Inspirational Posters Gone Wrong

clipped from www.theburningbiscuit.com

Is Monogamy Natural?

"Lots of animals," Quirk says, "have the 'marriage' instinct: penguins, parrots, swans, gibbons, seahorses, humans. ... What do all these animals have in common? Long childhoods. Who has the longest childhood in the animal kingdom? Humans."

clipped from www.alternet.org Is Monogamy Natural? Vaunted in the mainstream media, two new reports from the Pew Research Center report and the National Survey of Families and Households indicate that couples become bored and unhappy sooner than was previously thought: more like three years into their togetherness than seven. For species whose slow-growing offspring statistically stand better chances of survival with two parents providing double-sustenance, double-vigilance, double-protection and double-support, monogamy makes scientific sense. But because it's so difficult "to live in the same nest for fifteen years," as Quirk puts it, "love is an instinct coded into our genes." Fool yourself all you want about free will. "We inherited the desire to fall in love," Quirk insists, because that soul-baring, die-for-you devotion helped our ancestors "raise babies on the dangerous Pleistocene savanna."

Facebook court hearing is delayed

reposted from BBC

Facebook is the world's second biggest social networking site

A hearing into the case against the founder of the social networking website Facebook has been postponed by the judge until 8 August.

Three founders of a rival site, ConnectU, say Facebook's creator Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for the site while they were all at Harvard.

The judge has given ConnectU's founders extra time to flesh out their case.

Facebook's lawyers denied the allegations and urged Judge Douglas Woodlock to dismiss the case.

The Federal case accuses Mr Zuckerberg of fraud and misappropriation of trade secrets, and asks for ConnectU to be given ownership of Facebook.

Facebook has become a global phenomenon with about 31 million users, compared with ConnectU's 70,000.

Copying claim

The ConnectU founders claim that while at college Mr Zuckerberg agreed to write computer code for them, but that he stalled and eventually created Facebook using their ideas.

Judge Woodlock told ConnectU's lawyer to file a fresh plea specifying the facts to support the claims.

"Dorm room chit-chat does not make a contract," he said.

The case was originally filed in September 2004 but was dismissed on a technicality in March this year and immediately refiled.

You know you're living in 2007 when.....

Editing meant leaving 12,and13 out but...

clipped from www.thoughtmechanics.com 1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave. 2. You haven’t played Solitaire with real cards in years. 3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3. 4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you. 5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don’t have e-mail addresses. 6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries. 7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen. 8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it. 10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee. 11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile.  : ) 14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list. 15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn’t#9 on this list

Science's 10 Most Beautiful Physics Experiments

check out the source for descriptions and animations of the experiments.

clipped from physics-animations.com   Robert P. Crease, a member of the philosophy department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory, recently asked physicists to nominate the most beautiful experiment of all time. Based on the paper of George Johnson in The New York Times we list below 10 winners of this polling and accompany the short explanations of the physical experiments with computer animations.   1. Double-slit electron diffraction 2. Galileo's experiment on falling objects 3. Millikan's oil-drop experiment 4. Newton's decomposition of sunlight with a prism 5. Young's light-interference experiment 7. Eratosthenes' measurement of the Earth's circumference 8. Galileo's experiments with rolling balls down inclined planes 9. Rutherford's discovery of the nucleus 10. Foucault's pendulum

The Kiss

Wonderful picture and story

clipped from aad.lomag.net The Kiss ... He had just saved her from a fire in her house, rescuing her by carrying her out of the house into her front yard, while he continued to fight the fire. She is pregnant. When he finally got done putting the fire out, he sat down to catch his breath and rest. A photographer from the Charlotte, North Carolina newspaper, "The Observer," noticed her in the distance looking at the fireman. He saw her walking straight toward the fireman and wondered what she was going to do. As he raised his camera, she came up to the tired man who had saved her life and the lives of her babies, and kissed him, just as the photographer snapped this photograph.