Cupid or Not, Roborant Sages Dare

maptitude1:Average age by country

Sat, 24 Mar 2018 13:31:39 -0400

maptitude1:

Average age by country

BREAKING: HRC Condemns Trump-Pence Transgender Troop Ban Policy | Human Rights Campaign

Sat, 24 Mar 2018 13:29:42 -0400

BREAKING: HRC Condemns Trump-Pence Transgender Troop Ban Policy | Human Rights Campaign

When Barbie Went to War with Bratz

Sat, 20 Jan 2018 12:03:23 -0500

When Barbie Went to War with Bratz:

newyorker:

“The only thing wrong that I saw when I held Barbie,” Alex Kozinski, then the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, who presided over Mattel v. MGA, said, joking, “is when I lift her skirt there is nothing underneath.”

Corporate ownership of ideas, the dramatic extension of the terms of copyright, and a wild expansion of what counts as protectable intellectual property have together undermined the original purpose of intellectual-property law. Nine out of ten patents granted in the United States are now owned by corporations. Congress passed ten copyright-extension acts in the course of the twentieth century; copyright now lasts for seventy years after the death of the author. Corporations have attempted to claim exclusive legal rights to everything from yoga moves to genetic sequences.

More than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries issue 'warning to humanity'

Sat, 20 Jan 2018 10:59:52 -0500

More than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries issue 'warning to humanity'

mapsontheweb: Language difficulty categories of the FSI....

Sat, 20 Jan 2018 10:56:55 -0500

mapsontheweb:

Language difficulty categories of the FSI. Updated since French and German have been changed.

Keep reading

Scott Pruitt claims he’s taken more actions to fight pollution than Obama, but can’t name any

Sat, 20 Jan 2018 10:54:04 -0500

Scott Pruitt claims he’s taken more actions to fight pollution than Obama, but can’t name any:

Pruitt tried to justify the fact that he’s extremely close with the fossil fuel industry by claiming these relationships “will ultimately make the air cleaner and the water safer to drink,” the Sierra Club said in a statement Friday. In the statement, the environmental group contends “the worst EPA administrator ever would like you to believe he’s an environmentalist.”

“Scott Pruitt is an environmental steward in the same way the Marlboro Man is fighting lung cancer. Pruitt’s obvious disconnect from reality is dangerous to your health, and his systematic destruction of our clean air and water laws is one of the biggest crises in our federal government today,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in the statement.

land-of-maps:United States presidential election, 1924 [OC]...

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 14:08:47 -0500

land-of-maps:

United States presidential election, 1924 [OC] [1671x1080]

'Warmest year without El Niño'

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 14:07:54 -0500

'Warmest year without El Niño':

Nasa says it is possible statistically to remove the natural warming and cooling effects that come from El Niño and La Niña. When this smoothing is done (red line), 2017 comes out warmer than any previous year. The grey columns denote major volcanic eruptions that ordinarily depress the warming trend.

Excerpts:

The World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said the long-term temperature trend was far more important than the ranking of individual years.

“Arctic warmth has been especially pronounced and this will have profound and long-lasting repercussions on sea levels, and on weather patterns in other parts of the world.”

Prof Richard Allan from the University of Reading said: “Rather than warming being inconsequential or catastrophic, as some have suggested, we can be sure societies are facing a dangerous temperature rise, but one which we still have time to fix.

“The conclusions confirm that human-caused climate change is a serious concern.

“But if we act now with sustained and substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, societies will still be able to avoid much of the most dangerous climate change predicted by computer simulations.”

Climate change is triggering a migrant crisis in Vietnam

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 13:52:06 -0500

Climate change is triggering a migrant crisis in Vietnam

Opinion | ‘Vision, Chutzpah and Some Testosterone’

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 13:47:45 -0500

Opinion | ‘Vision, Chutzpah and Some Testosterone’:

The Times editorial board has been sharply critical of the Trump presidency, on grounds of policy and personal conduct. Not all readers have been persuaded. In the spirit of open debate, and in hopes of helping readers who agree with us better understand the views of those who don’t, we wanted to let Mr. Trump’s supporters make their best case for him as the first year of his presidency approaches its close. Tomorrow we’ll present some letters from readers who voted for Mr. Trump but are now disillusioned, and from those reacting to today’s letters and our decision to provide Trump voters this platform.

land-of-maps:Life expectancy by US county, December 2016...

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 13:46:08 -0500

land-of-maps:

Life expectancy by US county, December 2016 (800x570)

mapsontheweb:US Natural Disaster Map.

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 13:43:51 -0500

mapsontheweb:

US Natural Disaster Map.

Mark Taylor: Hillary Clinton Would Have Handed America Over To The New World Order | Right Wing Watch

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 13:34:53 -0500

Mark Taylor: Hillary Clinton Would Have Handed America Over To The New World Order | Right Wing Watch

Scott Pruitt wants to move full steam ahead on his pro-industry agenda in 2018

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 13:23:53 -0500

Scott Pruitt wants to move full steam ahead on his pro-industry agenda in 2018:

saywhat-politics:

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt wants to use metrics to gauge the weekly performance of every office at his agency. That would be good news if Pruitt’s intention was to measure how each EPA office is protecting the environment and public health to the best of its ability.

But the metrics to which Pruitt is referring will be used to measure how quickly the EPA is granting clean air and clean water permits to polluters. Pruitt wants to ensure industry is not having to wait long to get permission to conduct work that will likely have harmful effects on the environment.

Health Workers Who Oppose Abortion Get New Protections

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 12:58:46 -0500

Health Workers Who Oppose Abortion Get New Protections:

Critics said the administration was giving health care providers a license to discriminate, and they raised the possibility that some doctors might deny fertility treatments to lesbian couples and that some pharmacists might refuse to fill prescriptions for certain types of contraceptives. In such situations, patients could suffer, and health care workers could violate professional or ethical obligations.

“Donald Trump’s administration is handing out permission slips for hospitals and providers to deny individuals, including women and LGBT patients, access to a full range of health services including life saving emergency care,” said Dawn Huckelbridge, director of the Women’s Rights Initiative at American Bridge, a Democratic advocacy group. “If there is any doubt about how morally repulsive, politically unpopular, and far-reaching the consequences of this rule will be, crafting it in secret behind closed doors and without public input says all you need to know.”

Eric D. Hargan, the acting secretary of health and human services, said the new initiative carries out an executive order issued last year by President Trump, who said that people of faith would no longer be bullied or silenced.

neurosciencenews: Defining Curiosity Philosopher Thomas Hobbes...

Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:31:29 -0500

neurosciencenews:

Defining Curiosity

Philosopher Thomas Hobbes called it “the lust of the mind.” Former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt said it was “the most useful gift.” And, yes, we all know what killed the cat. But ask a group of scientists to define curiosity and you’ll get a rousing debate, and a lot of unanswered questions about its biology. No more, argue two University of Rochester researchers in a review of curiosity science. They propose that it’s time for researchers to organize and focus on curiosity’s function, evolution, mechanism, and development.

The research is in Neuron. (full open access)

The Psychology and Neuroscience of Curiosity
by Celeste Kidd & Benjamin Y. Hayden

Neuron, Volume 88, Issue 3, p449–460, 4 November 2015

Do yourself a favor. Learn to code. Here's how.

Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:10:34 -0500

boomeyer:

boomeyer:

I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.

Learning to code elevates your professional life, and makes you more knowledgeable about the massive changes taking place in the technology sector that are poised to have an immense influence on human life.

(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)

But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.

There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:

Novice

Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:

Dash - by General Assembly

CodeAcademy

w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)

Intermediate

Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:

Khan Academy

CodeAcademy - Ruby, Python, PHP

Difficult

If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.

Programming problems

Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems

Talentbuddy

TopCoder

Web Applications

If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial - it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.

Django Tutorial

I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.

Rails Guide

If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:

Cake PHP Book

Symfony 2 - Get Started

Yii PHP - The Comprehensive Guide

Conclusion

If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.

If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.

Best of luck!

Great work expanding on my humble list to include a much fuller collection of resources for learning how to code! Cheers!

science-junkie: itsrosewho: FAMOUS AUTHORS Classic...

Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:04:02 -0500

science-junkie:

itsrosewho:

FAMOUS AUTHORS

Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.

The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.

Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.

Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.

Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.

Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.

Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.

Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.

The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.

Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.

Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.

Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.

Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.

Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.

TEXTBOOKS

Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.

Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.

KnowThis Free Online Textbooks: Get directed to stats textbooks and more.

Online Medical Textbooks: Find books about plastic surgery, anatomy and more here.

Online Science and Math Textbooks: Access biochemistry, chemistry, aeronautics, medical manuals and other textbooks here.

MIT Open Courseware Supplemental Resources: Find free videos, textbooks and more on the subjects of mechanical engineering, mathematics, chemistry and more.

Flat World Knowledge: This innovative site has created an open college textbooks platform that will launch in January 2009.

Free Business Textbooks: Find free books to go along with accounting, economics and other business classes.

Light and Matter: Here you can access open source physics textbooks.

eMedicine: This project from WebMD is continuously updated and has articles and references on surgery, pediatrics and more.

MATH AND SCIENCE

FullBooks.com: This site has “thousands of full-text free books,” including a large amount of scientific essays and books.

Free online textbooks, lecture notes, tutorials and videos on mathematics: NYU links to several free resources for math students.

Online Mathematics Texts: Here you can find online textbooks likeElementary Linear Algebra and Complex Variables.

Science and Engineering Books for free download: These books range in topics from nanotechnology to compressible flow.

FreeScience.info: Find over 1800 math, engineering and science books here.

Free Tech Books: Computer programmers and computer science enthusiasts can find helpful books here.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

byGosh: Find free illustrated children’s books and stories here.

Munseys: Munseys has nearly 2,000 children’s titles, plus books about religion, biographies and more.

International Children’s Digital Library: Find award-winning books and search by categories like age group, make believe books, true books or picture books.

Lookybook: Access children’s picture books here.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

Bored.com: Bored.com has music ebooks, cooking ebooks, and over 150 philosophy titles and over 1,000 religion titles.

Ideology.us: Here you’ll find works by Rene Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, David Hume and others.

Free Books on Yoga, Religion and Philosophy: Recent uploads to this site include Practical Lessons in Yoga and Philosophy of Dreams.

The Sociology of Religion: Read this book by Max Weber, here.

Religion eBooks: Read books about the Bible, Christian books, and more.

PLAYS

ReadBookOnline.net: Here you can read plays by Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and others.

Plays: Read Pygmalion, Uncle Vanya or The Playboy of the Western World here.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: MIT has made available all of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and histories.

Plays Online: This site catalogs “all the plays [they] know about that are available in full text versions online for free.”

ProPlay: This site has children’s plays, comedies, dramas and musicals.

MODERN FICTION, FANTASY AND ROMANCE

Public Bookshelf: Find romance novels, mysteries and more.

The Internet Book Database of Fiction: This forum features fantasy and graphic novels, anime, J.K. Rowling and more.

Free Online Novels: Here you can find Christian novels, fantasy and graphic novels, adventure books, horror books and more.

Foxglove: This British site has free novels, satire and short stories.

Baen Free Library: Find books by Scott Gier, Keith Laumer and others.

The Road to Romance: This website has books by Patricia Cornwell and other romance novelists.

Get Free Ebooks: This site’s largest collection includes fiction books.

John T. Cullen: Read short stories from John T. Cullen here.

SF and Fantasy Books Online: Books here include Arabian Nights,Aesop’s Fables and more.

Free Novels Online and Free Online Cyber-Books: This list contains mostly fantasy books.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Project Laurens Jz Coster: Find Dutch literature here.

ATHENA Textes Francais: Search by author’s name, French books, or books written by other authors but translated into French.

Liber Liber: Download Italian books here. Browse by author, title, or subject.

Biblioteca romaneasca: Find Romanian books on this site.

Bibliolteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes: Look up authors to find a catalog of their available works on this Spanish site.

KEIMENA: This page is entirely in Greek, but if you’re looking for modern Greek literature, this is the place to access books online.

Proyecto Cervantes: Texas A&M’s Proyecto Cervantes has cataloged Cervantes’ work online.

Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum: Access many Latin texts here.

Project Runeberg: Find Scandinavian literature online here.

Italian Women Writers: This site provides information about Italian women authors and features full-text titles too.

Biblioteca Valenciana: Register to use this database of Catalan and Valencian books.

Ketab Farsi: Access literature and publications in Farsi from this site.

Afghanistan Digital Library: Powered by NYU, the Afghanistan Digital Library has works published between 1870 and 1930.

CELT: CELT stands for “the Corpus of Electronic Texts” features important historical literature and documents.

Projekt Gutenberg-DE: This easy-to-use database of German language texts lets you search by genres and author.

HISTORY AND CULTURE

LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.

The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.

Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.

Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.

Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.

RARE BOOKS

Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.

Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.

Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.

2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.

Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.

Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.

Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.

Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.

MYSTERY

MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.

TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.

Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.

POETRY

The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.

Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”

Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.

Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.

Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.

QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.

CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.

PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.

MISC

Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.

World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.

DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.

A Celebration of Women Writers: The University of Pennsylvania’s page for women writers includes Newbery winners.

Free Online Novels: These novels are fully online and range from romance to religious fiction to historical fiction.

ManyBooks.net: Download mysteries and other books for your iPhone or eBook reader here.

Authorama: Books here are pulled from Google Books and more. You’ll find history books, novels and more.

Prize-winning books online: Use this directory to connect to full-text copies of Newbery winners, Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer winners.

… and here is a gift for all of us.

How many dimensions are there, and what do they do to reality? – Margaret Wertheim | Aeon Essays

Sat, 13 Jan 2018 10:47:42 -0500

How many dimensions are there, and what do they do to reality? – Margaret Wertheim | Aeon Essays

mapsontheweb:Percent of population who describes their state as...

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 12:22:53 -0500

mapsontheweb:

Percent of population who describes their state as the “Worst possible state to live in”.