Interesting Stuff Thread

FouxDaFaFa

Apologies if this has been discissed before but this film will be coming out soon (probably on limited release) and it looks great. It's about a young Saudi girl who wants to get a bike to race her male friend on. Unfortunately, girls don't ride bikes in Saudi Arabia. Notable for having a female director also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L88YCw0bCyk

robindch

"Some African cultures" sure are missing out:

http://www.livescience.com/23500-why-men-love-breasts.html

coffee_cake

FouxDaFaFa wrote: »

Apologies if this has been discissed before but this film will be coming out soon (probably on limited release) and it looks great. It's about a young Saudi girl who wants to get a bike to race her male friend on. Unfortunately, girls don't ride bikes in Saudi Arabia. Notable for having a female director also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L88YCw0bCyk

that looks brilliant

Turtwig

Found this very interesting. It reports briefly on the studies that investigate the relationships between lung cancer and second hand smoke. It would appear that second hand smoking is more potent that I'd have thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBbQX3Rsu4o

Calibos

robindch wrote: »

"Some African cultures" sure are missing out:

http://www.livescience.com/23500-why-men-love-breasts.html

Disappointing lack of Pictorial examples to back the Hypothosis IMHO.

kiffer

Jernal wrote: »

Found this very interesting. It reports briefly on the studies that investigate the relationships between lung cancer and second hand smoke. It would appear that second hand smoking is more potent that I'd have thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBbQX3Rsu4o

It's almost like that's why we had a smoking ban!

recedite

robindch wrote: »

"Some African cultures" sure are missing out:

http://www.livescience.com/23500-why-men-love-breasts.html

Maybe it's the other cultures that are missing out
Because by the logic of that article, the women of the sexiest culture of all.... are wearing burkas.
Speaking of which, that new film really looks like a major landmark for progress in Saudi Arabia;

Wadjda, breaks down one giant cinematic barrier, marking the first feature film fully shot in Saudi Arabia in the history of film. And on top of that, its director, Haifaa Al Mansour, is a woman.

movie review

Sarky

Canadian parliament debates zombie apocalypse. Now that's the kind of country I'd feel safe in.

FouxDaFaFa

Canada is pretty great. They got rid of the penny because it makes financial sense. They have milk in bags. What more could you want?

PopePalpatine

I know a Canadian guy on a racing game forum who can't go 10 posts without mentioning Canada. :pac:

Dades

FouxDaFaFa wrote: »

They have milk in bags. What more could you want?

I really hope they're called fun bags.

ShooterSF

S glad i applied for my canadian visa now.

Mr. CooL ICE

So, meteors have hit Russia. Wasn't it a meteor that was supposed to have killed the dinosaurs? Well if multiple meteors have hit Russia and everybody is still alive, I guess that proves that dinosaurs didn't walk the earth and that earth is 6,000 years old.

Creationism 1, Atheists 0

robindch

HuffPo announces that A+A won't be needed by 2038:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nigel-barber/atheism-to-defeat-religion-by-2038_b_1565108.html

HuffPo wrote:

Countries with the best standard of living are turning atheist. That shift offers a glimpse into the world's future. Religious people are annoyed by claims that belief in God will go the way of horse transportation, and for much the same reason, specifically an improved standard of living.

The view that religious belief will give way to atheism is known as the secularization thesis. The specific version that I favor (1) is known as the existential security hypothesis. The basic idea is that as people become more affluent, they are less worried about lacking for basic necessities, or dying early from violence or disease. In other words they are secure in their own existence. They do not feel the need to appeal to supernatural entities to calm their fears and insecurities.

The notion that improving living conditions are associated with a decline in religion is supported by a mountain of evidence (1,2,3). That does not prevent some serious scholars, like political scientist Eric Kaufmann (4), from making the opposite case that religious fundamentalists will outbreed the rest of us. Yet, noisy as they can be, such groups are tiny minorities of the global population and they will become even more marginalized as global prosperity increases and standards of living improve.

Moreover, as religious fundamentalists become economically integrated, young women go to work and produce smaller families, as is currently happening for Utah's Mormons. The most obvious approach to estimating when the world will switch over to being majority atheist is based on economic growth. This is logical because economic development is the key factor responsible for secularization. In deriving this estimate, I used the nine most godless countries as my touchstone (excluding Estonia as a formerly communist country).

The countries were Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. These nine countries averaged out at the atheist transition in 2004 (5) with exactly half of the populations disbelieving in God. Their gross domestic product (GDP) averaged $29,822 compared to $10,855 for the average country in the world. How long will it take before the world economy has expanded sufficiently that the GDP of the average country has caught up to the average for the godless countries in 2004?

Using the average global growth rate of GDP for the past 30 years of 3.33 percent (based on International Monetary Fund data from their website), the atheist transition would occur in 2035. Belief in God is not the only relevant measure of religion, of course. A person might believe in God in a fairly superficial way without religion affecting his or her daily life. One way of assessing the depth of religious commitment is to ask survey participants whether they think that religion is important in their daily lives as the Gallup Organization has done in worldwide nationally representative surveys.

If fewer than 50 percent of the population agreed that religion was important to them, then the country has effectively crossed over to a secular majority. The godless countries by religiosity were Spain, South Korea, Canada, Switzerland, Uruguay, Germany and France. At a growth rate of 3.33 percent per year it would be 2041 before the average country in the world would be at an equivalent level of affluence as these godless nations. If national wealth drives secularization, the global population will cross an atheist threshold where the majority see religion as unimportant by 2041.

Averaging across the two measures of atheism, the entire world population would cross the atheist threshold by about 2038 (average of 2035 for disbelief and 2041 for religiosity). Although 2038 may seem improbably fast, this requires only a shift of approximately 1 percent per year whether in religiosity or belief in God. Using the Human Development Index as a clock suggests an even earlier arrival for the atheist transition (1).

Is the loss of religious belief something fear? Contrary to the claims of religious leaders, Godless countries are highly moral nations with an unusual level of social trust, economic equality, low crime and a high level of civic engagement (5). We could do with some of that.

Just Like Heaven

People living in Ireland prioritise education above all else, are most unhappy with the country’s health services, and rank religion and spirituality as the least important thing in their lives, according to a new study.

http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_articles/2013/1/25/ireland-puts-its-faith-in-education-not-religion?category=Education

Corkfeen

Coolest self portrait ever! T'is Wall-E.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16764.html

Turtwig

Corkfeen wrote: »

Coolest self portrait ever! T'is Wall-E.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/725557main_pia16764-43_946-710.jpg
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16764.html

^ ^ ^

Mark Hamill

I had this on my facebook for a day before my brother rings me and asks where he can get it. He wants to waterproof his raingear for when he golfs :pac:

The Black Oil

Is this new Gardai, or Garda Reserves being sworn in...Bible at the start, think the constitution is in some hands, too. Maybe they've a choice.

http://bcove.me/2jt2pkpf

Dades

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I had this on my facebook for a day before my brother rings me and asks where he can get it. He wants to waterproof his raingear for when he golfs :pac:

That stuff is f*cking awesome!

I wonder if it can be used on car bodywork?

joseph brand

Dades wrote: »

That stuff is f*cking awesome!

I wonder if it can be used on car bodywork?

If The Diceman was still around he could coat himself in the stuff and freak the sh1t out of people on Grafton St, on a rainy day.

I wonder what would happen if he was then dropped into the sea. Would be head straight for the bottom?

Hotblack Desiato

joseph brand wrote: »

I wonder what would happen if he was then dropped into the sea. Would be head straight for the bottom?

No, he'd float higher than he otherwise would

Hotblack Desiato

The Black Oil wrote: »

Is this new Gardai, or Garda Reserves being sworn in...Bible at the start, think the constitution is in some hands, too. Maybe they've a choice.

http://bcove.me/2jt2pkpf

I saw that pic on the front of the (dead tree) Irish Times today and the headline was below the fold. Thought it was some US bunch of fundies...

That is just f*king unacceptable in what is supposed to be a secular republic :mad:

Gardai are not allowed to express allegiance to a political party, but on finishing their training they express their allegiance to a religion? WTF??

If they want something to swear on how about a bound copy of our Constitution.

Andrewf20

30 Renowned Writers Speaking About God - Arthur C Clarke, Terry Pratchett, Gore Vidal etc. Interesting what they have to say...

joseph brand

Gbear

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I had this on my facebook for a day before my brother rings me and asks where he can get it. He wants to waterproof his raingear for when he golfs :pac:

Wouldn't be surprised to see that sort of thing rolled out for car windscreens. Renders windscreen wipers redundant.
You could put it on rear view mirrors or door windows as well.
Presumably it'd also stop ice forming on your windows and maybe it'd avoid them fogging up as well.


You never seem to see that sort of thing in Sci-fi. It's just too weird to have even contemplated a few decades ago.

joseph brand

Rise of campus secular group groups.

Secular groups on college campuses are proliferating. The Ohio-based Secular Student Alliance, which a USA Today writer once called a “Godless Campus Crusade for Christ,” incorporated as a nonprofit in 2001. By 2007, 80 campus groups had affiliated with them, 100 by 2008, 174 by 2009, and today there are 394 SSA student groups on campuses across the country. “We have been seeing rapid growth in the past couple of years, and it shows no sign of slowing down,” says Jesse Galef, communications director at SSA. “It used to be that we would go to campuses and encourage students to pass out flyers. Now, the students are coming to us almost faster than we can keep up with.”

Oddly enough, in the geography of on-campus student groups, atheist organizations fit within the category of faith-based groups like the Campus Crusade For Christ, which recently (and controversially) changed its name to Cru. At Stanford University, the Atheists, Humanists and Agnostics (AHA!) register with the Office For Religious Life, just like Cru, and are a member of Stanford Associated Religions.
“There are a lot of parallels with religious groups on campus,” says Ron Sanders, Cru’s missional team leader at Stanford.
“They have weekly meetings similar to ours, and give one another support, and they do social justice projects on campus and in the communities… I don’t know that they aren't a faith group. They don’t have a faith in God, or in revelation or something like that, but they have faith in reason and in science, as I understand it, as a guide for human flourishing.”

Atheists have faith? I think he's conflating the belief in a parted sea and a bearded man in the sky (who's also everywhere) with the belief/ knowledge that electrickery and gravity exist.

Good news all the same.

joseph brand

Cosmos may be 'inherently unstable'.

Scientists say they may be able to determine the eventual fate of the cosmos as they probe the properties of the Higgs boson.

A concept known as vacuum instability could result, billions of years from now, in a new universe opening up in the present one and replacing it.

"If you use all the physics we know now, and you do this straightforward calculation - it's bad news.

"What happens is you get just a quantum fluctuation that makes a tiny bubble of the vacuum the Universe really wants to be in. And because it's a lower-energy state, this bubble will then expand, basically at the speed of light, and sweep everything before it," the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory theoretician told BBC News.

It was not something we need worry about, he said. The Sun and the Earth will be long gone by this time.

If the calculation on vacuum instability stands up, it will revive an old idea that the Big Bang Universe we observe today is just the latest version in a permanent cycle of events.

"I think that idea is getting more and more traction," said Dr Lykken.

"It's much easier to explain a lot of things if what we see is a cycle. If I were to bet my own money on it, I'd bet the cyclic idea is right," he told BBC News.

QI.

Even the whole Universe re-cycles.

Genghiz Cohen

joseph brand wrote: »

Cosmos may be 'inherently unstable'.



QI.

Even the whole Universe re-cycles.

So... it doesn't matter if I don't separate my plastics?

Dades

joseph brand wrote: »

BBC wrote:

If the calculation on vacuum instability stands up, it will revive an old idea that the Big Bang Universe we observe today is just the latest version in a permanent cycle of events.

Yes, but who started the permanent cycle of events, eh?