Recently in Profound Category
Michael Fumento reports: "The Negative Side Of Positive Thinking"
A review of Barbara Ehrenreich's book Brightsided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America: "Unhinged optimism is pervasive, but the real culprits are those who profit from it: motivational speakers and writers, "life coaches" and various gurus, as well as the 'pastorpreneurs' of the 'prosperity gospel' movement. These chuck aside Christ's teachings to declare that 'God wants us to ... have plenty of money to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us.'" (Via Fausta, who has links to related stories on runaway self-esteem.)
Vegan Reader: How To Make Rice Milk And Stop Supporting Rice Dream
"In this country, many of us are beginning to realize that when we traded in our own skills for the convenient agreement of others doing our work in exchange for money, we won ourselves a world of pesticides, polluted skies and water, contaminated food and foreign sweatshop labor. We stopped living like the incredibly skilled American Indians, or even the early pioneers, nearly all of whom knew how to grow food, make fire, build shelter, find water, craft clothing and feed people. We have become a nation of unskilled workers who pay others to do everything we need for the very basics of being alive, and those we have given our money to have failed to resist the temptation to increase profit by casting care for human and environmental health aside." (Via Phoebe Gleeson.)
Duverger's law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"In political science, Duverger's law is a principle which asserts that a plurality rule election system tends to favor a two-party system."
Dangers of Soy | Food Renegade
Bad for your thyroid, says Food Renegade.
ToddSeavey.com: Skeptics and Norman Borlaug
"We can't change the physical laws of the universe, for instance, nor the laws of economics -- but people like Borlaug show you are even more likely to accomplish amazing, world-altering things if you understand the scientific and economic constraints within which we operate."
The Lunacy of Our Retreat from Space by Charles Krauthammer on National Review Online
"Michael Crichton once wrote that if you told a physicist in 1899 that within a hundred years humankind would, among other wonders (nukes, commercial airlines), 'travel to the moon, and then lose interest . . . the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad.'... Fourteen months from today, for the first time since 1962, the United States will be incapable not just of sending a man to the moon but of sending anyone into Earth orbit. We'll be totally grounded. We'll have to beg a ride from the Russians or perhaps even the Chinese.... But look up from your BlackBerry one night. That is the moon. On it are exactly 12 sets of human footprints -- untouched, unchanged, abandoned. For the first time in history, the moon is not just a mystery and a muse, but a nightly rebuke."
The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It... - Sid Burgess - FriendFeed
"The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect"
Brits at their Best: The British Constitution
Magna Carta, the Coronation Oath, the Statute of Westminster, the Bill of Rights of 1689: Elements of the foundation of the Anglosphere's heritage of liberty.
Recalling the Apgar Score's Namesake - WSJ.com
A simple way to quantify a newborn's condition motivated vast improvements in neo-natal care:
"As simple as it was, the score transformed deliveries by requiring staffers to carefully observe and assess each baby, assigning a score of 0, 1 or 2 to each of the five categories. Then, as now, few babies get a perfect 10 one minute after birth, since most have bluish toes and fingers until oxygenated blood starts circulating fully. Some doctors became competitive about the scores, and many hospitals began repeating the test at five or 10 minutes to measure whether newborns had improved."
"Most importantly, babies who needed care started to get it, gradually spurring the development of newborn-size resuscitation tools, infant heart-rate monitors and neonatal intensive-care units. Thanks to all those efforts, and the philosophy that came with them, U.S. infant mortality dropped from 58 per 1,000 in the 1930s to 7 per 1,000 today. By the 1970s, it was said, 'every baby born in a hospital around the world is looked at first through the eyes of Virginia Apgar.'"
FORA.tv - MythBuster Adam Savage's Colossal Failures
An hour-long program (speech plus Q&A) at Maker Faire: Adam Savage from MythBusters explains what he learned from a couple of disastrous projects early in his career. Great viewing for the gifted kid (or gifted former kid) who's afraid to try and fail. Some interesting background on how he got into the special effects business and why it's great for polymaths. (Via manasclerk.)
