Barnhard Blog

What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised. Quite a few of them said they did so regularly and led active lifestyles. The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting.
Most of us have heard that sitting is unhealthy. But many of us also have discounted the warnings, since we spend our lunch hours conscientiously visiting the gym.

NASA’s annual budget announcements are always an easy target for the public and media. This is due its open nature of communication and very public purpose. Last month however, the 2010 announcement has become ground of particularly heated debates and general disapproval.

Obama administration proposed to axe manned flight (exit space shuttle, constellation project, moon plans) until commercial space flight and research is mature enough to sustain an affordable (Mars?) mission again. Much money goes therefore to research only.

However, congress and the Senate don’t buy this “flexible” plan. Many jobs are lost, no definite planning is made and reliance on foreign countries and an immature space industry give great worries. The plan has been send back. Change has come, but where is it eventually going? Check more for some highlighted discussions of the senate and congres.
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Great talk by Dan on why it is so hard to prepare robots for space or even more precise: adaption. With interesting own experiences as an astronaut Dan illustrates how well nature is capable of doing this.

There is increasingly interest in happiness. However articles and books unfortunately make too little correct distinction between happy memories and experiences, which make a big difference. If you want to optimize your happiness, each needs a different approach. Social Economics clearly has much ground to gain here.

A TAT Cascades powered prototype of the Augmented ID concept. Accurate mobile face detection and recognition using Polar Rose’s FaceLib. Recognizr shows how powerful computer vision and 3D graphics can be used to create fast, precise and aesthetic augmented reality. This prototype runs on Android.

Website: Tat.se [via]
Blog: Mobileuserinterfaces.blogspot.com

Traditionally, David Agus explains, cancer treatments have had a short-sighted focus on the offending individual cells. He suggests a new, cross-disciplinary approach, using atypical drugs, computer modeling and protein analysis to treat and analyze the whole body.

De Facebook Fail benadrukt een nieuw dilemma waar we als gebruikers van online communicatiemiddelen tegenaan lopen. Als we nu op elk moment aan iedereen alles kunnen melden, rijst de vraag: wat willen we dan vertellen, met welke online tools en met welke onbedoelde gevolgen?

Lees artikel op Frankwatching

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Now that the conspiracy theorists have blown off steam, it’s time for a more sober analysis of those e-mails and what they mean. I can’t go through all of them, there are far too many, and . So I’ve taken the two that seem to be getting conspiracy theorists most worked up — Phil Jones’s e-mail about “Mike’s Nature trick” and Kevin Trenberth’s e-mail about a “travesty.” I’m glad to see that skeptic websites that cover the science understand what these e-mails actually mean. As you’ll see, very few commentators who jumped on the conspiracy bandwagon even before reading the e-mails mandged to get it right. [Youtube]

[via]

28-11-1908 | 1-11-2009

Who Knew Discussing A Long Repealed Copyright Law Could
Be So Interesting… from the copyright-geeking dept

The summary? Copyright law is so screwed up that even if you put a significant number of the top copyright scholars and students in an auditorium for a day, they’ll disagree on almost everything, and only agree that the system is a total mess. Even simple questions like “how should copyright be handled on blogs” created a collective shoulder shrug, with everyone effectively admitting that copyright law has no answer for such basic questions. That should worry people. If the intention of copyright is to “promote the progress of science” then it shouldn’t be so incredibly ambiguous and contentious. All in all, it seems to reinforce the point that copyright law has been stretched and twisted in so many different ways over the years, that it may be fundamentally broken. Basically, copyright law is adjusted every so often not based on any look at whether or not it actually promotes the progress, but based on whatever new technological innovation comes along that throws some legacy providers’ business models into doubt. That industry freaks out, and politicians respond with some patch that protects that industry, but has little to nothing to do with actually promoting progress.

Read more @ Techdirt.com

This awesome song & video, made by John Boswell , can be downloaded here: Colorpulsemusic.com [© 2009 Colorpulse]

Sounding like a cross between Auto-Tune-abusing T-Pain and The Matrix’s Agent Smith, Carl Sagan describes the natural beauty of the universe in a song called “A Glorious Dawn.” Seeing as how Sagan probably was the most successful science popularizer of all time, this song seems in keeping with his goal of getting the masses to appreciate science. A few verses even feature the “vocal” talents of noted astrophysicist Stephen Hawking (also no slouch in the “make science popular” field). [read more]

Quote: This is awesome to the billionth power [Cynical-c.com]

Barnhard Blog note:

John Boswell is good example of an artist who uses the new media for the distribution of his work.

Recent worrisome BUMA-Stemra (Dutch RIAA) billing announcements may cut-off the Dutch market for artist like John Boswell by simply scaring the hell out of Dutch social media users with sky-rocketing bills for embedding Youtube clips on e.g. weblogs (like non-commercial ones like Barnhard Blog).

Although BUMA-Stemra only aims to bill embedded clips on blogs containing licensed material it is expected that Dutch bloggers will be hesitated/scarred to post any embedded clip containing music, just to be sure …

Update & another John Boswell’s clip: Read the rest of this entry »

Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine head to the ends of the earth in search of animals on the edge of extinction. In New Zealand the travellers make their way through one of the most dramatic landscapes in the world. They are on a journey to find the last remaining kakapo, a fat, flightless parrot which, when threatened with attack, adopts a strategy of standing very still indeed.

[via]

A nice view inside the regulatory government apparatus rounding Goldman.

De thrash metal band Slayer is lange tijd erg populair geweest onder Amerikaanse soldaten. Nummers als The Antichrist en Mandatory Suicide (over het leven van een militair) appeleerden kennelijk aan de soldaten. Of anders wel het nummer Jihad, geschreven vanuit het perspectief van een terrorist.

Toen de Amerikaanse componist en universitair muziek Jonathan Pieslak las dat tijdens de Golfoorlog veertig procent van de fanmail van soldaten uit het Midden-Oosten kwam, raakte hij geïntrigeerd. Het resultaat daarvan is zijn onlangs verschenen boek Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War.

Lees meer: NRC - Heavy metal en andere martiale muziek in Irak

THE solar system’s clockwork motion is by no means guaranteed: one day the Earth could collide with Venus or tear Mars apart in a close encounter, a new simulation has shown.

Read full article @ Newscientist.com

Contrary to Hollywood notions, the 40-year-old virgin is not an awkward yet funny and endearing electronics salesman played by Steve Carell. He is a church-going teetotaller who has neither been to jail nor served in the military, according to a new survey of more than 7000 people. He also represents an estimated 1.1 million American men and 800,000 women aged 25 to 45 who have never had sex.

Men and women who attended church at least once a week were respectively 5 and 3.9 times more likely to be virgins than those who attended church less often. Virgins of both sexes were slightly less likely to have swigged a beer in the last year, compared to non-virgins. And women with college degrees were 5.4 times more likely to be virgins than women who never got their Bachelor’s.

Read more: Newscientist.com - Meet the real 40-year-old virgins

According to Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder of La Quadrature du Net: “The European citizens will remember this courageous stand. Members of the European parliament honoured their mandates by standing courageously for citizens’ rights and freedoms. This is one more blow to Nicolas Sarkozy’s ‘three strikes’ or ‘HADOPI’ law in France, and a strong sign that nobody in Europe will want to pass such a stupid legislation going against progress, citizens’ rights and common sense.”.

Philippe Aigrain, also co-founder of La Quadrature du Net concludes: “We will also follow with great attention the negociations in a future conciliation committee to make impossible for the Council to endanger other aspects of the telecom packet such as equitable networking. It is time for Member States to realize that the economy and society can benefit together from an open infrastructure and a strong affirmation of rights.”. (more)

Parlement has voted rightly in favor of net neutrality.

The Next Web 2009 komt er aan.

Het is 2009 , het jaar van Darwin. De man die, zoals u weet, verwoede pogingen heeft gedaan om het ontstaan van soorten via het evolutieproces te verklaren. Een verklaring die bij meeste christenen het zere beentje roert.

Nee, geen logisch proces van mutatie en overlevingsdrang heeft de soorten doen ontstaan, het was een man op een wolk die het in 6 dagen voor elkaar heeft gebokst. Een aantal Christelijke organisaties en particulieren onder leiding van Kees van Helden, heeft besloten dat u dat ook maar eens onder ogen moet zien. Ditmaal met een eenzijdige brochure die bij élk Nederlands huishouden in de bus gegooid gaat worden.

Deze brochure is bij ons niet welkom, aangezien wij prima zelf kunnen nadenken en hier geen denkbeeldig vriendje voor nodig hebben. Samen met verschillende weblogs, waaronder Retecool, GeenStijl, Sargasso, Flabber en GeenCommentaar heeft Barnhard Blog de actie ‘Stuur die brochure terug naar zijn maker‘ opgestart. Laat de religieuze fanaten weten dat het afgelopen moet zijn met hun indocrinatie tot voorbij uw voordeur.

Barnhard Blog en alle opinieblogs die meedoen met de ‘Terug naar je Maker’ staan erom bekend dat reageerders met elkaar in discussie kunnen gaan. Volgens het Actie Comité Schepping is het doel van de anti-evolutiefolder een discussie in gang te zetten. De weblogs vinden dat discussie gevoerd op basis van een fabel geen discussie is en gaan daarom het debat met de initiatiefnemers van de folder niet aan.

Op www.terugnaarjemaker.nl vindt u onder andere een begeleidend schrijven om met de brochure mee te sturen, geschreven door columnist Luuk Koelman, u kunt deze brief naar hartelust aanpassen, zodat u uw eigen boodschap ook kwijt kunt.

Steun samen met ons ‘Terugnaarjemaker.nl‘

Update: screenshot van adres Kees

 
See Also:
Earlier atheism related posts.

2009/02/04 Pat: Shame on the Netherlands
2008/09/28 Richard Dawkins website banned in Turkey
2008/09/26 Palin Witchcraft
2008/03/31 Pat Condell - The Religion of Fear
2008/03/29 FITNA? “SINT - The Movie” is more shocking
2008/03/22 Trailer Fitna
2008/02/16 Scientology Raid In Orlando
2007/09/02 Teeuwen and the Halal Girls
2007/05/03 Creationism in 3 minutes
2006/11/16 A War On Science -Horizon Documentary
2006/08/10 Dumb
2006/03/19 Tree of Life
2006/02/07 We are too sick of it all
2005/04/16 72 maagden of druiven in het paradijs?

Yes, the world is going to S**T; but there’s one thing we can do: pour a pint of Guinness! Too many barmen and barladies (especially in the U.S., it must be said) simply pour the Guinness into the glass in a single pull. Ye BARBARIANS! [via]

A new study in the journal Social Science Quarterly examined the relationship between first name popularity in adolescents and tendency to commit crime. Results show that, regardless of race, juveniles with unpopular names are more likely to engage in criminal activity.

Science Blog:
Adolescents with Unpopular Names More Prone to Committing Crime

Cattle that are named and treated with a “more personal touch” can increase milk yields by up to 500 pints a year.

Yesterday was announced that Paul Krugman receives the nobel prize for his economic works.

Krugman is outspoken regarding current economic policy, but more interesting: He is well capable of defending his positions against talking-heads.

We wrote about the Nobel prizes before, as turns out the new Norwegian prize has been awarded last month. Apparently even an award for dutchmen Maarten Schmidt, any newspaper picked that up?

While most articles are about the scientific promises of the Large Hydron Collider, what about the data monster to make it work in the first place. Smart design and no supercomputers! Enjoy this offroad video at Cern. PS. Nobody chatting about that other subatomic billion dollar monster in france? Read the rest of this entry »