09 SEP 2016 by ideonexus
What if Conservative Media is Insulated from Electoral Lo...
Ziegler said he wanted to see the entire system torpedoed and rebuilt.
“I think the conservative media is the worst thing that has ever happened to the Republican Party on a national level,” he opined.
“Take a look at — now this is not Rush's fault. But if you look at the presidential elections before Rush Limbaugh became nationally syndicated, I believe Republicans won five out of six,” he said. “After Rush Limbaugh became truly nationally syndicated ... if you start in 1996 a...Folksonomies: media confirmation bias
Folksonomies: media confirmation bias
1 
notes
notes09 NOV 2015 by ideonexus
MySpace Destroyed History
MySpace, in a rush to relaunch and rebrand itself, made inaccessible the blogs of all of its users. There could be no movement to preserve this record of the past, as it happened so suddenly. Millions of contributions, critical records of events of a decade or so ago, lost in the blink of an eye. It’s similar to the destruction of something like Penn station: a website that was run by user-generated content, that was a central hub of Internet traffic, and that meant something to multiple mi...Folksonomies: history internet history
Folksonomies: history internet history
1 notes
notes30 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Violence Must be Considered Proportionally When Compared ...
In absolute numbers, of course, civilized societies are matchless in the destruction they have wreaked. But should we look at absolute numbers, or at relative numbers, calculated as a proportion of the populations? The choice confronts us with the moral imponderable of whether it is worse for 50 percent of a population of one hundred to be killed or 1 percent of a population of one billion. In one frame of mind, one could say that a person who is tortured or killed suffers to the same degree ...Folksonomies: violence quantification
Folksonomies: violence quantification
1 notes
notes29 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Encyclopedia Galactica
A. I do not say now that we can prevent the fall. But it is not yet too
late to shorten the interregnum which will follow. It is possible,
gentlemen, to reduce the duration of anarchy to a single millennium, if my
group is allowed to act now. We are at a delicate moment in history. The
huge, onrushing mass of events must be deflected just a little, – just a
little – It cannot be much, but it may be enough to remove twenty-nine
thousand years of misery from human h... 1 notes
notes01 JUN 2013 by mxplx
problem is not technology but your lack of will to adapt
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970416/quotesFolksonomies: immortality prescience
Folksonomies: immortality prescience
Prof.Barnhardt: There must be alternatives. You must have some technology that could solve our problem.
Klaatu: Your problem is not technology. The problem is you. You lack the will to change.
Prof. Barnhardt: Then help us change.
Klaatu: I cannot change your nature. You treat the world as you treat each other.
Prof.Barnhardt: But every civilization reaches a crisis point eventually.
Klaatu: Most of them don't make it.
Prof. Barnhardt: Yours did. How?
Klaatu: Our sun was dying. We had to evolve in order to survive.
Prof.Barnhardt: So it was only when your world was threated with destruction that you became what you are now.
Klaatu: Yes.
Prof.Barnhardt: Well that's where we are. You say we're on the brink of destruction and you're right. But it's only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve. This is our moment. Don't take it from us, we are close to an answer.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Teddy Roosevelt on Nature
A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great or beautiful cathedral. The extermination of the passenger pigeon meant that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims. And to lose the chance to see frigate-birds soaring in circles above the storm, or a file of pelicans winging their way homeward across the crimson afterglow of the sunset, or a myriad terns flashing in the bright light of midday as they ho...Folksonomies: nature spirituality
Folksonomies: nature spirituality
1 Nature is like a cathedral with every living thing a masterpiece.
05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Sad Evolutionary History of Humans
I know no study which is so unutterably saddening as that of the evolution of humanity, as it is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent than the other brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often as not led him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions, which make his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life with barren toi...Folksonomies: evolution big history
Folksonomies: evolution big history
1 notes
notesCome out of the wilderness as a brute, filled with terrors, and constantly subject to a cruel world.
21 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Indestructible Atoms
Chemical analysis and synthesis go no farther than to the separation of particles one from another, and to their reunion. No new creation or destruction of matter is within the reach of chemical agency. We might as well attempt to introduce a new planet into the solar system, or to annihilate one already in existence, as to create or destroy a particle of hydrogen. 1 notes
notesTo destroy an atom of Hydrogen would be like trying to introduce a new planet to the solar system.
02 FEB 2012 by ideonexus
Nuclear Power Forces Man to Greatness
It is hard to think of fissionable materials when fashioned into bombs as being a source of happiness. However this may be, if with such destructive weapons men are to survive, they must grow rapidly in human greatness. A new level of human understanding is needed. The reward for using the atom's power towards man's welfare is great and sure. The punishment for its misuse would seem to be death and the destruction of the civilization that has been growing for a thousand years. These are the a...Folksonomies: atomic power nuclear power
Folksonomies: atomic power nuclear power
1 notes
notesBecause the alternative is self-destruction.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Birth of the Modern
The so-called 'scientific revolution', popularly associated with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but reaching back in an unmistakably continuous line to a period much earlier still. Since that revolution overturned the authority in science not only of the middle ages but of the ancient world—since it ended not only in the eclipse of scholastic philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physics—it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissan...Folksonomies: enlightenment modernism
Folksonomies: enlightenment modernism
1 notes
notesAside from the Enlightenment, all other periods of European history are worthless in understanding how we got to the modern era.
