At least, so far:
What is the four-sided Mind of which Nick Carr speaks — this imaginative, rational, inventive, subversive angel striding through the ages, showering the generations with its beneficence? Who is this promethean shapeshifter, whom we’re now in our churlishness binding to some rock for the crows to feast on its innards? What Carr is describing isn’t a historical reality — it’s a god. And it does not exist.
Reading isn’t just a monkish pursuit: Matthew Battles on The Shallows
Rothstein also noted in a post that “If you’re a reporter, you’re supposed to be objective. We shouldn’t know if he voted for Ron Paul, President Obama or David Hasselhoff. If you’re going to be reporting on any political movement, you are supposed to take an unbiased position.” This is how a smear campaign starts, with an argument that in principle, [ostensibly] sounds correct, but really is, at its core, ill-informed, ignorant, and sensational. —Foster Kamer
I’ve been reading about the Dave Weigel thing all morning, only because I couldn’t get away from work long enough to focus on it yesterday. Wow. Village Voice blogger Foster Kamer sums it up nicely and has all the pertinent links. It’s a tawdry tale of true believers being angry that someone who knows a lot about them and can see them so clearly, hacks who fantasize about being take-down artists suddenly discovering the value of “journalistic principles,” and, in the end, a really great demonstration of something Jay Rosen has been blogging about heavily lately: the ideology of news reporting gives priority to ritualistic theatre above accuracy, transparency, and fairness.
Update June 27: Nate Silver weighs in on the bizarrely unrealistic central issue here:
Is the expectation really that journalists aren’t allowed to develop opinions about the subjects they cover, even if those opinions are expressed only in private? We have a name for people who are so indifferent about society: we call them sociopaths. Or is the expectation that journalists are allowed to have opinions, provided that they keep them secret?
Also of note, the very sensible observation that the ‘blog ethos’ of frankly including point of view “is just magazine-journalism ethos with the addition of cat pictures”. This approach is immeasurably richer than the fake-objectivity approach of newspapers because, as Jim Henley continues, “The writer will make sure to include a substantial account of challenges to her perspective, if only to knock it down later.”
Pelicans have been perfect since the early Oligocene, according to a newly published analysis of a fossilized bill, and partial skull and neck. The study’s lead author, Antoine Louchart, doesn’t actually want to commit to that interpretation, but the 30-million-year old fossil he reports on is so similar to today’s pelican species that it would be classified in the Pelecanus genus.
World Homeopathy Awareness Week, in April, wasn’t enough for the British Homeopathic Association, which has been celebrating homeopathy awareness over the last week (Jun 14 to June 21). According to its website, this year’s theme is women’s health.
I’m a healthy woman, and judging from comments I chose not to approve back in April, my attitude toward homeopathy is regarded in some quarters as being rather unkind. So I wanted to take this opportunity to state my support for the basic principle of homeopathy as a key part of a healthy lifestyle: Drink water. Drink it early and often. Drink lots of it.
Almost everyone should drink more water than they are drinking now. (As long as it’s clean water, of course, and really if you’re reading this you’re likely living somewhere with a hot and cold running supply of it.) Your body is mostly water, and you lose a little bit of it every time you breathe, not to mention sweating and peeing. Often when people feel “hungry,” they are actually thirsty, so starting with a glass of water can satisfy them—and curb the intake of extra calories. You might be stunned by how easily fatigue, congestion, muscle soreness, or headaches recede with a big old glass of water. Staying hydrated supports alertness, helps your body promptly flush waste products, and keeps your tissues comfortably moist so they can do their jobs.
So drink lots of water! You can prepare water yourself by opening a tap in a home or other structure that is supplied with potable water, perhaps improving the taste by running it through a faucet-mounted or carafe-based (eg, Brita) filter.
“We believe all wells can be drilled incident free. We believe this well will be drilled incident free and we won’t need a relief well,” [Mark MacLeod, Chevron’s Atlantic Manager] said.
Chevron is drilling a well in more than 2,600 meters (8,530 feet) of water off the Canadian coast, making it twice as deep as the BP well that has been fouling the Gulf of Mexico with oil since April. —Reuters Africa
Stunningly, bafflingly, foreshadowingly, the name of the rig doing the work (and the field it’s working on) is—wait for it—Blind Faith. I’ll say! Oh yeah, at least one of the ships it listed in its relief plan (saying it could be there in 10 days when the truth is probably more like a month) is already on the job in the Gulf.
I can sincerely say, because it’s better for all of us, that I hope this does not turn into the grimmest punchline of the decade.
The chairmen of four of the world’s largest oil companies broke their nearly two-month silence on the major spill in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday and publicly blamed BP for mishandling the well that caused the disaster.
OK, ha ha, well, sure, we can all understand the impulse. But are they sure they are really so different?
Although most of the Congressional fire was aimed at BP on Tuesday, the other executives came under criticism as well, particularly for the response plans that they prepared for a major spill in the gulf. The five companies submitted virtually identical plans to government regulators and to the committee. The 500-page document, prepared by a private contractor, refers to measures to protect walruses and gives a phone number for a marine biologist who died five years ago.
James J. Mulva, chief executive of ConocoPhillips, said the citations were “certainly an embarrassment to Conoco,” adding, “Plans need to be updated more frequently.”
From Oil Executives Break Ranks in Testimony.
But wait… Mulva?
…Richard Feynman argued that, in reality, the bouncing beads would not be capable of doing meaningful work. Feynman showed that, since the entire system operates at the same temperature, a pawl would occasionally slip off the wheel. As a result, the system would generate zero net movement.
Now, physicist Devaraj van der Meer from the University of Twente and his colleagues have demonstrated that such a machine can in fact spin the paddles forward only, generating a positive net movement … The key challenge was getting the vanes to move in the forward direction only, which the scientists achieved with – somewhat surprisingly – duct tape….
Is there anything duct tape can’t do? Besides break the second law of thermodynamics, I mean.
Newly created machine on Vimeo. Write-up at PhysOrg.com: Experiment finally proves 100-year-old thought experiment is possible .
On vacation last month, I saw a squirrel with no hair at all on its tail, and I didn’t have the heart to take a picture of what was, not surprisingly, a very unattractive animal. Here you get the hint of it amidst the great PR.
