Things that make you go hmmm...

"It is now widely accepted that the Universe we inhabit emerged from a hot, dense fireball called the Big Bang. In the 1920s and 1930s, astronomers first discovered that our Galaxy was simply one island of stars scattered among many similar galaxies and then that groups of these galaxies were moving apart from one another as the space between them stretched. This idea of an expanding universe had actually been predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity, completed in 1916, but it had not been taken seriously until the observers made their discoveries. When it was taken seriously, mathematicians discovered that the equations exactly describe the kind of expansion we observe, with the implication that if galaxies are getting farther apart as time passes then they must have been closer together in the past; and long ago all the matter in the Universe must have been piled up in a dense fireball.

It is the combination of theory and observation that makes the idea of the Big Bang so compelling; clinching evidence in support of the idea came in the 1960s with the discovery of a weak hiss of radio noise, the cosmic background radiation, that comes from all direction in space and is interpreted as the leftover radiation from the Big Bang itself. Like the expansion of the Universe, the existence of this background radiation was predicted by theory before it was observed experimentally. By the end of the twentieth century, the combination of theory and observations had established that the time that has elapsed since the Big Bang is about 14 billion years, and that there are hundreds of millions of galaxies like our own scattered across the expanding Universe. The question cosmologists are now confronting is how the Big Bang itself occurred -- or, if you like, how did the Universe begin?"

-- The Origins of the future: ten questions for the next 10 years P. 51-52

YouTube - 2008 Job Market

Funny!

On Human behavior ...

“[Humans] are perfectly capable of holding rational ideas and arguing, rationally, any point that suits them. One day, their reason leads them to positions that seem irrefutable; the next, the opposite opinion may seem just as irresistible, or even more so.

What is more remarkable is that they can hold an idea, and even cherish it, while doing something that is completely at odds with it.”

– Financial Reckoning Day P. 159

“People do not always act as they ‘should.’ Other people seem ‘irrational’ to us – especially those with whom we disagree. Nor do we always follow a logical and reasonable course of action. Instead, we are all swayed by tides of emotion … and occasionally swamped by them.”

- Financial Reckoning Day P. 1

“The world never works the way people think it does. That is not to say every idea about how the world works is wrong, but that often particular ideas about how it works will prove to be wrong if they are held in common. For only simple ideas can be held by large groups of people. Commonly held ideas are almost always dumbed down until they are practically lies …and often dangerous ones.”

- Financial Reckoning Day P. 3

“Public knowledge has its own peculiar character, for it must be dumbed down to a level that can be absorber by a mob.

A learned and thoughtful man may speak before a crowd and get no positive reaction whatsoever. A real demagogue, on the other hand, will distill his thoughts into a few simple-minded expressions and soon have enough admirers to run for public office. Readers who have wondered why it is that politicians all seem to be such simpletons now have their answer: It is a requirement for the job. For, en masse, mankind can neither understand complex or ambiguous thoughts nor remember them.”

- Financial Reckoning Day P. 168

“Democracy has a lie at its very core --- that you can cheat, murder, and steal as long as you get 51 percent of registered voters to go along with you. People are perfectly happy to vote their way into other people’s bank accounts --- and feel morally superior doing so. For they always do so in the name of some high-minded chutzpah, whether it is concern for the environment or the poor --- or making the world free!”

- Financial Reckoning Day P. 175

Lest I forget I'm an Immigrant

"The violent upheavals of the twentieth century have made millions of people homeless in one traumatic uprooting after another. Exile, is of course, not simply a change of address. It is also spiritual dislocation. Anthropologists and psychologists tell us that displaced people feel lost in a universe that has suddenly become alien. Once the fixed point of home is gone, there is fundamental lack of orientation that makes everything seem relative and aimless. Cut off from the roots of their culture and identity, migrants and refugees can feel that they are somehow withering away and becoming insubstantial. Their world – inextricably linked with their unique place in the cosmos – has literally come to an end.” - The Spiral Staircase, P.23-24.

Why I'm glad I'm not a Mantise

"... More well known is the macabre cannibalism of female praying mantises. Mantises are large carnivorous insects. They normally eat smaller insects such as flies, but they will attack almost anything that moves. When they mate, the male cautiously creeps up on the female, mounts her, and copulates. If the female gets the chance, she will eat him, beginning by biting his head off, either as the male is approaching, or immediately after he mounts, or after they separate. It might seem most sensible for her to wait until copulation is over before she starts to eat him. But the loss of the head does not seem to throw the rest of the male's body off its sexual stride. Indeed, since the insect head is the seat of some inhibitory nerve centers, it is possible that the female improves the male's sexual performance by eating his head. If so, this is an added benefit. The primary one is that she obtained a good meal." The Selfish Gene, P. 5

I Have a Dream - Part II

Amazing Stuff from science...