Three jokes from Osho, words of wisdom. http://amplify.com/u/k5tq

World's Largest Online Database Assembled for Plants

Amplify’d from news.discovery.com

Capping the UN's International Year of Biodiversity, botanists in Britain and the United States on Wednesday unveiled a library of plant names aimed at helping conservationists, drug designers and agriculture researchers.

The database, accessible at The Plant List, identifies 1.25 million names for plants, ranging from essential food crops such as wheat, rice and corn to garden roses and exotic jungle ferns, and provides links to published research.

The aim is to clear up a century-old taxonomic jumble in which non-standard names sowed ignorance, rivalry and sometimes damaging confusion about the world's plant wealth.

See more at news.discovery.com

 

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Ancient Bible fragments reveal a forgotten history

Jews continued to use a Greek version of the Bible in synagogues for centuries longer than previously thought.

Amplify’d from www.admin.cam.ac.uk

New research has uncovered a forgotten chapter in the history of the Bible, offering a rare glimpse of Byzantine Jewish life and culture.

The study by Cambridge University researchers suggests that, contrary to long-accepted views, Jews continued to use a Greek version of the Bible in synagogues for centuries longer than previously thought. In some places, the practice continued almost until living memory.

The key to the new discovery lay in manuscripts, some of them mere fragments, discovered in an old synagogue in Egypt and brought to Cambridge at the end of the 19th century. The so-called Cairo Genizah manuscripts have been housed ever since in Cambridge University Library.

Now, a fully searchable online corpus (http://www.gbbj.org) has gathered these manuscripts together

See more at www.admin.cam.ac.uk

 

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Everyday Canadian Hero

One of the clip and comment by @shaor3 made me clip this heart-warming story. Watch it at the source.



http://www.globalnational.com/video/index.html?releasePID=xYzhSPYw4feN2gYhdV1zLCBeH1zOFKFC

Amplify’d from www.globalnational.com

Fri, Dec 17: If you've ever had your car die on the side of a road, you know how frustrating that can be. But there is one stretch of highway in Ontario where you can count on help. Dawna Friesen reports Read more at www.globalnational.com

 

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Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

Amplify’d from www.good.is

Americans have a really distorted view of how wealth is distributed in this country.

This chart is from a paper called "Building a Better America One Wealth Quintile at a Time" by Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton.

The top row shows the actual distribution of wealth in America. The richest 20 percent, represented by that blue line, has about 85 percent of the wealth. The next richest 20 percent, represented by that red line, has about 10 percent of the wealth. And the remaining three-fifths of America shares a tiny sliver of the country's wealth.

See more at www.good.is

 

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The internet changes nothing ...

Excellent article, read at the site.

Amplify’d from www.roughtype.com

Before the Web we were already used to sitting in front of electronic boxes for hour upon hour. The boxes have now changed, but they are still boxes. Of course the things we do on the Internet are different from those we did (and do) in front of the TV. But it’s important to remember that they are only different; they are not new. Think for a moment about what you do on the Internet. Not what you could do, but what you actually do. You email people you know. In an effort to broaden your horizons, you could send email to strangers in, say, China, but you don’t. You read the news. You could read newspapers from distant lands so as to broaden your horizons, but you usually don’t. Read more at www.roughtype.com

 

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2011 Calendar – Excel Template

The source is an excellent site for Excel fans.



h/t, via Zoho forums.

Amplify’d from chandoo.org

Here is a 2011 new year gift to all our readers – a free 2011 calendar template.

See more at chandoo.org

 

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NASA's International Space Station Calendar for 2011

Amplify’d from twitter.com

» NASA NASA Need a 2011 calendar? Our International Space Station calendar celebrates 10 yrs of people living in space: http://go.nasa.gov/hO0GLF 8 hours ago Read more at twitter.com

 

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Somebody was using Computer back in the 1600s!

Amplify’d from ngrams.googlelabs.com

See more at ngrams.googlelabs.com

 

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Exhibition explores early Islamic science

Amplify’d from www.ox.ac.uk

A new exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science explores the world of early Islamic scientific instrument makers as they sought a delicate balance between function and beauty.

‘Al-Mizan: Sciences and the Arts in the Islamic World’ marks the 25th anniversary of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and is open until 20 March 2011. 'Al-Mizan' is the Arabic word for 'balance'.

For hundreds of years Arabic was the primary language of science and mathematics. Read more at www.ox.ac.uk

 

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McDonald markets its meals directly to young children violating several consumer protection laws

Oh yes they do. Try preventing the young one from getting chicken nuggets, ahem, the toy they like!

Amplify’d from www.theglobeandmail.com

The lawsuit was filed in California Superior Court in San Francisco on Wednesday.

They claim McDonald's decision to markets its meals directly to young children violates several consumer protection laws because it exploits a child's vulnerability.

San Francisco recently became the first city to prohibit fast-food restaurants from including toys with children's meals that don't met nutritional guidelines.

A similar ordinance was passed Santa Clara County. Read more at www.theglobeandmail.com

 

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What is your idea of heaven?

There is no heaven and there is no hell.  They are not geographical, they are part of your psychology. They are psychological. To live a life of spontaneity, truth, love and beauty is to be in heaven. To live a life of hypocrisy, lies and compromises, to live according to others, is to live in a hell.  To live in freedom is heaven, and to live in bondage is hell.

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Chocolate - The Bitter Truth

http://j.mp/fkdaov

Amplify’d from j.mp

See more at j.mp

 

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Chocolate - The Bitter Truth - BBC investigative documentary.http://j.mp/fzlrBuYou don't want to watch this if you like chocolate. http://amplify.com/u/idec

In Genesis, God is arguing against the powerful deities prevalent in that culture

I can agree with this particular historical premise.

Amplify’d from www.guardian.co.uk via Google Reader

In Genesis, God is alone, and the measured, ordered creation comes into existence by the sheer benevolent power of God. Sun, moon and stars, often seen in ancient cultures as powerful deities, requiring worship and propitiation, are merely among the things that God creates in Genesis, and God decides their proper role and sphere (1.14-19). In Genesis, God creates human beings with the deliberate intention of sharing the ordering of creation with them (1.26). Over and over again, Genesis emphasises the peaceful origins of the world, and its innate goodness. So the story of degeneration that follows does not reflect an eternal dualism in the cosmos between good and evil, and it does not suggest that there is anything more powerful than God at work.

So it reads as though Genesis is a deliberate challenge to the accepted understanding of the origins of the universe. Genesis is looking at what the culture around it believes about the nature and purpose of the material world, and disagreeing with it profoundly. It is not what we might call a "scientific" disagreement, in that it is not so much talking about the mechanics of how the world comes into being. Instead, it is a "theological" disagreement, which leads to a radical rethinking of what human life is for and how the human and divine realm interact. Genesis is arguing that our lives are not accidental and purposeless, that we are not helplessly caught between good and evil, that the world is not morally neutral, and that we have a role to play in it, based on our relationship with the creator. And all of that is as much a critique of the prevailing cultural assumptions of the 21st century as it was of 10th century BCE. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk

 

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The Lion of Narnia has elements of Muhammad, Buddha, all the Great Prophets and Spiritual Leaders

"But there's no mistaking that The Chronicles of Narnia has always connected with audiences in a mystical, magical way. And to whatever extent that is true with the books, I think it will be equally true with this movie."

Amplify’d from www.guardian.co.uk via Google Reader

Is the new Narnia movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, tantamount to Christian propaganda? Or is it an affront to the faithful, its makers so irreligious and "stupid" that they have destroyed the Christian thinking behind the books?

Both, if recent press reaction is to be believed. The Guardian's own Andrew Pulver noted "the sledgehammer moral lessons with nakedly religious overtones" found in "the godlike burbling of Liam Neeson, the voice of Aslan", whenever "the lion has to deliver one of his homilies".

On the flip side, Neeson remarked in a press conference last week that, in addition to Aslan's Christ-like qualities, he finds elements of "Muhammad, Buddha, all the great, great prophets and spiritual leaders that we've had over the centuries". Read more at www.guardian.co.uk

 

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