Top Ten Places Affected by Climate Change

“People who talk about the effects of global warming tend to use the future tense, as if the damage had yet to occur. If only. Even though the earth is just beginning to heat up, it’s already showing the strain.

In Darfur, a decades-long drought — triggered by a warming southern Atlantic — led to a shortage of arable land and ignited an ongoing ethnic conflict. In Washington, D.C., politicians are being forced to deal with more powerful Gulf Coast hurricanes and a flood of “environmental refugees” from equatorial countries. Meanwhile, European nations like Italy are increasingly susceptible to “tropical” diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, while the wine industry is being forced to migrate north, to Denmark and England. So garage that SUV, or brace yourself for the inevitable bottles of Chateau Liverpool.” – – VSL

http://www.sciam.com/slideshow.cfm?id=top-10-places-already-affected-by-climate-change&thumbs=horizontal&photo_id=40DF5ED1-D4FF-29D2-C64A7E706AA67373

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File Sharing Made Easy

“Drop.io is a totally free, totally private server space that allows you to upload and share documents and (unlike Google Docs) music and video files.

“Drops” can hold up to 100MB of data and come with their own e-mail addresses and fax and voice-mail numbers: Once you’ve built one, you create a password to allow others inside. Work on group projects, back up your files, or post all your holiday photos at once and shoot the URL over to your friends and family members. The best part? Unlike other file-sharing sites — YouSendIt, box.net — drop.io doesn’t ask you to register or provide an e-mail address.” – – VSL 

http://drop.io/

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The Geek Thesaurus

“Visuwords turns the dictionary into a neural network; it’s the perfect interface for writers, readers, and anyone who’s curious about the English language.

Type your word into the search bar, and watch it pop up in the center of your screen. Shooting off in all directions are other, associated words. Click on those words, and open an entirely new set of words and meanings. The site — which taps into Princeton University’s WordNet database — is the most fun we’ve had with a dictionary since looking up naughty words in grade school.” – – VSL

http://www.visuwords.com/

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NOVA….Interactive

“The producers of PBS’s best science show, NOVA, have posted an excellent gallery of online experiments: Skydive from 100,000 feet. Replicate Shackleton’s 800-mile open-boat journey from the South Shetland Islands to South Georgia. Tweak the variables in a steroid, a rice paddy, or a rocket. Perform a virtual heart transplant. You may get so caught up you never escape.

Our favorite experiment involves Bill Goldfinch — a British prisoner in a Nazi POW camp who looked out the window, saw snowflakes rising, and had an epiphany: Could he glide to freedom on the same updraft? Together with another prisoner, he constructed a false wall, then built a handmade, two-passenger glider behind it. They were almost finished when the war ended — but decades later, some of Goldfinch’s fellow POW-camp alums used his design to build and launch another glider, one that actually flew. Here you can test-fly a virtual version — and at far less risk of crash or capture than Goldfinch might have faced.” – – VSL

 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hotscience/

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Oxford, Baby!!

“Oxford’s podcast series allows you to audit courses at the English-speaking world’s oldest university — free of charge, and from afar.

Learn about quantum nanotechnology while riding the subway. Study Milton in the Laundromat. And hear the creation story as it’s described in the Torah, the Bible, and the Koran. You can also hear American economist Joseph Stiglitz’s recent talk on the credit crunch (it’s the top-ranked podcast at iTunes) and tag along with Michael Palin (Oxford ’65, Monty Python ’83) as he gives you a video tour of the university and its Bodleian Library (it’s home to 9 million items, including four Magna Cartas). Oxford has launched the careers of countless movers and shakers — including 25 prime ministers. Here’s your chance to join their ranks!” – – VSL

http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/

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Graphic Design in a Box…er…website

“MorgueFile — which provides quickly findable, high-res digital photos, free — is a graphic designer’s dream come true.

The site archives stock photographs submitted by professional and amateur shutterbugs, all of which are ready and waiting for your commercial or personal use. (N.B.: Morgue file is a newspaper term for the stock of past issues.) There’s no sign-up, no hassle, no fuss: Just take what you need and go. But the site does recommended that you credit the photographers, or be extra-polite and shoot them an e-mail. Sounds reasonable to us — if a picture’s worth a thousand words, we’ll start with “Thanks.”” – – VSL

http://www.morguefile.com/

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Spunky Language Arts Lesson….

What a great language arts lesson…..

“The Omnificent English Dictionary invites you to rewrite the definition of every single word in our language — in limerick form.

Thus far, the online database has published 48,000-plus poems (and that only takes it up to the D’s). Here’s an example sent in by frequent contributor Meg Beagle, for the definition of agasp:

 

I am, as they say, all agasp.
I ruined my Maidenform’s clasp.
Now going cold turkey,
Just one side is perky.
The other is out of my grasp.

 

Who needs a dictionary illustration after reading something like that? Limericks, of course, tend toward the racy, but the site’s keepers do trust you to stick within the boundaries of good taste. Nantucket, we’ve got our eye on you!” – – VSL

http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?Word=&button=Go

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Forvo: Speaking in Tongue

I thought this was a very cool site – – and especially for those who either want to study different languages or would like to help those who do.  In any case, I hope you at least visit the site and check ’em out!!

“Forvo’s a Web database with a single, insanely ambitious goal: to collect the proper pronunciation of every word, in every language, on the planet.

Here’s how it works: Userssubmit a word or a name they’d like to hear spoken in its native tongue. Don’t know how to say the name of the Brazilian dance xaxado? A local named Brazguy can help! And you, too, can help, by recording an mp3 and answering someone else’s query: As of this writing, there are 104,429 words in 190 languages, but only half of them have audio pronunciations. If you know how to pronounce the name of British rocker Midge Ure, please visit the site immediately — they’re in dire need of your assistance.” – – VSL

 http://forvo.com/

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Origami Art…

“A new flock of creatures has been spotted in the vicinity of Boston’s Charles River. But these are not Robert McCloskey’s beloved children’s-book ducklings, and adorable is not the word that comes to mind when you look at them. Creepy? Yes. Bizarre? Definitely. Awe-inspiring? Maybe. But certainly not cute.

The beasts are part of the Student Origami Competition, which is held each year at MIT and challenges undergrads to fashion the most whacked-out animals imaginable. It’s all in keeping with MIT’s illustrious history of fielding highly competitive tiddlywinks teams. (No, really!) Parents will just have to assume that this extracurricular activity is in no way interfering with their child’s studies. Otherwise, that $36,390 tuition check could be folded rather nicely into swans, dragons, or paper tigers of their own.” – – VSL

http://www.influks.com/post862.html

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