Human-Animal Chimera | MIT Technology Review >>
I don’t know whether to be excited, scared, or make a reference to Man-Bear-Pig.
(Source: technologyreview.com)
Showing posts tagged with “science”
SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator >>
“SCIgen is a program that generates random Computer Science research papers, including graphs, figures, and citations. It uses a hand-written context-free grammar to form all elements of the papers. Our aim here is to maximize amusement, rather than coherence.
One useful purpose for such a program is to auto-generate submissions to conferences that you suspect might have very low submission standards.”
i can science too now guys
Much of Earth’s Water Is Older Than the Sun, and Came From Deep Space >>
“A new study published today (Sep. 25) in the journal Science suggests that between 10 to 30 percent of the Earth’s water is older than the sun, and likely hails from comets born outside our solar system.”
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.”
Pages from my ‘Levels of Complexity’ project, in which I wanted to explore ways in which I could communicate biology and science-based information in a more accessible illustrative style. I hoped to inspire some amount of awe at just how much is going on ‘beneath the surface,’ such as cells, tissues, organs, processes, etc within our bodies and our environment.
This is so radically gorgeous, I’m dumbfounded. Absolutely dumbfounded. It’s like science, art, poetry, and philosophy met together and decided to do something wonderful and this person produced it. Astounding. I actually want prints of these, like a series or posters or something. I’d put them in lovely, simple frames as to not distract from them. It would be like a book on my wall.
Totally looking up if she has prints of these for sale.
I wish that I could hug whoever made this.
PRO CHOICE
HEY EVERYBODY WE SHOULD GET OUR FACTS STRAIGHT!
That first picture is an UNFERTILIZED chicken egg! How is that different than a fetus that can be aborted? IT WAS NEVER ALIVE. Not all chicken eggs have the potential to become chicks. There’s no use in aborting an unfertilized human egg because your body does that naturally anyway. Periods, ya know?
That human egg there about to be fertilized? HUGELY DIFFERENT!
Now let’s talk about biology and the law! Currently in the US, a fetus can be aborted as late as the 23rd week. And did you know that babies have been born AND SURVIVED as early as 18 weeks after conception?
Look at this precious little human being, Amillia Taylor. She was only 9.5 inches long when she was born. What a fighter!
Furthermore, the human heart starts beating just four weeks after conception. Given that death is clincally defined when the heart stops beating, shouldn’t life also be defined by when the heart starts?
What this means is that the fetus is a living human being before you can even detect its existance.
All life is precious. I mean, look at this baby (now a few months older than a year) and her beautiful mom.
(Source: dicksantorum-2012-blog)
Counting Stars
Five years after scientists discovered
Where the edge of the universe lay,
And all of the stars were counted and confirmed
Into proper categories to stay,
I found myself and a hastily packed suitcase
Standing in the doorway of a rented room.
As I watched the rain drip from my nose,
Creating dark craters in the worn carpet,
I contemplated just what birthed my woes.
And realized then that I was in that apartment,
And the scientific method said so,
All at the fault of you.
Satisfied with the flawed test results
I lay upon the bed to admire my faults
And stared out the lonely window.
There were no stars.
On the breeze that blew in from outside
I swore I smelt the grass upon we laid
That sweet spring night oh so long ago
When to the world I swore I’d love you
Until there were no stars left to count.
But look where that promise led, my dear!
Look how broken hearted I am as I lie here
Just as how to you I had lied that night.
But how was I to know that I wasn’t right?
Did we not deceive each other into believing
That what we had was not simply dreaming?
But now all the stars are numbered
And so are our days.
In my grief I never once cared to notice
That the warm shirt I wore was yours once,
Or that the ring on my left finger
Was of your promise a reminder.
In my blindness I cast my eyes to the walls
And noticed something peculiar.
In the smooth paint I saw puckerings
And I couldn’t decide what they were.
To feed the curiosity of my modern mind
I approached one like a cat to its prey
And was astonished at my find.
Believing it to be impossible,
I scratched off the old paint
And discovered a small star glowing faint,
The remnants of a child’s dream to confine the sky
To everything within their naive eyes.
Stickers on the wall to create free wishes,
Never once of their falsehood suspicious.
Around the room I scanned my eyes,
And finding yet more without surprise
I set about to scratching the rest free.
My fingers raw, nail ragged, hours gone,
I turned off the light with newfound certainty.
The darkness was gone, banished by the lights
So small, so fragile, but countless and bright.
My body shook, the tears ran freely
As quickly as shooting stars on a spring night
And everything that once was suddenly
Shattered.
No matter what computers had said,
No matter what scientists did to fill their heads,
No matter how long they peered through their telescope,
Nothing they found could have created this hope.
In all their wise blindness they had overlooked
A child’s secret dreams covered by paint.
And here was I, following their method,
Thinking myself to be perfected,
Giving up that endless chase for meaning
Thinking it to be so demeaning
When a child could show me how far I’d gone awry
Because there were still stars left to count in the sky.