Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and…
January 18th and 23rd are planned blackout days for a number of web sites in protest to passing the Stop Online Piracy Act. Existing legislation like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act already reveal copyright owners ask to shut down web sites even when there is no infringing material. Granting them more power seems like a bad…
Apparently former House Speaker and current President candidate Newt Gingrich, made an offensive statement that Palestinians are an invented people. Remember, there was no Palestine as a state — (it was) part of the Ottoman Empire. I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab…
I was looking for a quote on why public education is important to democracy when I ran across this in Quotes on the Importance of Voting. Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness,…
Here is good explanation for Schrödinger’s Cat. I’ll continue below the video. If the embedded video does not work, then go to Schrödinger’s Cat on Youtube. So the cat exists in two states both dead or alive until something forces the universe to choose one. It seems like many political decisions follow something like this.…
Isaac Asimov has an interesting pre-World-Wide Web quote, “The advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.” Janov Pelorat in Foundation’s Edge (1982). Think about the word “civilization”. The root, civil, means to treat others well. In one ideal world, everyone would treat everyone else well for no reason. In hunter-gather…
Language is our genes talking; getting things that it wants. … Social learning is visual theft.
Ender Wiggin’s sister, Valentine plays the role of fictional Demosthenes online in several of the books by Orson Scott Card. She would play the role of an extremist to whip up the gullible Americans, while her power hungry psychopath brother Peter played the role of Locke would be the moderate. In reading Ender in Exile, a speculative train…
One of those Facebook poll things had a list of American Film Institute top 100 movies. Fortunately for me, Netflix Watch Instantly has several of the ones I wanted to see. Network was one of them. The scene where Beale, the news announcer breaks down in the rant, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not…