In April 2010, physicist and outspoken lover of science Brian Cox spoke at a TED meeting about the state of science funding in the UK and the world, and why we do science. Trust me, you need to find the 17 minutes today to watch this.
Man, he’s good. Someone should give him a TV show.
Tip o’ the LHC to Goran Prunk.
From Eric Dondero:
A balding Mid-west Governor, and a more-than-husky outspoken East Coast chief of state are described as "sexy" proponents of the free market philosophy - tongue in cheek - in the latest column by Michael Gerson at WaPo "Mitch Daniels: A paradox for our times":
Daniels became a highly successful Indiana governor, combining a motorcycle-driving, pork-tenderloin-eating populism with courageous budget cutting, a solid record of job creation and a reputation for competence. If responsibility and austerity are now sexy, Daniels and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are centerfolds.
When asked his political influences, Daniels cites Charles Murray, the author of "What It Means to Be a Libertarian." Daniels speaks of taxation as a form of coercion that can be justified only by narrow and necessary public purposes. But unlike, say, libertarian Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, Daniels has actually run a state, forcing him to define government's necessary purposes in a more realistic manner.
From BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition:
A new complication has been seen in a patient with kidney disease who received stem cell therapy, scientists have warned. Stem cells were injected into the kidney, but the patient suffered tissue damage and died from an infecti
what is the relationship between pressure and velocity?
From Wired Top Stories:
A Scottish electrical engineer publishes a brief letter in the journal Nature, describing the essentials of making and receiving television images. But it will take 40 years before the well-delineated concept finally achieves commercial success. Think twi
Here’s the long and short of this “comprehensive energy plan” they want to pass: For 40 years, no President has “found” a solution getting us off of oil. The Free Market has no desire because most believe oil isn’t near its peak point. SO the Democrats want to put ENORMOUS tax increases on all carbon [...]
From mental_floss Blog:
I mentioned Watson, IBM's Jeopardy-playing computer, back in February. But the details were a little thin back then. Now, the New York Times Magazine has a full profile of Watson, and it sounds like this thing is a monster. IBM has been staging "live" gam
From IEEE Spectrum:
Justin is a dexterous humanoid robot that can make coffee. Now it's learning to fix satellites. Justin was developed at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), in Wessling, Germany. The robot has different con
From SPACE.com:
Two weeks before a total eclipse of the sun crosses over the South Pacific Ocean, the moon will put on a sky show of its own — a partial lunar eclipse on June 26 that should be visible from parts of North America, weather permitting. The lunar eclipse will
From USATODAY.com Technology News:
U.S. regulators are reconsidering the rules that govern high-speed Internet connections — wading into a bitter policy dispute that could be tied up in Congress and the courts for years. The chairman's plan has the backing of many big Inte
Republicans vote near unanimous for Repeal
From Eric Dondero:
Every single Republican in the US House, with the exceptions of Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana and Rep. Zach Wamp of Tenn. who missed the vote, voted "Yea" for repeal of the individual mandate in Obama's Health Care bill. The vote was 187-230.
From Politico:
Republicans wanted to get Democrats on the record once again saying they back a law that requires uninsured Americans to purchase health insurance.
The procedural motion never really had a shot at passing, but that wasn't the Republicans' point. The vote was 187-230, with 21 Democrats voting to roll back the individual mandate.
The amendment was sponsored by Republican Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan.
AntzinPantz blog comments:
Of course, it was defeated.
But it left the republicans with a handy list of names to campaign against.
This is a guest post from a member of Science in the News (SITN), an organization of PhD students at Harvard University whose mission is to bring the newest and most relevant science to a general audience. For over a decade, SITN has been presenting a fall lecture series at Harvard Medical School, with talks on a diversity of current and newsworthy topics, such as stem cell biology and climate change. SITN also publishes the Flash, an online newsletter written by graduate students at Harvard, which presents current scientific discoveries and emerging fields in an accessible and entertaining manner. SITN engages in additional outreach activities such as "Science by the Pint", and hopes students at other institutions will also make the commitment to strengthen science communication. The following post is from Harvard graduate student Rou-Jia Sung. The phrase "obsessive compulsive" has become such a part of the pop lexicon that it merits three separate entries on urbandictionary.com. However, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a serious illness that affects between 1 in 50 and 1 in100 adults in the US and is more prevalent than panic disorder or bipolar disorder. Several antidepressants are approved by the FDA for treatment of OCD, but the ...
Though, "conservatives and libertarian voters" will turn out anyway
From Eric Dondero:
Initiatives and referendum for repeal of ObamaCare will be on the ballot in a number of states this Fall, including Missouri, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arizona and Florida. The initiatives are seen as a way to help boost turn-out on the Right. But some on the Right, don't see it as entirely necessary. Conservatives and libertarians are already fired up.
From The Hill "Republicans put health reform on ballot in push to turn out conservatives":
“We don’t care who gets it done,” [repeal] said ALEC health task force director Christie Herrera, “just as long as they get it done.”
Herrera said she doesn’t think Republicans need the ballot measures to bring out the vote.
“I think you’re going to see huge turnout among conservatives and libertarian voters,” she said, “just because there’s huge residual anger against the health reform law.”
To reach orbit you have to have your vehicle have a horizontal, i.e., tangential, orbital velocity, of about 7,800 m/s and have sufficient altitude, say at least 100 km, the altitude considered to be "space". To get to this altitude you have to have a separate velocity in the vertical direction. T
what is line and phase voltage and current in 3 ph system?
The obvious question in the test industry is an age-old one: Can we build completely defect-free electronics? Can we design test strategies that will positively find every product defect? Test professionals and their managers have struggled with these questions for decades. How many failures can we
Yet another alternative energy startup thinks it may have developed the key to widespread commercialization of solar-powered windows and glass. But despite all the efforts and untold billions of dollars in government research and development funding over decades, wide-spread use of solar power seems
by Eric Dondero
About time! Perhaps the election of John Harper and his Conservative Party is starting to have an affect. The Canadians are joining the worldwide fight against Islamo-Fascism.
Father and son were convicted last week and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of their daughter/sister Aqsa Parvez. What warranted the brutal strangling in the basement of Miss Parvez? She didn't want to wear a hijab, she wanted to get a part-time job in town, and hang out at the mall. In other words, she wanted to live a Western lifestyle.
Amazingly, many in the Canadian media are saying the sentence wasn't harsh enough. From the Globe and Mail editorials, June 17:
Canadian justice needs to be unyielding with those who kill women and children for what they deem to be culturally appropriate reasons. There is reason to question whether it gave too much ground, in the murder of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez of Mississauga, Ont., by her father, Muhammad Parvez, and her brother, Waqas.
Crown prosecutors called it an honour killing, a murder to erase the shame of the men in an immigrant, traditionalist family from Pakistan in which a daughter sought Western-style freedoms, such as a part-time job. If that was so, the Crown should have sought the strongest possible sentence, that of first-degree murder, based on evidence of planning and deliberateness. The brother, for instance, had asked a friend days earlier if he could get him a gun to kill his sister.
Libertarians and cultural liberals need to face up to the harsh reality of Radical Islam. Explains Canadian columnist Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail (via Memeo):
Aqsa’s entire family was dedicated to resisting Western values, not adopting them. They were determined to cling to the ways of rural Pakistan. They believed that their community in Mississauga would understand what had been done. And they were right. At the local mosque, where kids of Aqsa’s age attend Islamic class, the kids agreed that she’d largely brought it on herself. The imam did not disagree with them.
Got that? Western values clashed with imported Radical Islam, resulting in the brutal murder of this beautiful young girl.
As Marc Steyn explains (recent column):
they want to kill us merely because we are the other—undermines the hyper-rationalist’s entire world view... At a superficial level, the Islamo-leftist alliance makes no sense: gay feminist secular hedonists making common cause with homophobic misogynist proscriptive theocrats. From Islam’s point of view, it’s an alliance of convenience.
The Left are too dumb to understand this. Let's hope at least Libertarians who've been momentarily fooled, will wake up and smell the (Turkish) coffee.
Simplifying difficult situations
Is it true that for rotation of hydro-generator and turbine, we have to first know the layout of Penstock and all before deciding on direction of rotation? Please do enlighten me.
