Historical Perspectives – Page 99

Animals, Crazy Stuff, Culture, Current Events, Historical Perspectives, Latest News

Giant Tuna Sells For $396,000

January 6, 2011

It’s beginning to look a lot like sushi…

In Tokyo, a giant bluefin tuna sold at auction for a record 32.49 million yen—nearly $396,000. The price for the 754-pound tuna beat the previous record set in 2001 when a 445-pound fish sold for 20.2 million yen. What do you do with a fish that sold for $526 per pound? Make sushi.

The massive tuna was bought and shared by the same duo that won the bidding for last year’s top fish: the owners of Kyubey, an upscale sushi restaurant in Tokyo’s Ginza district, and Itamae Sushi, a casual, Hong Kong-based chain…

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Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Global Warming, Globalism, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, New Discoveries

Scientists Create 52 Artificial Rain Storms in Abu Dhabi Desert

January 6, 2011

On the 52 days it rained in the region throughout July and August, forecasters did not predict rain once.

Hail, lightning and gales came through the state’s eastern region this summer thanks to scientist-puppetmasters.

As part of a secret program to control the weather in the Middle East, scientists working for the United Arab Emirates government artificially created rain where rain is generally nowhere to be found. The $11 million project, which began in July, put steel lampshade-looking ionizers in the desert to produce charged particles. The negatively charged ions rose with the hot air, attracting dust. Moisture then condensed around the dust and eventually produced a rain cloud. A bunch of rain clouds…

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Breakthrough Thinking, Great New Product, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, New Viewpoints, People Making a Difference

Could Fire Truck Ladders Be Replaced with Escalators?

January 5, 2011

Up, Up and Away On A Conveyor Belt!

Orville Douglas Denison thinks that telescoping ladders used by firefighters are too slow for firefighters to use effectively. So he designed a system that would lift up firefighters on something like a conveyor belt or an escalator:

In a rescue, firemen could extend Denison’s hydraulic ladder to windows as high as 113 feet. But rather than clamber up the ladder, the firefighter would hop on, and the rungs would roll up at 200 feet per minute—more than twice the average climbing speed of a firefighter weighed down by 130 pounds of gear…

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Crazy Stuff, Culture, Current Events, Globalism, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Hot Issues, Human Behavior, Latest News, New Discoveries, New Viewpoints, People Making a Difference

7 Billion

January 5, 2011

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc4HxPxNrZ0&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Sometime this year, the world’s population will pass the 7 billion mark. By 2045, that figure is expected to be 9 billion. National Geographic is beginning a year-long series on how the world’s population came to be, where we are headed, and the challenges that come with so many of us living together. Those challenges include energy consumption, education, birth control, natural resources, immigration, and more.

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Breakthrough Thinking, Current Events, Historical Perspectives, New Discoveries, New Viewpoints

10-Year-Old Canadian Girl Discovers Supernova

January 5, 2011

Supernova girl Kathryn Gray

A 10-year-old girl in Canada has become the youngest person to discover a supernova – an exploding star which can briefly outshine a whole galaxy. Kathryn Gray was studying images taken at an amateur observatory which had been sent to her father. She spotted the magnitude 17 supernova on Sunday.

Supernovas – which are rare events – are stellar explosions that mark the violent deaths of stars several times bigger than the Sun. The supernova was discovered in the galaxy UGC 3378, about 240 million light years away, in the constellation of Camelopardalis. “I’m really excited. It feels really good,” Ms Gray said…

(video after jump…)

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Globalism, Historical Perspectives, Latest News

Weather.com Text Alerts

January 5, 2011

I used to be a weather idiot. When it was going to rain, I usually found out by getting wet or by seeing everyone else holding an umbrella or rain coat on public transportation. I wanted something that informed me when it was going to rain (but not something that I had to look for). I wondered if there was a text message alert system for when it rained…

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Analysis, Art, Breakthrough Thinking, Current Events, Historical Perspectives, Science & Technology News

Ancient Rock Art In Western Australia Maintains Its Vivid Colors Because It Is Alive

January 4, 2011

(Scale bar = 1mm. Rectangle left shows approximate location of digital micrograph illustrated right).
‘Cherry’ figure. Note that red organisms predominate, but black fungus is also present.

While some rock art fades in hundreds of years, the “Bradshaw art” remains colourful after at least 40,000 years.

Jack Pettigrew of the University of Queensland in Australia has shown that the paintings have been colonized by colorful bacteria and fungi.

These “biofilms” may explain previous difficulties in dating such rock art…

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Brain, Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Current Events, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior, Latest News, Medical Breakthrough

Scientists Find Evidence For ‘Chronesthesia,’ or Mental Time Travel

January 4, 2011

Is your brain aware of more than the time right now?

Researchers have found evidence for “chronesthesia,” which is the brain’s ability to be aware of the past and future, and to mentally travel in subjective time. They found that activity in different brain regions is related to chronesthetic states when a person thinks about the same content during the past, present, or future…

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Crazy Stuff, Current Events, Great Videos, Historical Perspectives, New Viewpoints

All Plane Flights in the World in a Day

January 4, 2011

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx7_yzypm5w[/youtube]

This one is quite neat. Here’s a YouTube clip showing all of the air traffic in the world in a single day, condensed to a little over a minute:

The yellow dots are airplanes in the sky during a 24 hour period. Stay with the picture. You will see the light of the day moving from the east to the west, as the Earth spins on its axis…

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Analysis, Business, Crazy Stuff, Current Events, Entertainment, Globalism, Historical Perspectives

Apple Is Now Worth More Than $300 Billion

January 3, 2011

Did you invest in Apple by buying an iProduct?

Apple has surpassed $300 billion in market capitalization, achieving a distinction shared currently by only one other company in the world.

By Monday at 12:10 p.m. ET, the price of Apple Inc. shares has risen by more than seven points to 329.75, giving the company an approximate market capitalization of $302.47 billion…

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Animals, Current Events, Historical Perspectives, Latest News

Scientists Created Singing Mouse. No, Seriously.

January 2, 2011

Fa, la, la, la, la, la.

Having cured cancer and other serious ailments, a team of Japanese scientists from the University of Osaka turned to the next most vexing scientific problem facing the world today, the lack of singing mice, and licked that problem too. No seriously. Singing mouse.

A team of researchers at the University of Osaka created the animal in their “Evolved Mouse Project”, in which they use genetically modified mice that are prone to miscopying DNA and thus to mutations…

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Analysis, Big Problems, Breakthrough Thinking, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior

12 Tips From The Stupidest Criminals Of 2010

January 1, 2011

Criminals are not always the smartest or luckiest people

If you’re robbing a pizza joint asking for ‘dough’ and pointing to a bag behind the counter, don’t look surprised when you end up with a bag full of pizza ingredients.
Most lawbreakers aren’t exactly geniuses, but these troublemakers cross the line between foolishness and downright ineptitude…

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