Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Lily Allen: “Hard Out Here” video takes on misogyny and Miley Cyrus. (VIDEO)

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/11/12/lily_allen_hard_out_here_video_takes_on_misogyny_and_miley_cyrus_video.html


---SPSmith

Book Review: Anxiety Across the Americas, A Great Read - RoadRUNNER Motorcycle Touring & Travel Magazine

http://www.roadrunner.travel/2013/11/10/book-review-anxiety-across-the-americas-a-great-read/


---SPSmith

Article: Bill Gates: Here’s My Plan to Improve Our World — And How You Can Help


Bill Gates: Here's My Plan to Improve Our World — And How You Can Help
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/11/bill-gates-wired-essay/

These days I get to spend a lot of time trying to advance innovation that improves people's lives in the same way that fertilizer did. Let me reiterate this: A full 40 percent of Earth's population is alive today because, in 1909, a German chemist named Fritz Haber figured out how to make synthetic ammonia. Another example: Polio cases are down more than 99 percent in the past 25 years, not because the disease is going away on its own but because Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk invented polio vaccines and the world rolled out a massive effort to deliver them.


---SPSmith

Slate: Pain vs. Polls



---SPSmith

Thursday, November 07, 2013

Global warming: why is IPCC report so certain about the influence of humans? | Dana Nuccitelli | Environment | theguardian.com

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/27/global-warming-ipcc-report-humans


---SPSmith

Testing the God Hypothesis | Victor Stenger

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/testing-the-god-hypothesi_b_4226750.html?utm_hp_ref=religion-science


---SPSmith

APS -66th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics - Event - Urinal Dynamics

http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DFD13/Event/202554

In response to harsh and repeated criticisms from our mothers and
several failed relationships with women, we present the splash
dynamics of a simulated human male urine stream impacting rigid and
free surfaces. Our study aims to reduce undesired splashing that may
result from lavatory usage. Experiments are performed at a pressure
and flow rate that would be expected from healthy male
subjects.\footnote{Lapides, J., Fundamentals of Urology, W.B.
Saunders, Philadelphia, 1976.} For a rigid surface, the effects of
stream breakup and surface impact angle on lateral and vertical
droplet ejection distances are measured using high-speed photography
and image processing. For free surface impact, the effects of velocity
and fluid depth on droplet ejection distances are measured. Guided by
our results, techniques for splash reduction are proposed.

---SPSmith

Indicators | Climate Change | US EPA

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/


---SPSmith

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71 | Music News | Rolling Stone

With the Velvet Underground in the late Sixties, Reed fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry. As a restlessly inventive solo artist, from the Seventies into the 2010s, he was chameleonic, thorny and unpredictable, challenging his fans at every turn. Glam, punk and alternative rock are all unthinkable without his revelatory example. "One chord is fine," he once said, alluding to his bare-bones guitar style. "Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lou-reed-velvet-underground-leader-and-rock-pioneer-dead-at-71-20131027#ixzz2ixTS2giL 
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook


---SPSmith

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Ten Good Reasons to Hate Oprah - Page 2 | Nerve.com

7) She treats celebrities as medical experts

Giving celebrities a platform to express their fringe medical ideas as fact is not only irresponsible, but dangerous. When Jenny McCarthy took to Oprah's stage to talk about her belief that a vaccine caused her son's autism, Oprah fueled a dangerous anti-vaccine conspiracy theory that had been building in the United States. And when Suzanne Somers raved about how a quite possibly dangerous hormone treatment helped her with menopause, millions of American women began inquiring about how they could receive the same treatment.

the-secret8) She endorsed The Secret and other pseudoscience

When Oprah became enamored with The Secret, so, of course, did everyone else. Its central idea — that you're solely responsible for your own happiness — aligns with Oprah's ethos, but it's a dressed-up version of blaming the victim. When you believe that the universe rewards positive thinking, you must also believe the converse — that the universe punishes those who have negative thoughts. Negative thinking isn't responsible for poverty, illness, abuse, or misfortune. Oprah didn't rise to fame by wanting it more than anyone else — she worked hard and had a lot of help. To insinuate that success is based on sending good thoughts into the universe is junk science and offensive to anyone who has suffered a tragedy.


---SPSmith

Speak For Yourself: A Meditation on the Marketplace of Ideas |

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/speak-for-yourself-a-meditation-on-the-marketplace-of-ideas/


---SPSmith

Friday, October 18, 2013

Tea party

The Tea Party is led by ignorant, bigoted deadbeats, so is it any
wonder its principles are asinine and incorrect. Substantiating
proof:

We are taxed enough already: No, you are just too much of a deadbeat
to pay your share of the support structures of society:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/tax-reform/news/2011/06/10/9751/ten-charts-that-prove-the-united-states-is-a-low-tax-country/

So it is no surprise:
http://www.wweek.com/portland/mobile/articles/articleView/id:21408
Process servers can't find the Oregon Tea Party founder, who's more
than three years behind on mortgage payments.


---SPSmith

Mortgage company can't find Oregon's Tea Party chair | KATU Investigators | KATU.com - Portland News, Sports, Traffic Weather and Breaking News - Portland, Oregon

http://www.katu.com/news/investigators/Mortgage-company-cant-find-Oregons-Tea-Party-chair-228291091.html?mobile=y


---SPSmith

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Intel Beats The Street In Q3 2013 With $13.5 Billion In Revenue And $0.53 EPS | TechCrunch

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/15/intel-beats-the-street-in-q3-2013-with-13-5-billion-in-revenue-and-0-53-eps/


---SPSmith

The Dangers of Pseudoscience - NYTimes.com

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/the-dangers-of-pseudoscience/?_r=1&

The borderlines between genuine science and pseudoscience may be
fuzzy, but this should be even more of a call for careful
distinctions, based on systematic facts and sound reasoning. To try a
modicum of turtle blood here and a little aspirin there is not the
hallmark of wisdom and even-mindedness. It is a dangerous gateway to
superstition and irrationality.
---SPSmith

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite review (2013) | The Verge

http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/7/4811694/amazon-kindle-paperwhite-review-2013

Last year's $119 Kindle Paperwhite was the best ebook reader ever
made, the default choice, the one I recommend to everyone without a
second's thought — and 12 months later it still is. There isn't even
viable competition at this point.
---SPSmith

Tuesday, October 01, 2013

'Breaking Bad' Quotes: 20 Most Badass - Hollywood Reporter

The most famous Walt quote has been celebrated by fans and inspired an homage by Samuel L. Jackson.Breaking Bad writer Gennifer Hutchison, who wrote the episode, told THR she didn't realize the monologue would become iconic. "It was always a cool scene. I didn't realize how big it would become." Here's the quote in full: "You clearly don't know who you're talking to, so let me clue you in. I am not in danger, Skyler. I amthe danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot, and you think that of me? No! I am the one who knocks!"

---SPSmith

Monday, September 16, 2013