WHAT MAKES PEOPLE VOTE REPUBLICAN? By Jonathan Haidt What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. Diagnosis is a pleasure. But with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes seduction wearing a halo. I began to study morality and culture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. For my dissertation research, I made up stories about people who did things that were disgusting or disrespectful yet perfectly harmless. This research led me to two conclusions. The second conclusion was that the moral domain varies across cultures.
Copenhagen interpretation The Copenhagen interpretation is one of the earliest and most commonly taught interpretations of quantum mechanics.[1] It holds that quantum mechanics does not yield a description of an objective reality but deals only with probabilities of observing, or measuring, various aspects of energy quanta, entities that fit neither the classical idea of particles nor the classical idea of waves. The act of measurement causes the set of probabilities to immediately and randomly assume only one of the possible values. This feature of mathematics is known as wavefunction collapse. The essential concepts of the interpretation were devised by Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and others in the years 1924–27. According to John Cramer, "Despite an extensive literature which refers to, discusses, and criticizes the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, nowhere does there seem to be any concise statement which defines the full Copenhagen interpretation. Background[edit] Origin of the term[edit] 1. .
Joshua Bell- Voice of the violin: Estrellita How to Write Articles and Essays Quickly and Expertly Translations: Belorussian Introduction: Four Types of Discursive Writing From time to time people express amazement at how I can get so much done. Begin by writing - in your head, at least - your second paragraph (that would be the one you just read, above). But how do you write this paragraph? You have more options because there are four types of discursive writing. These are your choices of types of article or essay: Argument: convinces someone of something Explanation: tells why something happened instead of something else Definition: states what a word or concept means Description: identifies properties or qualities of things An argument is a collection of sentences (known formally as 'propositions') intended to convince the reader that something is he case. An explanation tells the reader why something is the case. A definition identifies the meaning of some word, phrase or concept. Finally, a description provides information about some object, person, or state of affairs. Argument:
The Origin of America’s Intellectual Vacuum - Chris Hedges' Columns The Origin of America’s Intellectual Vacuum Posted on Nov 15, 2010 By Chris Hedges The blacklisted mathematics instructor Chandler Davis, after serving six months in the Danbury federal penitentiary for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), warned the universities that ousted him and thousands of other professors that the purges would decimate the country’s intellectual life. “You must welcome dissent; you must welcome serious, systematic, proselytizing dissent—not only the playful, the fitful, or the eclectic; you must value it enough, not merely to refrain from expelling it yourselves, but to refuse to have it torn from you by outsiders,” he wrote in his 1959 essay “...From an Exile.” “You must welcome dissent not in a whisper when alone, but publicly so potential dissenters can hear you. But they did not take Davis back. “Political discourse has been impoverished since then,” Davis said. “Repression does not target original thought,” Davis noted.
Primer (film) Primer is a 2004 American science fiction drama film about the accidental discovery of a means of time travel. The film was written, directed, and produced by Shane Carruth. Primer is of note for its extremely low budget (completed for $7,000), experimental plot structure, philosophical implications, and complex technical dialogue, which Carruth, a college graduate with a degree in mathematics and a former engineer, chose not to simplify for the sake of the audience.[2] The film collected the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, before securing a limited release in the United States, and has since gained a cult following.[3] The operation of time travel in Primer. After arguing over the project that the group should tackle next, Aaron and Abe independently pursue work on technology intended to reduce the weight of an object. Having traveled back four days in time using this failsafe point, Abe goes to meet Aaron and collapses. List of films featuring time loops
Knowledge Question The year 2008 in photographs (part 1 of 3) 2008 has been an eventful year to say the least - it is difficult to sum up the thousands of stories in just a handful of photographs. That said, I will try to do what I've done with other photo narratives here, and tell a story of 2008 in photographs. It's not the story of 2008, it's certainly not all stories, but as a collection it does show a good portion of what life has been like over the past 12 months. This is a multi-entry story, 120 photographs over three days. Watch for part 2 and part 3 tomorrow and the next day. (40 photos total) Lightning bolts appear above and around the Chaiten volcano as seen from Chana, some 30 kms (19 miles) north of the volcano, as it began its first eruption in thousands of years, in southern Chile May 2, 2008.
With Wealth Highly Skewed Toward the Top, US Ranks 12th in New Measure of Human Development | World December 1, 2010 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Twenty years ago, in 1990, the United Nations began publishing an annual Human Development Report. To register social progress, economic orthodoxy held back then, nations needed to simply hike their “GNP,” their sum total of economic goods and services. But real human development, Sen and his colleagues countered, involves much more than economic growth. GNP cannot measure this real human development. The UN has been releasing an annual “Human Development Index” ever since, grading almost every nation in the world by a single number that reflects people’s capacity to live life to the fullest. “It is now universally accepted that a country’s success or an individual’s well-being cannot be evaluated by money alone,” as UN Development Program director Helen Clark writes in her intro to the UN Human Development Report’s just-published 20th anniversary edition.
Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Comment: The idler photon first encounters the prism PS, where it's path is bent to ensure it heads off where it is supposed to – one path for photons from region A, a different path for photons from region B. The idler photon next encounters a 50-50 beamsplitter BSA or BSB. The beamsplitter will either reflect the idler photon off course and into the detector D3 or D4; or it will allow the photon to pass through and continue (toward the reflecting mirror MA or MB). If the idler photon is reflected at BSA or BSB into the detector D3 or D4, it will be detected with which-path information intact. As stated earlier in the paper, "The registration of D3 or D4 provides which-path information (path A or path B) of [idler] photon 2 and in turn provides which-path information of [signal] photon 1 because of the entanglement nature of the two-photon state . . .." If the idler photon is not reflected at BSA or BSB, it will continue toward its next encounter, the reflecting mirror MA or MB.
Sean's Question Risky Business Comment Risky business Health-scare stories often arise because their authors simply don’t understand numbers Ben Goldacre Monday June 20, 2005 The Guardian Competence always looks better from a distance, but I have a confession to make: I’m a doctor, and I just don’t understand most of the stories on health risks in the news. Last week, we were told that red meat causes bowel cancer, and Nurofen causes heart attacks, but I was no wiser. Article continues HG Wells, 150 years ago, said that statistical thinking would one day be as important as the ability to read and write in a modern technological society. Let’s say the risk of having a heart attack in your 50s is 50% higher if you have high cholesterol: that sounds pretty bad. Natural frequencies are readily understandable, because instead of using probabilities, or percentages, they use concrete numbers, just like the ones you use every day to check if you’ve lost a kid on a coach trip, or got the right change in a shop.