A microscope (from the Ancient Greek: μικρÏŒς, mikrós, "small" and σκοπεá¿–ν, skopeîn, "to look" or "see") is an instrument used to see objects that are too small for the naked eye. The science of investigating small objects using such an instrument is called microscopy. Microscopic means invisible to the eye unless aided by a microscope. - wikipedia

Enjoy these images found via schizoides!

Source:
PeymanAbr - Microscope Images Album

 

Microscope Images

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Titled Thumbnail Slides by masodo

The Joy Of Self-Delusion
Tuesday, 1st April 2014

Cycling around South Oxon today, in lovely but unseasonably warm weather, I found myself wondering about the distinction between us and rats.

To explain: the latest IPCC report confirms what we already knew – because of climate change, the planet faces a bleak future, and thus so do we all.

It’s that simple. This made top story in some news outlets … for a day. And that’s it. The scale of news media’s response is a good measure of how we are collectively going to respond to this looming calamity. We’re not. We know it’s coming, but it’s not going to set any meaningful national or global agendas. It’s not going to make any significant difference to how we all behave. And then, sooner or later, the problems will force themselves into our lives (if they haven’t already), and then we’ll struggle on, and cope as best we can – or not.

Perhaps some did, but none of the news reports I saw made mention of the screamingly obvious elephant in the room: population growth. If you really want to tackle both the causes of climate change and help mitigate the consequences of it, there would be a world-wide drive to discourage the human population from growing. There’s as much chance of that happening as there is of us all decamping to a new planet to live there happily ever after.

What I did see in the news reports was the inevitable clutching at straws – the mentions of ‘perhaps this report by the IPCC might be alarmist’, or ‘perhaps some crop yields will increase’ or ‘perhaps human ingenuity can come up with solutions’.

Perhaps all this unseasonable warmth will mean bumper crops. Perhaps.

Ignoring problems and instead clutching at straws: this isn’t surprising behaviour. It’s akin to smokers believing that they won’t get lung cancer, or the obese not believing it’s what they eat that’s the problem. (Said the over-weight ex-smoker.) There are any number of examples of how humans like to and, more importantly, are able to deceive themselves.

There’s a famous – if pretty grim – experiment from the 1950s by someone called Curt Richter. In a nutshell: if you put rats in jars of water that they can’t get out of, they’ll give up struggling fairly quickly and drown. If you set the same conditions up but take a rat out before it drowns, then put it back in again, it will struggle on for far longer, before – of course- it eventually drowns too. Such is the power of hope.

The distinction between us and rats is that the rats need an external cause to have hope – they need to be rescued (albeit briefly) before they feel they have a reason to struggle on. That is to say, they can’t fool themselves that there’s hope. Unlike rats, we can fool ourselves and have hope despite all the evidence to the contrary. Whether that makes us the superior of a rat or not, I’m not sure.

~

Source: http://www.codgertation.co.uk/the-joy-of-self-delusion/

April Fools' Day

April Fools' Day (sometimes called All Fools' Day) is an informal holiday celebrated every year on April 1. The day is not a national holiday in any country, but it is widely recognized and celebrated as a day when people play practical jokes and hoaxes on each other, called April fools. Hoax stories are also often found in the press and media on this day.

Origins

Famous Quotes from The Simpsons:

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From Kids At Play: Life Stinks? For Abigail it often does. It seems that no matter where she is or what she’s doing things have the potential to go wrong … hilariously wrong. A hysterical new web series starring Rachael Harris, produced in association with AFG, Principato Young Entertainment, and Electus.  

"You’re not stuck in traffic;
you are  the traffic!"

I have been having fun with the BlogDogIt "Friends - Link Exchange" (over to the right there - in case you missed it.)[smiley:;)] I have made several friends and have hopefully generated some traffic for them. I also have them to thank for bringing visitors to BlogDogIt by virtue of their display of the "BlogDogIt Tag" on their site, as part of the "Throw BlogDogIt A Bone" initiative.

I was facing a delima in that I had several links posted in the link exchange simply because they contained links back to BlogDogIt while not actually displaying the "BlogDogItTag." I still want to promote those sites but I really feel that the "Friends - Link Exchange" needs to stay true to its intended purpose.

Today I completed what I think to be a fine solution: I call it "Friendly Ad Roller" and right now it is displayed in the upper left corner of every page. This feature displays a randomly selected link-back graphic to one of our friend's websites. The pool of ads contains the official link exchange participants as well as other folks that I would like to bring to your attention.

Scroll this Box for the full "Rotation" of available Ads.

Shining the spotlight on friends of BlogDogIt.com

If you would like your site in this spotlight - just ask.
If you wish to be removed - same deal.

webmaster®BlogDogIt.com

" If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor "