It may not change anything right now, but it must feel nice to have the President of the United States stand up and say he has your back.
It’s not change. It doesn’t negate bad laws or make new ones magically appear. But damn it sure is nice to have the president say he supports gay marriage.
It’s not change. But it is hope.
I’ve been asked many times, what would I do if I were NASA Director. And I said, I would resign, knowing that that’s an insufficient place of power to do what NASA needs to do.
You need to be in a position to double NASA’s budget and if the president can’t do it, then the only force left are those to whom the president reports — and that’s the electorate. In fact, any deep change that needs to happen with NASA needs to happen on a level that transcends partisan politics and politics in general, so that is a will of the nation rather than a whim of a politician that’s coming in and out of office.
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On the Science Times podcast, astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson makes a passionate and articulate case for space exploration and the crucial importance of citizen engagement with science. Tyson recently testified before Senate on the same subject, with equal eloquence. His new book, Space Chronicles, is a must-read, blending scientific urgency with keen cultural and political observation. (via explore-blog) |
Profit is not evil - it’s the foundation of human civilization.
What is wrong and evil is failing to pay attention to economic issues and allowing corporations to write their own self-serving rules as a result. The business prime directive is to make profit - it’s our job to set up intelligent rules that prevent unfair competition, restraint of trade and monopoly while allowing innovation and promoting growth. If you refuse to pay close attention to business and financial issues, for whatever reason, you are getting the economic system you implicitly asked for. What’s needed are better, smarter, more impartial rules that promote competition and fairness, not some fantasyland where everyone works strictly due to compassion for their fellow humans. That absolutely can happen, if ordinary citizens start paying attention. Sunshine is a wonderful disinfectant.
Without profit and a fully developed economic system, billions of people would die and those who survived would be facing a very short, incredibly hard life. That’s not my idea of utopia.
The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.
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Neil Degrasse Tyson, in an AMA on reddit, responding to a young man who asked how to find motivation in life (via hip-) I love this man. (via shebrokeherbuttons) |
