"Reli gious fun da men tal ism is dan ger ous because it can not accept ambi gu i ty and diver si ty and is there fore inher ent ly intol er ant. Such intol er ance, in the name of virtue, is ruth less and uses polit i cal power to destroy what it can not con vert. It is dan ger ous, espe cial ly in Amer i ca, because it is anti-democratic and is sus pi cious of 'the other,' in what ev er form that 'other' might appear. To main tain itself, fun da men tal ism must always define 'the other' as deviant."
"In a way, of course it has to end with the belief in the divine," says Hitchens, "because that is the origin of all dictatorship."
The new contender was created by Nathan Myhrvold, the former CTO of Microsoft. Myhrvold cuts his potatoes into batons and rinses them to get rid of surface starch. Then he vacuum-seals them in a plastic bag, in one even layer, with water. He heats the bag to 212 degrees for 15 minutes, steaming the batons. Then he hits the bag with ultrasound to cavitate the water—45 minutes on each side. He reheats the bag in an oven to 212 degrees for five minutes, puts the hot fries on a rack in a vacuum chamber, and then blanches them in 338-degree oil for three minutes. When they're cool, Myhrvold deep-fries the potatoes in oil at 375 degrees until they're crisp, about three more minutes, and then drains them on paper towels. Total preparation time: two hours.
The result is amazing. The outside nearly shatters when you bite into it, yielding to a creamy center that's perfectly smooth. The key is the cavitation caused by the ultrasonic bath—it creates thousands of tiny fissures on the potato's surface, all of which become crunchy when it's fried. When Plato saw the shadow of a french fry on the wall of his cave, the guy standing behind him was snacking on these.
The recipe is one of 1,600 in Myhrvold's new cookbook, Modernist Cuisine. It's a big book—2,400 pages big. Six volumes big. Big like the original slipcase failed Amazon .com's shipping tests and had to be replaced with acrylic. Big like it weighs nearly 50 pounds and costs $625.
(Sent from Flipboard)The work by IU Department of Mathematics Professor Nets Hawk Katz, with Larry Guth of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., achieved what many thought was unachievable: Solving Paul Erd?s' 1946 Distinct Distances Problem.
"If someone hands you some distinct set of points, you can figure out what is the set of differences. The problem is to determine what the minimum possible set of distances is," Katz said. "What we did is to show that no matter how you place the N points, the number of distances is at least a constant times N/log N."
James A. W. Powell set high standards in the advanced math classes at Finneytown during the 1960's through the 1980's.
Jim attended Wheaton College before joining the Army during World War II. After the war, he married Louise, his wife 47 years, came to Cincinnati and went to U.C. where he earned his B.S. and M.Ed. degrees. He taught at St. Bernard for 11 years before coming to Finneytown for the next 24 years. He retired in 1984.
Following the death of one of their three children, Jim and Louise helped to establish a national support group called "Parents of Murdered Children," whose headquarters are here in Cincinnati.
Jim is most proud of his marriage, the success of his children and teaching. Jim says that he likes keeping in touch with some of the best students in the world! Jim enjoys his vegetable gardening and working in an 8-acre woodland in Adams County.
Sent from Steve's iPad...6. Walker is corrupt.
Although early in Walker says they are investigating the Democratic Senators to see if they are committing ethics violations by accepting union funds, when the fake David Koch says he will fly Walker "out to Cali and really show you a good time," Walker responds by saying "that would be outstanding."
The problem is -- and dare I say this -- it doesn't look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice. And then we hear that she's out eating ribs at 1,500 calories a serving with 141 grams of fat per serving, yeah it does -- what do you mean, what do I mean?
What is it - no, I'm trying to say that our First Lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date every six months or what have you. I mean, women are under constant pressure to look lithe, and Michelle My Belle is out there saying if you eat the roots and tree bark and the berries and all this cardboard stuff you will live longer, be healthier and you won't be obese. Okay, fine, show us.
"It's an autobiography written as it's happening," he said. "The theme is about staying alive. Getting a job, finding a mate, having a place to live, finding a creative outlet. Life is a war of attrition. You have to stay active on all fronts. It's one thing after another. I've tried to control a chaotic universe. And it's a losing battle. But I can't let go. I've tried, but I can't."
Obama also Friday named Otellini to his jobs council in a move designed to harness the power of innovation to ignite economic and employment growth.
Otellini will serve on the president's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, an advisory board, headed by General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt that is dedicated to finding new ways to boost growth, hiring and the education and training of US workers.
• Intel, whose open-source MeeGo smartphone operating system was quite publicly dumped by Nokia last week when the phone maker announced its tie-up with Microsoft, says it will keep on keeping on. "The carriers still want a third ecosystem and the carriers want an open ecosystem, and that's the thing that drives our motivation," Intel CEO Paul Otellini said, according to Reuters.Devindra Hardawar at VentureBeat begs to differ. If Otellini is touting open as MeeGo's draw, Hardawar said the open "champion will be Android."
Actually, Nokia wasn't entirely clear it was breaking up with MeeGo, but it did decide to hook up with Microsoft to put Windows on its smartphones, plus it let go of the executive in charge of the joint venture with Intel. (See Quoted: Nokia gets on board with Microsoft — is it the right call?) The world's largest chip company can take a hint. But it's not above getting in a few digs. The Reuters article also includes this from Otellini, speaking about Nokia CEO Stephen Elop's decision to go with Microsoft: "I wouldn't have made the decision he made, I would probably have gone to Android if I were him. MeeGo would have been the best strategy but he concluded he couldn't afford it."
Sent from Steve's iPad...
"We've taken the notion of a one-time password that generates a dynamic code every 30 seconds and we've embedded it into the chipset," Gilburg says, "into the [manageability engine] of the 2nd Generation Intel Core and Core vPro. This is brand new technology; Intel is the first to do this."
That manageability engine (ME), by the way, is on the same silicon as the Core processors' compute and graphics cores. And unlike Intel's vPro client-management technology, IPT is common to all three levels of the 2nd Geneneration processors: the Core i3, i5, and i7; vPro skips the i3.(Sent from Flipboard)> "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.
