« To the past
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Feb 15, 2012
Sign in bathroom at Blip HQ. We should not need this.
Amazing that this is still an issue. Even cooler that we have this sign.
Feb 5, 2012
Feb 4, 2012
The question, “If I were President I’d…” implies that if you swap out one leader, put in another, then all will be well with America—as though our leaders are the cause of all ailments.
That must be why we’ve created a tradition of rampant attacks on our politicians. Are they too conservative for you? Too liberal? Too religious? Too atheist? Too gay? Too anti-gay? Too rich? Too dumb? Too smart? Too ethnic? Too philanderous? Curious behavior, given that we elect 88% of Congress every two years.
A second tradition-in-progress is the expectation that everyone else in our culturally pluralistic land should hold exactly your own outlook, on all issues.
When you’re scientifically literate, the world looks different to you. It’s a particular way of questioning what you see and hear. When empowered by this state of mind, objective realities matter. These are the truths of the world that exist outside of whatever your belief system tells you.
One objective reality is that our government doesn’t work, not because we have dysfunctional politicians, but because we have dysfunctional voters. As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
New York, August 21, 2011
(quote from Hayden Planetarium Blog, the unedited version of a quote given to the New York Times as part of a series they did called, “If I Were President, I’d…”)
Smartest man in the room.
(via helms-deep)
Feb 4, 2012
We cannot wash our hands of this.The Pakistani Ambassador speaking at the Security Council, saying that the draft resolution veto doesn’t release the international community of its continued obligation. (via thepoliticalnotebook)
Feb 2, 2012
AMA with George Pelecanos, a writer and producer of The Wire
George Pelecanos:
We worked it out together in the writers room. A lot of discussion and sometimes arguments. When it got heated, it came from a place of passion, and I think it was reflected in the final product. Yes, often times I had to fight for what I thought was right in a script. And sometimes David stood firm and saved me from my own worst instincts. I was given the penultimate episodes—the ones where bad, violent shit happens—because David thought I did a good job of similar scenes in my books. I did not write the celebrated chess scene; that was David, I believe. I wrote the deaths of Wallace, Frank Sobotka, Stringer Bell, and Snoop. Also, I wrote the scene in the park between Bunk and Omar. That, and the rooftop scene between Stringer and Avon, are my personal favorites of what I actually wrote. There are others, like the paper bag speech written by Richard Price in Season 3, that I’m still in awe of.
Jan 27, 2012
Based on data from hundreds of programs, policy analyst John D. Graham and his colleagues at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis found in 1997 that the median cost for lifesaving expenditures and regulations by the U.S. government in the health care, residential, transportation, and occupational areas ranges from about $1 million to $3 million spent per life saved in today’s dollars. The only marked exception to this pattern occurs in the area of environmental health protection (such as the Superfund program) which costs about $200 million per life saved. Graham and his colleagues call the latter kind of inefficiency “statistical murder,” since thousands of additional lives could be saved each year if the money were used more cost-effectively. To avoid such deadly waste, the Department of Transportation has a policy of rejecting any proposed safety expenditure that costs more than $3 million per life saved. That ceiling therefore may be taken as a high-end estimate for the value of an American’s life as defined by the U.S. government.
How Much Is an Astronaut’s Life Worth? - Reason Magazine (via zachrose)
Fascinating, although I don’t think “lives saved” is necessarily the correct metric for environmental regulation.
(via zachrose)
Jan 27, 2012
sparkyinfla asked: I just read that you're leaving Blip at the same time millions are being raised for the company. What gives? Are you starting something new? Thanks. (re: story on venturebeat)
I left blip for personal reasons. The company also raised a bunch of money. The company’s doing well and the team’s cranking, but I concluded after about six years that it was time for me to do something new. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made.
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I'm a high school dropout, the long-term CEO of blip.tv and a former warblogger.
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