Thats Easy For You To Say !
Eyja fjalla jökull
It's not LL as in miller.
It's TL as in antler.
Stress is on syllables shown in bold.
"Eyja" - island - ayuh as in sayer
"fjalla" - mountain - fyatle with fy as in few, at, le as in rattler without the 'r' sound.
"jökull" - yokooteel with yo as in yacht, oo as in book, faint or missing final L.
island mountain glacier
It could hardly be simpler. :-)
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/pronounce-eyjafjallajokull-10392613
The airlines may be losing money over this volcano, but the media is having a…
Many Americans go to foreign news sources for coverage of the war in Iraq and Palestinian-Israeli conflict because western media outlets censor gruesome war-time images, according to a study in Media, War and Conflict.
Researchers conducted two online surveys of Al-Jazeera Web users during November and December 2004. They found that most of those who use the Al-Jazeera English-language website are from the U.S., Canada, the U.K and Australia. Respondents indicated that they appreciate the graphic pictures of war they find on the site that they don't see in mainstream media. As one user…
Electronic readers allow children to interact with texts in ways they don't interact with the printed word, encouraging them to read, according to Kansas State University professor of Education Lotta Larson.
Since fall 2009, Larson has been using the Amazon Kindle in her work with a pair of second-graders. The e-reader has features that make the text audible, increase or decrease font size and let readers make notes about the book.
"It's interesting to see the kinds of things these kids have been able to do," Larson said.
Sometimes they make comments summarizing the plot, therefore…
This is just to mention that I have been blogging for this site for exactly one year.
During the last twelve months here I have observed a few changes from the old blog which I ran at wordpress. First of all, being hosted in Scientific Blogging extended my readership. However, I also lost some regular readers, probably ones who deem a site running commercial ads not worth reading. I specifically remember some of them, who contributed frequently to the comments threads in the old site - Fred, Guess Who, Tripitaka, Jeff ... The list is long. Too bad, it's life. Growth, I am convinced, only…
Life and health insurance companies are greedy, for-profit enterprises that do not care about public health, according to Harvard researchers writing in the American Journal of Public Health.
Why such scorn for the insurance industry? The authors of the study found that U.S., Canadian and European-based insurance firms hold at least $1.88 billion of investments in fast-food companies.
Although there is normally nothing wrong with investing in fast food companies, the busy bodies at Harvard are irritated because the health care legislation just enacted in the U.S. essentially guarantees…
If church attendance is any indication, Americans are as religious as they were 30 years ago. But the makeup of the nation's congregations has undergone significant changes during that same stretch, according to a study published in Sociology of Religion.
The findings challenge the popular notion that church attendance has decreased. Aside from a moderate decline in the 1990s, the study shows that Americans' churchgoing routines have been fairly constant over the decades, at around 23 to 28 services a year.
"There is a small decline in church attendance over time, but not nearly as large as…
Biology is entering a period where the science can be underlaid by explanatory and predictive principles, rather than little bits of causality swimming in a sea of phenomenology.
- Eric Davidson, quoted in Nature, 1 April 2010 issue, p. 666
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