/////////////// Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.
— Sam Keen
////////////////
Friday, 8 August 2008
Tuesday, 5 August 2008
EVIL-WICEDNESS OR INEPTITUDE
////////////////OKY DOKEY ARTICHOKEY
/////////////////THAT SEEMS TO BE THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
//////////////////NATR=Is religion good for your health?
Religion arose to protect us from disease, US researchers claim. Philip Ball unpicks the idea.
Philip Ball
Science and religion, anyone? Come now, stifle those yawns. A paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B1 this week claims to offer a fresh perspective, with the startling suggestion that religion is a way to protect us from disease.
The general idea behind this theory — that religion is mainly a social construct — is actually much older than the authors, Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, acknowledge. It harks back to classic works by two of sociology’s founding fathers, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, who, around the start of the twentieth century, offered explanations of how religions around the world have shaped and been shaped by the societies in which they are embedded.
crossFantastically baroque, but does religion carry a health benefit?Daniel BOITEAU / Alamy
This idea has fallen out of fashion, but that may tell us more about our times than about its validity. The increasing focus on individualism in the Western world since Durkheim wrote that “God is society, writ large” is reflected in the current enthusiasm for what has been dubbed neurotheology: attempts to locate religious experience in brain activity and a genetic predisposition for certain mental states. Such studies might ultimately tell us why some people have religious tendencies, but they say very little about why this predisposition gives rise to a relatively small number of institutionalized religions.
Similarly, the militant atheists who gnash their teeth at the sheer irrationality of religious belief will be doomed to do so forever unless they recognize Durkheim’s point that, rather than being some pernicious mental virus propagating through cultures, religion has social capital and thus possible adaptive value2. Durkheim argued that religion once was, and still is in many cultures, the cement of society that maintains order. This cohesive function is as evident today in much of American society as it is in Tehran or Warsaw.
Keep out
But of course there is a flipside. A tightly-knit group tends to exclude outsiders, and this is no less true of religions than of any other club. Fincher and Thornhill now propose a specific reason for why some societies may benefit from religious insularity — it is, they say, a way to avoid disease.
The more a society disperses and mixes with other groups, the more it risks contracting new diseases — in other words, strangers are bad for your health. “There is ample evidence,” Fincher and Thornhill write, “that the psychology of xenophobia and ethnocentrism is importantly related to avoidance and management of infectious disease.”
Fincher and Thornhill have previously shown that the diversity of language within a society, for example, seems to correlate with the diversity of infectious disease3, suggesting that linguistic differences are a manifestation of disease avoidance strategies.
Now they have found that religious diversity is also greater in parts of the world where the risk of catching something nasty from outsiders, who are likely to have different immunity patterns, is higher.
They studied 339 societies from Asia, America, Africa and Australia, and found that people living in areas with a greater diversity of infectious disease (and thus a higher risk of contagion from outsiders) tend to have smaller 'social ranges': on average, they live their lives across smaller areas. And populations with smaller social ranges had more religious diversity.
Fantastically baroque and socially costly
It’s an intriguing observation. But as with all correlation studies, cause and effect are hard to untangle. One could equally argue that avoiding contact with other social groups simply prevents the spread of some cultural traits at the expense of others, and so merely preserves an intrinsic diversity that has a tendency to arise anywhere.
This, indeed, is the basis of some theoretical models for how cultural exchange and transmission occurs4. Where opportunities for interaction are fewer, ‘island cultures’ are more likely to coexist rather than being consumed by a dominant one.
And the theory of Fincher and Thornhill tells us nothing about religion per se, other than its simple function of keeping ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ apart.
In fact, compared with other ‘in-group’ markers such as family names or styles of art and music, religion is a fantastically baroque and socially costly means of separating friend from presumed foe. As ethnic conflicts have long proved, humans are remarkably and fatefully adept at identifying the smallest signs of difference.
What we have here, then, is very far from a theory of how and why religions arise and spread. But it does suggest that there are hidden biological influences on the dynamics of cultural diversification. It is also a useful reminder that religion is not so much a personal belief as, in Durkheim’s words, a ‘social fact’.
/////////////////
/////////////////THAT SEEMS TO BE THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
//////////////////NATR=Is religion good for your health?
Religion arose to protect us from disease, US researchers claim. Philip Ball unpicks the idea.
Philip Ball
Science and religion, anyone? Come now, stifle those yawns. A paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B1 this week claims to offer a fresh perspective, with the startling suggestion that religion is a way to protect us from disease.
The general idea behind this theory — that religion is mainly a social construct — is actually much older than the authors, Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, acknowledge. It harks back to classic works by two of sociology’s founding fathers, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, who, around the start of the twentieth century, offered explanations of how religions around the world have shaped and been shaped by the societies in which they are embedded.
crossFantastically baroque, but does religion carry a health benefit?Daniel BOITEAU / Alamy
This idea has fallen out of fashion, but that may tell us more about our times than about its validity. The increasing focus on individualism in the Western world since Durkheim wrote that “God is society, writ large” is reflected in the current enthusiasm for what has been dubbed neurotheology: attempts to locate religious experience in brain activity and a genetic predisposition for certain mental states. Such studies might ultimately tell us why some people have religious tendencies, but they say very little about why this predisposition gives rise to a relatively small number of institutionalized religions.
Similarly, the militant atheists who gnash their teeth at the sheer irrationality of religious belief will be doomed to do so forever unless they recognize Durkheim’s point that, rather than being some pernicious mental virus propagating through cultures, religion has social capital and thus possible adaptive value2. Durkheim argued that religion once was, and still is in many cultures, the cement of society that maintains order. This cohesive function is as evident today in much of American society as it is in Tehran or Warsaw.
Keep out
But of course there is a flipside. A tightly-knit group tends to exclude outsiders, and this is no less true of religions than of any other club. Fincher and Thornhill now propose a specific reason for why some societies may benefit from religious insularity — it is, they say, a way to avoid disease.
The more a society disperses and mixes with other groups, the more it risks contracting new diseases — in other words, strangers are bad for your health. “There is ample evidence,” Fincher and Thornhill write, “that the psychology of xenophobia and ethnocentrism is importantly related to avoidance and management of infectious disease.”
Fincher and Thornhill have previously shown that the diversity of language within a society, for example, seems to correlate with the diversity of infectious disease3, suggesting that linguistic differences are a manifestation of disease avoidance strategies.
Now they have found that religious diversity is also greater in parts of the world where the risk of catching something nasty from outsiders, who are likely to have different immunity patterns, is higher.
They studied 339 societies from Asia, America, Africa and Australia, and found that people living in areas with a greater diversity of infectious disease (and thus a higher risk of contagion from outsiders) tend to have smaller 'social ranges': on average, they live their lives across smaller areas. And populations with smaller social ranges had more religious diversity.
Fantastically baroque and socially costly
It’s an intriguing observation. But as with all correlation studies, cause and effect are hard to untangle. One could equally argue that avoiding contact with other social groups simply prevents the spread of some cultural traits at the expense of others, and so merely preserves an intrinsic diversity that has a tendency to arise anywhere.
This, indeed, is the basis of some theoretical models for how cultural exchange and transmission occurs4. Where opportunities for interaction are fewer, ‘island cultures’ are more likely to coexist rather than being consumed by a dominant one.
And the theory of Fincher and Thornhill tells us nothing about religion per se, other than its simple function of keeping ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ apart.
In fact, compared with other ‘in-group’ markers such as family names or styles of art and music, religion is a fantastically baroque and socially costly means of separating friend from presumed foe. As ethnic conflicts have long proved, humans are remarkably and fatefully adept at identifying the smallest signs of difference.
What we have here, then, is very far from a theory of how and why religions arise and spread. But it does suggest that there are hidden biological influences on the dynamics of cultural diversification. It is also a useful reminder that religion is not so much a personal belief as, in Durkheim’s words, a ‘social fact’.
/////////////////
CDS 050808
Up, Up and Away ...
Half the world is living with double-digit inflation, as boom gives way to bust.
//////////////////As we snooze, our brain is busily processing the information we have learned during the day.
Sleep makes memories stronger, and it even appears to weed out irrelevant details and background information so that only the important pieces remain.
Our brain also works during slumber to find hidden relations among memories and to solve problems we were working on while awake.
In 1865 Friedrich August Kekulé woke up from a strange dream: he imagined a snake forming a circle and biting its own tail. Like many organic chemists of the time, Kekulé had been working feverishly to describe the true chemical structure of benzene, a problem that continually eluded understanding. But Kekulé’s dream of a snake swallowing its tail, so the story goes, helped him to accurately realize that benzene’s structure formed a ring. This insight paved the way for a new understanding of organic chemistry and earned Kekulé a title of nobility in Germany.
Although most of us have not been ennobled, there is something undeniably familiar about Kekulé’s problem-solving method. Whether deciding to go to a particular college, accept a challenging job offer or propose to a future spouse, “sleeping on it” seems to provide the clarity we need to piece together life’s puzzles. But how does slumber present us with answers?
The latest research suggests that while we are peacefully asleep our brain is busily processing the day’s information. It combs through recently formed memories, stabilizing, copying and filing them, so that they will be more useful the next day. A night of sleep can make memories resistant to interference from other information and allow us to recall them for use more effectively the next morning. And sleep not only strengthens memories, it also lets the brain sift through newly formed memories, possibly even identifying what is worth keeping and selectively maintaining or enhancing these aspects of a memory. When a picture contains both emotional and unemotional elements, sleep can save the important emotional parts and let the less relevant background drift away. It can analyze collections of memories to discover relations among them or identify the gist of a memory while the unnecessary details fade—perhaps even helping us find the meaning in what we have learned.
Not Merely Resting
If you find this news surprising, you are not alone. Until the mid-1950s, scientists generally assumed that the brain was shut down while we snoozed. Although German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus had evidence in 1885 that sleep protects simple memories from decay, for decades researchers attributed the effect to a passive protection against interference. We forget things, they argued, because all the new information coming in pushes out the existing memories. But because there is nothing coming in while we get shut-eye, we simply do not forget as much.
Features
The Hidden Power of Scent
Perspectives
Monkey Brains Hint at Evolutionary Root of Language Processing
Ask the Brains
Can one neuron release more than one neurotransmitter? Why is it comforting to discuss problems with others?
Then, in 1953, the late physiologists Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman of the University of Chicago discovered the rich variations in brain activity during sleep, and scientists realized they had been missing something important. Aserinsky and Kleitman found that our sleep follows a 90-minute cycle, in and out of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. During REM sleep, our brain waves—the oscillating electromagnetic signals that result from large-scale brain activity—look similar to those produced while we are awake. And in subsequent decades, the late Mircea Steriade of Laval University in Quebec and other neuroscientists discovered that individual collections of neurons were independently firing in between these REM phases, during periods known as slow-wave sleep, when large populations of brain cells fire synchronously in a steady rhythm of one to four beats each second. So it became clear that the sleeping brain was not merely “resting,” either in REM sleep or in slow-wave sleep. Sleep was doing something different. Something active.
Sleep to Remember
The turning point in our understanding of sleep and memory came in 1994 in a groundbreaking study. Neurobiologists Avi Karni, Dov Sagi and their colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel showed that when volunteers got a night of sleep, they improved at a task that involved rapidly discriminating between objects they saw—but only when they had had normal amounts of REM sleep. When the subjects were deprived of REM sleep, the improvement disappeared. The fact that performance actually rose overnight negated the idea of passive protection. Something had to be happening within the sleeping brain that altered the memories formed the day before. But Karni and Sagi described REM sleep as a permissive state—one that could allow changes to happen—rather than a necessary one. They proposed that such unconscious improvements could happen across the day or the night. What was important, they argued, was that improvements could only occur during part of the night, during REM.
////////////////////All too often the difference between success and failure, progress and regress, happiness and depression--and, yes, balance and imbalance--is simply a matter of perspective.
Paul Wilson
Business executive and author
Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.
Samuel Lover (1797-1868)
Novelist and songwriter
/////////////////////////
Half the world is living with double-digit inflation, as boom gives way to bust.
//////////////////As we snooze, our brain is busily processing the information we have learned during the day.
Sleep makes memories stronger, and it even appears to weed out irrelevant details and background information so that only the important pieces remain.
Our brain also works during slumber to find hidden relations among memories and to solve problems we were working on while awake.
In 1865 Friedrich August Kekulé woke up from a strange dream: he imagined a snake forming a circle and biting its own tail. Like many organic chemists of the time, Kekulé had been working feverishly to describe the true chemical structure of benzene, a problem that continually eluded understanding. But Kekulé’s dream of a snake swallowing its tail, so the story goes, helped him to accurately realize that benzene’s structure formed a ring. This insight paved the way for a new understanding of organic chemistry and earned Kekulé a title of nobility in Germany.
Although most of us have not been ennobled, there is something undeniably familiar about Kekulé’s problem-solving method. Whether deciding to go to a particular college, accept a challenging job offer or propose to a future spouse, “sleeping on it” seems to provide the clarity we need to piece together life’s puzzles. But how does slumber present us with answers?
The latest research suggests that while we are peacefully asleep our brain is busily processing the day’s information. It combs through recently formed memories, stabilizing, copying and filing them, so that they will be more useful the next day. A night of sleep can make memories resistant to interference from other information and allow us to recall them for use more effectively the next morning. And sleep not only strengthens memories, it also lets the brain sift through newly formed memories, possibly even identifying what is worth keeping and selectively maintaining or enhancing these aspects of a memory. When a picture contains both emotional and unemotional elements, sleep can save the important emotional parts and let the less relevant background drift away. It can analyze collections of memories to discover relations among them or identify the gist of a memory while the unnecessary details fade—perhaps even helping us find the meaning in what we have learned.
Not Merely Resting
If you find this news surprising, you are not alone. Until the mid-1950s, scientists generally assumed that the brain was shut down while we snoozed. Although German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus had evidence in 1885 that sleep protects simple memories from decay, for decades researchers attributed the effect to a passive protection against interference. We forget things, they argued, because all the new information coming in pushes out the existing memories. But because there is nothing coming in while we get shut-eye, we simply do not forget as much.
Features
The Hidden Power of Scent
Perspectives
Monkey Brains Hint at Evolutionary Root of Language Processing
Ask the Brains
Can one neuron release more than one neurotransmitter? Why is it comforting to discuss problems with others?
Then, in 1953, the late physiologists Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman of the University of Chicago discovered the rich variations in brain activity during sleep, and scientists realized they had been missing something important. Aserinsky and Kleitman found that our sleep follows a 90-minute cycle, in and out of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. During REM sleep, our brain waves—the oscillating electromagnetic signals that result from large-scale brain activity—look similar to those produced while we are awake. And in subsequent decades, the late Mircea Steriade of Laval University in Quebec and other neuroscientists discovered that individual collections of neurons were independently firing in between these REM phases, during periods known as slow-wave sleep, when large populations of brain cells fire synchronously in a steady rhythm of one to four beats each second. So it became clear that the sleeping brain was not merely “resting,” either in REM sleep or in slow-wave sleep. Sleep was doing something different. Something active.
Sleep to Remember
The turning point in our understanding of sleep and memory came in 1994 in a groundbreaking study. Neurobiologists Avi Karni, Dov Sagi and their colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel showed that when volunteers got a night of sleep, they improved at a task that involved rapidly discriminating between objects they saw—but only when they had had normal amounts of REM sleep. When the subjects were deprived of REM sleep, the improvement disappeared. The fact that performance actually rose overnight negated the idea of passive protection. Something had to be happening within the sleeping brain that altered the memories formed the day before. But Karni and Sagi described REM sleep as a permissive state—one that could allow changes to happen—rather than a necessary one. They proposed that such unconscious improvements could happen across the day or the night. What was important, they argued, was that improvements could only occur during part of the night, during REM.
////////////////////All too often the difference between success and failure, progress and regress, happiness and depression--and, yes, balance and imbalance--is simply a matter of perspective.
Paul Wilson
Business executive and author
Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.
Samuel Lover (1797-1868)
Novelist and songwriter
/////////////////////////
Saturday, 2 August 2008
THE YELLOW PAINT-RL STEVENSON
/////////// ...........thought the end was very fitting. It just goes to show that nothing, not even a magic yellow paint, can better you if you put forth no effort to be good in the first place. the story was nicely written and the moral was very easy to understand.
////////////////////
////////////////////
FORESHADOWING
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which an author drops subtle hints about plot developments to come later in the story. An example of foreshadowing might be when a character displays a gun or knife early in the story. Merely the appearance of a deadly weapon, even though it is used for an innocuous purpose — such as being cleaned or whittling wood — suggests terrible consequences later on (also known as Chekhov's gun).
//////////////////////
The low cost laptop revolution
A luxury no longer, Chris Long, looks at the drive towards low cost laptops.
OLPC
The One Laptop Per Child project was the catalyst for a revolution
In the old days, you would buy a desktop computer to do your work on and if you had a lot of money, maybe a laptop too to take travelling with, pure luxury.
Today the desktop market is declining and everyone is buying notebooks.
And while juggernauts like the traditional notebook cost a similar amount to an equivalent desktop, you would pay a hefty premium for anything smaller.
Well now it is think small, think cheap, think very cheap.
Until recently laptops have been marketed as high value almost designer items, where stylish people use them in interesting places, maybe with an expensive coffee.
At the other end of the spectrum the mobile market has shown that there is a desire for very portable data capture or web surfing devices.
We didn't anticipate such a big response from the market, from the customers
Emily Lee, Asus
It has been a while coming though, but now the technology planets have aligned we have found ourselves in a cheap computer revolution where we have small notebooks selling for as little as £100.
Perhaps the biggest winner in this area has been Asus's Eee PC which stumbled into a massive success with its extraordinarily cheap £250 notebook.
$100 laptop
Emily Lee of Asus, explained: "We didn't anticipate such a big response from the market, from the customers.
"It really hit a gap."
The catalyst for this revolution has been the One Laptop Per Child project or OLPC. It has been dubbed the $100 laptop, despite costing nearly twice that.
Gaynor Dewit of VIA Technologies told Click: "The OLPC had several effects, in terms of pricepoint, it slashed the market open for that type of device.
"It also had people talking about the emerging markets but actually in reality in the western world, what it talked about was cheaper PCs.
"The whole concept, whilst $100 was not feasible, certainly blew the market open and started people talking about this and really it was one of the catalysts for the whole Eee PC platform style thing to take off."
Laptop
Laptops used to only be at the high-end of the market
Although others suggest it is not quite such a direct line between the easy PC and the OLPC
Rupert Goodwins, editor of ZDNet said: "It was a very, very bold statement which unfortunately hasn't come to pass as predicted but it did make a lot of people go back and look at the education market and they thought 'well, perhaps there is something here, we can't hit $100 but we'll try and we'll make it say $300 or $200', and all the arguments for there being computers in classrooms are true even in countries that are relatively well off.
Cheap boast
"So that was where the Asus came for the education market that wasn't being addressed properly, the OLPC demonstrated that.
"The Asus Eee came from a different engineering idea, marketwise it was very similar."
Another early player in the low cost market was Intel with its Classmate PC also aimed at developing communities, and this is one of the few times you will see a big company executive boasting about how cheap their product is.
The keyboard is liquid-proof, you can spill the milk on it.
John E Davies, Intel
John E Davies of Intel, explained: "We have a smaller screen, we run less memory, we get the costs out of the system any way we can.
"It also needs to be rugged, kids will drop these on the floor, they will break and so it is all solid state parts, it's flash, there's no hard disc there.
"The keyboard is liquid-proof, you can spill the milk on it, it will survive that, it will survive the backpack test."
New market
There are lots more devices on the way - from many other manufactures as they jump on the low cost bandwagon. Perhaps most notably the Elonex One which is being sold in the UK for £99.
True it is a low powered device with a seven inch (17.5cm) detachable screen that runs Linux, but it is easily powerful enough surf the net while sipping an expensive coffee.
Asus are talking about selling 5 million Eee PCs by the end of the year, which is enough to kick start a market.
Ultimately then, it would seem for these low costs devices to be a real success they have to be produced for everyone, not simply developed as hybrid devices to bring computers to the third world.
///////////////////The protagonist or main character is the central figure of a story. It is not necessarily clear what being this central figure exactly entails. The terms protagonist, main character and hero are variously (and rarely well) defined and depending on the source may denote different concepts. The word "protagonist" derives from the Greek πρωταγωνιστής (protagonistes), "one who plays the first part, chief actor"[1][2].
Basically, the term protagonist is defined to be either always synonymous with the term main character, or it is defined as a different concept, in which case a single character still may (and usually will) serve the function of both the protagonist and main character, or the functions may be split.
////////////////////OF MICE AND MEN=Two migrant field workers in California during the Great Depression – George Milton, an intelligent and cynical man; and Lennie Small, an ironically named man of large stature and immense strength but limited mental abilities – come to a ranch near Soledad southeast of Salinas, California to "work up a stake". They hope to one day attain their shared dream of settling down on their own piece of land. Lennie's part of the dream, which he never tires of hearing George describe, is merely to tend to (and touch) soft rabbits on the farm. George protects Lennie at the beginning by telling him that if Lennie gets into trouble George won't let him "tend them rabbits"; they are fleeing from their previous employment in Weed where they were run out of town after Lennie's love of stroking soft things resulted in an accusation of attempted rape when he touched a young woman's dress. In a textbook example of foreshadowing, Lennie kills his pet mouse, and a puppy, by stroking them too roughly.
At the ranch, the dream appears to move closer to reality. Candy, the aged, one-handed ranch-hand, even offers to pitch in with Lennie and George so they can buy the farm by the end of the month. The dream crashes when Lennie accidentally kills the young and attractive wife of Curley, the ranch owner's son, while trying to stroke her hair. A lynch mob led by Curley gathers. George, realizing he is doomed to a life of loneliness and despair like the rest of the migrant workers, and wanting to spare Lennie a painful death at the hands of the vengeful and violent Curley, shoots Lennie in the back of the head before the mob can find him after they had recited their dreams of owning their own land.[1][2][3]
//////////////////////
//////////////////////
The low cost laptop revolution
A luxury no longer, Chris Long, looks at the drive towards low cost laptops.
OLPC
The One Laptop Per Child project was the catalyst for a revolution
In the old days, you would buy a desktop computer to do your work on and if you had a lot of money, maybe a laptop too to take travelling with, pure luxury.
Today the desktop market is declining and everyone is buying notebooks.
And while juggernauts like the traditional notebook cost a similar amount to an equivalent desktop, you would pay a hefty premium for anything smaller.
Well now it is think small, think cheap, think very cheap.
Until recently laptops have been marketed as high value almost designer items, where stylish people use them in interesting places, maybe with an expensive coffee.
At the other end of the spectrum the mobile market has shown that there is a desire for very portable data capture or web surfing devices.
We didn't anticipate such a big response from the market, from the customers
Emily Lee, Asus
It has been a while coming though, but now the technology planets have aligned we have found ourselves in a cheap computer revolution where we have small notebooks selling for as little as £100.
Perhaps the biggest winner in this area has been Asus's Eee PC which stumbled into a massive success with its extraordinarily cheap £250 notebook.
$100 laptop
Emily Lee of Asus, explained: "We didn't anticipate such a big response from the market, from the customers.
"It really hit a gap."
The catalyst for this revolution has been the One Laptop Per Child project or OLPC. It has been dubbed the $100 laptop, despite costing nearly twice that.
Gaynor Dewit of VIA Technologies told Click: "The OLPC had several effects, in terms of pricepoint, it slashed the market open for that type of device.
"It also had people talking about the emerging markets but actually in reality in the western world, what it talked about was cheaper PCs.
"The whole concept, whilst $100 was not feasible, certainly blew the market open and started people talking about this and really it was one of the catalysts for the whole Eee PC platform style thing to take off."
Laptop
Laptops used to only be at the high-end of the market
Although others suggest it is not quite such a direct line between the easy PC and the OLPC
Rupert Goodwins, editor of ZDNet said: "It was a very, very bold statement which unfortunately hasn't come to pass as predicted but it did make a lot of people go back and look at the education market and they thought 'well, perhaps there is something here, we can't hit $100 but we'll try and we'll make it say $300 or $200', and all the arguments for there being computers in classrooms are true even in countries that are relatively well off.
Cheap boast
"So that was where the Asus came for the education market that wasn't being addressed properly, the OLPC demonstrated that.
"The Asus Eee came from a different engineering idea, marketwise it was very similar."
Another early player in the low cost market was Intel with its Classmate PC also aimed at developing communities, and this is one of the few times you will see a big company executive boasting about how cheap their product is.
The keyboard is liquid-proof, you can spill the milk on it.
John E Davies, Intel
John E Davies of Intel, explained: "We have a smaller screen, we run less memory, we get the costs out of the system any way we can.
"It also needs to be rugged, kids will drop these on the floor, they will break and so it is all solid state parts, it's flash, there's no hard disc there.
"The keyboard is liquid-proof, you can spill the milk on it, it will survive that, it will survive the backpack test."
New market
There are lots more devices on the way - from many other manufactures as they jump on the low cost bandwagon. Perhaps most notably the Elonex One which is being sold in the UK for £99.
True it is a low powered device with a seven inch (17.5cm) detachable screen that runs Linux, but it is easily powerful enough surf the net while sipping an expensive coffee.
Asus are talking about selling 5 million Eee PCs by the end of the year, which is enough to kick start a market.
Ultimately then, it would seem for these low costs devices to be a real success they have to be produced for everyone, not simply developed as hybrid devices to bring computers to the third world.
///////////////////The protagonist or main character is the central figure of a story. It is not necessarily clear what being this central figure exactly entails. The terms protagonist, main character and hero are variously (and rarely well) defined and depending on the source may denote different concepts. The word "protagonist" derives from the Greek πρωταγωνιστής (protagonistes), "one who plays the first part, chief actor"[1][2].
Basically, the term protagonist is defined to be either always synonymous with the term main character, or it is defined as a different concept, in which case a single character still may (and usually will) serve the function of both the protagonist and main character, or the functions may be split.
////////////////////OF MICE AND MEN=Two migrant field workers in California during the Great Depression – George Milton, an intelligent and cynical man; and Lennie Small, an ironically named man of large stature and immense strength but limited mental abilities – come to a ranch near Soledad southeast of Salinas, California to "work up a stake". They hope to one day attain their shared dream of settling down on their own piece of land. Lennie's part of the dream, which he never tires of hearing George describe, is merely to tend to (and touch) soft rabbits on the farm. George protects Lennie at the beginning by telling him that if Lennie gets into trouble George won't let him "tend them rabbits"; they are fleeing from their previous employment in Weed where they were run out of town after Lennie's love of stroking soft things resulted in an accusation of attempted rape when he touched a young woman's dress. In a textbook example of foreshadowing, Lennie kills his pet mouse, and a puppy, by stroking them too roughly.
At the ranch, the dream appears to move closer to reality. Candy, the aged, one-handed ranch-hand, even offers to pitch in with Lennie and George so they can buy the farm by the end of the month. The dream crashes when Lennie accidentally kills the young and attractive wife of Curley, the ranch owner's son, while trying to stroke her hair. A lynch mob led by Curley gathers. George, realizing he is doomed to a life of loneliness and despair like the rest of the migrant workers, and wanting to spare Lennie a painful death at the hands of the vengeful and violent Curley, shoots Lennie in the back of the head before the mob can find him after they had recited their dreams of owning their own land.[1][2][3]
//////////////////////
CDS 020808-HYPOTHALAMIC HAMARTOMA-LAUGHING TUMOUR
////////////////SILENCE OF THE BEES-CCD-NO SUBSTITUTE FOR POLLINATION-IAPV=ISRAEL ACUTE PARLS VIRUS
///////////////////FIRST BENGALI MRCPS-DWARKANATH BOSE,BHOLANATH BOSE,BASANTA KR BOSE,KADAMBINI GANGULY,JAMINI SEN
/////////////////////LAST YRS ARE CRAP YRS ANYWAY
//////////////////////RAFOD-AOD-MMBAI BLSTS 1993
///////////////////////Words on Tao
Tao is the way without a way;
It is the path with no tracks.
You start walking the way of Tao when you erase anything - good or bad - you learned about Tao.
*
Tao is pure intuition.
*
Close your eyes and you'll see the Way (Tao).
*
Nobody knows the Tao as it is not an open book!
*
Stop doing and achieve the Tao.
//////////////////////Chapter II: Sankhya Yoga
(Krishna speaking to Arjuna)
II.17. Know That to be indestructible, by Which all this is
pervaded. None can cause the dstruction of That, the Imperishable.
COMMENTARY: Brahman or Atman pervades all the objects like ether.
Even if the pot is broken, the ether that is within and without
the pot cannot be destroyed. Even so, if the bodies and all other
objects perish, Brahman or the Self that pervades them cannot
perish. It is the living Truth, 'Sat'.
Brahman has no parts. There cannot be either increase or
diminution in Brahman. People are ruined by loss of wealth. But
Brahman does not suffer any loss in that way. It is
inexhaustible. Therefore, note can bring about the disappearance
or destruction of the Self. It always exists. It is always all-
full and self contained. It is Existence Absolute. It is immutable.
PANGON
///////////////////Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
Posted: 31 Jul 2008 09:00 PM CDT
~ Ambrose Redmoon
//////////////////////GEORGE CARLIN-1937-2008-COMEDIAN USING MAX F WORD
/////////////////////Are grunting respirations a sign of serious bacterial infection in children?
Bilavsky E, Shouval DS, Yarden-Bilavsky H, Ashkenazi S, Amir J.
Department of Pediatrics C, Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel, Petah Tiqva, and Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Aim: To assess the significance of grunting respirations in children and their potential association with serious bacterial infections, and to identify characteristics unique to this patient group. Patients and Methods: A prospective case-control design was used. Data were collected on all children who were hospitalized with grunting respirations in our department of paediatrics over a 13-month period. The enrolled patients were divided into three groups: previously healthy children aged 3 months or less, previously healthy children aged more than 3 months and children with chronic illness at any age. The findings were compared to matched controls hospitalized for similar symptoms but without grunting respirations. Results: Grunting respirations were documented in 149 of the 3334 admissions (4.5%) during the period of study. The incidence was higher in children aged 3 months or less (7.5%) and lower in children older than 3 months (3.9%). Fever and respiratory symptoms were common (83.9% and 65.1%, respectively). Heart rate was the only vital sign that was significantly different between the study and control groups. Serious bacterial infection occurred more frequently in the study group (31.5% vs. 14.8%, p < 0.001, OR 2.14, 95% CI 1.36-3.36). Comparisons between the groups showed that grunting respirations were a sign of serious bacterial infection in previously healthy children older than 3 months (p = 0.007, OR 1.95, 95% CI 1.21-3.13) and in children with a chronic disease of any age (p = 0.033, OR 7.0, 95% CI 1.0-49.7 respectively), but not in previously healthy children younger than 3 months (p = 1). Conclusion: The incidence and importance of grunting respirations in hospitalized children depend on patient's age and previous medical status. A finding of grunting respirations in a previously healthy child aged over 3 months or in a chronically ill child should alert the physician to seek further evidence of bacterial infection, especially pneumonia.
ALSO MYOCARDITIS
///////////////////////Study identifies mechanism linking stress to physical illness, aging
By
Elaine Schmidt
| 7/15/2008
Key to early aging?
FINDINGS:
Every cell contains a tiny clock called a telomere, which shortens each time the cell divides. Short telomeres are linked to a range of human diseases, including HIV, osteoporosis, heart disease and aging. Previous studies have shown that an enzyme within the cell, called telomerase, keeps immune cells young by preserving their telomere length and ability to continue dividing. UCLA scientists found that the stress hormone cortisol suppresses immune cells' ability to activate their telomerase. This may explain why the cells of persons under chronic stress have shorter telomeres.
"When the body is under stress, it boosts production of cortisol to support a 'fight or flight' response," said study author Rita Effros. "If the hormone remains elevated in the bloodstream for long periods of time, though, it wears down the immune system. We are testing therapeutic ways of enhancing telomerase levels to help the immune system ward off cortisol's effect. If we're successful, one day a pill may exist to strengthen the immune system's ability to weather chronic emotional stress."
/////////////////////
Tsunami-Causing Earthquake Trimmed Bulge off Earth's Middle
By Michael Schirber, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 12 January 2005 06:21 am ET
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0 Comments | 1 Recommend
Tsunami Strikes Sri Lanka: On December 26, 2004, tsunamis swept across the Indian ocean, spawned by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra. Aside from Indonesia, the island nation of Sri Lanka likely suffered the most casualties, with the death toll reported at 21,715 on December 29th. DigitalGlobe’s Quickbird satellite captured an image of the devastation around Kalutara, Sri Lanka (top), on December 26, 2004, at 10:20 a.m. local time—about an hour after the first in the series of waves hit. A Quickbird image taken on January 1, 2004 (lower), shows the normal ocean conditions. Water is flowing out of the inundated area and back into the sea, creating turbulence offshore. Some near-shore streets and yards are covered with muddy water. It is possible that the image was acquired in a “trough†between wave crests. Imagery of nearby beaches shows that the edge of the ocean had receded about 150 meters from the shoreline. Click on image to enlarge. Credit: Images Copyright DigitalGlobe
Full Size
Previous Image Next Image
1 of 2
Tsunami Strikes Sri Lanka: On December 26, 2004, tsunamis swept across the Indian ocean, spawned by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra. Aside from Indonesia, the island nation of Sri Lanka likely suffered the most casualties, with the death toll reported at 21,715 on December 29th. DigitalGlobe’s Quickbird satellite captured an image of the devastation around Kalutara, Sri Lanka (top), on December 26, 2004, at 10:20 a.m. local time—about an hour after the first in the series of waves hit. A Quickbird image taken on January 1, 2004 (lower), shows the normal ocean conditions. Water is flowing out of the inundated area and back into the sea, creating turbulence offshore. Some near-shore streets and yards are covered with muddy water. It is possible that the image was acquired in a “trough†between wave crests. Imagery of nearby beaches shows that the edge of the ocean had receded about 150 meters from the shoreline. Click on image to enlarge. Credit: Images Copyright DigitalGlobe
Launched in 1992, the ocean-monitoring Topex/Poseidon satellite mission is a joint effort between NASA and the French Space Agency that monitors global ocean circulation and climate interactions between the sea and atmosphere.
The Dec. 26 earthquake off the coast of Indonesia was the fourth largest in one hundred years. Scientists have determined that this major shift in the Earth's plates changed the planet's shape - enough to shorten the day by fractions of a second and to shift the North Pole by an inch.
The general shape of the Earth is slightly oblate - that is, it is not a perfect sphere but is slightly squished down, making it about 26 miles wider at the equator than between the poles. This shape, however, is not rigid, with climate being a major distorting force.
//////////////////////
///////////////////FIRST BENGALI MRCPS-DWARKANATH BOSE,BHOLANATH BOSE,BASANTA KR BOSE,KADAMBINI GANGULY,JAMINI SEN
/////////////////////LAST YRS ARE CRAP YRS ANYWAY
//////////////////////RAFOD-AOD-MMBAI BLSTS 1993
///////////////////////Words on Tao
Tao is the way without a way;
It is the path with no tracks.
You start walking the way of Tao when you erase anything - good or bad - you learned about Tao.
*
Tao is pure intuition.
*
Close your eyes and you'll see the Way (Tao).
*
Nobody knows the Tao as it is not an open book!
*
Stop doing and achieve the Tao.
//////////////////////Chapter II: Sankhya Yoga
(Krishna speaking to Arjuna)
II.17. Know That to be indestructible, by Which all this is
pervaded. None can cause the dstruction of That, the Imperishable.
COMMENTARY: Brahman or Atman pervades all the objects like ether.
Even if the pot is broken, the ether that is within and without
the pot cannot be destroyed. Even so, if the bodies and all other
objects perish, Brahman or the Self that pervades them cannot
perish. It is the living Truth, 'Sat'.
Brahman has no parts. There cannot be either increase or
diminution in Brahman. People are ruined by loss of wealth. But
Brahman does not suffer any loss in that way. It is
inexhaustible. Therefore, note can bring about the disappearance
or destruction of the Self. It always exists. It is always all-
full and self contained. It is Existence Absolute. It is immutable.
PANGON
///////////////////Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
Posted: 31 Jul 2008 09:00 PM CDT
~ Ambrose Redmoon
//////////////////////GEORGE CARLIN-1937-2008-COMEDIAN USING MAX F WORD
/////////////////////Are grunting respirations a sign of serious bacterial infection in children?
Bilavsky E, Shouval DS, Yarden-Bilavsky H, Ashkenazi S, Amir J.
Department of Pediatrics C, Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel, Petah Tiqva, and Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Aim: To assess the significance of grunting respirations in children and their potential association with serious bacterial infections, and to identify characteristics unique to this patient group. Patients and Methods: A prospective case-control design was used. Data were collected on all children who were hospitalized with grunting respirations in our department of paediatrics over a 13-month period. The enrolled patients were divided into three groups: previously healthy children aged 3 months or less, previously healthy children aged more than 3 months and children with chronic illness at any age. The findings were compared to matched controls hospitalized for similar symptoms but without grunting respirations. Results: Grunting respirations were documented in 149 of the 3334 admissions (4.5%) during the period of study. The incidence was higher in children aged 3 months or less (7.5%) and lower in children older than 3 months (3.9%). Fever and respiratory symptoms were common (83.9% and 65.1%, respectively). Heart rate was the only vital sign that was significantly different between the study and control groups. Serious bacterial infection occurred more frequently in the study group (31.5% vs. 14.8%, p < 0.001, OR 2.14, 95% CI 1.36-3.36). Comparisons between the groups showed that grunting respirations were a sign of serious bacterial infection in previously healthy children older than 3 months (p = 0.007, OR 1.95, 95% CI 1.21-3.13) and in children with a chronic disease of any age (p = 0.033, OR 7.0, 95% CI 1.0-49.7 respectively), but not in previously healthy children younger than 3 months (p = 1). Conclusion: The incidence and importance of grunting respirations in hospitalized children depend on patient's age and previous medical status. A finding of grunting respirations in a previously healthy child aged over 3 months or in a chronically ill child should alert the physician to seek further evidence of bacterial infection, especially pneumonia.
ALSO MYOCARDITIS
///////////////////////Study identifies mechanism linking stress to physical illness, aging
By
Elaine Schmidt
| 7/15/2008
Key to early aging?
FINDINGS:
Every cell contains a tiny clock called a telomere, which shortens each time the cell divides. Short telomeres are linked to a range of human diseases, including HIV, osteoporosis, heart disease and aging. Previous studies have shown that an enzyme within the cell, called telomerase, keeps immune cells young by preserving their telomere length and ability to continue dividing. UCLA scientists found that the stress hormone cortisol suppresses immune cells' ability to activate their telomerase. This may explain why the cells of persons under chronic stress have shorter telomeres.
"When the body is under stress, it boosts production of cortisol to support a 'fight or flight' response," said study author Rita Effros. "If the hormone remains elevated in the bloodstream for long periods of time, though, it wears down the immune system. We are testing therapeutic ways of enhancing telomerase levels to help the immune system ward off cortisol's effect. If we're successful, one day a pill may exist to strengthen the immune system's ability to weather chronic emotional stress."
/////////////////////
Tsunami-Causing Earthquake Trimmed Bulge off Earth's Middle
By Michael Schirber, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 12 January 2005 06:21 am ET
Buzz up!
Add to delicious del.icio.us
Digg It! Digg It!
Save to Newsvine Newsvine
Add to reddit reddit
0 Comments | 1 Recommend
Tsunami Strikes Sri Lanka: On December 26, 2004, tsunamis swept across the Indian ocean, spawned by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra. Aside from Indonesia, the island nation of Sri Lanka likely suffered the most casualties, with the death toll reported at 21,715 on December 29th. DigitalGlobe’s Quickbird satellite captured an image of the devastation around Kalutara, Sri Lanka (top), on December 26, 2004, at 10:20 a.m. local time—about an hour after the first in the series of waves hit. A Quickbird image taken on January 1, 2004 (lower), shows the normal ocean conditions. Water is flowing out of the inundated area and back into the sea, creating turbulence offshore. Some near-shore streets and yards are covered with muddy water. It is possible that the image was acquired in a “trough†between wave crests. Imagery of nearby beaches shows that the edge of the ocean had receded about 150 meters from the shoreline. Click on image to enlarge. Credit: Images Copyright DigitalGlobe
Full Size
Previous Image Next Image
1 of 2
Tsunami Strikes Sri Lanka: On December 26, 2004, tsunamis swept across the Indian ocean, spawned by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra. Aside from Indonesia, the island nation of Sri Lanka likely suffered the most casualties, with the death toll reported at 21,715 on December 29th. DigitalGlobe’s Quickbird satellite captured an image of the devastation around Kalutara, Sri Lanka (top), on December 26, 2004, at 10:20 a.m. local time—about an hour after the first in the series of waves hit. A Quickbird image taken on January 1, 2004 (lower), shows the normal ocean conditions. Water is flowing out of the inundated area and back into the sea, creating turbulence offshore. Some near-shore streets and yards are covered with muddy water. It is possible that the image was acquired in a “trough†between wave crests. Imagery of nearby beaches shows that the edge of the ocean had receded about 150 meters from the shoreline. Click on image to enlarge. Credit: Images Copyright DigitalGlobe
Launched in 1992, the ocean-monitoring Topex/Poseidon satellite mission is a joint effort between NASA and the French Space Agency that monitors global ocean circulation and climate interactions between the sea and atmosphere.
The Dec. 26 earthquake off the coast of Indonesia was the fourth largest in one hundred years. Scientists have determined that this major shift in the Earth's plates changed the planet's shape - enough to shorten the day by fractions of a second and to shift the North Pole by an inch.
The general shape of the Earth is slightly oblate - that is, it is not a perfect sphere but is slightly squished down, making it about 26 miles wider at the equator than between the poles. This shape, however, is not rigid, with climate being a major distorting force.
//////////////////////
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