Philosophers are no longer allowed at environmentalist conferences
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The nature of time
The beginning of the Space Age
Weirdness check
So, gmcdavid, your LiveJournal reveals…
You are… 3% unique (blame, for example, your interest in woodwright’s shop), 31% peculiar, 36% interesting, 21% normal and 10% herdlike (partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy science fiction). When it comes to friends you are normal. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are wary of trusting strangers. Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is conventional.
Your overall weirdness is: 40
(The average level of weirdness is: 28.
You are weirder than 80% of other LJers.)
Not a day of rest
Twitter, Facebook, and social activism
Why the revolution will not be tweeted, via Slashdot.
This reminded me of something a friend wrote last summer:
Facebook connected me to current friends, old friends, old non-friends, current non-friends, concert venues, my library, and dozens of other people. But these were, as Umair Haque phrased it so well, “weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships.” Following all these people takes time and attention, but I have as much connection with a person who used to share deep conversation with me as I do with someone who was a passing acquaintance: not only thin, but impersonally thin.
godshopped
Urban Dictionary’s Word of the Day
Definition:
The manipulation of scientific data to provide evidence for intelligence design
Via Skepchick.
Back at work after 36 years
Lost Rover Found on Moon With Retroreflector Still Intact.
The rediscovery of the reflector could have an important impact in several areas of science that depend on accurately measuring the position and orbit of the Moon. Laser rangefinding currently provides the most precise tests of many aspects of gravity, including the strong equivalence principle, the constancy of Newton’s constant, geodetic precession, gravitomagnetism and the inverse square law.
Technical details at Laser Ranging to the Lost Lunokhod~1 Reflector.
Who does God want to win the World Series?
At the Episcopal Café
Respond in the comments. Your answers should cite Augustine, Schleiermacher (yeah, I had to look up the spelling) or Annie Savoy. Heretical assertions (e. g. “God doesn’t care who wins the World Series) will result in disqualification.
Check out the comments!
Another Earth?
Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet
A team of planet hunters led by astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet (three times the mass of Earth) orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely in the middle of the star’s “habitable zone,” where liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface. If confirmed, this would be the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a potentially habitable one.
Via Possible earthlike planet found in the Goldilocks zone of a nearby star! which includes some cautions, beginning with:
However, this does not mean the planet is habitable, or even very Earthlike. It may not even have any water on it at all. For now, we can’t know these things, so beware of any media breathlessly talking about life on this planet, or how we could live there.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 