Find similarities to other human languages? That's incredibly obtuse. Human languages have innate similarities and they're all produced by human vocal anatomy. It's unlikely that an alien species would have evolved to make sounds even as comprehensible to us as dolphins or whales make. And to expect any structural similarity, much less any common root words from a species that evolved on another world seems unlikely in the extreme.
Y' betcha! Golly, I'm sure that Palin has spent a lot of time on Little Diomede just waitin' for Putin to rear his head and come into her airspace! She has a very big airspace, so there ya go!
Suction? Since when did an open pit mine have "suction"? The Bingham Canyon copper mine here in Utah is over 1.2 km deep and 4 km wide. I bet our mine sucks more than the Siberian's.
Darwin merely observed what mankind had been doing with plant an animal species for thousands of years. Artificial selective breeding is responsible for the vast majority of our food and many of our pets.
It wasn't called "eugenics" but slave owners in so-called "Christian" nations practiced selective breeding to enhance the performance of their captives. The Nazis were as much Crusaders as eugenicists. It's not a matter of belief that selective breeding can be used to propagate traits you consider desireable, it's a fact. What's immoral is when you deem yourself superior in religion, culture and physical attributes to other human beings and you use force to achieve your non-scientific non-rational ideals.
Evolution tells us that variety is necessary for the long term survival of species, and it also tells us that our notions of "race" are a fiction when you discard superficial features and look at our genetic makeup. This is fact, not belief. "Belief" in evolution is like belief in gravity. You can use your understanding of gravity to make missiles and bombs kill with accuracty, but that doesn't make an understanding of gravity immoral. Morality is a human construct, and the golden rule is a great concept to guide a social species - especially a species with the technology to destroy the planet.
Hey Neatorama, how is this topic "neat"? I look to this blog as a nice diversion, not a place for heated discussions.
Even a fisheye lens at the opposite end of the superwide to super tele spectrum lets you take a clear picture of an object a mile away, even something really far away like the Moon. This article reminds me of the silly question I get often using any larger lens; "How far can you see with that lens?"
The fact is, that big-ass Canon lens isn't very powerful compared to a cheap telescope. The reason this Canon lens huge is its light-gathering power, not its telephoto power. This lens isn't especially powerful (1200mm on 35mm is only a modest 24 power - you can get binoculars and spotting scopes and cheap telescopes with more magnification) it's that it's bright. It's the f/5.6 aperture that makes this lens so big. You can buy a 1000mm f/11 mirror lens that will get you 20X magification on 35mm for about $500. That lens is only 8" long and weighs under 4 lbs. You could easily mount an SLR camera to a modest telescope and get over 3000mm tele - but you'd have very little light to make your exposures.
This bigass expensive lens is neat, it's just neat for reasons few folks will appreciate.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I don't think it's unfair at all to dismiss this device as a probable hoax or at best a device that has misleading operation that has nothing to do with rewriting physics. If something amazing proves out of this story (still waiting on cold fusion fans to deliver the goods) then I'd love to see it.
I can fake all sorts of things that may appear to be "neat", but that doesn't make them deserving of attention. There's nothing wrong with approaching this stuff with skepticism, and factual explanations aren't any less surprising nor do they make the universe any less mysterious and amazing. Don't pretend to be open-minded and then ask others to get lost.
Yeah, the "prey" comment got my attention too. I have a photo somewhere in my slide collection of an albino squirrel in a Salt Lake City park. Maybe urban albino squirrels don't have to worry so much about predators - any more than white cats and small dogs.
I see lots of potential beyond the fake stock photo family. Imagine the fetish images you could wrap yourself in on a cold winter's night.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction_grating
It wasn't called "eugenics" but slave owners in so-called "Christian" nations practiced selective breeding to enhance the performance of their captives. The Nazis were as much Crusaders as eugenicists. It's not a matter of belief that selective breeding can be used to propagate traits you consider desireable, it's a fact. What's immoral is when you deem yourself superior in religion, culture and physical attributes to other human beings and you use force to achieve your non-scientific non-rational ideals.
Evolution tells us that variety is necessary for the long term survival of species, and it also tells us that our notions of "race" are a fiction when you discard superficial features and look at our genetic makeup. This is fact, not belief. "Belief" in evolution is like belief in gravity. You can use your understanding of gravity to make missiles and bombs kill with accuracty, but that doesn't make an understanding of gravity immoral. Morality is a human construct, and the golden rule is a great concept to guide a social species - especially a species with the technology to destroy the planet.
Hey Neatorama, how is this topic "neat"? I look to this blog as a nice diversion, not a place for heated discussions.
The fact is, that big-ass Canon lens isn't very powerful compared to a cheap telescope. The reason this Canon lens huge is its light-gathering power, not its telephoto power. This lens isn't especially powerful (1200mm on 35mm is only a modest 24 power - you can get binoculars and spotting scopes and cheap telescopes with more magnification) it's that it's bright. It's the f/5.6 aperture that makes this lens so big. You can buy a 1000mm f/11 mirror lens that will get you 20X magification on 35mm for about $500. That lens is only 8" long and weighs under 4 lbs. You could easily mount an SLR camera to a modest telescope and get over 3000mm tele - but you'd have very little light to make your exposures.
This bigass expensive lens is neat, it's just neat for reasons few folks will appreciate.
I can fake all sorts of things that may appear to be "neat", but that doesn't make them deserving of attention. There's nothing wrong with approaching this stuff with skepticism, and factual explanations aren't any less surprising nor do they make the universe any less mysterious and amazing. Don't pretend to be open-minded and then ask others to get lost.