30 DEC 2013 by ideonexus

 The Advantage of Offline Source

Sharif smiled hesitantly. “In all honesty, I was as surprised as you about that. Professor Gu and I were talking freely when he arrived on campus. He got rather quiet as we came down the slope from your Warschawski Hall. And then for no apparent reason, he turned left and we went around the north side of the library. The next thing I knew he was walking into the freight entrance—and I lost contact. I don’t know what more I can say. My own wearable security is of the highest order, of co...
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An interesting critique on the bias of the Internet in how it brings you exactly what you are looking for, while the paper-books only brought you approximations, challenging you.

04 FEB 2012 by ideonexus

 Neil deGrasse Tyson Doesn't Want to be President

The question, “If I were President I’d…” implies that if you swap out one leader, put in another, then all will be well with America—as though our leaders are the cause of all ailments. That must be why we’ve created a tradition of rampant attacks on our politicians. Are they too conservative for you? Too liberal? Too religious? Too atheist? Too gay? Too anti-gay? Too rich? Too dumb? Too smart? Too ethnic? Too philanderous? Curious behavior, given that we elect 88% of Congress ev...
Folksonomies: politics
Folksonomies: politics
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He wants to enlighten voters so they'll elect a good one.

19 JUN 2011 by ideonexus

 Ignoring Inconvenient Truths In Astronomy

Metaphysically speaking, no one paradigm is innately any better than any other. A universe that began at 9 a.m. on October 10, 4004 B.C. (which was official back in the seventeenth century) is intrinsically no less valuable for those who live by a belief in it than is our present uncertain universe, perhaps built like a yo-yo, forever destroying and remaking itself in never-ending big bangs. Each of the cosmological theories has, at different times, found totally ironclad evidence to support ...
  1  notes

In order to keep the Earth at the center of the Universe, theologians and astronomers had to come up with wild explanatory theories that did not fit the evidence.