30 MAY 2016 by ideonexus
Rural Communities "Deserve to Die"
It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces... [N]obody did this to them. They failed themselves.
[...]
If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy—which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect a...Folksonomies: politics
Folksonomies: politics
1 Commentary from a conservative lamenting the rise of Donald Trump
07 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
How Los Angeles Regulates Air Pollution
Los Angeles is not really a city of skyscrapers. All around those skyscrapers is a flat expanse of one- and two-story buildings. This low-density urban development means you have to drive to get around in LA. Los Angeles’ sprawl is considered a classic case of failed urban planning.Los Angeles’ sprawl is considered a classic case of failed urban planning. Its public transportation has not been developed or utilized to its fullest potential. This has caused an inevitable increase in car o... 1 
notes
notesDespite increased traffic.
24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Von Neuman and Predicting the Weather
I remember a talk that Von Neumann gave at Princeton around 1950, describing the glorious future which he then saw for his computers. Most of the people that he hired for his computer project in the early days were meteorologists. Meteorology was the big thing on his horizon. He said, as soon as we have good computers, we shall be able to divide the phenomena of meteorology cleanly into two categories, the stable and the unstable. The unstable phenomena are those which are upset by small dist...Folksonomies: prediction chaos theory
Folksonomies: prediction chaos theory
1 notes
notes09 AUG 2014 by ideonexus
Collapse is a Recurrent Phenomenon in Societies
The Roman Empire's dramatic collapse (followed by many centuries of population decline, economic deterioration, intellectual regression, and the disappearance of literacy) is well known, but it was not the rst rise-and-collapse cycle in Europe. Prior to the rise of Classical Greco- Roman civilization, both the Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations had each risen, reached very advanced levels of civilization, and then collapsed virtually completely [Morris, 2006; Redman, 1999]. The history of Mes... 1 notes
notes21 JUN 2014 by ideonexus
There is a mass exodus into the virtual world
The real world just doesn’t offer up as easily the carefully designed pleasures,
the thrilling challenges, and the powerful social bonding afforded by
virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t
engineered to maximize our potential. Reality wasn’t designed from the bottom
up to make us happy.
And so, there is a growing perception in the gaming community:
Reality, compared to games, is broken.
In fact, it is more than a perception. It’s a phenom...Folksonomies: education gamification
Folksonomies: education gamification
1 notes
notes29 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Christmas is Not Christian
I have decked my soundproof booth with boughs of holly and, of course, poinsettia or, some say, poin-settia. Though it is actually pronounced pon-see-ha. Did you know that it is a Mexican plant? It is. Named for the ambassador to Mexico, James Poinsett, it was brought to our country in 1828 and quickly became favored over its predecessor, the Christ-odendron.
Some might argue we've ended up with an inferior, less godly plant. But in fact, history shows us so little of Christmas is actually C... 1 notes
notesMost of the traditions we embrace for the holiday have pagan origins.
25 DEC 2012 by ideonexus
Should Smallpox be Made Extinct?
A few decades from now, we may make a brutal,calculated decision to totally eradicate a particular form of life. We already are 99 percent of the way along that path.
Even conservationists, who publicly deplore the extinction of innumerable species of animals and plants through neglect, ignorance, or financial greed, have applauded this conscious, murderous act to be carried out by a UN agency.
I speak of smallpox virus. Since 1967, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been systematica... 1 notes
notes1978 article on the state of the smallpox virus, driven to extinction by the United Nations, asks whether it should be preserved in deep freeze for science?
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Past and Future of the Mississippi
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the old Oolitic Silurian Period, must a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the ...Folksonomies: speculation
Folksonomies: speculation
1 notes
notes"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."
14 APR 2012 by ideonexus
The Journey of a Fossil
One hundred million years ago, an ammonoid lived in the sea that then separated India from Asia. It died and fell into limy sediments on the seafloor. These sediments grew deeper and hardened into rock. The shell calcified, becoming part of the rock, though maintaining every detail of its structure. India was on the move, drifting on a slab of the Earth's mobile crust toward Asia. The floor of the intervening sea was forced under the Asian continent, back into the hot interior of the planet. ...
1 Chet Raymo describes the epic journey of a fossil from the bottom of the ocean to the top of a mountain.
08 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Babies Can Distinguish Sounds Adults Cannot
Why do the speakers of different languages hear and produce sounds so differently? Ears and mouths are the same the world over. What differs is our brains. Exposure to a particular language has altered our brains and shaped our minds, so that we perceive sounds differently. This in turn leads speakers of different languages to produce sounds differently. When and how do babies start to do this? Do they start out listening like a computer, with no categorical distinctions? Or do they start out... 1 notes
notesBefore a baby learns the sounds of their language, they can distinguish the sounds of any language. Later, they are unable to distinguish the non-categorized sounds when produced in other languages.
