Sonic 15G

incidentalcomics: Paths to Success

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:59:27 +0700

Paths to Success

like pulling teeth: 18.

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:58:26 +0700

I eat fruit
in the hopes that it will blossom in me.
My mother used to tell me
“Don’t eat the seeds, they’ll grow
watermelons in your stomach,”
and I’d save them for last,
swallow them like medicine or communion
and wait to be overgrown and wild,
to wake up with vines resting gently…

crownedrose: Dinosaurs grew to outpace their youngAncient...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:57:22 +0700

crownedrose:

Dinosaurs grew to outpace their young
Ancient reptiles owed huge size more to their eggs than to a benign environment.

Some dinosaurs grew to gigantic sizes to avoid competition from their own young, rather than to take advantage of abundant oxygen, high temperatures and large territorial ranges, say two studies. But their largeness may also have proved their undoing.

Some have argued that dinosaurs were able to grow quickly and fuel large bodies when temperatures were warm, oxygen levels were high, and land masses such as the supercontinent Gondwana provided abundant living space.

But although the idea that certain environmental conditions favoured the growth of enormous dinosaurs has been popular among palaeontologists, there is little evidence for it.

Friendly environment: To see whether the link could be supported, Roland Sookias, a biologist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany, and his colleagues examined whether changes in body size followed changes in environmental factors. Their findings are published in Biology Letters today ¹.

The team used thigh-bone lengths to work out the body sizes of more than 400 species alive during the Permian, Triassic and Jurassic periods (299 million to 145 million years ago). This included dinosaurs and their predecessors, as well as contemporaries such as flying pterosaurs and the ancestors of mammals.

Continue reading at Nature

Interesting read! Dinosaur growth is a topic I’ve always enjoyed, especially when it comes to how fast they would grow. A nice read for anyone interested.

brilliantbotany: This is the Indian Pipe plant, an...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:53:51 +0700

brilliantbotany:

This is the Indian Pipe plant, an eerie-looking plant, in my opinion. Monotropa uniflora is a heterotroph. That means that it doesn’t photosynthesize. Instead, it’s a parasitic plant that relies on mycorrhizal fungi for its nutrients.
Why is it white? No chlorophyll, no green.
It’s also known as the Ghost Plant, and the Corpse Plant.

fuckyeahspaceexploration: Repair

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:51:39 +0700

fuckyeahspaceexploration:

Repair

Photo

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:51:29 +0700

theatlantic: 10 Things You Should Know About Hitler:...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:50:24 +0700

theatlantic:

10 Things You Should Know About Hitler: Predictions From The Atlantic in 1932

In 1932, Hitler had not yet taken power in Germany. But he was close.

What would happen to Germany if the Nazis were to rule? That was a question that had a surprisingly easy answer. In the March issue of The Atlantic, Nicolas Fairweather wrote “Hitler and Hitlerism: A Man of Destiny.” In it, he analyzed Hitler and his philosophy, as derived from a reading of Mein Kampf, “to foreshadow, from [Hitler’s] own statements, some of the things he would like to accomplish.” Journalists, at times, can be horrible predictors of the future. But in this case, Fairweather’s assessment was a sound alarm. He summarizes Hitler in 10 points:

1. His violent racial nationalism, which springs from his conviction that the Aryan stocks in general, and the Germans in particular, are a chosen people in whose victorious survival the divine purposes are bound up.

2. His violent animosity to Marxian Socialism as in essence opposed to his ideal of a nationally minded people and a racial state. …

3. His violent hatred of the Jews as the racial enemies of all Aryans, the subtle corrupters of pure Aryan states. These parasites, says Hitler, have made Marxian Socialism, which they invented, the principal tool by which they insinuate themselves into healthy, pure blooded, racial states in order to debase simultaneously the national ideals and the national blood. Destroyers of Aryan civilizations, they remain impotent to create a civilization of their own.

Read more. [Image: AP]

Soulmate

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:49:39 +0700

i—am—a—writer:

Embed me into your skin-
let me be the tattoo etched on your arm
& I promise-
I’ll purse our memories
between your skin cells

& not even the rain-
will have enough strength
to wash me (/our memories)
away from you-
not even if it tried it’s hardest.

(I’ll always be there.
Always.
Forever & ever, remember?)

Photo

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:48:10 +0700

inothernews: Except for the rings of Saturn, the Ring Nebula...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:47:49 +0700

inothernews:

Except for the rings of Saturn, the Ring Nebula (M57) is probably the most famous celestial band. Its classic appearance is understood to be due to perspective - our view from planet Earth looks down the center of a roughly barrel-shaped cloud of glowing gas. But expansive looping structures are seen to extend far beyond the Ring Nebula’s familiar central regions in this intriguing composite of ground based and Hubble Space Telescope images with narrowband image data from Subaru. Of course, in this well-studied example of a planetary nebula, the glowing material does not come from planets. Instead, the gaseous shroud represents outer layers expelled from the dying, once sun-like star at the nebula’s center. Intense ultraviolet light from the hot central star ionizes atoms in the gas. Ionized oxygen atoms produce the characteristic greenish glow and ionized hydrogen the prominent red emission. The central ring of the Ring Nebula is about one light-year across and 2,000 light-years away. (Photo and caption via NASA APOD)

lypeach: Grotto in an iceberg, photographed during the British...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:46:47 +0700

lypeach:

Grotto in an iceberg, photographed during the British Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1913, 5 Jan 1911 by National Library NZ on The Commons on Flickr.

Crowded!

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:25:07 +0700

Crowded!

science: Astronaut Ron Garan did an AMA on reddit. This photo...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:17:24 +0700

science:

Astronaut Ron Garan did an AMA on reddit. This photo was his reply when asked, “Have you seen anything when looking down on earth or into space that has you completely awed that is captured in your memory for the rest of your life?” It’s the illuminated border between India and Pakistan, as seen from the International Space Station.

Realizing what this picture depicted had a big impact on me. When viewed from space, Earth almost always looks beautiful and peaceful. However, this picture is an example of man-made changes to the landscape in response to a threat, clearly visible from space. This was a big surprise to me. (…)

The point is not that we can look down at the Earth and see a man-made border between India and Pakistan. The point is that we can look down at that same area and feel empathy for the struggles that all people face. We can look down and realize that we are all riding through the Universe together on this spaceship we call Earth, that we are all interconnected, that we are all in this together, that we are all family.

futurejournalismproject: The Internet’s Population Doubled Over...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 11:54:06 +0700

futurejournalismproject:

The Internet’s Population Doubled Over the Last Five Years

Royal Pingdom susses out some interesting trends about the world’s 2.27 billion Internet users:

Africa has gone from 34 million to 140 million, a 317% increase.

Asia has gone from 418 million to over 1 billion, a 143% increase.

Europe has gone from 322 million to 501 million, a 56% increase.

The Middle East has gone from 20 to 77 million, a 294% increase.

North America has gone from 233 to 273 million, a 17% increase.

Latin America (South & Central America) has gone from 110 to 236 million, a 114% increase.

Oceania (including Australia) has gone from 19 to 24 million, a 27% increase.

They also note that Asia’s Internet population is almost as large* the entire Internet population was in 2007.

*My original post stated that Asia’s Internet population was almost double, not almost as large. Thanks to Anna for catching that.

Brand New!

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 11:47:38 +0700

Hello, SONICers! This is our new website class. HAHAHA :D

WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 11:42:04 +0700

KORPRI SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL BEKASI, INDONESIA.

This is our class picture, SONIC made by Akmal.

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 11:30:00 +0700

This is our class picture, SONIC made by Akmal.

Begun from our beloved school’s picture!

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 11:26:00 +0700

Begun from our beloved school’s picture!