Month: October 2010

Bear Chasing Bison Photos

“I thought I was having a hallucination or something,” said Wypyszinski. “I couldn’t believe what that buffalo looked like.”

It was a bison, badly burned from an encounter with one of the numerous hot spots in Yellowstone National Park.

A grizzly was chasing the buffalo (which was practically cooked already) and gaining quickly.

Wypyszinski stopped his car on the desolate highway and took out his camera. “I stood along the car as long as I thought it was safe.” The two beasts passed the man by without paying any notice.

We pick our tale up where the photos end.

Wypiszinski says once in the safety of the woods the bison out maneuvered the grizzly, escaping to live exactly one more day. Park rangers had to put the bison down due to the injuries it sustained. The result: these 14 hair-raising pictures at the link below thanks to Chris Mergenthaler

via The bison got away | KTVQ.com | Q2 | Billings, Montana.

Born a Leftist

The research, based on 2,000 Americans, is published in the Journal of Politics. It found those with a strain of the DRD4 gene seek out “novelty” – such as people and lifestyles which are different to the ones they are used to. This leads them to have more liberal political opinions, it found.

The person’s age, ethnicity, gender or culture appeared to make no difference – it was the gene which counts. DRD4 is controlled by dopamine which affects the way the brain deals with emotions, pleasure and pain and can therefore influence personality traits.

UC Professor James Fowler said: “It is the crucial interaction of two factors – the genetic predisposition and the environmental condition of having many friends in adolescence – that is associated with being more liberal. “These findings suggest that political affiliation is not based solely on the kind of social environment people experience.”

via ‘Liberal gene’ discovered by scientists – Telegraph.

China Abandons The Abacus

China said today that it’s raising interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point.

That’s a big deal. China hasn’t raised interest rates since 2007, and the move is a sign of strength for China’s economy.

One interesting detail: It’s the first time in modern history that China’s central bank made an interest-rate move that wasn’t a multiple of .09.

“The reason is that on the abacus, adding multiples of nine was much easier than adding multiples of 10. So the modern People’s Bank of China inherited that special character from the old days,” an economist with Citigroup in Beijing told Reuters. Continue reading “China Abandons The Abacus”

The Rise Of Youthful Secularism

The most rapidly growing religious category today is composed of those Americans who say they have no religious affiliation. While middle-aged and older Americans continue to embrace organized religion, rapidly increasing numbers of young people are rejecting it.

As recently as 1990, all but 7% of Americans claimed a religious affiliation, a figure that had held constant for decades. Today, 17% of Americans say they have no religion, and these new “nones” are very heavily concentrated among Americans who have come of age since 1990. Between 25% and 30% of twentysomethings today say they have no religious affiliation — roughly four times higher than in any previous generation.

Sociologists Michael Hout and Claude Fischer of UC Berkeley were among the first to call attention to the ensuing rise in young “nones,” and in our recent book, “American Grace,” we have extended their analysis, showing that the association between religion and politics (and especially religion’s intolerance of homosexuality) was the single strongest factor in this portentous shift. In religious affinities, as in taste in music and preference for colas, habits formed in early adulthood tend to harden over time. So if more than one-quarter of today’s young people are setting off in adult life with no religious identification, compared with about one-20th of previous generations, the prospects for religious observance in the coming decades are substantially diminished.

via Religion, politics: Walking away from church – latimes.com.

Everyday Things Under The Electron Microscope

A wood or heathland ant, Formica fusca, holding a microchip

All these 24 pictures are from the book “Microcosmos”, created by Brandon Brill from London. This book includes many scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of insects, human body parts and household items. Click the link to see all 24 pictures.

via Really funny stuff – Amazing Scanning Electron Microscope Pictures (24 pics).

24 Perspectives On Life

1. A day without sunshine is like night.

2. On the other hand, you have different fingers.

3. 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.

4. 99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

5. Remember, half the people you know are below average.

6. He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

7. Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

8. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese in the trap. Continue reading “24 Perspectives On Life”

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