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rePost::Sex…in….spaaaaaaaaaace : Neurotopia

Go to the linked post to get to the report!!!

Sex…in….spaaaaaaaaaace
Category: Friday Weird Science
Posted on: January 28, 2010 12:30 PM, by Scicurious
Happy Thursday Weird Science. 🙂
Apparently NASA astronauts have undergone secret testing (very secret, I can't get the report, too bad, too) for the examination of sex in space! This could be important for the survival of people in 0G for long periods of time, gotta propagate the species somehow. And Sci thinks it's long past time, I mean, what have all the astronauts been DOING in space all this time?! Playing cards (ok, maybe)?!
You can see the report here. But sadly, it doesn't say WHAT the 10 top positions turned out to be, except that missionary was simply “not possible”.
via Sex…in….spaaaaaaaaaace : Neurotopia.

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rePost::Updates on dotPH vs. Versomina

Updates on dotPH vs. Versomina
By Rico, 9:09 am Thu Jan 28 2010 – Announcements, Featured – 2 Opinions
dotph-logoHere’s an update written by a friend of mine working for dotPH. It details what’s happened so far with the company’s legal battle against Versomina, and made me reconsider my stance on blogging and libel.
Everyone is a champion of the sacred right to free speech – but how many of these well-meaning souls will still do it when faced with a harrowing, expensive lawsuit? Not to mention the fact that they will get a grand total of nothing for the effort?
Very few, I imagine. dotPH is one of them. It fought for the right to free speech – it is still fighting for somebody else’s right to free speech against a company that will sue a pair of shoes if it knew that it could get something out of the case.
Forgot it? Let me jog your memory. An anonymous person set up a blog called Alimuom using dotPH’s blogging platform, I.ph. The blogger aired his grievances against a company, Versomina, claiming that it abused its employees and sued them if they tried to leave. Joel Aquino (lawsuit-happy owner of Versomina, also charged with a criminal case by the NBI) got wind of this and asked dotPH to take down the blog. Valuing the inherent right to free speech, Joel Disini (dotPH CEO) refused.
via Updates on dotPH vs. Versomina.

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rePost:Radical? Hardly!:Howard Zinn…not in our high schools either | Angry Bear

I always wondered why Howard Zinn was considered a radical. (He called himself a radical.) He was an unbelievably decent man who felt obliged to challenge injustice and unfairness wherever he found it. What was so radical about believing that workers should get a fair shake on the job, that corporations have too much power over our lives and much too much influence with the government, that wars are so murderously destructive that alternatives to warfare should be found, that blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities should have the same rights as whites, that the interests of powerful political leaders and corporate elites are not the same as those of ordinary people who are struggling from week to week to make ends meet?
…..
Mr. Zinn was in Santa Monica this week, resting up after a grueling year of work and travel, when he suffered a heart attack and died on Wednesday. He was a treasure and an inspiration. That he was considered radical says way more about this society than it does about him.
via Howard Zinn…not in our high schools either | Angry Bear.

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rePost::Howard Zinn…not in our high schools either | Angry Bear

Howard Zinn wrote this to Henry Giroux a few days before his death, hope you can read the whole write up of henry about Howard Zinn. I’ve always been a fairly level headed chap, I caution against over reaction, and trying to appear too radical. I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that I’ve been wrong in this stance. Once again read the linked article.

“Henry, we are in a situation where mild rebuke, even critiques we consider ‘radical’ are not sufficient. (Frederick Douglass’ speech on the Fourth of July in 1852, thunderously angry, comes close to what is needed). Raising the temperature of our language, our indignation, is what you are doing and what is needed. I recall that Sartre, close to death, was asked: ‘What do you regret?’ He answered: ‘I wasn’t radical enough.'”
via Howard Zinn…not in our high schools either | Angry Bear.

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rePost:Philippine Housing Bubble?:An Alternate Theory about the Root Cause of the Current Economic Crisis | Angry Bear

Ewan. I’d like to do the legwork on this problem but I don’t know where to get the data for it. Let’s just say that I’m feeling that the developments going in and around the Metro (GMA, Metro Cebu, Metro Davao, Some Parts of Luzon) are the beginnings of a housing bubble Japan style, only we don’t have a government flush with cash and a household savings of more than 3 Trillion dollars. I pray I’m wrong because this may not be good.

As the dual forces of technology and globalization progressed over the past decade, I suspect it became pretty clear to most average workers that holding a job at the prevailing wage offered little hope for getting ahead. Recognition of that reality certainly played an important role in the politics that led to the creation of subprime lending programs. You can make a pretty strong case that the housing bubble was caused not simply by low interest rates but by widespread recognition that investing in a home represented perhaps the only viable hope for a typical American family to achieve any measure of prosperity.
via An Alternate Theory about the Root Cause of the Current Economic Crisis | Angry Bear.

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rePost:Not Fishy:Justice to J.D. Salinger – The New York Review of Books

“At least you know there won’t be any goddam ulterior motives in this madhouse,” Zooey tells Franny. “Whatever we are, we’re not fishy, buddy.” “Close on the heels of kindness, originality is one of the most thrilling things in the world, also the most rare!” Seymour writes in “Hapworth.” What is thrilling about that sentence is, of course, the order in which kindness and originality are put. And what makes reading Salinger such a consistently bracing experience is our sense of always being in the presence of something that—whatever it is—isn’t fishy.
via Justice to J.D. Salinger – The New York Review of Books.

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rePost:Confidence Of Filipino Industrialist:A Damaged Culture: A New Philippines? – James Fallows

The countries that have most successfully rebuilt their economies, including Japan and Korea, went through extremely protectionist infant-industry phases, with America’s blessing; the United States never permitted the Philippines such a period. The Japanese and Koreans now believe they can take on anybody; the confidence of Filipino industrialists seems to have been permanently destroyed.
via A Damaged Culture: A New Philippines? – James Fallows.

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rePost::A Damaged Culture: A New Philippines? – James Fallows

Nationalism is valuable when it gives people a reason not to live in the world of Hobbes–when it allows them to look beyond themselves rather than pursuing their own interests to the ruination of everyone else. I assume that most people in the world have the same mixture of selfish and generous motives; their cultures tell them when to indulge each impulse. Japan is strong in large part because its nationalist-racial ethic teaches each Japanese that all other Japanese deserve decent treatment. Non-Japanese fall into a different category. Individual Filipinos are at least as brave, kind, and noble-spirited as individual Japanese, but their culture draws the boundaries of decent treatment much more narrowly. Filipinos pride themselves on their lifelong loyalty to family, schoolmates, compadres, members of the same tribe, residents of the same barangay. The mutual tenderness among the people of Smoky Mountain is enough to break your heart. But when observing Filipino friendships I thought often of the Mafia families portrayed in The Godfather: total devotion to those within the circle, total war on those outside. Because the boundaries of decedent treatment are limited to the family or tribe, they exclude at least 90 percent of the people in the country. And because of this fragmentation–this lack of nationalism–people treat each other worse in the Philippines than in any other Asian country I have seen.
via A Damaged Culture: A New Philippines? – James Fallows.