Space Zen: Will Humans Brains Change During Travel in Outer Space? -A Galaxy Insight. In February, 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell experienced the little understood phenomenon sometimes called the “Overview Effect”.
He describes being completely engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness. Without warning, he says, a feeing of bliss, timelessness, and connectedness began to overwhelm him. Why Monetary Expansion Must Stop - Patrick Barron. [Address delivered at the European Parliament in Brussels on March 16, 2011] Introduction: The Illusion of Unlimited Resources The current problems faced by all the world's economies stem, primarily, from one source: the demise of sound money, whose quantity could not be increased without significant cost, and its replacement with fiat money that can be inflated to infinite amounts at almost no cost to the producer.
Expansion of fiat money makes it appear to all market participants, including financial regulators, that there are more resources available than really exist. What the science of human nature can teach us. After the boom and bust, the mania and the meltdown, the Composure Class rose once again.
Its members didn’t make their money through hedge-fund wizardry or by some big financial score. Theirs was a statelier ascent. They got good grades in school, established solid social connections, joined fine companies, medical practices, and law firms. "We quite suddenly realized that we were looking at a general pattern": Q&A with Richard Wilkinson. In 2009, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published the book The Spirit Level, making a bold case that economic inequality within a society, the size of the gap between rich and poor, has corrosive effects from the bottom of society right up to the top.
Wilkinson spoke about their book and research this summer at TEDGlobal (watch his TEDTalk); earlier this week, he talked to the TED Blog about how he and Pickett came to this insight … and what Occupy Wall Street might mean for the future of fairness. When did your research start heading in this direction? What made you look at broad inequality within societies? I’ve been involved in research on health inequalities — the huge social class differences in death rates — for more than 30 years.
Story of Broke & The Story of Stuff Project. The United States isn’t broke; we’re the richest country on the planet and a country in which the richest among us are doing exceptionally well.
But the truth is, our economy is broken, producing more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other country. In these and so many other ways, it just isn’t working. But rather than invest in something better, we continue to keep this ‘dinosaur economy’ on life support with hundreds of billions of dollars of our tax money. The Story of Broke, released on November 8, 2011, calls for a shift in government spending toward investments in clean, green solutions—renewable energy, safer chemicals and materials, zero waste and more—that can deliver jobs and a healthier environment. Rats Free Trapped Friends, Hint at Universal Empathy. With a few liberating swipes of their paws, a group of research rats freed trapped labmates and raised anew the possibility that empathy isn’t unique to humans and a few extra-smart animals, but is widespread in the animal world.
Though more studies are needed on the rats’ motivations, it’s at least plausible they demonstrated “empathically motivated pro-social behavior.” People would generally call that helpfulness, or even kindness. Michio Kaku on The Singularity. Eight Must-Have Charts Summarize the Evidence for a "Human Fingerprint" on Recent Climate Change. By Joe Romm on October 6, 2011 at 4:05 pm "Eight Must-Have Charts Summarize the Evidence for a “Human Fingerprint” on Recent Climate Change" Click to Enlarge The Yale Project on Climate Change Communications asked Americans “If you had the opportunity to talk to an expert on global warming, which of the following questions would you like to ask?”
Better live in Sweden than in the US: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. Details Category: Nicolas' Blog Published on Thursday, 11 February 2010 23:00.
Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Dec., 1984), pp. 1007-1026. If You Believe in IP, How Do You Teach Others? - Jeffrey A. Tucker. Some Harvard professors are taking very seriously their "intellectual property rights" and have claimed copyright to the ideas that they spread in their classrooms.
What prompted this was a website in which students posted their notes to help other students. The professors have cracked down. It might have been enough to legislate against this behavior in particular. I WANT TO LOSE A FORTUNE. History of Work Ethic. Home Page Historical Context of the Work Ethic Roger B.
Hill, Ph.D. America's Unique Fascism - Anthony Gregory. "The dirty little secret is that there has been a bipartisan project of corporatism, the economic underpinning of fascism, for almost a century. " Five years ago, antiwar liberals calling the Bush administration fascist were labeled as kooks, marginalized by their own party leadership, accused by conservatives of treasonous thoughts worthy of federal punishment, even deportation. A few years pass, the policies hardly change, and the political dynamic turns upside down: tea-party conservatives accusing the Obama regime of fascist impulses are compared to terrorists, accused of being racists, told that their hyperbole is a real threat to the country's security.
The establishment derides both groups for their fringe outlook on America, convinced that the United States is anything but a fascist country. After all, isn't America the nation that defeated fascism in the 1940s?