ShiftHappens – Everyone should watch this … it changes your perspective (for the better)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
This guy gave a great keynote at a recent conference. Slides here:
http://www.slideshare.net/mcleod/2007-cali/
He has a great technology/education blog here:
http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/
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Have you seen the Battle at Kruger?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM
Survival of the fittest is never pretty but sometimes it can be interesting to see who the bigger badass is: a few lions, a couple of alligators or a bunch of water buffalo. Place your bets.
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Scientists and engineers simulate jet colliding with World Trade Center
http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/news/news_wtc.cfm
"Current findings from the simulation have identified the destruction of 11 columns on the 94th floor, 10 columns on the 95th floor and nine columns on the 96th floor," he said. "This is a major insight. When you lose close to 25 percent of your columns at a given level, the building is significantly weakened and vulnerable to collapse."
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POLITICS
Kucinich has good ideas -- I hope that people are listening:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w4aDFH450Q
It's too bad that he's not as "camera-friendly" as Edwards.
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Fareed At Last
By Harry Shearer
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/fareed-at-last_b_53729.html
Fareed Zakaria, a friend of a friend (so this post is written with the love and the respect and everything), last came into my consciousness when he told George Stephanopoulos on May 20 that Tony Blair would go down in history as the most significant Labor Prime Minister of the UK since Lloyd George. (For the record, Lloyd George was a Liberal, not a Laborite) Now (ht--Kevin Drum) Fareed writes a piece in Newsweek about the reality of the jihadist situation in the modern world:
...The split between Sunnis and Shiites -- which plays a role in Lebanon as well -- is only one of the divisions within the world of Islam... Rather than speaking of a single worldwide movement -- which absurdly lumps together Chechen separatists in Russia, Pakistani-backed militants in India, Shiite warlords in Lebanon and Sunni jihadists in Egypt -- we should be emphasizing that all these groups are distinct, with differing agendas, enemies and friends. That robs them of their claim to represent Islam. It describes them as they often are -- small local gangs of misfits, hoping to attract attention through nihilism and barbarism.
Fine as far as it goes, but doesn't one have to ask: in the face of this reality, what benefit does the Bush administration derive from ignoring such reality-based advice? Would it have something to do with advancing their fear-based argument about "the enemy" coming here? After all, if these were "small local gangs of misfits", they would hardly pose a continuing, unique threat to the homeland that requires war without end, and government without anything except what Dick Cheney wants.
[True. Looking at it another way, given the various factions that can’t be all made happy at the same time, how do we keep them from getting angry enough to find some way to detonate a nuclear device? What are we doing to help sow peace, democracy, and prosperity throughout the world?]
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In Defense of Witchcraft
By Sam Harris
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-witchcraft_b_53865.html
Imagine that the year is 1507, and life is difficult. Crops fail, good people suffer instantaneous and horrifying turns of bad luck, and even the children of royalty regularly die before they have taken their first steps. As it turns out, everyone understands the cause of these calamities: it is witchcraft. Not all witchcraft is at fault, of course -- there are "white" witches who use their powers to heal -- but there is no question that some witches have formed an alliance with the Devil. Happily, the Church has produced many learned and energetic men who are equal to this challenge, and each year hundreds of women are put to death for casting spells upon their innocent neighbors.
Imagine being among the tiny percentage of people -- the 5 percent, or 10 percent at most -- who think that a belief in witchcraft is nothing more than a malignant fantasy. Imagine writing a book arguing that magic spells do no real work in the world, that the confessions of bad witches are delusional or coerced, that the claims of good witches are self-serving and unempirical. You argue further that a belief in magic offers false hope of benefits that are best sought elsewhere, like from scientific medicine, and lays the ground for false accusations of imaginary crimes, leading to the misery and death of innocent people…
[see link for full text]
