Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains What Would Happen If You Fell into a Black Hole

Per­haps you’ve pon­dered your own mor­tal­i­ty. But have you ever imag­ined per­ish­ing as you fall into a black hole? Prob­a­bly not. But if you’re intrigued by this admit­ted­ly unlike­ly sce­nario, then watch the clip above. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astro­physi­cist who heads up the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um in NYC, breaks down the scene for you step-by-step and in a fair­ly humor­ous way. This talk is based on his well-reviewed book, Death by Black Hole: And Oth­er Cos­mic Quan­daries.

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Our Rapidly Changing Digital World

In case you need­ed a reminder, we’re no longer liv­ing in your grand­fa­ther’s world. This video makes that plain­ly clear. Every­thing is chang­ing in a blink, and edu­ca­tion offers you and your kids the best way to nav­i­gate it all. Don’t take it for grant­ed.

via The Dig­i­tal­Blur. Thanks Jil­lian for the tip on this one.

Remem­ber to catch us on Twit­ter.

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Bridging the Science-Religion Divide

Is there “a philo­soph­i­cal incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty between reli­gion and sci­ence. Does the empir­i­cal nature of sci­ence con­tra­dict the rev­e­la­to­ry nature of faith? Are the gaps between them so great that the two insti­tu­tions must be con­sid­ered essen­tial­ly antag­o­nis­tic?” These were the ques­tions raised by Jer­ry Coyne, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, in a long and meaty book review (“See­ing and Believ­ing”) appear­ing in The New Repub­lic. Over at the Edge.org, a num­ber of sci­en­tif­ic thinkers, who reg­u­lar­ly engage with these essen­tial ques­tions, have offered their own thoughts on the mat­ter. You’ll find short pieces by Stephen Pinker, Daniel Den­nett, Sam Har­ris, George Dyson and oth­ers. This one pas­sage by Karl Giber­son par­tic­u­lar­ly struck me (though it’s not exact­ly a reflec­tion of my world­view):

Empir­i­cal sci­ence does indeed trump revealed truth about the world as Galileo and Dar­win showed only too clear­ly. But empir­i­cal sci­ence also trumps oth­er empir­i­cal sci­ence. Ein­stein’s dethrone­ment of New­ton was not the whole­sale under­min­ing of the sci­en­tif­ic enter­prise, even though it showed that sci­ence was clear­ly in error. It was, rather, a glo­ri­ous and appro­pri­ate­ly cel­e­brat­ed advance for sci­ence, albeit one not under­stood by most peo­ple. Why is this dif­fer­ent than mod­ern the­ol­o­gy’s near uni­ver­sal rejec­tion of the tyran­ni­cal anthro­po­mor­phic deity of the Old Tes­ta­ment, so elo­quent­ly skew­ered by Dawkins? How is it that “sci­ence” is allowed to toss its his­tor­i­cal bag­gage over­board when its best informed lead­ers decide to do so, even though the ideas con­tin­ue to cir­cu­late on main street, but reli­gion must for­ev­er be defined by the ancient bag­gage car­ried by its least informed?

The world dis­closed by sci­ence is rich and mar­velous, but most peo­ple think there is more to it. Our reli­gious tra­di­tions embody our fit­ful and imper­fect reflec­tions on this mys­te­ri­ous and tran­scen­dent intuition—an intu­ition that, as artic­u­lat­ed by some of our most pro­found thinkers, seeks an under­stand­ing of the world that is goes beyond the empir­i­cal.
 


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Milton Friedman on Greed

The new Trea­sury Sec­re­tary unveiled his plan this morn­ing, and appar­ent­ly the mar­kets hate it, which pret­ty much guar­an­tees that we’ll be liv­ing with our finan­cial mess for a good while longer. As we know, this cri­sis could have been avoid­ed. But greed got the bet­ter of us. So, I won­der what read­ers think when they see Mil­ton Fried­man’s 1979 defense of cap­i­tal­ism and greed. Is it a mod­el, a line of argu­ment, that’s now dis­cred­it­ed? Or do we grudg­ing­ly con­cede his points and say that cap­i­tal­ism is the worst eco­nom­ic mod­el except for all the oth­ers that have been tried (a cheap play here on Churchill), and then fig­ure out how to mop it up?

via Andrew Sul­li­van’s Dai­ly Dish

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The Obama “Hope” Poster & The New Copyright Controversy

obamaposter-198x300By now, every­one knows the famous Oba­ma “Hope” poster pro­duced by Shep­ard Fairey. Recent­ly, Fairey has acknowl­edged that the poster was orig­i­nal­ly inspired by a pho­to­graph belong­ing to the AP Press, and now the AP is claim­ing that Fairey has infringed on its copy­right and wants “pay­ment for the use of the pho­to and a por­tion of any mon­ey he makes from it.” (see arti­cle in the New York Times). In response, Fairey has filed a pre­emp­tive law­suit, claim­ing that he used the AP pho­to as a mere start­ing point and then trans­formed it into a “stun­ning, abstract­ed and ide­al­ized visu­al image that cre­at­ed pow­er­ful new mean­ing and con­veys a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent mes­sage.” If you put the two images side by side (see here), it’s pret­ty instant­ly clear that Fairey took an admit­ted­ly well done news pho­to and did some­thing quite trans­for­ma­tive with it, which makes things fair game. That’s obvi­ous to almost any­one (includ­ing hope­ful­ly judges), and it’s a shame to see the AP, which lives by its First Amend­ment rights, look­ing to use the copy­right clause to lim­it free­dom of expres­sion. Bad move guys.

As a quick side note, Fairey is being rep­re­sent­ed in court by The Fair Use Project at Stan­ford Law School’s Cen­ter for Inter­net and Soci­ety (to which I have zero con­nec­tion.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry Behind the Icon­ic Oba­ma Cam­paign Poster

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Elizabeth Gilbert on Creative Genius

Eliz­a­beth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, talked at last week’s TED Con­fer­ence about writ­ers, their “genius,” and the expec­ta­tions that we place on it. I know that Gilbert — or at least her last book — has a lot of fans. And that’s why I’m post­ing this here. Per­son­al­ly, I’m not so much a fan. She just does­n’t do it for me. But that’s just me … and so hope­ful­ly this work for you.

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Bill Gates on Changing the World

The 2009 TED con­fer­ence, which fea­tured a long list of well-known speak­ers, wrapped up on Fri­day. And now you can watch two of the key pre­sen­ta­tions online. First, and fea­tured above, you’ll get Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and now major phil­an­thropist, talk­ing about how to change the world through edu­ca­tion and dis­ease pre­ven­tion. It’s a good 20 min­utes, and it will par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est any edu­ca­tors who read this blog. Next, Bill Gross, founder of Ide­al­ab, gives you 20 min­utes on the ground­break­ing work being done in solar ener­gy.

We’ve added the Gates talk to our list of YouTube Favorites. Also, you’ll find videos from TED on our list: YouTube Edu­ca­tion: 80 Intel­li­gent Video Col­lec­tions.

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Lincoln on Flickr

The Library of Con­gress has added a series of images to Flickr that will “let you see how Lin­coln looked over 20 years—from the ear­li­est known pho­to­graph­ic like­ness in 1846, through the U.S. pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of 1860, and the pres­sures of the Civ­il War years. Views from Lincoln’s funer­al in 1865 and por­traits of his imme­di­ate fam­i­ly are also includ­ed.”

via The Library of Con­gress Blog

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.