A great little scifi story about the changes in store for humanity.
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The Gentle Seduction by Marc Stiegler First Published by Analog …
The Gentle Seduction. by. Marc Stiegler. First Published by Analog Magazine in 1989. He worked with computers; she worked with trees, and the flowers that took hold on the sides of the Mountain. She w…
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I posted this earlier today with just one photo, but I added a closer photo and no one knew what it was earlier…
So, one last try: Â Can anyone tell me what kind of tree this is? Â I'm located in Missouri, USA.
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Reshared post from +gwern branwen
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Isaac Newton’s occult studies – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Newton’s writings suggest that one of the main goals of his alchemy may have been the discovery of The Philosopher’s Stone (a material believed to turn base metals into gold), and perhaps to a lesser …
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Reshared post from +Chris Worth
The Derweze area is rich in natural gas. While drilling in 1971, Soviet geologists tapped into a cavern filled with natural gas.The ground beneath the drilling rig collapsed, leaving a large hole with a diameter of 70 metres (230 ft) at 40°15′10″N 58°26′22″E. To avoid poisonous gas discharge, it was decided the best solution was to burn it off. Geologists had hoped the fire would use all the fuel in a matter of days, but the gas is still burning today. Locals have dubbed the cavern "The Door to Hell".
Full resolution picture here -Â http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Darvasa_gas_crater_panorama.jpg
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 She also pays 9.99/month for phone insurance through them.  Not a good deal, but if it makes her feel better, I don't care.
The problem with it, is that the insurance and the phone suck. Â They've repaired/replaced it 4 or 5 times. Â So while it's good that they take care of fixing it, the problem is that she uses this phone for business (several thousand minutes a month of talk time). It's a huge hassle to use another phone without all her apps and stuff on top of having to drive an hour to the nearest Best Buy to drop the phone off and then drive another hour to pick it up when it's "fixed". Â I use quotes because the last time she dropped it off, they replaced it with a phone on which the backlights behind the front buttons stopped working within a week so she had to take it back and wait for a replacement again.
When she went back this last time she just asked for a different, better phone model. Â They told her they can't do anything like that unless the phone is brought in three times for the same problem. Â So, basically, she can just keep taking this piece of crap back in a bajillion times for different problems and they're just going to keep wasting our time and money and their time and money because their policy says so.
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So, in this study of 330 women over 15 years, they found that the nipples of women who did not wear a bra raised an average of 7mm/year towards the shoulders and their breasts became more firm.
Apparently, wearing a bra weakened the supportive tissue…
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Brassiere Support Is A Lie, Say French Scientists
In a 15-year study from the University of Besançon in eastern France, sports science professor Jean-Denis Rouillon found that wearing a bra may not
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To test their hypothesis about the packing tape, the shoemakers decided to send two packages to each of 89 people in the United States. For each recipient, one package featured the Atheist-branded packing tape and one used generic packing tape. All packages were shipped the same day. Yet the Atheist-branded packages took an average of three days longer to reach their destinations. And while only one package from the generic-tape set went missing, nine of the Atheist-branded packages went missing. These (statistically significant) results were recently released on their website.
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Atheist Shoemaker Loses Faith In U.S. Mail : NPR
Is there a bias against “Atheist” mail in the United States? A shoemaker in Berlin sees evidence of it after running an experiment that commentator Tania Lombrozo cites as “a great example of citizen science.”
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I'm vindicated!  Actually, I just always hated stretching before exercising.  I didn't really have any thoughts about whether it was efficacious[1] or not.
One, a study being published this month in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, concluded that if you stretch before you lift weights, you may find yourself feeling weaker and wobblier than you expect during your workout. Those findings join those of another new study from Croatia, a bogglingly comprehensive re-analysis of data from earlier experiments that was published in The Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports. Together, the studies augment a growing scientific consensus that pre-exercise stretching is generally unnecessary and likely counterproductive.
[1] I love saying efficacious.
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Reasons Not to Stretch
Two new studies provide additional reasons not to warm up with a stretch.
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This is the best explanation of how a piece of technology works that I've ever had the privilege of watching.
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