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House Girds For Second Try on Financial Rescue more similar news »
House members are getting another chance to vote on a bill many would like to avoid: a massive financial rescue that has infuriated millions but is being promoted as critically needed to stave off a deep recession. It comes back to the House loaded with billions of dollars worth of tax cuts and other sweeteners added by Senators who passed their version in a 74-25 vote late Wednesday.
Wired.com
Thu Oct 02, 2008 more from this source»»
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The Telescope: 400 Years and Counting more similar news »
Quick -- name the invention that has done most to redefine our place in the universe.
Hint: This invention was also the most seditious, blasphemous instrument of all time, shaking the very foundations of society.
The answer, if you haven't already guessed it, is the telescope. It's hard to believe that this instrument, often sold as a cheesy toy in gift shops, is perhaps the single most important scientific instrument of all time.
Now that the telescope is celebrating its 400th anniversary, it's a good time to take stock of this marvelous invention.
For 99.9 percent of human history, most people held a Neolithic viewpoint of our world. It was a natural viewpoint: All our senses scream out to us that Earth is the center of the universe, and everything revolves around us. It's also a comforting point of view, since it means that we stand at the very center of God's creation.
Once in a while, scientists challenged this viewpoint -- the Greeks even calculated the size of the Earth around 200 B.C. -- but for the most part, it stuck around, largely because it dovetailed with powerful religious interests.
The invention of the telescope dealt a deathblow to that Earth-centric cosmology.
In antiquity, it was known to glassblowers that, while making stained glass, spherical blobs of glass could magnify images. But it took centuries for anyone to make the inventive leap of assembling two lenses into a telescope.
Most reliable accounts place the...
Wired.com
Thu Oct 02, 2008 more from this source»»
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Security Matters: The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Terrorists more similar news »
Most counterterrorism policies fail, not because of tactical problems, but because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates terrorists in the first place. If we're ever going to defeat terrorism, we need to understand what drives people to become terrorists in the first place.
Conventional wisdom holds that terrorism is inherently political, and that people become terrorists for political reasons. This is the "strategic" model of terrorism, and it's basically an economic model. It posits that people resort to terrorism when they believe -- rightly or wrongly -- that terrorism is worth it; that is, when they believe the political gains of terrorism minus the political costs are greater than if they engaged in some other, more peaceful form of protest. It's assumed, for example, that people join Hamas to achieve a Palestinian state; that people join the PKK to attain a Kurdish national homeland; and that people join al-Qaida to, among other things, get the United States out of the Persian Gulf.
If you believe this model, the way to fight terrorism is to change that equation, and that's what most experts advocate. Governments tend to minimize the political gains of terrorism through a no-concessions policy; the international community tends to recommend reducing the political grievances of terrorists via appeasement, in hopes of getting them to renounce violence. Both advocate policies to provide effective nonviolent alternatives, like free...
Wired.com
Thu Oct 02, 2008 more from this source»»
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Gallery: Giants of Earth and Space more similar news »
: Photo courtesy H. Raab
On Oct. 2, 1608, officials in the Netherlands pondered over a patent application. It was submitted by spectacle-maker Hans Lippershey for a "device by means of which all things at a very great distance can be seen as if they were nearby." This is the earliest known record of a telescope. A few months later, scientist Galileo Galilei would get his hands on one.
Initially telescopes were simple, handheld gadgets made by combining a few small lenses of ground glass, housed in tubes of wood about as long as a man's arm. But now, 400 years later, the world's largest telescopes require footholds on great mountains and tons of iron and steel to support the giant mirrors that allow scientists to see astoundingly vast distances across space.
In a speech to astronomers in June 2008, author Dava Sobel asserted that looking through telescopes is some of the finest work that humans do as a species. Here's a glimpse at that work, with a few images produced by the ten largest ground-based optical telescopes.
You can also send us your own photos taken of or through telescopes.
Gran Telescopio Canarias
Currently, the largest ground-based telescope is the Gran Telescopio Canarias, or GTC, located on one of the Canary Islands, La Palma, home to several telescopes. GTC has a 10.4-meter mirror, formed by 36 custom-made hexagonal components, each engineered to within a millimeter to fit together perfectly. To tell them apart during construction, each segment was...
Wired.com
Thu Oct 02, 2008 more from this source»»
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A Simple Plan to ID Every Creature on Earth more similar news »
The utopian lepidopterist holds a pin in each hand. His style is ambidextrous and probably unique. He catches two forewings of a dead moth simultaneously and pins them to his drying board, and then, in a continuous sweep, he does the same with the hind wings. He repeats these motions again and again, like a conductor with tiny batons. Outside, it is hot and bright. Inside, it is hot and dark. The lepidopterist, whose name is Dan Janzen, has been working here in this Costa Rican forest for more than 40 years. He is married to his research partner, Winnie Hallwachs, and the two of them occupy a small house with a roof of corrugated metal whose eaves cast deep shade. During the day they work under artificial light. At night bats flit through the gaps at the top of the wall, do hairpin turns in the air, and exit again without slowing. The utopian lepidopterist's aim is to put names on all the moths and butterflies in the forest. He wants to know more than just the names, of course; he wants to know who lives where and who eats whom and to unravel the mysteries of the ecosystem. But his first question is always the most basic one. This moth, here on the drying board: What is it called?
All over the world, farmers, port inspectors, game wardens, exterminators, building contractors, and, of course, professional biologists are staring at some form of plant or animal life and wondering helplessly what it is. Matching living things to their names is so notoriously difficult that the...
Wired.com
Thu Oct 02, 2008 more from this source»»
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Show Us Your Favorite Telescope Photos more similar news »
In honor of the telescope's 400th anniversary, we here at Wired.com want to see your favorite telescope photo. Whether it's constellations, your telescope from home or a giant observatory you visited last summer, show us your best tribute to this epic invention.
Use the Reddit widget below to submit your favorite telescopes photo and vote for your favorite among the other submissions.
Please tell us who to credit the image to and submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your photo, which may include exposure information, equipment used, etc.
We don't host the photos, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. Using an online photo service that requires that you login will not work. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).
Please bookmark this page and check back periodically over the next two weeks to vote on new submissions!
Vote on telescopes photos submitted by other readers.
Show entries that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your telescopes photo.
Submit your telescopes photo.
(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)
...
Wired.com
Thu Oct 02, 2008 more from this source»»
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How to Stop a Fixed-Gear Bicycle more similar news »
Fixed-gear bikes may be all the rage, but your traditional "fixie" is
missing a component most cyclists take for granted -- a mechanical braking
mechanism. Stopping a bike with no brakes takes strong knees and heaps of
practice. Here's how to get started. Got extra advice? Share your knowledge
at Wired.com's How-to Wiki.
Wired.com
Wed Oct 01, 2008 more from this source»»
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Apple Abandons iPhone Developer NDA more similar news »
Apple has lifted the nondisclosure agreement attached to the iPhone developer's kit. Software developers building apps for the iPhone -- who had previously been forbidden from discussing the inner workings of their creations -- are now free to talk about their code, collaborate with one another and share knowledge publicly.
Wired.com
Wed Oct 01, 2008 more from this source»»
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