A nation of tall cheese-eaters. Image copyright Thinkstock The Dutch drink a lot of milk, eat a lot of cheese, and are now the tallest people in the world. Could there be a connection? The author of a new book on the Netherlands, Ben Coates, explains how the Dutch became not only voracious but also very discerning cheese eaters. Earlier this year, a museum in Amsterdam was the scene of a terrible crime. Image copyright Boska In some countries, a theft from the national cheese museum might sound like the plot for an animated children's film.
The Netherlands' love of all things dairy is largely a consequence of its unique geography. Some of the new land was built on, but large areas were also allocated to help feed the growing population of cities like Amsterdam. Image copyright ALAMY In the Netherlands, milk became a popular drink at a time when clean water was in short supply. Today, the country's affection for all things bovine continues. Image copyright AFP Dutch cuisine is not especially renowned internationally. Ron Wiseman's answer to What has Donald Trump's campaign for President done for America? Boeing publishes photos of secret 1960s stealth plane experiment. Boeing The "Quiet Bird"—Boeing's secret project designated Model 853—on a trailer at Boeing's Wichita research center in 1962. Boeing The "Quiet Bird"—Boeing's secret project designated Model 853—on a trailer at Boeing's Wichita research center in 1962.
Boeing The Quiet Bird was built as a radar cross-section model. According to notes from Boeing's archive, it "started out as an Army observation airplane study. " More than two decades before the first flight of the F-117A "Nighthawk" stealth fighter—and two years before Russian mathematician Pyotr Ufimtsev would publish a paper first defining the physics that would drive development of stealth aircraft—engineers at Boeing's Wichita, Kansas, facility performed tests on an experimental design that might have been the first stealth aircraft ever. Built with a non-metallic skin of a "variable density" material, the Quiet Bird model was tested and refined during radar cross-section tests at Wichita over two years.
Listing image by Boeing. Fox News's Shepard Smith has the perfect response to Pope Francis's conservative critics. When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake - The Texican. © Houston Chronicle >gallery_thumbnails_show|thetexican-2577-post-3385-g22200|thetexican-2577-post-3385-g22200|0 gallery_thumbnails_show|thetexican-2577-post-3385-g22200|thetexican-2577-post-3385-g22200|0 gallery_overlay_open|thetexican-2577-post-3385-g22200|thetexican-2577-post-3385-g22200|0 gallery_overlay_open_thumbs|thetexican-2577-post-3385-g22200|thetexican-2577-post-3385-g22200|0 © Houston Chronicle 09/16/1989 - Boris Yeltsin and a handful of Soviet companions made an unscheduled 20-minute visit to a Randall's Supermarket after touring the Johnson Space Center. 09/16/1989 - Boris Yeltsin and a handful of Soviet companions made an...unscheduled 20-minute visit to a Randall's Supermarket after touring...the Johnson Space Center. 09/16/1989 - Boris Yeltsin and a handful of Soviet companions made an unscheduled 20-minute visit to a Randall's Supermarket after touring the Johnson Space Center.
At JSC, Yeltsin visited mission control and a mock-up of a space station. Destined for War: Can China and the United States Escape Thucydides’s Trap? When Barack Obama meets this week with Xi Jinping during the Chinese president’s first state visit to America, one item probably won’t be on their agenda: the possibility that the United States and China could find themselves at war in the next decade. In policy circles, this appears as unlikely as it would be unwise. And yet 100 years on, World War I offers a sobering reminder of man’s capacity for folly. When we say that war is “inconceivable,” is this a statement about what is possible in the world—or only about what our limited minds can conceive?
In 1914, few could imagine slaughter on a scale that demanded a new category: world war. When war ended four years later, Europe lay in ruins: the kaiser gone, the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, the Russian tsar overthrown by the Bolsheviks, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of its youth and treasure. War, however, is not inevitable. The logic of Crowe’s analysis echoed Thucydides’s insight. Thucydides Case Studies. IBM Uses Watson to Teach Robots Social Intelligence. Robert High, chief technology officer of Watson, talking to a robot on stage at RoboBusiness. IBM is using some of the artificial-intelligence techniques that emerged from its Watson project to teach robots to better understand and mimic human communication. During a keynote speech at a conference called RoboBusiness held in San Jose, California, this week, Robert High, chief technology officer of Watson at IBM, demonstrated some of the techniques his team is working on using a small humanoid robot.
The robot, a Nao model from the company Aldebaran, spoke with realistic intonation and made appropriate hand gestures during a conversation with High. It even exhibited a little impatience and sarcasm, miming looking at its watch, for example, when asking High to hurry up with his talk. Speaking with MIT Technology Review after the demo, High admitted that this interaction was prerecorded, because the system doesn’t always work well in noisy environments. Ignoring science isn't a Republican problem. It's an American problem. "I'm not a scientist. " How many times have you heard that lately from politicians who are trying to duck questions about important scientific topics like climate change and vaccines? So many times that it's even become a Wikipedia entry. But what does that phrase even mean?
I'm not a cardiologist. So I go to one to have my heart checked. I'm not an electrician, so I hire one to rewire my house. I trust people who have training in those fields to give me advice on important things. You're right, Mr. or Ms. You're right, Mr. or Ms. I grew up in an age where children were crippled and died from diseases like polio and measles, and now we have Donald Trump irresponsibly repeating long-discredited links between vaccines and autism.
Sure, if you read their words, they support vaccines, yet raise questions about the timing of giving vaccines that is without scientific merit. <div>You must enable Javascript to watch this video! And make no mistake, this isn't just a Republican problem. Samsung's new Gear VR virtual reality headset only costs $99.
Hollywood, CA—You might’ve thought Gear VR was already a thing, but guess what: You were wrong. Samsung’s Gear VR Innovator’s Edition was half-consumer product, half-dev kit, and it showed. Overly expensive, a lack of content, a slightly-cumbersome headset—all of these were real problems that made Gear VR an impressive demo device but a poor value proposition for normal people. But at Oculus Connect on Thursday, Samsung’s Peter Koo came on stage to announce a brand new Gear VR, which I guess we’ll call “Gear VR 2015” from now on. The headset looks largely the same as its predecessor, though Samsung claims it’s 22 percent lighter and “much more comfortable to wear.”
Also, the side-controls (used for navigation and volume) look a bit more defined. The big news though is that when Gear VR 2015 ships in November (pre-Black Friday, says Peter Koo) it’ll be compatible with all of Samsung’s flagship 2015 phones—the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, and Note 5. And there’s finally content! Solar Fields, Sexist Poverty and a Modern Marshall Plan. If you are allergic to fanfare you’d better bolt your doors and shutter your windows on September 25, because there is going to be a lot of it that day in the vicinity of the United Nations, when world leaders ratify the Global Goals for Sustainable Development.
This is a genuinely big deal, of large consequence — let’s hope — especially for the poorest people on the planet, but you will be forgiven if some of you are rolling your eyes, or yawning, or worse. At a time when Europe and the rest of the world are flailing in response to the massive refugee crisis in the Middle East, this hardly seems a time for grand commitments of any kind, unless it’s a commitment to stop stumbling over our own two feet. It’s a fair and pressing question. But pause for a second before you projectile vomit, and consider that the emergency in Syria shows exactly why we need to pursue — and achieve — these Global Goals. Especially when the demographers join in. A modern George C. Uk.businessinsider. An Italian engineering company is taking 3D-printing to new heights, literally. World’s Advanced Saving Project (WASP), which is a company that builds 3D printers, has created a 40 foot tall, 20 foot wide printer that uses locally sourced, eco-friendly materials like clay or dirt to construct low-cost houses.
The massive machine basically consists of a metal frame with a nozzle in the center that rotates forming a structure layer by layer all while consuming very little energy. WASP built the gigantic printer, called the Big Delta, with the aim of providing housing quickly and efficiently to those in need. For example, this technology could be used to provide housing in developing nations or to provide relief to those in disaster zones who have lost their homes. Adequate housing is global problem plaguing millions of people.
Printers like the one WASP created could potentially provide some relief to the housing crisis. Check out the video below to see the giant printer set-up. Rupert Baines's answer to When and why did London get so expensive? Quora. Quora. Quora. Igor Markov's answer to Why are the US and the EU backing Neo-Nazis in Ukraine? I am Les Stroud (aka Survivorman), a filmmaker, outdoor adventurer, singer-songwriter and performer and I’m back for another AMA. Ask Me Anything! : IAmA. NjhpdZJ. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places. Ancestral background can be determined by fingerprints. A proof-of-concept study finds that it is possible to identify an individual's ancestral background based on his or her fingerprint characteristics – a discovery with significant applications for law enforcement and anthropological research.
"This is the first study to look at this issue at this level of detail, and the findings are extremely promising," says Ann Ross, a professor of anthropology at North Carolina State University and senior author of a paper describing the work. "But more work needs to be done. We need to look at a much larger sample size and evaluate individuals from more diverse ancestral backgrounds. " Anthropologists have looked at fingerprints for years, because they are interested in human variation.
But this research has looked at Level 1 details, such as pattern types and ridge counts. "A lot of additional work needs to be done, but this holds promise for helping law enforcement," Ross says. Everyone wants to be happy. Almost everyone is going about it wrong. As a therapist, the number-one goal I hear from my patients is: "I just want to be happy. " I ask, "What would being happy mean to you? " The answers range from "Everything I wish for will happen" to "I will feel good all the time" to "I won't ever feel sad or disappointed.
" These patients are deeply misguided: believing that bliss is a permanent, attainable state is both unrealistic and emotionally dangerous. Awful things occur that we cannot control, and that will and should at least temporarily affect how we feel. A utopian world would be like I Love Lucy: it would be possible to have a minor stress of the week resolved in 24 minutes My happiness-seeking patients are also, sadly, doomed to fail. Here are some of the most common myths my patients believe about happiness — and how I help my patients move past them. 1) They keep saying, "I'll be happy when... " Philip was able to call his now-retired father and say that these impossible standards had left him unable to enjoy life.
Quora. These 5 Facts Explain Why We Need the United Nations. Unless you were born before 1945, you aren’t old enough to remember the catastrophes that gave birth to the United Nations and the surge of idealism that defined its mission. The UN charter commits the organization to, among other things, “promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,” to “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small” and to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Given the scope of that ambition, we shouldn’t be surprised that the UN has produced major successes over its 70 years—and major failures. Though they represent a tiny part of the UN story, these facts help bring both into sharper focus as the organization prepares to celebrate its 70th anniversary. 1. Protecting Global Health In war zones, public health hotspots, and natural disasters, hundreds of men and women have died in service to the United Nations. 2.
Quora. Five Best USB 3.0 Flash Drives. Here's the question Mark Zuckerberg asked that almost made the Indian prime minister cry. Facebook’s Town Hall Q&As — where Facebook users around the world get to ask Mark Zuckerberg questions — aren’t typically emotional events. This changed Sunday during a special Q&A Zuckerberg held with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. During the 50-minute event held at the social network’s Menlo Park, Calif., campus, Modi fielded questions about government investments, the ease of doing business in India and what was being done to empower women. But it was a question from Zuckerberg himself, about family, that got an unexpectedly emotional response from the prime minister. “I understand that your mother is very important in your life,” Zuckerberg said.
“So I’m hoping you’ll tell us a bit about her.” Before diving into his own story, the prime minister first asked Zuckerberg's own parents — who were sitting in the audience — to stand up so the crowd could congratulate them for raising Zuckerberg. Then, his voice breaking with emotion, Modi paused before recounting his childhood. 1. 2. What the End of the Moral Majority Means for Christian Communities. According to a growing number of Christian leaders and thinkers, America in 2015 looks a lot like the declining, dissolute Roman empire. Conservative blogger Rod Dreher, a Protestant-turned-Catholic-turned-Orthodox Christian, has introduced what he believes to be the best way forward for Christians embroiled in the culture wars: The Benedict Option. Dreher asks whether Christians ought to emulate the 5th-century Roman saint, and undertake “communal withdrawal from the mainstream, for the sake of sheltering one’s faith and family from corrosive modernity and cultivating a more traditional way of life?”
Saint Benedict was born around 480 AD in Nursia, Italy, an area of southeastern Umbria now best known for its wild-boar sausage. Dreher first issued his call back in 2013. Since then, and especially in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. In this way, the Benedict Option could be just the thing evangelicals need. ELI5: Does a company forcing you to change your password every 6 months (for example) actually increase security? As far as I'm concerned it just causes me to forget my password. : explainlikeimfive.
I was in North Korea twice for 12 days for my documentary project. Ask me anything from fake grocery stores to computer without keyboards! AMA! : IAmA. The One Secret Thing All Successful People Do. 1958 - Global Warming - It's NOT newly known. Quora. Quora. Several Startups Are Selling Robot Workmates. This robot, developed by Clearpath Robotics, can carry heavy loads around a factory or warehouse. Those who work in professions from warehouse staff to hotel concierges may soon count a robot among their colleagues. While Amazon has pioneered the use of robots in its fulfillment centers, its robots are still largely separated from human workers (see “Inside Amazon”). The next generation of workplace bots will work in much closer proximity to regular employees.
Some will replace workers entirely, but most will simply take on the more mundane tasks of a human’s job. Clearpath Robotics, a company based in Ontario, Canada, launched a robotic platform designed to take on the work done by forklift truck drivers in warehouses and factories. The company’s system, called Otto, was on show at the RoboBusiness conference in San Jose, California, last week. Otto first must be driven through a warehouse, so that its laser sensors can map the environment. Quora. 'Unfinished Business': When Working Families Can't Do It All. World cities. Uk.businessinsider.
What Does Donald Trump's 'Great' America Look Like? ELI5: Why is it normal to give all of our money to banks? Why are people who keep their cash looked at as 'odd'? : explainlikeimfive. The Source Of Creativity : TED Radio Hour. Some Supplements Are Basically Drugs. Applying for a home loan. LR75kIO. Last-minute Nexus rumors: $379 for the 5X, $499 for the 6P. Uk.businessinsider. When Schools Overlook Introverts: Why Quiet Time is Important for the Learning Process. Obama's Global Warming, Syria Push at UN. 15215036166_6536971f04_h. Challenges Ongoing Classification of the CIA Torture Program | OpenTheGovernment.org | Americans for Less Secrecy, More DemocracyOpenTheGovernment.org seeks to advance the public's right to know and to reduce secrec.
Photos et vidéos de Edward Snowden (@Snowden) | Twitter. Mount Everest to be declared off-limits to inexperienced climbers, says Nepal. What a Shaman Sees in A Mental Hospital. Dronestream (@dronestream) | Twitter. Geografi. Map of Life: An interactive look at flora and fauna. Maps That Prove You Don't Really Know Earth. Worldometers - real time world statistics. FBI and DEA under review for use of NSA mass surveillance data. ELI5: How did humans become so smart and why are we the only ones? : explainlikeimfive. You’re Not Too Tired To Create. You’re Too Distracted. — Life Learning. Taliban attack airport after seizing northern Afghan city.
Self-control saps memory resources | Science. My Paradoxical Quest to Build a Personal Brand. Five Useful Cooking Techniques No One Teaches You. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places. Uk.businessinsider. Quora. Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 and Lumia event: what to expect. Why Japanese Kids Can Walk to School Alone. Stockton mayor was briefly detained on return flight from China.
How to Dispel Your Illusions by Freeman Dyson. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places. Boyhood Encounter With UFO Inspired Art That Soared Around The World. The Rise of the Outrageously Long Commute. Masters Of The Universe Oral History. How to Improve Your Character Stats and Level Up in Real Life. ELI5: Why do secret service wear suits and ties when if they need to run, move quickly, or do anything else that seems like the most restrictive attire? : explainlikeimfive.
From rescuer to rescued: Doctor and paramedic save each other's lives 30 years apart. Corporate tax dodging is 'corruption': World Bank chief. This Color Blot Test Will Determine What Your Subconscious Is Obsessed With. Quora. Rare Film Is Glimpse Of A Distant America : NPR History Dept. Uk.businessinsider.
Internet of Things That Lie: the future of regulation is demonology / Boing Boing. Virtual Reality for Mice Reveals the Workings of the Brain. What Hiring Managers Wish You Knew About Applying for a Job. Scientists identify potential birth control 'pill' for men. Record 94,610,000 Americans Not in Labor Force. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places. ELI5: How were languages created? Did we just get better at grunting? : explainlikeimfive. Russian Jets Strike IS Command Centre In Syria. Uk.businessinsider.
SolarCity Boasts Record Panels as It Moves to Manufacturing. There are laws making it illegal to collect data on open land. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places. Why we’re better off with fewer friends. How Often You Should Wash Your Clothes, According to Science. Alphabet to Become Official Google Holding Company At Markets Close.