More than we realize – Here’s another reason we need alternative energy sources like solar energy: If all the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico had been used for fuel, it could have powered 38,000 cars, 3,400 trucks and 1,800 ships for a full year, based on the estimated spill rate of 19,000 barrels of oil per day.
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Can luck really influence the outcome of events? Athletes clearly think so: Many baseball players have talismans they carry around with them and perform elaborate rituals before getting up to bat. Investors are also superstitious (and their lucky charms haven’t been working lately).
In the April 29th edition of the Wall Street Journal, Carl Bialik writes about German researchers who tested this by telling a group of golfers that some of them were playing with “lucky balls.” Those who thought their balls were lucky sank more putts than those who thought they had regular balls. Bialik quotes psychologist Stuart Vyse as saying, “Simply being told this is a lucky ball is sufficient to affect performance.”
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By intelligent machines – The Master of the Key told Whitley, “If I was an intelligent machine, I would deceive you.” Well, intelligent machines are only one of the new things that are coming our way!
The H Plus website reports that, “While the US Army actively pursues ‘thought helmets’ that might someday lead to secure mind-to-mind communication between soldiers, the Japanese are going after the consumer market.” Their goal is to make available commercial mind-reading devices and personal assistant bots available within the next decade. These intelligent machines could read your mind and change TV channels or to use cell phones to send text messages you compose by thought alone. These robots would detecting when you
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What’s coming up in the future? From its heyday in the 1950s to its current resurgence, 3-D technology has gone from a cinematic gimmick to a box-office gold mine. James Cameron’s Avatar, heralded for its creation of a three-dimensional fantasy world, is now the highest grossing movie ever. But do audiences really like it better than 2-D and what do they like about it? According to one researcher, the truth can be seen in their faces and eyes.
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