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December 31, 2007
My Events, 2007, Q4
http://www.chekonim.com/archives/events_calendars/index.html
Jan 22 : Academy Awards Nominations Announcement
Jan 18 - 28 : Sundance Film Festival
Jan 18 - 21 : MLK Ski Heavenly (Weather)
Jan 1 : Rose Parade in Pasadena
Jan - Feb : Elephant Seal Mating in Ano Nuevo, CA
Dec 25 - 29 : Persian Gulf Environmental Art Festival in Hormoz Island
Dec 25 : Christmas
Dec 21 : Shab-e Yalda
Dec 12 : Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi in San Francisco (Movie, Book)
Dec 2 : LAST DAY! Green Card Lottery
Nov 22 - 23 : Thanksgiving (Video)
Nov 17 - 18 : Ski and Snowboard Show in Sacramento
Nov 9 - 11 : Ski and Snowboard Show in San Jose
Nov 8 - 11 : International Animation Festival in San Francisco
Nov 6 : General Election (Results)
Nov 4 : End of DST (set clock 1 hour backward)(new date for 2007)
Oct 31 : Halloween (Video)
Oct 8 : World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay
Oct 7 : Decompression (Burning Man) in SF (100 Photos)
Oct 6 - 14 : International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, NM
Oct 6 : Sandcastle Classic in San Francisco
Oct 5 - 7 : Fleet Week (Blue Angels Air Show) in SF
Oct 3 - Dec 2 : Green Card Lottery
Posted by chek at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
December 28, 2007
Kandovan Hotel, Iran
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071205-village-video-ap.html Iranian Town Carved From Rock
Carved into Iranian mountains, the village of Kandovan may be more than 700 years old. The energy-efficient homes draw tourists from around the world.
Posted by chek at 04:25 PM | Comments (0)
December 25, 2007
Merry XMAS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAglt4KPIH4
Posted by chek at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Persian Gulf Env Art Festival
http://www.iranian.com/main/node/15817
Persian Gulf Environmental Art Festival
During the last week of 2007 (Dec. 25 -29, 2007) the 2nd Persian Gulf Environmental Art Festival was held on the coast of Hormoz Island, in the Persian Gulf. More than 80 artists gathered on this beautiful island to create environmental installations and sand sculptures. The festival also included a number of art performances [Read more in Persian or English]. Photos by Mansour Vahdani, R. Balochi, Ameneh Raisi, Gizella Varga Sinai and Ahmad Nadalian. Samira Sinai filmed the event and plans to create video art.
Posted by chek at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2007
First Map of Amreica
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7142784.stm
The map is thought to have been drawn exactly 500 years ago by a monk in the present-day French region of Lorraine.
It was produced in 1507 in the town of Saint Die by the German monk Martin Waldseemueller.
His was the first map to show a full and separate western hemisphere and in some regards it remains fairly accurate.
One of the main sources for his new work was the knowledge brought to Europe by the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
The US felt it worth $10m (£4.9m) to acquire the map - which is more than two metres (6ft 6in) wide - from its home in Germany, where it remained for centuries in a remarkably unblemished state.
Posted by chek at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)
December 05, 2007
EverBank - Foreign Currency Account
https://www.everbank.com/
Allows you to open accounts in many foreign currencies with the local interest rates.
Posted by chek at 06:25 PM | Comments (0)
OANDA currency conversion
http://www.oanda.com/
The Currency Site:
Foreign Exchange Services and Trading
Also:
Currency Tools for your Website
Posted by chek at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)
December 03, 2007
Chimps beat humans in memory test
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7124156.stm
Chimpanzees have an extraordinary photographic memory that is far superior to ours, research suggests.
Young chimps outperformed university students in memory tests devised by Japanese scientists.
The tasks involved remembering the location of numbers on a screen, and correctly recalling the sequence.
The findings, published in Current Biology, suggest we may have under-estimated the intelligence of our closest living relatives.
Dr Matsuzawa and colleagues tested three pairs of mother and baby chimpanzees against university students in a memory task involving numbers.
The mothers and their five-year-old offspring had already been taught to "count" from one to nine.
During the experiment, each subject was presented with various numerals from one to nine on a touch screen monitor.
The numbers were then replaced with blank squares and the test subject had to remember which number appeared in which location, then touch the appropriate square.
They found that, in general, the young chimps performed better than their mothers and the adult humans.
The university students were slower than all of the three young chimpanzees in their response.
The researchers then varied the amount of time that the numbers appeared on-screen to compare the working memory of humans and chimps.
Chimps performed much better than university students in speed and accuracy when the numbers appeared only briefly on screen.
The shortest time duration, 210 milliseconds, did not leave enough time for the subjects to explore the screen by eye movement - something we do all the time when we read.
This is evidence, the researchers believe, that young chimps have a photographic memory which allows them to memorise a complex scene or pattern at a glance. This is sometimes present in human children but declines with age, they say.
"Young chimpanzees have a better memory than human adults," Dr Matsuzawa told BBC News.
Posted by chek at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)