2013: A rare nineteenth century torpedo was discovered off the coast of Southern California this week—by a very elite squad of dolphins.

1856: Desperate to improve military conditions in the southwest United States, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis authorized the purchase of seventy-five camels from Egypt and Morocco. 

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Military Mammals
2013: A rare nineteenth century torpedo was discovered off the coast of Southern California this week—by a very elite squad of dolphins. While it sounds like something out of a movie, the U.S. Navy regularly uses dolphins and other marine

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In a statement, the filmmakers said this is an ironic turn: “It’s the very thing our film is about—public servants bowing to pressures, direct or indirect, from high-dollar donors.”

"I don't believe there was a concerted conspiracy to keep 'Citizen Koch' off of public television, with David Koch as a ringleader," Deal told CMD. "Instead, Koch's presence and role in that world created an environment that was hostile to our message. And that was enough."

/via +Mari Thomas

Reshared post from +Jim Feig

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PBS Killed Wisconsin Uprising Documentary “Citizen Koch” To Appease Koch Brothers
“Citizen Koch,” a documentary about money in politics focused on the Wisconsin uprising, was shunned by PBS for fear of offending billionaire industrialist David Koch, who has given $23 million to pub

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Today, eight African countries have space agencies, space centers or mission control facilities. Several others, including Uganda and Ghana, are in the process of launching theirs. Megascience projects are sprouting up from the Cape of Good Hope to the Gold Coast. … When the 1.5 billion Euro SKA is finished, it will be the single largest scientific structure in the world, dwarfing CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. … “African governments,” Chetty believes, “are finally coming around to understand the critical importance of science as an instrument for development. Training in astronomy, and training in computing and engineering leads to skills that are very wide ranging and are transferable to other disciplines and even in endeavors far removed from academia; for example in commerce and industry. This will become the basis for training a new generation of technicians and artisans.”

Reshared post from +Irina Tcherednichenko

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African Space Programs Aren’t Science Fiction

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Moral progress, scientific and technological progress, and economic progress: those are the three forms that progress takes in the minds of those who put their faith in it: if you will, the three heads of the deity of the Church of Progress. It’s crucial to keep in mind, though, that these three visions of progress often intertwine in complex ways in the minds of believers. To many mainstream American liberals in the late 20th century, for example, the limitless progress of science and technology would guarantee equally limitless economic growth, which would make it possible to abolish poverty, provide equal opportunity for all, and fulfill the hopes of moral progress without requiring any of those who already had access to privilege and economic abundance to give up any of these things. … How many times have we all heard that economic growth was going to take care of resource depletion and environmental degradation, or that scientific and technical advances were going to take care of them, or that a great moral awakening—call it the rise of planetary consciousness, or any of the other popular buzzwords, if you wish—was going to take care of them.  As it turned out, of course, none of those things took care of them at all, and since so many people placed their faith on one or the other kind of progress, nothing else took care of them, either. … To make sense of the future closing in on us, it’s going to be necessary to get past that easy but misleading habit of thought, to recognize that the contemporary faith in progress is a culturally specific product that emerged in a highly unusual and self-terminating set of historical circumstances, and to realize that while it was highly adaptive in those circumstances, it’s become lethally maladaptive now.

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The God With Three Heads
It’s been said that a man’s religion is the thing he can’t bear to have questioned. If there’s any truth in that old saying, the idea that faith in progress is a religion has a great deal going for it. Over the seven years th…

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True, this. Opinions? Yeah, I've got them, and I'm rarely afraid to share them. However, I do need to write more of my own words. Re-sharing with occasional annotations is just too facile. I am often anxious about being prosaic, not having anything profound to say or an extraordinary insight to offer.

Writing is scary. Sometimes when we publish something, it makes us feel like our insides are hanging out, for all the world to see. We feel vulnerable. We feel naked. We feel … terrified. But here’s the thing — we have to keep writing, in spite of the fear. If we let fear stop us, our content will have no spark, no life. And everything we write will be completely unremarkable. … __If we’re willing to write what we truly believe — the stuff that scares us — we get to experience true vulnerability and connection with our readers. And I believe that connection will not only make our lives better, but will also make us successful beyond our wildest dreams.

Reshared post from +Brian Clark

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Why We Still Need to Write, Even When We’re Scared
Writing is scary. Sometimes when we publish something, it makes us feel like our insides are hanging out, for all the world to see. We feel vulnerable.

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