Monday, June 11, 2012
Friday, June 8, 2012
From the Wikipedia: The Fermi Paradox | Tedquarters.net
Great blog post about The Fermi Paradox. Basically, this is it:
"The Fermi Paradox refers to the apparent contradiction between the high probability of other intelligent life in the universe and our wholesale lack of evidence of that intelligent life. It is named for the great physicist Enrico Fermi, who interrupted an otherwise pleasant 1950 lunch conversation with some of his physicist buddies by blurting, “Where is everybody?”"
This is probably the best piece from the post:
"Say some alien spaceship did manage to fly to Earth? What are the chances it would have happened in the course of recorded human history? The Big Bang happened about 13.75 billion years ago, the planet formed about 4.54 billion years ago and human civilization is about 10,000 years old. Dinosaurs dominated earth for 135 million years! It’s way more likely that if aliens ever landed here — multiple times even — all they saw were dinosaurs, and they were all, “oh holy s—, dude, run! They’ve got dinosaurs!”"
"The Fermi Paradox refers to the apparent contradiction between the high probability of other intelligent life in the universe and our wholesale lack of evidence of that intelligent life. It is named for the great physicist Enrico Fermi, who interrupted an otherwise pleasant 1950 lunch conversation with some of his physicist buddies by blurting, “Where is everybody?”"
This is probably the best piece from the post:
"Say some alien spaceship did manage to fly to Earth? What are the chances it would have happened in the course of recorded human history? The Big Bang happened about 13.75 billion years ago, the planet formed about 4.54 billion years ago and human civilization is about 10,000 years old. Dinosaurs dominated earth for 135 million years! It’s way more likely that if aliens ever landed here — multiple times even — all they saw were dinosaurs, and they were all, “oh holy s—, dude, run! They’ve got dinosaurs!”"
Monday, April 30, 2012
How car-centric is your city? Public transit ranked
No surprise to see New York at
number 1 on this list. I am surprised to see San Francisco as a close second and Chicago at number 6. I would have figured they'd be the other way around.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Are liberals more pro-woman? A cool graph from a natural experiment | The Incidental Economist
Interesting how the more daughters a representative has, the more likely he/she is to support women's issues compared to the mean for his/her party.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Who Pays Taxes in America?
A Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) report details who actually does pay taxes in the United States:
"It’s often claimed that the richest Americans pay a disproportionate share of taxes while those in the bottom half pay nothing. These claims ignore the many taxes that most Americans are subject to — federal payroll taxes, federal excise taxes, state and local taxes — and focus instead on just one tax, the federal personal income tax. The other taxes are mostly regressive, meaning they take a larger share of income from a poor or middle-income family than they take from a rich family."
So basically, conservatives choose to ignore the hollow argument about how the wealthy pay a disproportionately high amount of taxes since the more regressive sales taxes hit everyone and Social Security taxes are capped so people above a certain income level (the amount of which escapes me right now) pay the same regardless of their income.
So read the whole report to figure out why this graph flattens halfway through and then starts to drop at the right.
"It’s often claimed that the richest Americans pay a disproportionate share of taxes while those in the bottom half pay nothing. These claims ignore the many taxes that most Americans are subject to — federal payroll taxes, federal excise taxes, state and local taxes — and focus instead on just one tax, the federal personal income tax. The other taxes are mostly regressive, meaning they take a larger share of income from a poor or middle-income family than they take from a rich family."
So basically, conservatives choose to ignore the hollow argument about how the wealthy pay a disproportionately high amount of taxes since the more regressive sales taxes hit everyone and Social Security taxes are capped so people above a certain income level (the amount of which escapes me right now) pay the same regardless of their income.
So read the whole report to figure out why this graph flattens halfway through and then starts to drop at the right.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
A Subway to New Jersey? ‘Not a Chance,’ Lhota Says | WSJ.com
"A proposal send the No. 7 subway under the Hudson River into New Jersey probably won’t happen “in our lifetime,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Joseph Lhota said, despite the interest of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg."
I'd like to state my opinion on Mr. Lhota's statement but I'm trying to keep this blog clean.
Nothing to see here; keep moving...
I'd like to state my opinion on Mr. Lhota's statement but I'm trying to keep this blog clean.
Nothing to see here; keep moving...
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