violetplanet

In her new book, Knocking on Heaven's Door, Harvard University theorist Lisa Randall explores how physics may transform our understanding of the fundamental nature of the world. She thinks an extra dimension may exist close to our familiar reality, hidden except for a bizarre sapping of the strength of gravity as we see it. She also ponders the makeup of dark matter, unseen particles that have shaped the growth of the entire cosmos. These ideas, once the sole province of fiction writers, face... Read Full Story

Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth.” -Lynn Margulis, What Is Life?    Biologist Lynn Margulis died on November 22nd. She stood out from her colleagues in that she would have extended evolutionary studies nearly four billion years back in time. Her major work was  in cell evolution, in which the great event was the appearance of the eukaryotic, or nucleated, cell — the cell upon which... Read Full Story

"The past is but the past of a beginning." -H. G. Wells  DEEP in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream.  At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators.  But, according to a growing band of top scientists... Read Full Story

  EXCERPT – “Why I am not a Christian:” The Emotional Factor “As I said before, I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it. You know, of course, the parody of that argument in Samuel Butler's book, Erewhon Revisited. You will remember that in... Read Full Story

”A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.”  -Samuel Johnson A CONVERSATION: between Samuel Johnson & James Boswell, 1778: Boswell: We must be contented to acknowledge that death is a terrible thing. Johnson: Yes, sir. I have made no approaches to a state which can look on it as not terrible.                                                                                                                                                   Mrs. Knowles... Read Full Story

“Despair has its own calms.”  -Bram Stoker. “I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.” - Bram Stoker. THE private journal of Dracula creator Bram Stoker has been found after  lying undiscovered on his great-grandson's bookshelf in England... Read Full Story

ANONYMOUS SPEAKS: "Weaving soldiers come not here." -  On Bohemian Grove Logo.  The hackers’ collective Anonymous may have  obtained “literally explosive” information concerning Bohemian Grove, an annual  gathering of power brokers from the US and Europe set to meet this week in  California, which many see as a nefarious avenue through which elitists secretly manipulate world affairs. Bohemian Grove is a privately owned 2,700 acre  compound in Monte Rio, California surrounded by... Read Full Story

“The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.” -J. Robert Oppenheimer "The 2053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 are plotted visually and audibly on a world map. As the video starts out detonations are few and far between. The first three detonations represent the Manhattan Project and the two bombs that ended World War II. After a few representative minutes the USSR and Britain enter the nuclear club and the... Read Full Story

“Great liars are also great magicians" -Adolf Hitler "Shortly before his death, Marlon Brando was working on a series of instructional videos about acting, to be called “Lying for a Living”. On the surviving footage, Brando can be seen dispensing gnomic advice on his craft to a group of enthusiastic, if somewhat bemused, Hollywood stars, including Leonardo Di Caprio and Sean Penn. Brando also recruited random people from the Los Angeles street and persuaded them to improvise (the footage is... Read Full Story

We used to think agriculture gave rise to cities and later to writing, art, and religion. Now the world’s oldest temple suggests the urge to worship sparked civilization." "Dozens of massive stone pillars arranged into a set of rings, one mashed up against the next. Known as  (pronounced Guh-behk-LEE TEH-peh), the site is vaguely reminiscent of Stonehenge, except that Göbekli Tepe was built much earlier and is made not from roughly hewn blocks but from cleanly carved limestone pillars... Read Full Story