15 second timelapse video from NASA shows 60 years of rising temperatures

This video from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, shows a running five-year average global temperature, as compared to a baseline average global temperature from 1951-1980. Yellow, on the map, indicates the average being reached while orange and red indicate that the average has been exceeded. According to NASA 2013 tied for the seventh warmest…

Sober Second Thought: Fixing the Canadian Senate

No one likes the Senate, but no one has a plan to fix it either. Justin Trudeau grabbed headlines this week by booting all of the Liberal members of the senate out of his caucus. NDP leader Tom Mulcair wants to abolish the Senate outright but under the parliamentary system, such a move would make…

Sir Ian McKellen’s One Man Show “Acting Shakespeare”

Jonathan Crow at Open Culture posted this video today. It is Sir Ian McKellen, known for his stage work long before he was Gandalf, discussing the plays of William Shakespeare and performing monologues from some of those plays without sets or props. Acting Shakespeare was developed on the road between 1977-80 and this recording of the…

10 Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe (Video)

People know a lot about our world and the universe now. It’s easy to look at the past and scoff at how much they didn’t know but, before we get too proud of ourselves it’s good to be reminded of some of the really important stuff we don’t know. Today Alltime10s has a new video…

How to Make Life in a Bottle

There are people out there who think that the creation of life has something to do with divinity (of one kind or another) but the reality is that it’s not all that complicated. Ok, it’s a little complicated and you probably don’t have the equipment at home but the University of Chicago’s Stanley Miller demonstrated…

Why Pets are Good for Unborn Children

Having an environment that is too clean may help prevent some diseases, but it can also lead to an increased risk of childhood allergies, including severe, life threatening allergies as well as childhood asthma. If the environment, the immune system does not develop properly and can react inappropriately. Having pets, such as dogs and cats…

Check Out Alejandra Ribera’s New Video “I Want”

I got a nice surprise in my email today. I’d never heard of Alejandra Ribera before but the Montreal singer songwriter has a lovely voice. I hate to use the cliche but ‘smoky’ is the only word that really fits. According to Ken at Killbeat, The video was “woven together with footage from a group…

Calling it Now: Hillary Clinton Wins the White House

I always thought that when the United States elected its first female president that it would be a nail biter – a down to the wire race that would keep us up late on election night before it was official, but Hillary Clinton’s presidency is shaping up to be a coronation. The Clinton candidacy is…

Are You Watching Helix?

Zombies have nearly run their course. They, along with vampires, wizards and the ‘supernatural’ in general have had a good run for the past few decades but we’re quickly reaching the point where we’ve had every possible variation of every story, for now anyway. NBC’s Dracula, which was actually pretty good, portrayed the Transylvanian bloodsucker…

Franz Kafka, the video game coming soon

The Franz Kafka video game is exactly what you think / are afraid it might be, a video game based on the writings of Franz Kafka  .. so it should be Kafkaesque I suppose. Samantha Grossman at Time says “Good news for fans of alienation and deep inner turmoil: a video game based on the…