Interesting Stuff Thread

kylith

I am continually surprised that Irish women would want to convert to Islam.

robindch

BBC cuts the amount of religion it broadcasts:

http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2013/07/bbc-reduces-the-amount-of-religion-it-broadcasts

NCC wrote:

The BBC has published its annual report which shows that the amount of time devoted to religion on the various BBC platforms has reduced over the past year. In the 2012/2013 period BBC1 broadcast 99 hours of religion as opposed to 102 hours in the previous year. The only channel to show a rise in the number of hours of religious broadcasting was BBC2 which went up from 27 hours in the 2011/2012 period to 47 hours in the latest period. BBC4 showed a significant drop from 53 hours last year to only 5 hours this year. On BBC Radio the number of hours devoted to religion went down from 1,211 last year to 975 hours this year.

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: "It is good that the BBC is taking notice of its audiences at last — who according to its own research don't regard religion as an important genre and hardly ever watch it. This small reduction in hours is welcome, but it still represents an awful lot of religion." Mr Sanderson said that it wasn't clear whether the BBC's figures included such things as the church service for Margaret Thatcher's funeral (which was broadcast in full) or the service of thanksgiving for the anniversary of the Queen's coronation. These appear to be extra to the official religious figures in the annual report. Mr Sanderson said he welcomed a more imaginative approach to religion and a more critical examination of it. "It is impossible to ignore the part that religion is negative."

sephir0th

robindch wrote: »

Selfish traits not favoured by evolution, study shows:

There's a false dichotomy between 'selfish' and 'co-operative' traits. Both adaptations are favored by evolution in the right circumstances or situation.

Gbear

Stephen Fry has written an open letter to Cameron, Lord Coe and anyone else that might have a say in taking part in the Winter Olympics in Russia.

http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/08/07/an-open-letter-to-david-cameron-and-the-ioc/single-page/

Could do with the same for the 2 world cups coming up after Brazil - Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022, although the people in FIFA don't try to hide that they're greedy ***** only in it for the money so I doubt any headway can be made there.

Mardy Bum

Great article by Steven Pinker about science and the ill conceived manner it is view on by some.

b318isp

Mardy Bum wrote: »

Great article by Steven Pinker about science and the ill conceived manner it is view on by some.

As usual, an excellent and well balanced article by Pinker, and this sums up my thoughts exactly of the maturing of humanity:

Quote: "Most of the traditional causes of belief—faith, revelation, dogma, authority, charisma, conventional wisdom, the invigorating glow of subjective certainty—are generators of error and should be dismissed as sources of knowledge."

Sarky

Some really good points in there. I'd love to see a university throw caution to the wind and create a digital humanities department.

Bannasidhe

Sarky wrote: »

Some really good points in there. I'd love to see a university throw caution to the wind and create a digital humanities department.

Hello - working on it.

http://dahphd.ie/faculty/ucc/

Sarky

Anonymous data junkie hacks half a million computers to create the most accurate map of the internet yet.

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/this-is-most-detailed-picture-internet-ever

Interesting to see usage vary over the time of day. Is it just me or does the US not peak as high as most of Europe? I'd have thought it'd be at least equal. Maybe it's because vast areas of the US are dustbowls?

recedite

Sarky wrote: »

Is it just me or does the US not peak as high as most of Europe?

Americans are paranoid about security, and this bot required an internet connection with no password. India and coastal areas of China and South America seem to be the hotspots.

Cork boy 55

Near death experiences explained
I guess it not God after all

A surge of electrical activity in the brain could be responsible for the vivid experiences reported by near-death survivors, scientists report.

A study carried out on dying rats found high levels of brainwaves at the point of the animals' demise.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23672150

Where's the electricity come from?

kylith

Deleted User wrote: »

Where's the electricity come from?

Not electricity, electrical activity. The same activity that's going on in your brain all the time, just more of it.

Where does electricity come from?

Bannasidhe

Deleted User wrote: »

Where does electricity come from?

Electricity is created when God rubs a balloon on a pussy.


:pac:

Pherekydes

Deleted User wrote: »

Where does electricity come from?

Electric current can be one of the by-products of chemical reactions.

And we are, of course, just bags of chemicals undergoing constant reactions.

kylith

Deleted User wrote: »

Where does electricity come from?

Molecular excitation, I think.

recedite

God certainly knows how to excite himself then

Sarky

It's a complicated mess of magnetism, radiation and subatomic particles jumping around.

Alternatively, electrons are angels doing God's work. I'm sure I read a piece on that before somewhere...

ShooterSF

Nothing religious but definitely a low point for news reporting in the U.S (and not by FOX!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4nK5cvg_5A

Obliq

Oh wow, I've finally found a facebook game that suits me. It's USEFUL!! Genius, and quite dear to my heart as I have many, many ash trees.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/13/ash-dieback-facebook-fraxinus-game

"Facebook enthusiasts will be able to log on from Tuesday and take part in one of the biggest experiments to harness computing and brain power to discover genetic variants that could help to counter ash dieback disease, caused by the fungus Chalara fraxinea. If thousands of people play the game, which involves matching on-screen patterns that correlate with genetic data amassed by scientists in the field, the results could hasten the process of breeding trees resistant to the disease from 50 years or more to a decade or less."

Playing it now.....real life jigsaw puzzles. I like it

Link to game:
https://apps.facebook.com/fraxinusgame/?fb_source=dialog_permission&fb_appcenter=1

Hmmm. Seems you're trying to beat the computer, in a way. I don't get it much.....any gamers/data people can explain it?

endacl

^^^
Reported as spam!

Obliq

endacl wrote: »

^^^
Reported as spam!

OH SH*T! Never thought of that :eek::eek: I'm getting the hang of it now. I couldn't care less if anyone else likes it, just thought it was an interesting use of facebook and human input into all that data they have to churn through....

Sarky

Gamers are a brilliant resource. I recall one research group making a puzzle game out of their protein-folding prediction problems, that could take the fastest computer clusters days to solve, whereas gamers could solve it in a few minutes. Clever thing, the human brain.

Obliq

Yeah, well I like patterns. Not convinced this game isn't full of bugs and it's definitely not user friendly. A pity - it's a worthwhile idea.

Bannasidhe

Sarky wrote: »

Gamers are a brilliant resource. I recall one research group making a puzzle game out of their protein-folding prediction problems, that could take the fastest computer clusters days to solve, whereas gamers could solve it in a few minutes. Clever thing, the human brain.

Colleague of mine (gamer since the old amstrad days) used teach via games - he would recreate all the parameters of major battles like Waterloo then allocate roles to a group of students and see if they could make Napolean win.

Sarky

"You have died of dysentery."

Ah, Oregon Trail, you were so historically accurate...

PopePalpatine

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Colleague of mine (gamer since the old amstrad days) used teach via games - he would recreate all the parameters of major battles like Waterloo then allocate roles to a group of students and see if they could make Napolean win.

That seems a lot more interesting than what I do, which is changing my PS3's language settings to German. At least I know what the German for diffuser is! :pac:

Bannasidhe

A mosaic based on Van Gogh's Starry Night made using images taken by the Hubble Telescope.

How cool is that!

Quatermain

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Colleague of mine (gamer since the old amstrad days) used teach via games - he would recreate all the parameters of major battles like Waterloo then allocate roles to a group of students and see if they could make Napolean win.

That was a TV show once upon a time on the BeeBeebCeeb. "Time Commanders", in which a team of four players was assigned command over an army during a battle from the ancient world (Teotoburger Wald, Cannae, Gaugamela, etc), and they had to see if they could win through their own cunning. The game itself used the engine that later became "Rome: Total War". Both game and show were enjoyed thoroughly, being a bit of an armchair general myself.

Come to think of it, the only team I remember winning was a group of Irish buskers who went mental with a huge regiment of cataphracts.

endacl

^^

Very cool

An interesting fact about an interesting post - and an Irish connection!



Look familiar?

That's the first drawing made to clearly show the spiral structure of any galaxy. It was made by William Parsons, the 3rd Earl of Rosse in 1845. Parsons was responsible for building the 'Leviathan', then the world's largest telescope, in the grounds of his home in Birr Castle, Co Offaly. There is a theory that this drawing was an inspiration for Van Gogh's 'Starry Night'. Thought you'd like the 'history' bit Bannasidhe.

See! I know the aul' astronomy stuff would come in handy on this forum at some point!

Obliq

Bannasidhe wrote: »

A mosaic based on Van Gogh's Starry Night made using images taken by the Hubble Telescope.

How cool is that!

NICE! And very cool!

recedite

endacl wrote: »

the first drawing made to clearly show the spiral structure of any galaxy. It was mad by William Parsons, the 3rd Earl of Rosse in 1845. Parsons was responsible for building the 'Leviathan', then the world's largest telescope

The guy's sons built their own family steam car, and sadly were involved in the worlds first fatal car accident.
Which just goes to show, being ahead of your time is not without risk.

El_Duderino 09

endacl wrote: »

^^

Very cool

An interesting fact about an interesting post - and an Irish connection!

It was made by William Parsons, the 3rd Earl of Rosse in 1845. Parsons was responsible for building the 'Leviathan', then the world's largest telescope, in the grounds of his home in Birr Castle, Co Offaly.

Ah Offaly, the home of Irish science and forward thinking since 1845

Cool pic. I remember going to see the telescope in Birr castle as a child. My dad was excited by the telescope and I thought it was cool to climb on

magicbastarder

recedite wrote: »

The guy's sons built their own family steam car, and sadly were involved in the worlds first fatal car accident.

offaly was also the site of the world's first air disaster - a hot air balloon crashed in tullamore, and the resulting fire burned down 130 houses.

Turtwig

Cabaal

The everywhere stretch theory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3MWRvLndzs

Obliq

Oh crap. I hate looking at "The Universe" as an object. How/Why/What is it? I don't even.....




Head melt, again

Delirium

In a technical tour de force, Japanese researchers created eggs and sperm in the laboratory. Now, scientists have to determine how to use those cells safely — and ethically.

Since last October, molecular biologist Katsuhiko Hayashi has received around a dozen e-mails from couples, most of them middle-aged, who are desperate for one thing: a baby. One menopausal woman from England offered to come to his laboratory at Kyoto University in Japan in the hope that he could help her to conceive a child. “That is my only wish,” she wrote.

The requests started trickling in after Hayashi published the results of an experiment that he had assumed would be of interest mostly to developmental biologists. Starting with the skin cells of mice in vitro, he created primordial germ cells (PGCs), which can develop into both sperm and eggs. To prove that these laboratory-grown versions were truly similar to naturally occurring PGCs, he used them to create eggs, then used those eggs to create live mice. He calls the live births a mere 'side effect' of the research, but that bench experiment became much more, because it raised the prospect of creating fertilizable eggs from the skin cells of infertile women. And it also suggested that men's skin cells could be used to create eggs, and that sperm could be generated from women's cells. (Indeed, after the research was published, the editor of a gay and lesbian magazine e-mailed Hayashi for more information.)

Sarky

Oh, that's gonna piss off a bunch of people who are usually pretty grumpy to begin with.

gaynorvader

koth wrote: »

In a technical tour de force, Japanese researchers created eggs and sperm in the laboratory. Now, scientists have to determine how to use those cells safely — and ethically.

Since last October, molecular biologist Katsuhiko Hayashi has received around a dozen e-mails from couples, most of them middle-aged, who are desperate for one thing: a baby. One menopausal woman from England offered to come to his laboratory at Kyoto University in Japan in the hope that he could help her to conceive a child. “That is my only wish,” she wrote.

The requests started trickling in after Hayashi published the results of an experiment that he had assumed would be of interest mostly to developmental biologists. Starting with the skin cells of mice in vitro, he created primordial germ cells (PGCs), which can develop into both sperm and eggs. To prove that these laboratory-grown versions were truly similar to naturally occurring PGCs, he used them to create eggs, then used those eggs to create live mice. He calls the live births a mere 'side effect' of the research, but that bench experiment became much more, because it raised the prospect of creating fertilizable eggs from the skin cells of infertile women. And it also suggested that men's skin cells could be used to create eggs, and that sperm could be generated from women's cells. (Indeed, after the research was published, the editor of a gay and lesbian magazine e-mailed Hayashi for more information.)

So now we can make a woman from a man's rib?

Bannasidhe

gaynorvader wrote: »

So now we can make a woman from a man's rib?

WE ARE GODS!

Sarky

I always said "if humans don't play god, who will?"

Delirium

gaynorvader wrote: »

So now we can make a woman from a man's rib?

It's actually much less invasive than that and requires substanially less raw materials. Seems God could have used a Japanese scientist to assist with creating Adam and Eve :P

PopePalpatine

I usually use the term "playing God" to refer to throwing a destructive tantrum. :pac:

Bannasidhe

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I usually use the term "playing God" to refer to throwing a destructive tantrum. :pac:

WE CAN DO THAT TOO!

Sarky

Bannasidhe wrote: »

WE CAN DO THAT TOO!

And do it better than anything the bible relates to us about the supreme wrath of god.

Not exactly a good thing, but illustrates that beating god is pretty easy. We've caught up on most of his other aspects too, as the news above shows.

gaynorvader

Bannasidhe wrote: »

WE CAN DO THAT TOO!

Hey, we made economics like one language, right, and then we built these massive towers to show how good we were at making money, and then some people on their god's behalf knocked them down. Still waiting for the spreading to the four corners of the globe and having our economics taken away though.

Dave!

On TV3 now, on Vincent Browne's show, they're discussing separation of church and state

Cabaal

http://gizmodo.com/this-comprehensive-map-traces-463-of-the-bibles-major-1188177994?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

This Comprehensive Map Traces 463 of the Bible's Contradictions