What if the Mayan Calendar is Right?
It’s become an annual tradition for my husband and me to create a calendar for an intimate group of friends. This year we decided to add an extra page. After the month of November 2012 is an illustration of the Mayan calendar with a 3-week ‘bucket list’ of things to do before the world is predicted to end on December 21st
Bicentennial of Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel; Nation's Oldest Natural History Museum
With eight books and a map of Switzerland, the founders began a library, which ranks among the world’s finest natural history libraries. Each founder also contributed a few specimens; the collections now number 17 million specimens
'Castle Doctrine' Laws Provoke Heated Debate
When Sarah Dawn McKinley, of Blanchard, Oklahoma, shot and killed a burglar breaking into her home on New Year’s Eve, she was spared prosecution by the state’s “castle doctrine” law, which protects people who defend themselves against intruders. Oklahoma has one of the nation’s most expansive castle doctrine laws
Small Worlds: Artworks That Create an Intimate Spaces
The Toledo Museum of Art challenges us to look at the world from new perspectives through its exhibition: "We may feel oversized when peering at Gregory Euclide’s miniature ecosystems, yet small and disoriented when we are surrounded by the video installation by Tabaimo"
The Strange Life of Objects: The Art of Annette Lemieux
She paints, sculpts, manipulates found photographs and objects — she’s likely to spin us via a vintage school-room globe into a polka dotted galaxy, or line up a troop of helmets on wheels like fledglings being patterned along an intractable trajectory. There is stagecraft, mime, and performance art sometimes at work.
MIT's Agnes Suit, An Instrumented Aware Car and the Miss Daisy Driving Simulator
These tools can be used to trigger driver feedback systems that are under development. Sensing systems include: six video cameras for operator monitoring, measures of vehicle velocity, lane position, radar; driver physiology issues includes heart rate, respiration rate and eye tracking
A Puzzlement
It’s hard enough, even with a determination to delve deeper, to detach the whole truth from what information is available to us about corporations, political candidates, about unfriendly nations, about allies, about governments, about our neighbors both near and far. A biographical article, for instance, may not contain a single direct lie. It also may leave out a score of relevant facts that can reverse the impression a reader gets.
Do Viewers Want to See Beautiful Politicians? Physical Attractiveness Has an Effect on TV Exposure
A study shows that physical attractiveness has an effect on television exposure: the better looking the politician, the more TV coverage he or she gains ... for every additional score on the ‘physical attractiveness index’, the politician’s television exposure rises by 11.6%.
Fed Reserve Governor Elizabeth Duke Suggests Some Some Housing Market Recovery Proposals
"Although there is no miracle cure here, these actions have the potential to help the economy recuperate more quickly than I currently expect it to, moving us closer to full employment sooner and improving the lives of many Americans."
States Struggle With National Sex Offender Law
Most states are continuing to voice their objections to what the federal law expects of them. It is expected that states will continue to press Congress for more discretion about which offenders to place on the three-tiered national registry, and for how long.
cbsphilly.com
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed a bill last month making Pennsylvania the 16th state to comply with the federal act aimed a…
Rating the Other Person's Attractiveness and Perceived Interest
In a new study that will appear in Psychological Science, men who thought of themselves as attractive overestimated a woman’s desire for them. The more attractive the woman was to the man, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest in him.
CAP's 20 New Jobs Ideas, Meeting the Jobs Challange
Launch a rehab-to-rent program to turn tens of thousands of government-owned foreclosed homes into affordable rental housing, stabilize neighborhoods, and put construction workers back on the job: 20,000 new jobs a year. Protect funding for community health centers over the next five years to provide health and related services at clinics and in the local business communities: 300,000 new jobs.
Culture Watch Reviews: P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley; Trollope's Nina Balatka
P.D. James has written not just a sequel to the action of Pride and Prejudice: she has somehow absorbed Jane Austen’s style whole. It is elegant proof that Baroness James deserves every ounce of her extraordinary literary reputation. Nina Balatka by Trollope is a welcome change of pace for most of us who aren’t ashamed to enjoy a romance, or in need of some entertaining preaching, even if it is to the choir
Eva Zeisel, The Shape of Life Exhibit: 'Look! Our dishes!'
"Eva is perhaps best known in the design world for bringing warmth and feeling to the cold formalism of Bauhaus, and what is most remarkable about her work in general is the emotional connection."
Successful Aging and Sexual Satisfaction Remains Positive in Older Women
"While we cannot assess cause and effect from this study, these results suggest that maintaining a high level of sexual satisfaction may positively reinforce other psychological aspects of successful aging.”
Rancho Bernardo Heart and Disease Study Observes 40th Year
“We studied the reasons for gender differences in heart disease and diabetes — our first questions — plus chronic arthritis, headaches, lung disease, liver disease, kidney disease, cancer, and cognitive, mental and functional health.”
Short-staffed and Budget-bare, Overwhelmed State Agencies are Unable to Keep Up
After years of budget cuts, layoffs, furloughs and hiring freezes, the everyday work of state government is piling up. This Stateline series examines what causes backlogs, who is hurt by them and how states can dig themselves out.
The Guest at the Feeder, Accompanied by Finches; Participate in the Next Great Backyard Bird Count
As the weather cools down the crowd on the feeders heats up. Often the feeders are packed with finches and sparrows but Redbird Cardinals are regular visitors and the brilliant red of the male cardinal is like a beacon on the bare branches.
Helen Frankenthaler: "For me, being a 'lady painter' was never an issue. I don’t resent being a female painter. I don’t exploit it. I paint."
"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it — well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that — there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me."
Health and Fitness: Staying Active In All Seasons and Without Spending a Dime
Go4Life exercises are designed to be done safely at home without special equipment or clothing. There's a free book as well as an exercise DVD available. Workout to Go, a mini exercise guide, shows you how you can be active anytime, anywhere.
Staying Motivated to Stay Active Be Physically Active without Spending a Dime Have Fun! Be Active with your Dog!
These are just a few of the tips sheets that adults 50 and older can read on theGo4Life website. Go4Life tip sh…
New Year's Peeve
Am I glad I didn’t live in Babylonia four thousand years ago. There the New Year celebration lasted eleven days. By the eleventh day, the Babylonians must have had prodigious hangovers. That’s not for me. It would mean missing all those great post-holiday sales.
Holidays at the White House (time lapse video)
Behind-the-Scenes Look: In 2011, more than 400 volunteers came together to help decorate the White House and assist with celebrations; Medals, badges, and patches from all of the military branches are displayed on ornaments on the tree in the Blue Room
Canine Connections, Atop a Yosemite waterfall or Peering From a Wicker Carriage
A new book from the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library gives fresh meaning to the term 'dog days' by celebrating the powerful connections between people and their canine companions. A cat version of "Everyday Dogs" already is in the works
2010 Federal Taxpayer Receipt
President Obama promised that this year, for the first time ever, American taxpayers would be able to go online and see exactly how their federal tax dollars are spent. The taxpayer receipt will give you a breakdown of how your tax dollars are spent
FactCheck.org: The Whoppers of 2011
One independent liberal group posted a widely seen Internet video of a man pushing a white-haired woman in a wheelchair to the edge of a scenic cliff and dumping her over it. It ends by asking, “Is America Beautiful without Medicare?” That bogus claim was found by our sister site, “FlackCheck.org,” to be among the “Worst of the Worst” of 2011.
