Monday, December 16, 2013

Religion in America’s states and counties, in 6 maps

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/12/12/religion-in-americas-states-and-counties-in-6-maps/


---SPSmith

This is a modern Christmas, so eat, drink and forget about the poor and the needy - Comment - Voices - The Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/this-is-a-modern-christmas-so-eat-drink-and-forget-about-the-poor-and-the-needy-9006181.html

Mariana Mazzucato, a professor of economics and innovation at Sussex University has just published a vital, incontestable new book, The Entrepreneurial State, debunking private vs public sector myths. She makes the case for a bigger and smarter state which would benefit everyone, including governments and business. I fear we will never have that again. Instead, as she points out, people have got used to the idea that social welfare should be "relentlessly trimmed" while "corporate welfare grown inexorably", by which she means tax breaks and deregulation.

---SPSmith

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Prevention and Control of Influenza with Vaccines

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr59e0729a1.htm


---SPSmith

'Sister Wives' case: Judge strikes down part of Utah polygamy law - CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/14/justice/utah-polygamy-law/index.html


---SPSmith

The History and Toxicity of Chlorine

http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/171547/

Although proposed as a disinfectant in the 1700s, it wasn't until 1825 that chlorine became widely used for the purpose of disinfecting. In 1825, the Royal Institute of France awarded the pharmacist Antoine Germain Labarraque for his recommendation of a chlorine solution for the enhancement of public health of France. Labarraque recommended that a chlorinated soda solution be used for disinfecting purposes and as a deodorant. After three years of various published clinic success using this chlorine solution, it became widely used and known as Labarraque's solution.

---SPSmith

Nice Shot - New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/opinion/10sachs.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


---SPSmith

Skeptico

http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/


---SPSmith

Omar Little is the gay stick-up man who robs drug dealers for a living in The Wire

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2008/jul/19/television.wire

When he robs an illicit card game, psychotic drug lord Marlo Stanfield fixes him with an evil glare and hisses, "Thats my money." Omar just smirks and explains, "Money ain't got no owners, only spenders."

---SPSmith

Mormon Church Finally Says Dark Skin is Not a Sign of God's Curse | Alternet

http://www.alternet.org/belief/mormon-church-dark-skin-sign-gods-curse-no-longer?paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark

So, even the Mormons admit their book is steeped in blatant racism...

---SPSmith

5 Reasons Why 2013 Was The Best Year In Human History | ThinkProgress

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/12/11/3036671/2013-certainly-year-human-history/


---SPSmith

About Fandor

http://www.fandor.com/company/about


---SPSmith

Slate: Why Won't Anyone Take the NYC Intel Experience Store's Free Pizza?

I thought you would like this article from The Slate Magazine for iPad




---SPSmith

Slate: The Tragedy of Common-Sense Morality



---SPSmith

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Eye on Sedona City Code with City Attorney Mike Goimarac

http://sedonaeye.com/eye-on-sedona-city-code-with-city-attorney-mike-goimarac

The City's sound regulations prohibit any animal from making noise for more than five minutes if continuous, or for more than 15 minutes if intermittent.

---SPSmith

Failure loves company

Failed President encourages failed field goal kicker. It is heartwarming to see the mediocre stick together. http://blogs.marketwatch.com/themargin/2013/12/11/george-w-bush-to-tormented-alabama-field-goal-kicker-life-has-its-setbacks-i-know/

---SPSmith

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

An Atheist Manifesto : : Sam Harris

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/atheist-manifesto-dec-7-2005


---SPSmith

One more attack on New Atheism from an atheist who should know better « Why Evolution Is True


Atheism is nothing more than a commitment to the most basic standard of intellectual honesty: One's convictions should be proportional to one's evidence. Pretending to be certain when one isn't—indeed, pretending to be certain about propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable—is both an intellectual and a moral failing.  (Sam Harris, 2005)
---SPSmith

Slate: Slate’s Favorite Recipes of the Year



---SPSmith

Saturday, December 07, 2013

Fatal Dog Bites Share Common Factors | Victoria Stilwell Positively

http://positively.com/2013/12/05/fatal-dog-bites-share-common-factors/


---SPSmith

Intel Sheds Light on the “Corner to Landing” Leap

http://www.hpcwire.com/2013/12/06/intel-sheds-light-corner-landing-leap/


---SPSmith

Florida man kills wife and son with crossbow, then slits throat - CNN.com


No matter how you dress it up, there are some fundamental difficulties with Christianity that are pretty hard to overcome.

1. At its most fundamental level, Christianity requires a belief that an all-knowing, all-powerful, immortal being created the entire Universe and its billions of galaxies 13,720,000,000 years ago (the age of the Universe) sat back and waited 10,000,000,000 years for the Earth to form, then waited another 3,720,000,000 years for human beings to gradually evolve, then, at some point gave them eternal life and sent its son to Earth to talk about sheep and goats in the Middle East.

While here, this divine visitor exhibits no knowledge of ANYTHING outside of the Iron Age Middle East, including the other continents, 99% of the human race, and the aforementioned galaxies.Either that, or it all started 6,000 years ago with one man, one woman and a talking snake. Either way "oh come on" just doesn't quite capture it.


---SPSmith

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Martin Bashir Says Someone Should Sh*t in Sarah Palin’s Mouth | Mediaite

Martin Bashir Says Someone Should Sh*t in Sarah Palin’s Mouth | Mediaite: " Bashir lit into Palin straight away, referring to her as America’s “resident dunce” and characterizing her remarks as “scraping the barrel of her long-deceased mind, and using her all-time favorite analogy in an attempt to sound intelligent about the national debt.”"

'via Blog this'

Bitcoin Explained

http://vimeo.com/63502573


---SPSmith

Religion Without God by Ronald Dworkin – review | Books | The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/28/religion-without-god-ronald-dworkin-review


---SPSmith

Philosophy Meets Medicine « Science-Based Medicine

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/philosophy-meets-medicine/


---SPSmith

Making the Web Faster with HTTP 2.0 - ACM Queue

http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2555617


---SPSmith

Sedona: A Documentary Film by Carrie Poppy, Brian Thompson, Adam Isaak — Kickstarter

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1654796823/sedona-a-documentary-film


---SPSmith

“PISA Day”—An Ideological and Hyperventilated Exercise | Economic Policy Institute

http://www.epi.org/blog/pisa-day-ideological-hyperventilated-exercise/

Today, threats to the nation's future prosperity come much less from flaws in our education system than from insufficiently stimulative fiscal policies which tolerate excessive unemployment, wasting much of the education our young people have acquired; an outdated infrastructure: regulatory and tax policies that reward speculation more than productivity; an over-extended military; declining public investment in research and innovation; a wasteful and inefficient health care system; and the fact that typical workers and their families, no matter how well educated, do not share in the fruits of productivity growth as they once did. The best education system we can imagine can't succeed if we ignore these other problems - See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/pisa-day-ideological-hyperventilated-exercise/#sthash.JvKvAAcb.dpuf

---SPSmith

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

To Settle Infinity Question, a New Law of Mathematics | Simons Foundation

To Settle Infinity Question, a New Law of Mathematics | Simons Foundation: "“If forcing axioms are right, then the continuum hypothesis is false,” Koellner said. “And if the inner-model axiom is right, then the continuum hypothesis is true. You go through a whole list of issues in other fields, and the forcing axioms will answer those questions one way, and ultimate L will answer them a different way.”"

'via Blog this'

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