Dragon*Con is the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the universe!
This year, Dragon*Con will be held Labor Day weekend (September 2-5, 2011) in Atlanta, GA.
check out the website: http://www.dragoncon.org/index.php
And here are some of the
FEATURED GUESTS
Note: Recent additions are marked with a » (within 7 days) or a » (within 14 days).
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| In one experiment, when foreign names were paired with “1” participants rated them as masculine and when paired with “2” they were rated as feminine. CREDIT: skvoor / Shutterstock |
Gender is so fundamental to the way we understand the world that people are prone to assign a sex to even inanimate objects. We all know someone, or perhaps we are that person, who consistently refers to their computer or car with a gender pronoun (“She’s been running great these past few weeks!”) New research suggests that our tendency to see gender everywhere even applies to abstract ideas such as numbers. Across cultures, people see odd numbers as male and even numbers as female.
Scientists have long known that language can influence how we perceive gender in objects. Some languages consistently refer to certain objects as male or female, and this in turn, influences how speakers of that language think about those objects. Webb Phillips of the Max Planck Institute, Lauren Schmidt of HeadLamp Research, and Lera Boroditsky at Stanford University asked Spanish- and German-speaking bilinguals to rate various objects according to whether they seemed more similar to males or females. They found that people rated each object according to its grammatical gender. For example, Germans see the moon as being more like a man, because the German word for moon is grammatically masculine (“der Mond”). In contrast, Spanish-speakers see the moon as being more like a woman, because in Spanish the word for moon is grammatically feminine (“la Luna”).
Aside from language, objects can also become infused with gender based on their appearance, who typically uses them, and whether they seem to possess the type of characteristics usually associated with men or women. David Gal and James Wilkie of Northwestern University studied how people view gender in everyday objects, such as food and furniture. They found that people see food dishes containing meat as more masculine and salads and sour dairy products as more feminine. People see furniture items, such as tables and trash cans, as more feminine when they feature rounded, rather than sharp, edges.
to read more, go to: http://www.livescience.com/15859-odd-numbers-male-female.html
| Analysis of dolphin communication with Information Theory has shown it to be surprisingly intricate and possibly second only to human communication in terms of complexity on Earth. CREDIT: Wild Dolphin Project. |
How do we define intelligence? SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, clearly equates intelligence with technology (or, more precisely, the building of radio or laser beacons). Some, such as the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, suggested that intelligence wasn’t just the acquisition of technology, but the ability to develop and improve it, integrating it into our society.
By that definition, a dolphin, lacking limbs to create and manipulate complex tools, cannot possibly be described as intelligent. It’s easy to see why such definitions prove popular; we are clearly the smartest creatures on the planet, and the only species with technology. It may be human hubris, or some kind of anthropocentric bias that we find difficult to escape from, but our adherence to this definition narrows the phase space in which we’re willing to search for intelligent life.
Technology is certainly linked to intelligence – you need to be smart to build a computer or an aircraft or a radio telescope – but technology does not define intelligence. It is just a manifestation of it, perhaps one of many.
Astrobiologists see intelligence a little differently. The dictionary defines intelligence as the ability to learn, while others see it as the capacity to reason, to empathize, to solve problems and consider complex ideas, and to interact socially.
Intelligence in the universe
If we take these characteristics to be a broad working definition of intelligence, our view of intelligent life in the universe suddenly looks very different. No longer are we confined to considering only life that has technology.
To be fair to SETI, at this moment in time it cannot search for anything other than beacons – the vast distances across the cosmos coupled with our own baby steps into the Universe mean that we don’t have the capability to search for any other form of intelligent life other than those that can deliberately signal their presence. However, what a wider definition of intelligence tells us is that we are not alone, not even on our own planet Earth.
Professor Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist from the University of Oxford, was one of the first to put forward the theory that the evolution of intelligence is driven by social factors, allowing animals to survive, interact and prosper in large and complex social groupings. These include notions of reciprocal altruism (I scratch your back, you scratch mine), politics (forming sub-groups and coalitions within the larger group) and understanding the emotions of others (empathy, which in turn relies on theory of mind, the ability to be aware of one’s self and others).
Looking at it that way, modern social networking on media such as Facebook may just be a symptom of what helped drive us to become intelligent in the first place, many tens of thousands of years ago.
Here’s the trick – to be social, you must be communicative. Staying quiet is anti-social. Personal interactions require communication, of some form, and the more complex the interaction, the more complex the communication. So if intelligence and social behavior is linked – and many people agree that it is – then the best place to start looking for intelligence is in animals that like to chat with one another.
And that brings us to dolphins.
to read more, go to: http://www.livescience.com/15889-dolphin-intelligence-search-extraterrestrial-life.html
It’s not uncommon for political bumper stickers to crop up during campaigns, but sometimes an image goes above and beyond its simple purpose. This is one of those bumper stickers.
Granted, the tape might give them some problems down the road, but we think it gets their message across.
Hungry for more Perry awkwardness? Here’s the GOP candidate answering a child’s questions:
for more, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/21/best-rick-perry-bumper-sticker_n_932400.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000005
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| A chimpanzee nest in Kenya. CREDIT: Joey Verge, under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license |
Every night, wild chimpanzees build themselves nests high in the trees and tuck themselves in for a good night’s sleep. But no one knows exactly what makes these nests good sleeping spots for chimps. So biological anthropologist Fiona Stewart decided to find out — by bedding down in the chimp nests herself.
Stewart, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge, found that the shaggy arboreal assemblages in her field site in Tanzania weren’t exactly five-star lodgings, but they did keep hertemperature
up and the bug bites down. Sleeping high above ground also eased the anxiety of hearing hyenas call to each other in the East African night.
Stewart “is a very adventurous person,” said William McGrew, Stewart’s former doctoral adviser and a professor of archaeology and anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Her findings could help explain why early humans broke from the chimp tradition of sleeping in trees, McGrew said.
to read more, go to: http://www.livescience.com/15883-scientist-sleeps-chimpanzee-nest.html
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| Top, clockwise from left: Patrice Genevet, Nanfang Yu, Federico Capasso, Zeno Gaburro, and Mikhail A. Kats. Bottom: A simulation of the image that would appear in a large mirror patterned with the team’s new phase mirror technology. CREDIT: Eliza Grinnell and Nanfang Yu |
In a mind-bending, and light-bending, discovery, scientists have produced a fun-house-like warping of light that defies existing laws of physics.
For centuries, simple equations (taught every year to high-school physics students) have described how light moves through different media, for example from air into glass. Now, however, researchers have found that if the boundary between media is sufficiently complex (in this case, coated with nano-sized wires), those laws no longer apply.
The discovery has prompted the physicists to rewrite the traditional equations to account for the characteristics of the boundary surface. In most cases where these tweaked equations are applied, the new laws simplify back to their traditional forms, but sometimes, they show that light can behave in incredibly strange ways
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| Archaeologists researching a site where Caribbean pirates “laid their hats” have found the drunken men not only smoked like the devil but also preferred fine pottery. They were sort of the real “Pirates of the Caribbean.” CREDIT: KSL Productions LLC / Shutterstock |
They smoked like the devil, drank straight from the bottle, annoyed the Spanish and had a fascination with fine pottery.
Oh, and they didn’t use plates … at least not ceramic ones.
Based in 18th-century Belize, they were real “Pirates of the Caribbean” and now new research by 21st-century archaeologists is telling us what their lives were like.
Their findings, detailed in a chapter in a recently published book, suggest that while these pipe-smoking men acted as stereotypical pirates would — drinking, smoking and stealing — they also kept fancy, impractical porcelain in their camps. The fine dinnerware may have been a way to imbue the appearance of upper-class society. [See photos of the pirate loot discovered]
Caribbean pirates
From historical records scientists had known that by 1720 these Caribbean pirates occupied a settlement called the “Barcadares,” a name derived from the Spanish word for “landing place.” Located 15 miles (24 kilometers) up the Belize River, in territory controlled by the Spanish, the site was used as an illegal logwood-cutting operation. The records indicate that a good portion of its occupants were pirates taking a pause from life at sea.
Their living conditions were rustic to say the least. There were no houses, and the men slept on raised platforms with a canvas over them to keep the mosquitoes out. They hunted and gathered a good deal of their food.
Capt. Nathaniel Uring, a merchant seaman who was shipwrecked and spent more than four months with the inhabitants, described them in the book The Voyages and Travels of Captain Nathaniel Uring (reprinted in 1928 by Cassell and Company) as a “rude drunken crew, some which have been pirates, and most of them sailors.”
Their “chief delight is in drinking; and when they broach a quarter cask or a hogshead of Bottle Ale or Cyder, keeping at it sometimes a week together, drinking till they fall asleep; and as soon as they awake at it again, without stirring off the place.” Eventually Captain Uring returned to Jamaica and, in 1726, published an account of his adventures.
to read more and see the photos, go to: http://www.livescience.com/15866-caribbean-pirates-archaeology.html
GIANT SINE WAVE: Imagine a sine wave 400,000 km long. Today, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is monitoring just such a structure. It’s an enormous filament of magnetism slithering over the sun’s northeastern limb:
One of the wave troughs appears to be passing through the core of sunspot1283. If so, an eruption of the sunspot could have an interesting ripple effect on the greater filament, perhaps even causing it to collapse.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence ceased to collect UFO reports as of December 2009, because, as they put it, “…in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom.” However, the UFO files being released by the British National Archives contain cases that clearly should be of concern, and I am not alone in this opinion. In fact, the last batch of files includes correspondence between the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and two high level military officials who were adamant that UFO cases should be taken more seriously.
The highest ranking among those hounding the MOD about UFOs was Baron Hill-Norton, former Admiral of the Fleet (1970-71), Chief of the Defence Staff (1971-73), and head of NATO’s military committee (1974-77). Two years after his retirement in 1977, Peter Hill-Norton was made Baron and a member of the House of Lords. As you can see, Lord Hill-Norton was quite an impressive chap and known as a tough and aggressive leader. In other words, he didn’t take no crap.
At some point Lord Hill-Norton took an interest in UFOs, and was unsatisfied with the MOD claiming that they were of no concern. He badgered the MOD with questions, trying to get them to actively investigate important cases. There are over 300 pages of correspondence between Lord Hill-Norton and the MOD in the latest batch of UK UFO files.
to read more, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alejandro-rojas/uk-ufo-files-show-high-le_b_937478.html#s339987&title=Ralph_Noyes
But I bet you don’t know what it looks like in outer space.
Here are six everyday occurrences — including the boiling of water — that happen very differently in microgravity, plus explanations as to why.
