Well, Why WOW?
We think WOW is often an appropriate response to life. Maybe you are like us; every now and then, you see things that just make you want to say 'Wow', sometimes said excitedly and flushed with optimism, sometimes said slowly and sadly in disbelief. Just for grins, we wanted to make WOW an acronym for some phrase; in our opinion, there are three categories of articles and opinion pieces that fit that abbreviation and this page.
WOW:World Of Wonders - This category is positioned as an upbeat view of the many marvelous things that are happening, many of which are not considered 'news' by the traditional media.
WOW:Weird Old World - This category is easy to populate---need we elaborate?
WOW:World Of [the] Web - This category tries to convey how the World Wide Web is changing our lives; special emphasis is given to social networks and amplification of the power of individuals.
Presented for your titillation, consternation and information are tidbits from around the world, and other eras. For anyone who has an inkling of what's going on in this world, it is hard to be bored for long. May this information 'inkle' you, not 'rankle' you.
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| New form factors for prosaic technologies Cell Phone Projectors and Touchscreen Coffee Tables are two of the products generated by the fertile minds of entrepreneurs. |
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| Is Appendicitis a form of Auto-immune disease? The Hygiene Hypothesis suggests that lack of exposure to germs at a formative age causes health problems down the road, as the body does not react appropriately to relatively innocuous agents. A recent interview on NPR suggests that appendicitis may be a similar reaction, where the body's immune system, confused by this syndrome, starts attacking material in the appendix, causing the malady. Eat a peck of dirt, folks! |
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| That bottled water is usually no better than your tap water! (Well, at least not much better.) Mainstream (pun intended) water bottlers use municipal water sources, while subjecting the water to much more filtering. Take the hint and just get yourself a filter and save money. The inhouse filter will pay for itself easily within a year. Related: If you want to minimize your exposure to chlorine-laden water, consider that a shower or bath exposes the millions of pores in your entire body surface to that water. If you're going to filter your water, don't forget the shower head and bath spigot! | ||
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| Enfield Poltergeist story in England still chills after 30 years You might dismiss it entirely, but the part about 'Bill' some 30 minutes into the show is pretty interesting. |
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| Thai food causes terrorist alert panic in London |
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| Remarkable stories of frogs/toads found within solid rock It's hard to know what to make of these stories; read, and conclude for yourself. Some can always come up with refutations of ALL odd phenomena, while others can at least on occasion feel a renewed sense of wonder at our weird world. |
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| How about riding around in the Chernobyl area on your motorcycle? Some might think it weird, but 'Kid of Speed' thinks it's no big deal. You decide. | ||
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| Free, Shareable Scientific Research The Public Library of Science publishes "peer-reviewed, open access scientific and medical journals that include original research as well as timely feature articles. All PLoS articles are immediately freely accessible online, are deposited in the free public archive PubMed Central, and can be redistributed and reused according to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License " If you are trying to put together a web site that has original, cutting edge strong scientific content, visit this site. |
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| Charity Focus is an experiment in the joy of giving, and the leveraging of good will volunteers and technology toward pursuit of noble ends. From their web site: "CharityFocus has partnered with hundreds of small nonprofit organizations... to build custom web-solutions. CharityFocus' unique model enables volunteers to deploy a broad array of expertise to help NPOs better deliver services to their beneficiaries and more effectively reach their target audience. CharityFocus is completely volunteer run, and the services of its volunteers are absolutely free." |
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| A 'Zagats' for Web sites McAfee SiteAdvisor is a feature of their virus- and spam-protection software. You can join other reviewers and add your opinions about web sites to warn fellow users. |
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| Child Sacrifice hundreds of years ago in the Andes A museum in Argentina, much against the wishes of local indigenous descendants of the Incas, has one of three child sacrifice victims in a display case. Modern forensics were able to determine that she had been given alcohol to help put her to sleep, after which she froze to death. |
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| On September 11th 2002, the New York Lottery drew 911 as the winning pick-3 combination and the Standard & Poor's 500 futures contract closed at 911.00 | ||
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| The New York Times is going to stop charging for content on their web site. Current TimesSelect subscribers will get a refund, and access will also extend to their archives. The whole area of how traditional newsprint organizations can survive in the webified world is still being worked out. Rupert Murdoch is going to make Wall Street Journal content available on line for free as well. | ||
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| Millions of Spiders in a 200-yard-long web Spiders are usually solitary predators; this cooperation on such a scale is remarkable. |
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| The "Michael Jordan of Meditation" That's what writer George Saunders has said about a remarkable story in the jungles of Nepal. You may have heard about the 'Buddha Boy'. It is an easy story to dismiss, but it may offer a glimpse of human potential, according to Saunders, who is still trying to come to terms with what he experienced, according to the NPR interview. Listen to the story of a modern American who writes for GQ, and who came away convinced that something very unusual, potentially wonderful, is going on there. His full column is only found in the pages of GQ, the June edition, unfortunately. |
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| Web Site indexes video, audio by text contents Blinkx (not the pastry!) runs video and audio through a speech-to-text converter, then indexes that content in a large database. You are then able to search for the occurrence of a word or a phrase, and pull up references to any indexed content that meets your criteria. Bet you won't be saying "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" when you see how useful this can be, (although you can search for any film that contains that phrase --- any that are already indexed, that is, and not all are yet) |
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| Akash Bhairab and the Airline Nepal's state-run airline sacrificed two goats recently to propitiate the Hindu god of the skies. We wonder if there's anything US carriers can sacrifice to add more leg room. |
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| Fly me to the Moon Now, you, a private citizen, can join the first private expedition to the moon. Price - $100 million. Obviously, not in everyone's budget, but affordable to increasingly many. |
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| UC Berkeley Courses free - on YouTube The thing about invention is that it is followed by innovation, which is the actual application of that new technology to human affairs. Here is one unforeseen but welcome use of the popular video site. (See note below about MIT courses as well). |
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| Trouser snake kills Cambodian man (actual headline from original web site story) | ||
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| Weird, Wonderful, or wonderfully weird, it's Leigh Bowery!! Artists often act out of their own worldview and inner drives. This flamboyant and often off-putting man had a brief but florid life. |
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| Bionic Eye coming Hmm. Just in time for the new series on NBC? |
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| A quarter-million people per SQUARE MILE During the height of the immigration wave into New York the tenements of the Lower East Side had a population density that was the highest on earth, 240,000 people per square mile. The movie Gangs of New York gives us a flavor of what that must have been like. Visit the Tenement Museum if you are ever in New York. It's fascinating. |
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| Rollerblades of Death (shudder) This is a real product, apparently; we think it belongs in the 'weird' category. |
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| Free Courses from MIT I think this rates a 'Wow' along with a 'Web'; imagine taking over 1500 courses that are offered at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at home, for free, in dozens of subjects? Remarkable example of the power of the Internet, and the Open Courseware (OCW) initiative. Statistics from their site:
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| Vegetable Oil-powered Bus | ||
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| One Million Miles in a Saab A salesman in Wisconsin recently donated his car to a museum; not that he couldn't have kept driving it, by the way. The owner cited a Volvo he had heard about that had 2.5 million miles on it. Way to go Scandinavia! |
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| Gun-toting Robots in Iraq This article discloses a new step in warfare, something we as a species seem to always be taking. 'Terminator', anyone? Competition for Blackwater? |
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| Flat, two-dimensional art of the Middle Ages You may wonder about the 'primitive' quality of most medieval European art, which has no perspective. This is not a failure of skill, as prior art did not suffer this flat appearance, but rather a deliberate attempt to depict existence from the point of view of an omnipotent God, to whom all look alike. This was a requirement of the Church. The Renaissance was the time in European history when old dogma and authority were challenged, and the (re)introduction of three-dimensional perspective and the 'vanishing point' were part of the reorientation of the world view. The use of perspective in painting supported the conceit that a human observer was looking at the picture. |
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| Remarkable Talent Apparently, this game is called 'footbag'. |
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| This is not your Father's Some 2008 Ford models will allow integration of your cell phone with the stereo system, to permit voice control of your audio experience, and to have your car read text messages to you. That way, you can still do your nails, shave, etc. without getting that optional third arm installed on your body (still prohibitively expensive, since it doesn't exist - yet). |
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| Triple-play In the Netherlands in September 2005, the first civil union of three partners was registered. Victor de Bruijn (46) from Roosendaal “married” both Bianca (31) and Mirjam (35) in a ceremony before a notary who duly registered their civil union. “I love both Bianca and Mirjam, so I am marrying them both,” Victor said. He had previously been married to Bianca. Two and a half years ago they met Mirjam Geven through an internet chatroom. Eight weeks later Mirjam deserted her husband and came to live with Victor and Bianca. After Mirjam's divorce the threesome decided to marry. Victor said at the time: “A marriage between three persons is not possible in the Netherlands, but a civil union is. We went to the notary in our marriage costume and exchanged rings. We consider this to be just an ordinary marriage.” Asked by journalists to tell the secret of their peculiar relationship, Victor explained that there is no jealousy between them. “But this is because Mirjam and Bianca are bisexual. I think that with two heterosexual women it would be more difficult.” Victor stressed, however, that he is “a one hundred per cent heterosexual” and that a fourth person will not be allowed into the “marriage.” Editor note: Well, you have to draw the line somewhere. |
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| Top Ten Weirdest Japanese Condom Designs (Mildly offensive, AND mind-boggling) |
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| Clouds for sale in China | ||
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| Spider Silk used to create tiny tubes | ||
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| Modern techniques uncover (at least one) secret of the Pyramids |
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| Chimpanzees seem to naturally exhibit selfless behavior to strangers While we as humans are unique, we do not claim as many singular traits as we used to. |
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| New 7 Wonders of the World | ||
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| Salem Witch Trials of 1600's likely reaction to bad rye crop | ||
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| More about Salem | ||
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| Bar in China allows stressed out customers to beat up staff | ||
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| A new approach to computing that tries to mimic the brain | ||
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| Robot telerounding ('making the rounds' in hospitals remotely saves money) | ||
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| Heiress to Rifle fortune feared ghostly retribution, built amazing house According to some accounts (although this story line is not mentioned in the article cited above) the woman who had the house built hoped that the design of the house would make it impossible for ghosts of people who were killed by Remington rifles to find her and harm her. |
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| Are solutions to our energy problems known, and being suppressed? This one truly rates a WOW, if it is even partly true. Although this will be covered in more detail later in the Borderland section, this deserves mention now, in light of our current plight. Note the national/global security implications as well. X-Files, indeed. |
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| If you already liked Tilapia on your plate, here's another reason to favor that fish, as this news from Africa is good news for malaria eradication efforts. | ||
COMING LATER
Airplanes the size of dragonflies
Birds that 'hibernate' nightly to avoid starving to death!
Robert Monroe and visits to other realms of existence
True Blue Bloods
Cheeseburger in Paradise, Cat Lady got Parasites
B.C. Baghdad Battery
The Crystal Skull - what is its origin?
Patterns of weathering on Sphinx contradict official timeline
Edgar Cayce and the Akashic Record
The dead man who appeared in his unit photo
Invisibility cloak is for real!
Living in the Midst of a Paradigm Shift
Throughout history, there have been times when growth in raw information and its mature spriritual sibling, human wisdom, have been rapid and profound, especially given the SYNERGISTIC effect that sometimes kicks in among different strands of enterprise and thought. One example is the Web, version 2.0, as it's called, which is characterized by the already powerful infrastructure of the internet, on which programmers and entrepreneurs have created services, with high availability, security, and high levels of peer-to-peer unmediated (or dis-intermediated, if you prefer) communication and commerce. Also powerful is the community-building and community-enhancing aspects of this global resource. Think of how much detailed reference material is available now, and how powerful that is. Think of the hand-held device such as the PDA or cell phone, connected to that global, standards-based, highly available network. Think of how you can store files, send movies and documents to anyone in the world, and build web sites like this to get your opinion heard, and visit other sites, to give your opinion. Think of the social impact of these factors. Think, think, think. And don't be afraid. Note also the arguments that a SMALL percentage of the population can have significant, decisive effects.
We are undergoing a lot of spiritual and physical environment/infrastructure change. In the Borderland region of CDEIS.COM, you will find engaging, and dare we say, persuasive evidence about this world that is not common knowledge, and has not made it into the popular understanding - yet. This evidence is enlightening, sometimes frightening, often awe-inspiring. Take a chance and visit our neighbor page.