Skip to main content

Home/ Long Game/ Group items tagged science

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
anonymous

The Love of One's Own and the Importance of Place - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...one_s_own_and_importance_place

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 10 Dec 10 - Cached
  • The study of geopolitics tries to identify those things that are eternal, those things that are of long duration and those things that are transitory. It does this through the prism of geography and power.
  • there is a huge gulf between the uncertainty of a prediction and the impossibility of a prediction.
  • There is no action taken that is not done with the expectation, reasonable or not, erroneous or not, of some predictable consequence.
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • Nature is the most predictable thing of all, since it lacks will and cannot make choices. Scientists who like to talk about the “hard sciences” actually have it easy.
  • First, human beings have choices as individuals. Second, and this is the most important thing, we are ourselves human. Our own wishes and prejudices inevitably color our view of how things will evolve.
  • Successful forecasting should begin by being stupid.
  • By being stupid we mean that rather than leaping toward highly sophisticated concepts and principles, we should begin by noting the obvious.
  • we should begin by noticing the obvious about human beings.
  • they are born and then they die
  • Human beings are born incapable of caring for themselves
  • Humans protect themselves and care for their young by forming families
  • Who should you ally with and where would you find them?
  • Why should you trust a relative more than a stranger?
  • The idea that romantic love should pre-empt the love of one’s own introduces a radical new dynamic to history, in which the individual and choice supersede community and obligation.
  • Which love is prior? Is it the love to which you are born — your family, your religion, your tradition — the love of one’s own? Or is it the acquired love, the one you have chosen because it pleases you as an individual?
  • one married out of love for one’s parents, and out of the sense of duty that grew out of that love.
  • Romantic love is acquired love.
  • This notion is embedded in the American Declaration of Independence, which elevates life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness over obligation.
  • Ideology is an acquired value. No child can be a Jeffersonian or a Stalinist. That can only be chosen after the age of reason, along with romantically acquired spouses.
  • Tradition is superseded by reason and the old regime superseded by artificially constructed regimes forged in revolution.
  • As a citizen, you have a relationship to an artificial construct, the constitution, to which you swear your loyalty. It is a rational relationship and, ultimately, an elective relationship. Try as one might, one can never stop being an American. One can, as a matter of choice, stop being a citizen of the United States. Similarly, one can elect to become a citizen of the United States. That does not, in the fullest sense of the word, make you an American. Citizenship and alienage are built into the system.
  • Loving America is simple and natural. Loving the United States is complex and artificial.
  • For modern regimes, birth is an accident that gives no one authority.
  • In post-revolutionary society, you may know who you were but that in no way determined who you would become.
  • Traditional society was infinitely more constrained but infinitely more natural.
  • This leads us to nationalism — or, more broadly, love and obligation to the community to which you were born, be it a small band of nomads or a vast nation-state.
  • Modern liberalism and socialism do not know what to do with nationalism.
  • For economists, self-interest is a natural impulse. But if it is a natural impulse, it is an odd one, for one can see widespread examples of human beings who do not practice it. Consider the tension between the idea that the United States was created for the purpose of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and the decision of a soldier to go to war and even willingly give his life.
  • Dying for a regime dedicated to the pursuit of happiness makes no sense. Dying for the love of one’s own makes a great deal of sense. But the modern understanding of man has difficulty dealing with this idea.
  • There is an important paradox in all this. Modern liberal regimes celebrate the doctrine of national self-determination, the right of a “people” to choose its own path. Leaving apart the amazing confusion as to what to do with a nation that chooses an illiberal course, you have the puzzlement of precisely what a nation is and why it has the right to determine anything.
  • Europe had been ruled by dynasties that governed nations by right of birth. Breaking those regimes was the goal of Europe’s revolutionaries.
  • In the case of the American founders, having acted on behalf of national self-determination, they created a Bill of Rights and hoped that history would sort through the contradiction between the nation, the state and the individual.
  • Why should we love those things that we are born to simply because we are born to them? Why should Americans love America, Iranians love Iran and Chinese love China? Why, in spite of all options and the fact that there are surely many who make their lives by loving acquired things, does love of one’s own continue to drive men?
  • Wherever one chooses to go, whatever identity one chooses to claim, in the end, you cannot escape from who you are.
  • anonymous on 10 Dec 10
     
    The study of geopolitics tries to identify those things that are eternal, those things that are of long duration and those things that are transitory. It does this through the prism of geography and power. What it finds frequently runs counter to common sense. More precisely, geopolitical inquiry seeks not only to describe but to predict what will happen. Those predictions frequently - indeed, usually - fly in the face of common sense. Geopolitics is the next generation's common sense. William Shakespeare, born in 1564 - the century in which the European conquest of the world took place -- had Macbeth say that history is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. If Macbeth is right, then history is merely sound and fury, devoid of meaning, devoid of order. Any attempt at forecasting the future must begin by challenging Macbeth, since if history is random it is, by definition, unpredictable. By George Friedman at StratFor on May 26, 2008.
anonymous

Greater India Before the Himalayas; Dinosaur Eating Snakes - 0 views

www.3quarksdaily.com/...the-dinosaur-eating-snake.html

earth science

shared by anonymous on 08 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Throughout most of the 545 million years during which there has been visible life on Earth (the Phanerozoic Eon), Greater India was not part of Asia, and it was not a peninsula.
  • Throughout most of the 545 million years during which there has been visible life on Earth (the Phanerozoic Eon), Greater India was not part of Asia, and it was not a peninsula.
  • Throughout most of the 545 million years during which there has been visible life on Earth (the Phanerozoic Eon), Greater India was not part of Asia, and it was not a peninsula.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Throughout most of the 545 million years during which there has been visible life on Earth (the Phanerozoic Eon), Greater India was not part of Asia, and it was not a peninsula.
  • Throughout most of the 545 million years during which there has been visible life on Earth (the Phanerozoic Eon), Greater India was not part of Asia, and it was not a peninsula.
  • Dinosaurs are one of the best groups for studying the potential effects of paleogeographic changes on evolution because dinosaurs were large animals that were capable of traversing continent scale-distances. For example, early in the Mesozoic Era, when the Earth's continental landmasses were connected, dinosaur faunas worldwide are generally similar. Carnivorous dinosaurs from North America, for example, bear striking resemblance to those from southern Africa, and herbivorous dinosaurs from China resemble those from South America. Later in the Mesozoic Era, however, this is not the case. Dinosaur faunas worldwide became more distinctive from one another due to evolutionary changes and extinction associated with increased isolation.
  • Snakes first appear in the fossil record 100 million years ago, but most Mesozoic snake fossils consist of isolated vertebrae—complete skeletons are extraordinarily rare and limited to a handful of specimens collected from Patagonia, the Levant, and southern Europe.
anonymous

Did Culture, Not Biology, Develop Humanity's Sense of Fair Play? - 0 views

blogs.discovermagazine.com/...p-humanitys-sense-of-fair-play

shared by anonymous on 22 Mar 10 - Cached
  • in a new study published in Science, scientists studying groups of people from different societies have suggested that our sense of fairness may depend on the type of society we live in.
  • Lead researcher Joseph Henrich observed that members of smaller groups were unwilling to punish selfish behavior and were willing to keep much of the money for themselves. This may be because smaller communities lack the social norms or informal institutions like markets and religion, causing them to have narrower concepts of fairness.
  • However critics argue that in the absence of cultural context, the tests seem weak. Terming the games an “artificial situation,” evolutionary game theorists Martin Nowak and David Rand pointed out that college students are “used to [such] concepts and hunter-gatherers aren’t. Who knows how they’re understanding the game?”
  • anonymous on 22 Mar 10
     
    From Discover Magazine Blogs, by Smriti Rao on March 22, 2010.
anonymous

Study: Massive Lava Flows Allowed Dinosaurs to Conquer the Planet - 0 views

blogs.discovermagazine.com/...inosaurs-to-conquer-the-planet

layscience lava study dinosaurs pangea

shared by anonymous on 24 Mar 10 - Cached
  • This week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, paleontologists say they’ve studied the period about 200 million years ago when dinosaurs first came to power, and found that while catastrophic volcanic activity may not explain dinosaur extinction, it could have explained why dinosaurs’ competitors disappeared and the terrible lizards took over the planet.
  • The scientists examined how two different isotopes (or forms) of carbon fluctuated during these volcanic eruptions. They found that the “heavy” form of carbon was depleted relative to the “light” form. They say this reflects disturbances in the carbon cycle at this time, including a spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and aerosols (fine solid particles)
  • anonymous on 24 Mar 10
     
    From 80beats (Discover Magazine). Written by Andrew Moseman on March 24, 2010.
anonymous

Exclusive Excerpt: Hack the Planet - 0 views

www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/hack-the-planet-excerpt/#more-19685#ixzz0j6SX7uuR

hack climate

shared by anonymous on 24 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Extending this common trope of American environmentalism to the question of climate engineering would be writer and climate activist Bill McKibben, who views geoengineering as the “junkie logic” of a culture addicted to technological solutions.
  • In The Whole Earth Catalog, first published in 1968, Brand wrote of humanity’s responsibility as Earth’s gardeners and caretakers, “We are as gods, and might as well get good at it.” Recently he updated his thinking. “Those were innocent times. New situation, new motto: ‘ We are as gods and have to get good at it.’”
  • Perhaps climate stewardship simply won’t work, and tinkering with the atmosphere won’t be available. Or it will — and we’ll kill one another over the thermostat. Now we contemplate wielding global powers previously imagined only in science fiction. Maybe the biggest question we’ll face may be how changing the planet will change ourselves….
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Advanced societies control the weather as a matter of course in the worlds of Star Trek and Dune. When it comes to our air and rain, our control fantasies are strong.
  • We may have to try, but attempting to dictate how much solar energy strikes the planet is a dangerous endeavor, perhaps involving just as much chance as our current course.
  • Succumbing to the illusion of control would mean replacing one burden — navigating the dangers of today’s climate crisis, and overhauling the world’s energy system — with the much more risky burden of revolutionizing our relationship with the sky itself. The illusion of control — “Everthing’s okay, the scientists have fixed the problem” — could engender apathy at a time when we desperately need to stop pouring carbon dioxide into the sky. It could drive nations apart during a planetary emergency, when they most require unity. It might work in unexpected ways or not at all.
  • anonymous on 24 Mar 10
     
    This is an exclusive excerpt from "Hack the Planet" by Eli Kintisch. It's featured at Wired Magazine.
anonymous

The Perils Of Polarization - 0 views

www.tnr.com/...the-perils-polarization

generations

shared by anonymous on 05 Apr 10 - Cached
  • American politics now seems condemned to an extended period of intense polarization, with an expanding army of aroused conservatives fighting to halt and reverse what it sees as the deplorable Europeanization of our economy and society. I doubt that a politics so configured will be able to address our long-term economic problems—until a crisis forces us to. I hope I’m wrong.
  • It remains the case that Washington is more polarized than the nation as a whole. The most recent analysis using the standard political science scoring system  found zero ideological overlap between Democrats and Republicans in either chamber of Congress. Which means that in both the House and the Senate, the most conservative Democrat is more liberal than is the most liberal Republican. In the electorate, Democrats who consider themselves moderate or conservative still overlap with similar Republican identifiers. But as Republicans have shed liberals and moderates over the past generation, the overlap has diminished.
  • anonymous on 05 Apr 10
     
    From The New Republic on April 5, 2010. By William Galston.
anonymous

Backs to the Future - 0 views

ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/...backsfuture06.asp

science reflections time

shared by anonymous on 07 Apr 10 - Cached
  • New analysis of the language and gesture of South America’s indigenous Aymara people indicates a reverse concept of time.
  • “Until now, all the studied cultures and languages of the world – from European and Polynesian to Chinese, Japanese, Bantu and so on – have not only characterized time with properties of space, but also have all mapped the future as if it were in front of ego and the past in back. The Aymara case is the first documented to depart from the standard model,” said Nunez.
  • no one had previously detailed the Aymara’s “radically different metaphoric mapping of time” – a super-fundamental concept, which, unlike the idea of “democracy,” say, does not rely on formal schooling and isn’t an obvious product of culture.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Why, however, is not entirely certain. One possibility, Nunez and Sweetser argue, is that the Aymara place a great deal of significance on whether an event or action has been seen or not seen by the speaker.
  • This cultural, cognitive-linguistic difference could have contributed, Nunez said, to the conquistadors’ disdain of the Aymara as shiftless – uninterested in progress or going “forward.”
  • anonymous on 07 Apr 10
     
    By Inga Kiderra on June 12, 2006. Referred to by Dave Gottlieb. More thoughts about time, the future, and the past. Thanks, Dave.
anonymous

Scientists as "spiritual atheists" - 0 views

blogs.discovermagazine.com/...ientists-as-spiritual-atheists

shared by anonymous on 14 Apr 10 - Cached
  • He’s referring to a new book, Science vs Religion: What Scientists Really Think by Elaine Howard Ecklund.
  • The reference point is the general population. In fact, 72% of scientists hold to a non-theistic position. On the other hand, most are not militant atheists in the mould of Richard Dawkins or Peter Atkins.
  • For the general public religious truths are both descriptive and prescriptive. That is, they describe the world’s past, and its present, as a factual matter, and, they prescribe a set of actions and norms. I think most scientists are thinking in prescriptive terms here, not descriptive. In other words, the religions of the world have integrated within their belief systems basic core human morality and ethics. Fundamental moral truths. I would myself agree that there are basic truths in many religions.
  • anonymous on 14 Apr 10
     
    Are Top Scientists Really So Atheistic? Look at the Data asks Chris Mooney. By Razib Khan in Discover Magazine Blogs on April 14, 2010.
anonymous

Does giving sweets to kids produce a "sugar rush?" - 0 views

www.straightdope.com/...s-to-kids-produce-a-sugar-rush

science layscience criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 18 Apr 10 - Cached
  • In 1995 the Journal of the American Medical Association published a review of 23 comparatively rigorous studies conducted between 1982 and 1994. These were your classic controlled double-blind affairs: two groups of kids, one fed a bunch of sugar, the other given a placebo (i.e., artificial sweetener), everyone kept sufficiently in the dark as to who'd gotten what, etc. The results? No discernible relationship between sugar ingested and how the kids acted. It didn't matter how old they were, how much sugar they got, what their diets were like otherwise — nothing. The JAMA authors stopped shy of drawing any definitive conclusions, but if there were a legitimate sugar-high effect out there, you'd like to see it turn up in the lab every so often.
  • the moms who thought they were in the sugar group said their sons acted more hyper. In addition, they tended to hover over their children more during play, offer more criticism of their behavior, etc. The mother-son pairs in the other group were judged by observers to be getting along better. What's more, those moms who, going into the experiment, most strongly believed their kids were sugar-sensitive also scored highest on a test designed to gauge cognitive rigidity.
  • I should stress we're not talking here about attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, which is its own freestanding issue; studies have suggested there's some correlation between ADHD and diet, so maybe every so often you'll get a kid whose condition really is exacerbated by sugar. And there are plenty of other good reasons to limit children's consumption of sugar-laden food. But when a parent freaks out because a swig of soda has allegedly made his kid uncontrollable, it's quite possible he's not just seeing the behavior he expects to see, he's helping create it.
  • anonymous on 18 Apr 10
     
    From The Straight Dope on February 15, 2008. More information about this long-lived myth.
anonymous

Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens - 0 views

spectrum.ieee.org/...0

augmented reality science layscience technology

shared by anonymous on 31 Mar 10 - Cached
  • anonymous on 31 Mar 10
     
    By Babak A. Parviz on September 2009 (in IEEE Spectrum).
anonymous

On Closing the Culture Gap - 0 views

seedmagazine.com/...on_closing_the_culture_gap

layscience longnow

shared by anonymous on 09 Apr 10 - Cached
  • acquiring a fundamental understanding of cultural evolution just might be the key to saving civilization from itself.
  • No living person knows even a billionth of the cultural information possessed by humanity. No reader of Seed could assemble a 747 from its parts, let alone tell how each part was manufactured, where, and from what.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 09 Apr 10
       
      This is what The Long Now is dedicated toward: a repository of essential knowledge for our species.
  • The discourse would emphasize that our brilliant, dominant species has undermined its own life-support systems. It now faces a daunting array of self-generated threats, ones that the human family could cooperatively organize to fight and, with luck, overcome by avoiding the first collapse of a global civilization.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Climate change, biodiversity loss, nuclear conflict—all are caused by human activity. We need a way to reorganize and refocus the sciences and humanities with a “Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior.”
  • anonymous on 09 Apr 10
     
    By Paul Ehrlich in Seed Magazine on April 8, 2010.
anonymous

40 years later, failure is still not an option - 0 views

blogs.discovermagazine.com/...e-is-still-no-longer-an-option

education

shared by anonymous on 13 Apr 10 - Cached
  • This week marks three related anniversaries. April 12, 1961: Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space. That was 49 years ago today. April 14, 1970: An oxygen tank disrupts on Apollo 13, causing a series of catastrophic malfunctions that nearly leads to the deaths of the three astronauts. That was 40 years ago this week. April 12, 1981: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, launches into space. That was 29 years ago today.
  • In 1970 Apollo 13 became our nation’s "successful failure".
  • But I’m old enough to remember when NASA could do the impossible. That was practically their motto. Beating the Soviets was impossible. Landing on the Moon was impossible. Getting Apollo 13 back safely was impossible.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Don’t get me wrong; the Shuttle is a magnificent machine. But it’s also a symbol of a political disaster for NASA.
  • Now, there’s a lot to be said for low Earth orbit. It is a fantastic resource for science, and I strongly think we should be exploiting it even more.
  • The idea of going back to the Moon is one I very much strongly support, but I get the impression that the plan itself is not well-thought out by NASA. The engineering, sure, but not the political side of it. And it’s the politics that will always and forever be NASA’s burden.
  • NASA needs a clear vision, and it needs one that is sturdy enough to resist the changing gusts of political winds.
  • anonymous on 13 Apr 10
     
    From Bad Astronomy at Discover Magazine. By Phil Plait on April 12.
anonymous

BANG! : The Universe Verse (Book 1) - 0 views

jldunbar.com/...BANG!.html

longnow science layscience

shared by anonymous on 19 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Book one in a three part series, “BANG!” explains the scientific theories regarding the origin of the universe using captivating illustrations and whimsical rhymes.  From the beginning of existence to the birth of stars and galaxies, you’ll learn how matter was created, why stars shine and where where we fit in this wild and crazy universe. This book is intended for all ages.  If you don’t understand everything, don’t worry, no one does!  That’s why I made it rhyme and added lots of pictures.
  • anonymous on 19 Apr 10
     
    A fantastic illustrated look at the history of the Big Bang. Written and illustrated by James Lu Dunbar.
anonymous

We Are Not Alone - 0 views

seedmagazine.com/...we_are_not_alone

layscience

shared by anonymous on 20 Apr 10 - Cached
  • according to a new book by astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch and science writer David Darling, we’ve had good evidence of microbial life on Mars since NASA’s Viking missions in the late 1970s.
  • The Viking researchers thought life on Mars would be heterotrophic, feeding off abundant organic compounds distributed everywhere all over the Martian surface. That picture was wrong, and studies of extremophiles on Earth have made us think differently about Mars.
  • There were three life-detection experiments: the Labeled Release Experiment that yielded a positive result, the Gas Exchange Experiment that gave a negative result, and the Pyrolytic Release Experiment, which was gave ambiguous, inconclusive results.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • We now have much better technologies, and a much better understanding of the Martian environment, but we still haven’t had a life-detection experiment since Viking!
  • all our biological molecules have a certain “handedness,” a left- or right-handed orientation to their structures. So if the molecules in the organisms from Mars have a different handedness than the molecules from Earth life, that would be pretty good proof.
  • The biggest thing is that we don’t yet understand the origin of life on Earth. Rather, we understand the persistence of life in habitable environments on this planet. There are tons of potential habitable environments elsewhere in our own solar system, and we know that life originated on Earth and spread nearly everywhere.
  • It’s hard to see other possibilities, other forms life can have, what other options, avenues, and paths, life could take elsewhere. I think as we discover more and more strange planets and moons, in our solar system and beyond, most scientists will realize that it’s very important to look at these other possibilities, so that we’re somewhat prepared for what else might be out there.
  • anonymous on 20 Apr 10
     
    "In his new book, astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch says that extraterrestrial life has already been found." By Lee Billings in Seed on April 20, 2010.
anonymous

Attention Whole Foods Shoppers - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...attention_whole_foods_shoppers

sustai sustainability contrarian longnow

shared by anonymous on 29 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.
  • Yet 850 million people in poor countries were chronically undernourished before the 2008 price spike, and the number is even larger now, thanks in part to last year's global recession. This is the real food crisis we face.
  • Poverty -- caused by the low income productivity of farmers' labor -- is the primary source of hunger in Africa, and the problem is only getting worse. The number of "food insecure" people in Africa (those consuming less than 2,100 calories a day) will increase 30 percent over the next decade without significant reforms, to 645 million, the U.S. Agriculture Department projects.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Influential food writers, advocates, and celebrity restaurant owners are repeating the mantra that "sustainable food" in the future must be organic, local, and slow. But guess what: Rural Africa already has such a system, and it doesn't work. Few smallholder farmers in Africa use any synthetic chemicals, so their food is de facto organic. High transportation costs force them to purchase and sell almost all of their food locally. And food preparation is painfully slow. The result is nothing to celebrate: average income levels of only $1 a day and a one-in-three chance of being malnourished.
  • we need to de-romanticize our view of preindustrial food and farming. And that means learning to appreciate the modern, science-intensive, and highly capitalized agricultural system we've developed in the West.
  • It's true that the story of the Green Revolution is not everywhere a happy one. When powerful new farming technologies are introduced into deeply unjust rural social systems, the poor tend to lose out.
  • Traditional food systems lacking in reliable refrigeration and sanitary packaging are dangerous vectors for diseases. Surveys over the past several decades by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found that the U.S. food supply became steadily safer over time, thanks in part to the introduction of industrial-scale technical improvements.
  • The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition last year published a study of 162 scientific papers from the past 50 years on the health benefits of organically grown foods and found no nutritional advantage over conventionally grown foods. According to the Mayo Clinic, "No conclusive evidence shows that organic food is more nutritious than is conventionally grown food."
  • Less than 1 percent of American cropland is under certified organic production. If the other 99 percent were to switch to organic and had to fertilize crops without any synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, that would require a lot more composted animal manure. To supply enough organic fertilizer, the U.S. cattle population would have to increase roughly fivefold. And because those animals would have to be raised organically on forage crops, much of the land in the lower 48 states would need to be converted to pasture. Organic field crops also have lower yields per hectare. If Europe tried to feed itself organically, it would need an additional 28 million hectares of cropland, equal to all of the remaining forest cover in France, Germany, Britain, and Denmark combined.
  • between 1990 and 2004, food production in these countries continued to increase (by 5 percent in volume), yet adverse environmental impacts were reduced in every category. The land area taken up by farming declined 4 percent, soil erosion from both wind and water fell, gross greenhouse gas emissions from farming declined 3 percent, and excessive nitrogen fertilizer use fell 17 percent. Biodiversity also improved, as increased numbers of crop varieties and livestock breeds came into use.
  • Foreign assistance to support agricultural improvements has a strong record of success, when undertaken with purpose. In the 1960s, international assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and donor governments led by the United States made Asia's original Green Revolution possible.
  • Development skeptics and farm modernization critics keep pushing us toward this unappealing second path. It's time for leaders with vision and political courage to push back.
  • anonymous on 29 Apr 10
     
    By Robert Paarlberg at Foreign Policy on May/June 2010. Hat tip from Modeled Behavior (http://modeledbehavior.com/2010/04/28/in-defense-of-the-industrial-farm-and-against-local-sustainable-and-organic/) - Printable, full version
anonymous

Objectivism & Politics, Part 50 - 0 views

aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/...ectivism-politics-part-50.html

criticalthinking politics tradition

shared by anonymous on 05 May 10 - Cached
  • Rand is unique in that she tried to justify capitalism and freedom using the same sort of rationalistic assumptions accepted by the Old Left. She insisted, just like so many of the so-called “scientific” socialists and progressives of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that everything in the political and moral realms had to be explicity justified on the basis of “reason.” But whether used to provide the rationalistic justification of socialism, capitalism, or any other ism that a febrile imagination can dream up, all such rationalisms amount to the same thing: incapacity in the face of the complexities of the human condition.
  • Reverence for tradition is, for the intelligent, non-ideological conservative, merely a tool used to compliment less tacit forms of knowledge, such as science and individual experience.
  • Traditional usages often have proven their worth over time, and should not be tossed out merely become some rationalist fails to explain it by “reason.” The conservative proceeds cautiously when reforming a tradition, because he knows, from long experience, how easy it is to make things worse, and that when faced with any daunting complexity, sheer trial and error is often a far better guide than the so-called “reason” of conceited intellectuals.
  • anonymous on 05 May 10
     
    By Greg Nyquist at Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature on May 4, 2010.
anonymous

How Our Brains Make Memories - 0 views

www.printthis.clickability.com/...cpt

shared by anonymous on 03 May 10 - Cached
  • anonymous on 03 May 10
     
    By Greg Miller at Smithsonian.com in the May 2010 issue.
anonymous

A New Clue to Explain Human Existence - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...18cosmos.html

layscience

shared by anonymous on 19 May 10 - Cached
  • Physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory are reporting that they have discovered a new clue that could help unravel one of the biggest mysteries of cosmology: why the universe is composed of matter and not its evil-twin opposite, antimatter.
  • In a mathematically perfect universe, we would be less than dead; we would never have existed. According to the basic precepts of Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics
  • Maria Spiropulu of CERN and the California Institute of Technology called the results “very impressive and inexplicable.”
  • anonymous on 19 May 10
     
    By Dennis Overbye at The New York Times on May 17, 2010
anonymous

Investing in the Poor - 0 views

www.marginalrevolution.com/...investing-in-the-poor.html

economics

shared by anonymous on 19 May 10 - Cached
  • The Unincorporated Man is a science fiction novel in which shares of each person's income stream can be bought and sold.  (Initial ownership rights are person 75%, parents 20%, government 5%--there are no other taxes--and people typically sell shares to finance education and other training.)
  • anonymous on 19 May 10
     
    By Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution on May 19, 2010.
« First ‹ Previous 121 - 140 of 156 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page