"Physically and mentally, women have the right stuff for lengthy missions in space. So why send men when you can send just their contributions to the next generation, collected and cryopreserved in tiny vials? Sending an all-female crew and a sperm bank lets a space program economize while also increasing the genetic diversity of the parental pool."
"Researchers at the University of Bath recently demonstrated that water dropped on a very hot ridged surface would cause the droplet to not only float, but climb along an inclined surface, as though ascending a flight of stairs. [The video below] produced by the folks at Science Friday, features some really beautiful closeup shots of the [Leidenfrost] effect."
"For years, the government has gotten by without having to produce the kind of financial statements that are required of most significant for-profit and nonprofit enterprises [...] it does not include the unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Social Security and other outsized and very real obligations. [...] We most often hear about the alarming $15.96 trillion national debt (more than 100% of GDP), and the 2012 budget deficit of $1.1 trillion (6.97% of GDP). As dangerous as those numbers are, they do not begin to tell the story of the federal government's true liabilities. The actual liabilities of the federal government -- including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees' future retirement benefits -- already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP. [...] When the accrued expenses of the government's entitlement programs are counted, it becomes clear that to collect enough tax revenue just to avoid going deeper into debt would require over $8 trillion in tax collections annually. [But] if the government confiscated the entire adjusted gross income of these American taxpayers, plus all of the corporate taxable income in the year before the recession, it wouldn't be nearly enough [...] to fund the growth of U.S. liabilities."This means political malfeasance and governmental incompetence of titanic proportions. We need a new generation of leaders in DC to steer the ship of state, which means electing more reality-minded and ethical people like MIT alumnus Representative Tom Massie!
"Standing here at the close of the 19th century -- amid the trophies of thought -- the triumphs of genius -- here under the flag of the Great Republic -- knowing something of the history of man -- here on this day that has been set apart for thanksgiving, I most reverently thank the good men. the good women of the past, I thank the kind fathers, the loving mothers of the savage days. I thank the father who spoke the first gentle word, the mother who first smiled upon her babe. I thank the first true friend. I thank the savages who hunted and fished that they and their babes might live. I thank those who cultivated the ground and changed the forests into farms -- those who built rude homes and watched the faces of their happy children in the glow of fireside flames -- those who domesticated horses, cattle and sheep -- those who invented wheels and looms and taught us to spin and weave -- those who by cultivation changed wild grasses into wheat and corn, changed bitter things to fruit, and worthless weeds to flowers, that sowed within our souls the seeds of art. I thank the poets of the dawn -- the tellers of legends -- the makers of myths -- the singers of joy and grief, of hope and love. I thank the artists who chiseled forms in stone and wrought with light and shade the face of man. I thank the philosophers, the thinkers, who taught us how to use our minds in the great search for truth. I thank the astronomers who explored the heavens, told us the secrets of the stars, the glories of the constellations -- the geologists who found the story of the world in fossil forms, in memoranda kept in ancient rocks, in lines written by waves, by frost and fire -- the anatomists who sought in muscle, nerve and bone for all the mysteries of life -- the chemists who unraveled Nature’s work that they might learn her art -- the physicians who have laid the hand of science on the brow of pain, the hand whose magic touch restores -- the surgeons who have defeated Nature’s self and forced her to preserve the lives of those she labored to destroy. I thank the discoverers of chloroform and ether, the two angels who give to their beloved sleep, and wrap the throbbing brain in the soft robes of dreams. I thank the great inventors -- those who gave us movable type and the press, by means of which great thoughts and all discovered facts are made immortal -- the inventors of engines, of the great ships, of the railways, the cables and telegraphs. I thank the great mechanics, the workers in iron and steel, in wood and stone. I thank the inventors and makers of the numberless things of use and luxury. I thank the industrious men, the loving mothers, the useful women. They are the benefactors of our race. The inventor of pins did a thousand times more good than all the popes and cardinals, the bishops and priests -- than all the clergymen and parsons, exhorters and theologians that ever lived. The inventor of matches did more for the comfort and convenience of mankind than all the founders of religions and the makers of all creeds -- than all malicious monks and selfish saints. [...] I thank the statesmen who have preserved the rights of man. I thank Paine whose genius sowed the seeds of independence in the hearts of ’76. I thank Jefferson whose mighty words for liberty have made the circuit of the globe. [...] I thank the great scientists -- those who have reached the foundation, the bed-rock -- who have built upon facts -- the great scientists, in whose presence theologians look silly and feel malicious [...] I thank the scientists one and all [...] I thank the heroes, the destroyers of prejudice and fear -- the dethroners of savage gods -- the extinguishers of hate’s eternal fire -- the heroes, the breakers of chains -- the founders of free states -- the makers of just laws -- the heroes who fought and fell on countless fields -- the heroes whose dungeons became shrines -- the heroes whose blood made scaffolds sacred -- the heroes, the apostles of reason, the disciples of truth, the soldiers of freedom -- the heroes who held high the holy torch and filled the world with light. With all my heart I thank them all."Amen!
fame -- and my colleague in performing Moments of Science at the IgNobel Prize Ceremony -- join me on MaximizingProgress.tv! The essence of our conversation was the power of learning-by-doing and the iterative experimentation and observation that's the core of the scientific method! Every kid can embrace this and have a major advantage in life -- being reality-grounded! Also, Daniel pointed out the gold at Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations website where the many demo videos include Exploding Garbage Can, Coanda Beach Ball, and Mousetrap Fission! 
Ian Sample in the Guardian shares exclusive interview with cosmologist Stephen Hawking who asserts... "There is no heaven or afterlife [...] that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. [...] "We should seek the greatest value of our action." [...] "I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first."Blunt, honest words from a remarkable intellect unbroken by the irrational religiosity all around us.
We're all born with aging genetically "programmed" in -- or, at least, it hasn't yet been evolutionarily selected against. Perhaps God and the Devil are both bloody Darwinians? And when you compound aging with the environmental ravages and behavioral burdens we bear or self-inflict, it's little wonder that our bodies and brains wither away too soon. But worst of all, in the final stretch, when we can consciously see our flame flickering low, the cruel reality of our decline and doom really hits home. That's dying and it sucks. 
P.S. I'm going to do something about this too. As far as I'm concerned, Gerontechnology merits a 12 figure global R&D budget. Governments planet-wide burn that much per year in tax dollars on military "defense" killing people, so it's not crazy to instead invest at least as much money on something that's the constructive exact opposite.
"...there is still a group that lots of Americans just don’t like much: atheists. Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry. [...]Will anti-atheism be the last of the poisonous prejudices and irrational stupidities of mankind?this stunning anti-atheist discrimination is egged on by Christian conservatives who stridently -- and uncivilly -- declare that the lack of godly faith is detrimental to society, rendering nonbelievers intrinsically suspect and second-class citizens. Is this knee-jerk dislike of atheists warranted? Not even close. A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency -- issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights -- the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious."
Thanks to Karen Weintraub for her Globe interview Religion Meets Science with Patrick McNamara, BU associate professor and co-founder of the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion. Among the tasty discussion morsels... "Q. What do you think science can learn from religion?Fascinating stuff!
A. If we can uncover the essential nature and functions of religiousness, we’re going to learn something really deep and interesting about human nature.
Q. Is this a feedback loop -- does religion offer anything to the brain?
A. I think one of the things that religion does when it’s working properly is it strengthens the prefrontal lobes. All those practices that the religious people tell their adherents to do -- like prayer, ritual, abstaining from alcohol, controlling your impulses -- strengthen the ability of frontal lobes to control primitive impulses.
Q. Does that help explain why religion has had such staying power?
A. If you’ve got a cultural system that produces people who are reliable, who cooperate, who are relatively honest and trustworthy, who can control their impulses, who are good parents, who abstain from ingesting addictive substances -- if a cultural system does that on a consistent basis over the centuries, that’s a pretty valuable system."
Daniel Michaels and Andy Pasztor write in the WSJournal that In Wake of Concorde Verdict, a Fiery Debate about French persecution and... "...heightening concerns among air-safety experts that the "criminalization" of accidents will hurt efforts to address flight hazards. [...] The trial is the latest example of a world-wide trend to pursue criminal charges in airliner accidents, which many aviation experts worry threatens to erode safety by chilling early, open discussion of hazards. The fear is that the prospect of criminal liability discourages employees of airlines and aircraft makers from speaking out about dangerous incidents. Safety experts and organizations, including the International Civil Aviation Organization, several months ago began a counterattack emphasizing the negative fallout from criminal prosecutions. The ICAO, an arm of the United Nations, intends to call on governments to avoid the criminalization of mistakes and insulate air-safety investigators from judicial interference. [...] The lengthy Concorde trial had symbolic importance for Continental, as well as for French political sensitivities. The carrier's French lawyer, Olivier Metzner, said on French television that the decision protected "national interests" because foreigners were found primarily responsible."Ah, yes, yet more feckless French perfidy.
on How Wide a Web. Co-founder of Tripod, Geekcorps, and more recently Global Voices, Ethan is a research fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center whose personal blog My Heart's in Accra… continues to delight. He's especially interested in how civic media can address deep biases in mass media, including something he called imaginary cosmopolitanism today. Just because we have potential access to blogs and newspapers and online reportage from around our planet at the click of a button does not mean that much if any attention is actually paid to such streams. Mapping the facts of human media consumption, experimenting and intervening, and ideally catalyzing new innovations in global media are high on his research agenda, including his prime current project, Media Cloud, a platform for the quantitative study of online media. Great stuff!
"The work of the mathematician who disproved the precepts of the efficient markets model half a century ago, well before financiers had started to bet huge sums on products derived from that model, suddenly regained attention once those bets failed in 2007 and 2008. His insights should have been devastating. The efficient markets hypothesis, and with it modern portfolio theory and the Black-Scholes model for pricing options, all assume that markets reflect all known information and follow a “random walk”,like coin tosses or Brownian motion. That implies that returns should follow the “bell curve” distribution often found in the natural world. But, as the charts show, extreme outliers in currency and stock markets are far more common than the coin-toss model would predict. These outliers make up the bulk of long-run returns. [...] His idea that markets could only be modelled with complex mathematical techniques that do not yet exist. In the absence of more research, his ideas imply an imprecise approach to risk management. Markets do indeed behave as if they are efficient for long periods. Investors can be excused for ignoring Mandelbrot’s ideas but in future they must accept that risk cannot be measured precisely and that “fully invested” will mean holding a higher proportion of cash. Academic economists’ refusal to acknowledge him was scandalous. He believed this was because his ideas meant “a great amount of work, trouble and effort”, while the efficient markets literature promised “capital on which one could live for a while”. Several economists won Nobel prizes by living on that capital: assuming market efficiency."
"In a seminal book, “The Fractal Geometry of Nature,” published in 1982, Dr. MandelbrotThere are endless fractal images, but the Mandelbrot Set remains among the most epic. Here's just one select sampling...defended mathematical objects that he said others had dismissed as “monstrous” and “pathological.” Using fractal geometry, he argued, the complex outlines of clouds and coastlines, once considered unmeasurable, could now “be approached in rigorous and vigorous quantitative fashion.” For most of his career, Dr. Mandelbrot had a reputation as an outsider to the mathematical establishment. [...] Dr. Mandelbrot traced his work on fractals to a question he first encountered as a young researcher: how long is the coast of Britain? The answer, he was surprised to discover, depends on how closely one looks. On a map an island may appear smooth, but zooming in will reveal jagged edges that add up to a longer coast. Zooming in further will reveal even more coastline. “Here is a question, a staple of grade-school geometry that, if you think about it, is impossible,” Dr. Mandelbrot told The New York Times earlier this year in an interview. “The length of the coastline, in a sense, is infinite.”
And here's a wonderful Zoom!
