Random humor to bring you laughing into the weekend. Enjoy!
Filed under Humor and Observations
SkyTran’s levitating transit pods will carry passengers over street traffic to their destinations. (www.skytran.us)
Flying cars may sound like something out of “The Jetsons,” but Israel’s Tel Aviv is soon set to be the first city to welcome SkyTran’s futuristic transportation trains.
The mass transit system of magnetically levitating pods was co-developed by engineers from NASA’s Ames Research Center and the privately held SkyTran company
.
Plagued by heavy traffic, the city of Tel Aviv is hoping to use SkyTran’s pods in order to offer energy and environmentally-friendly alternatives to cars and buses, The Times of Israel reported.
According to the planners, “sky trains” are a cheaper and faster transportation system and will help reduce congestion and pollution.
The city of Tel Aviv recently hired US consultant company Jenkins Gales & Martinez to help speed up the process in building the SkyTran track but no official timetable has been announced.
Filed under Humor and Observations
I want to say that people often mistakenly think the Bible says that Adam and Eve were the first humans. It does not. In fact, when Cain, their son, kills another son, Abel, he is banished. He is in fear that other people will kill him, so a mark of protection is placed on him. He goes out to another land and marries. Where did the other people come from? To me, Adam and Eve were created and placed in a protected refuge – the Garden of Eden, protected from outside impacts. Creating Adam and Eve and animal life could be considered today as genetic engineering or an experiment in a lab. God created them, gave them free will and a few rules and saw what happened. The entire Bible is pretty much like that. From the chosen people of the Jews to the Christians of today, we are created by God but given free will, a set of standards to live by, and we get to choose.
You can explain things that they just happened, that ancient aliens experimented with us, or that a Creator made us. My son told me that he could create certain basic amino acid reactions in the laboratory where he is studying to become a bio-chemical engineer. Of course, it sometimes takes him many tries to get an experiment correct, even in laboratory conditions. I personally don’t believe that every major “it just happened” event could occur at precisely the right time and place so many times to create what we are now. I think just like my son doing a lab project, God created us in His lab of sorts.
So it is that information like the following fits in with my belief in God and my own personal theories of life on this planet and that it was created. It is ok if you disagree. That is your exercise of your own free will. 🙂
By Tia Ghose
Published August 02, 2013
Human sex-determining chromosomes: X chromosome (left) and the much smaller Y chromosome. (University of Arizona)
Almost every man alive can trace his origins to one man who lived about 135,000 years ago, new research suggests. And that ancient man likely shared the planet with the mother of all women.
The findings, detailed Thursday, Aug. 1, in the journal Science, come from the most complete analysis of the male sex chromosome, or the Y chromosome, to date. The results overturn earlier research, which suggested that men’s most recent common ancestor lived just 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.
Despite their overlap in time, ancient “Adam” and ancient “Eve” probably didn’t even live near each other, let alone mate. [The 10 Biggest Mysteries of the First Humans]
“Those two people didn’t know each other,” said Melissa Wilson Sayres, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study.
Tracing history
Researchers believe that modern humans left Africa between 60,000 and 200,000 years ago, and that the mother of all women likely emerged from East Africa. But beyond that, the details get fuzzy.
The Y chromosome is passed down identically from father to son, so mutations, or point changes, in the male sex chromosome can trace the male line back to the father of all humans. By contrast, DNA from the mitochondria, the energy powerhouse of the cell, is carried inside the egg, so only women pass it on to their children. The DNA hidden inside mitochondria, therefore, can reveal the maternal lineage to an ancient Eve.
But over time, the male chromosome gets bloated with duplicated, jumbled-up stretches of DNA, said study co-author Carlos Bustamante, a geneticist at Stanford University in California. As a result, piecing together fragments of DNA from gene sequencing was like trying to assemble a puzzle without the image on the box top, making thorough analysis difficult.
Y chromosome
Bustamante and his colleagues assembled a much bigger piece of the puzzle by sequencing the entire genome of the Y chromosome for 69 men from seven global populations, from African San Bushmen to the Yakut of Siberia.
By assuming a mutation rate anchored to archaeological events (such as the migration of people across the Bering Strait), the team concluded that all males in their global sample shared a single male ancestor in Africa roughly 125,000 to 156,000 years ago.
In addition, mitochondrial DNA from the men, as well as similar samples from 24 women, revealed that all women on the planet trace back to a mitochondrial Eve, who lived in Africa between 99,000 and 148,000 years ago almost the same time period during which the Y-chromosome Adam lived.
More ancient Adam
But the results, though fascinating, are just part of the story, said Michael Hammer, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the study.
A separate study in the same issue of the journal Science found that men shared a common ancestor between 180,000 and 200,000 years ago.
And in a study detailed in March in the American Journal of Human Genetics, Hammer’s group showed that several men in Africa have unique, divergent Y chromosomes that trace back to an even more ancient man who lived between 237,000 and 581,000 years ago. [Unraveling the Human Genome: 6 Molecular Milestones]
“It doesn’t even fit on the family tree that the Bustamante lab has constructed. It’s older,” Hammer told LiveScience.
Gene studies always rely on a sample of DNA and, therefore, provide an incomplete picture of human history. For instance, Hammer’s group sampled a different group of men than Bustamante’s lab did, leading to different estimates of how old common ancestors really are.
Adam and Eve?
These primeval people aren’t parallel to the biblical Adam and Eve. They weren’t the first modern humans on the planet, but instead just the two out of thousands of people alive at the time with unbroken male or female lineages that continue on today.
The rest of the human genome contains tiny snippets of DNA from many other ancestors they just don’t show up in mitochondrial or Y-chromosome DNA, Hammer said. (For instance, if an ancient woman had only sons, then her mitochondrial DNA would disappear, even though the son would pass on a quarter of her DNA via the rest of his genome.)
As a follow-up, Bustamante’s lab is sequencing Y chromosomes from nearly 2,000 other men. Those data could help pinpoint precisely where in Africa these ancient humans lived.
“It’s very exciting,” Wilson Sayres told LiveScience. “As we get more populations across the world, we can start to understand exactly where we came from physically.”
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This is reposted from The Chive on the art of Lorenzo Manuel Duran –
Lorenzo Manuel Durán is an artist from Cáceres, Spain. Starting with more traditional oil paintings, he found himself inspired one day by a caterpillar eating a leaf. The moment propelled him to try cutting a leaf with a scalpel. That was 2008, and the rest is history.
Through a lengthy process of trial and error, Durán has developed his own leaf-cutting technique, taking great care not to ‘spoil’ the leaf during the cutting process. His main tools are a surgical scalpel and dental-pointed device that helps him remove the cut parts from the leaf.
Filed under Humor and Observations, Uncategorized
While shoe-horning these into conversation today might prove difficult, these 17 synonyms for sex were used often enough in 19th-century England to earn a place in the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, a book for upper-crust Britons who had no idea what the proles were talking about.
To say two people were engaged in the amorous congress was by far the most polite option on the list, oftentimes serving as the definition for other, less discreet synonyms.
“Those two recently opened a basket-making shop.” From a method of making children’s stockings, in which knitting the heel is called basket-making.
One on top of the other. “Rumor has it he found her bread and butter fashion with the neighbor.”
“Yeah, we had a brush once.” The emphasis here is on brevity; just a fling, no big deal.
“They left together, so they’re probably at clicket.” This was originally used only for foxes, but became less specific as more and more phrases for doing it were needed.
Aside from the obvious, this also comes from “making children,” because babies have faces.
There is probably no way to use this in seriousness or discreetly, but there you have it.
“Grounsils” are foundation timbers, so “on the floor.”
Similar to “amorous congress” in that this was a gentler term suitable for even the noble classes to use, even if they only whispered it.
“Flyers” being shoes, this is “dressed, or without going to bed.”
Giving a girl a green gown can only happen in the grass.
A woman who sleeps with soldiers coming in at port is said to “make a lobster kettle” of herself.
Those shared by “a fat man and woman in amorous congress.”
A game at pully hawly is a series of affairs.
In the story of St. George and the Dragon, the dragon reared up from the lake to tower over the saint. “Playing at St. George” casts a woman as the dragon and puts her on top.
Similar to having a brush, “making a stitch” is a casual affair.
A tiff could be a minor argument or falling-out, as we know it. In the 19th century, it was also a term for eating or drinking between meals, or in this case, a quickie.
Read the full text here: http://mentalfloss.com/article/12399/17-euphemisms-sex-1800s#ixzz2bFhAPP5J
–brought to you by mental_floss!
Filed under Humor and Observations, Writing
LiveScience | By Marc LallanillaPosted: 07/27/2013 11:30 am EDT | Updated: 07/27/2013 11:37 am EDT
It’s known as the Hum, a steady, droning sound that’s heard in places as disparate as Taos, N.M.; Bristol, England; and Largs, Scotland.
But what causes the Hum, and why it only affects a small percentage of the population in certain areas, remain a mystery, despite a number of scientific investigations. [The Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena]
Reports started trickling in during the 1950s from people who had never heard anything unusual before; suddenly, they were bedeviled by an annoying, low-frequency humming, throbbing or rumbling sound.
The cases seem to have several factors in common: Generally, the Hum is only heard indoors, and it’s louder at night than during the day. It’s also more common in rural or suburban environments; reports of a hum are rare in urban areas, probably because of the steady background noise in crowded cities.
Only about 2 percent of the people living in any given Hum-prone area can hear the sound, and most of them are ages 55 to 70, according to a 2003 study by acoustical consultant Geoff Leventhall of Surrey, England.
Most of the people who hear the Hum (sometimes referred to as “hearers” or “hummers”) describe the sound as similar to a diesel engine idling nearby. And the Hum has driven virtually every one of them to the point of despair. [Video: Listen to 6 Spooky Sounds]
“It’s worst at night,” Jacques said. “It’s hard to get off to sleep because I hear this throbbing sound in the background … You’re tossing and turning, and you get more and more agitated about it.”
Being dismissed as crackpots or whiners only exacerbates the distress for these complainants, most of whom have perfectly normal hearing. Sufferers complain ofheadaches, nausea, dizziness, nosebleeds and sleep disturbances. At least one suicide in the United Kingdom has been blamed on the Hum, the BBC reports. [The Top 10 Spooky Sleep Disorders]
The Hum zones
Bristol, England, was one of the first places on Earth where the Hum was reported. In the 1970s, about 800 people in the coastal city reported hearing a steady thrumming sound, which was eventually blamed on vehicular traffic and local factories working 24-hour shifts.
Another famous hum occurs near Taos, N.M. Starting in spring 1991, residents of the area complained of a low-level rumbling noise. A team of researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of New Mexico, Sandia National Laboratories and other regional experts were unable to identify the source of the sound.
Windsor, Ontario, is another Hum hotspot. Researchers from the University of Windsor and Western University in London, Ontario, were recently given a grant to analyze the Windsor Hum and determine its cause.
Researchers also have been investigating the Hum in Bondi, a seaside area of Sydney, Australia, for several years, to no avail. “It sends people around here crazy — all you can do is put music on to block it out. Some people leave fans on,” one resident told the Daily Telegraph.
Back in the United States, the Kokomo Hum was isolated in a 2003 study financed by the Indiana city’s municipal government. The investigation revealed that two industrial sites — one a Daimler Chrysler plant — were producing noise at specific frequencies. Despite noise-abatement measures, some residents continue to complain of the Hum.
What causes the Hum?
Most researchers investigating the Hum express some confidence that the phenomenon is real, and not the result of mass hysteria or hearers’ hypochondria (or extraterrestrials beaming signals to Earth from their spaceships).
As in the case of the Kokomo Hum, industrial equipment is usually the first suspected source of the Hum. In one instance, Leventhall was able to trace the noise to a neighboring building’s central heating unit.
Other suspected sources include high-pressure gas lines, electrical power lines, wireless communication devices or other sources. But only in a few cases has a Hum been linked to a mechanical or electrical source.
There’s some speculation that the Hum could be the result of low-frequency electromagnetic radiation, audible only to some people. And there are verified cases in which individuals have particular sensitivities to signals outside the normal range of human hearing.
Medical experts are quick to point out that tinnitus (the perception of sound when no external noise is present) is a likely cause, but repeated testing has found that many hearers have normal hearing and no occurrences of tinnitus.
Environmental factors have also been blamed, including seismic activity such as microseisms — very faint, low-frequency earth tremors that can be generated by the action of ocean waves.
Other hypotheses, including military experiments and submarine communications, have yet to bear any fruit. For now, hearers of the Hum have to resort to white-noise machines and other devices to reduce or eliminate the annoying noise.
Leventhall, who recommends that some hearers turn to cognitive-behavioral therapy to relieve the symptoms caused by the Hum, isn’t confident that the puzzle will be solved anytime soon.
“It’s been a mystery for 40 years, so it may well remain one for a lot longer,” Leventhall told the BBC.
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A few characters on the side of a 3,000-year-old earthenware jug dating back to the time of King David have stumped archaeologists until now — and a fresh translation may have profound ramifications for our understanding of the Bible.
Experts had suspected the fragmentary inscription was written in the language of the Canaanites, a biblical people who lived in the present-day Israel. Not so, says one expert who claims to have cracked the code: The mysterious language is actually the oldest form of written Hebrew, placing the ancient Israelites in Jerusalem earlier than previously believed.
“Hebrew speakers were controlling Jerusalem in the 10th century, which biblical chronology points to as the time of David and Solomon,” ancient Near Eastern history and biblical studies expert Douglas Petrovich told FoxNews.com.
“Whoever they were, they were writing in Hebrew like they owned the place,” he said.
“It is just the climate among scholars that they want to attribute as little as possible to the ancient Israelites.”
– Doug Petrovich
First discovered near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem last year, the 10th century B.C. fragment has been labeled the Ophel Inscription. It likely bears the name of the jug’s owners and its contents.
If Petrovich’s analysis proves true, it would be evidence of the accuracy of Old Testament tales. If Hebrew as a written language existed in the 10th century, as he says, the ancient Israelites were recording their history in real time as opposed to writing it down several hundred years later. That would make the Old Testament an historical account of real-life events.
According to Petrovich, archaeologists are unwilling to call it Hebrew to avoid conflict.
“It’s just the climate among scholars that they want to attribute as little as possible to the ancient Israelites,” he said.
Needless to say, his claims are stirring up controversy among those who do not like to mix the hard facts of archaeology — dirt, stone and bone — with stories from the Bible.
Tel Aviv University archaeologist Israel Finkelstein told FoxNews.com that the Ophel Inscription is critical to the early history of Israel. But romantic notions of the Bible shouldn’t cloud scientific methods — a message he pushed in 2008 when a similar inscription was found at a site many now call one of King David’s palaces.
At the time, he warned the Associated Press against the “revival in the belief that what’s written in the Bible is accurate like a newspaper.”
Today, he told FoxNews.com that the Ophel Inscription speaks to “the expansion of Jerusalem from the Temple Mount, and shows us the growth of Jerusalem and the complexity of the city during that time.” But the Bible? Maybe, maybe not.
Professor Aren Maeir of Bar Ilan University agrees that some archaeologists are simply relying too heavily on the Bible itself as a source of evidence.
“[Can we] raise arguments about the kingdom of David and Solomon? That seems to me a grandiose upgrade,” he told Haaretz recently.
In the past decade, there has been a renaissance in Israel of archaeologists looking for historical evidence of biblical stories. FoxNews.com has reported on several excavations this year claiming to prove a variety of stories from the Bible.
Most recently, a team lead by archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel wrapped up a ten-year excavation of the possible palace of King David, overlooking the valley where the Hebrew king victoriously smote the giant Goliath.
Garfinkel has another explanation as to the meaning behind the Ophel Inscription.
“I think it’s like a [cellphone] text,” Garfinkel told FoxNews.com. “If someone takes a text from us 3,000 years from now, he will not be able to understand it.”
The writing on the fragmented jug is a type of shorthand farmers of the 10th century used, in his opinion, and not an official way of communication that was passed on.
“What’s more important is that there is a revolution in this type of inscription being found,” Garfinkel told FoxNews.com. There have been several from the same time period found across Israel in the past five years.
“When we find more and more of these inscriptions, maybe not until the next generation, we may have a breakthrough,” he said.
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Cosplay Pictures for your enjoyment.
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First World Problems vs. Third World Skeptical Kid. You decide…
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Crossovers or mash-ups are mixing two or more concepts, shows, movies, etc. together for humor or to make you think. For other crossover posts, type “crossover” into the search block of my home page. Enjoy!
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Michael Bradley - Time Traveler 