> "There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing."
And there's a cer tain ghoul ish ele ment, even about the nice peo ple who've been pray ing for me. Because they are not just pray ing for my recov ery, they're pray ing for my rec on cil i a tion with reli gion. And I—I pro posed a trade off the other day, I said, I tell you what, what if we secu lar ists stop going to hos pi tals and walk ing around the wards and ask ing if peo ple are reli gious when they are in extrem is and in their last days and say ing look, you've still got a lit tle time, why don't you live the last few days of it as a free per son. You'll feel much bet ter. All that non sense they taught you. You know you could still have every chance to give it up. Expe ri ence the life of a free think ing autonomous per son. Don't live in fear, don't believe in mythol o gy.
They – I don't think they'd wel come it. And of course, we don't do that. But it seems to be con sid ered the right of almost everybody to do it the other way around. I don't resent it at all, because I like every oppor tu ni ty for the argu ment, but it—a lot of it has been to do with that.
For most of the 20th century, we were No. 1 in the world in education;
today, we are ninth in the proportion of young people with college
degrees, 18th in high school graduation rates among industrialized
nations and 27th in the proportion of science and engineering degrees.
China now graduates more English-trained engineers than the U.S. and
has become the world's No. 1 exporter in high technology
Sent from Steve's iPad...
According to results from the 2009 National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP)—also known as The Nation's Report
Card—34 percent of the nation's fourth-graders, 30 percent of
eighth-graders, and 21 percent of twelfth-graders are performing
at or above the Proficient level in science, meaning that less
than one-half of students are demonstrating solid academic
performance and competency over challenging subject matter.
Sent from Steve's iPad...
In a democratic and demotic society like ours, the biggest challenge to scientific thinking is the tendency to embrace views on the basis of faith or of ideology. A majority of Americans doubt evolution because it goes against their religious teachings; and at least a sizeable minority are skeptical about global warming — or more precisely, the human contributions to global change — because efforts to counter climate change would tamper with the 'free market'.
Popper popularized the notion that a claim is scientific only to the extent that it can be disproved — and that science works through perpetual efforts to disprove claims.
Sent from Steve's iPad..."It's a complete work of fiction. I kind of wish my life were that cool. There are no Victoria's Secret models in Silicon Valley."
— Sean Parker, speaking to author Paulo Coelho at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich, when asked about "The Social Network," the movie about Facebook's founding in which the Napster co-founder — and former Facebook president — was portrayed by actor Justin Timberlake as a cocaine-sniffing celebrity geek. Parker also said he still considers Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin a friend.
I hap pen to real ly like this plant dis tri b u tion info graph ic, but it's hard ly the most strik ing one in the col lec tion. In par tic u lar, there are some great geogra phy images (with color!), and beau ti ful time tables that actu al ly start getting clos er to a more mod ern sort of graph ic design.
About those defense "cuts" the Obama administration wants to push through, Adam Serwerwrites:
Calling this a "defense cut" is a bit bizarre. Think about it this way: If you were 300 pounds, and in the next year your doctor told you that you were on the road to gaining another hundred, but you instead only went up to 350 pounds, you wouldn't be walking around telling everyone about how you "lost weight."(Sent from Flipboard)
 BEATNIK VERSION: "Our father whose art's in heaven |
Sent from Steve's iPad...
Creative Commons Picture of the Year: According to Wikimedia Commons, "The Commons Picture of the Year is a competition that was first run in 2006. It aims to identify the best freely-licensed images from those that during the year have been awarded Featured picture status." There area different categories and different Rounds to the competition. Here are 23 of the best winners from the Creative Commons Pictures of the Year competition.
