NASA’s Juno spacecraft is scheduled to rendezvous with the solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter. After five years of travelling in deep space, the craft will soon orbit the planet. RT America’s Manuel Rapalo breaks down some of the most fascinating science at play in the mission.
Don’t be fooled, the NRA is not working for responsible gun owners; the NRA is working for gun manufacturers.
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Early Sunday morning, Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, perpetrating the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Mateen, his father explained the next day, had repeatedly been angered by the sight of two men kissing.
In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson about the public understanding of science, his career as an educator, political atheism, racism, artificial intelligence, alien life, and other topics.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is the head of Hayden Planetarium in New York City and the first occupant of its Frederick P. Rose Directorship. He is also a research associate of the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. His research interests include star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the structure of our Milky Way. Tyson is the recipient of nineteen honorary doctorates and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest award given by NASA to a non-government citizen. He holds a degree in physics from Harvard and a PhD in astrophysics from Columbia.
Tyson has served on several Presidential commissions and government advisory councils. He has written ten books, including The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist and Death By Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries, and Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier.
Recently, Tyson served as executive editor, host, and narrator for Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, the 21st century continuation of Carl Sagan’s landmark television series. The show began in March 2014 and ran thirteen episodes in Primetime on the FOX network, and appeared in 181 countries in 45 languages around the world on the National Geographic Channels. Cosmos won four Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, two Critics Choice awards, as well as a dozen other industry recognitions.
I think I could turn and live with animals, they’re so placid and self contain’d,. . . .
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the earth.
~ Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1891 edition
On this date in 1819, Walt Whitman [May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892] was born on Long Island. After working as clerk, teacher, journalist and laborer, Whitman wrote his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, pioneering free verse poetry in a humanistic celebration of humanity, in 1855. Emerson, whom Whitman revered, said of Leaves of Grass that it held “incomparable things incomparably said.” During the Civil War, Whitman worked as an army nurse, later writing Drum Taps (1865) and Memoranda During the War (1867). His health compromised by the experience, he was given work at the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. After a stroke in 1873, which left him partially paralyzed, Whitman lived his next 20 years with his brother, writing mainly prose, such as Democratic Vistas (1870). Leaves of Grass was published in nine editions, with Whitman elaborating on it in each successive edition. In the preface of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman wrote, “This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God.” In 1881, the book had the compliment of being banned by the commonwealth of Massachusetts on charges of immorality.
Whitman was at most a Deist who scorned religion (see several samples of his views below). D. 1892.
Congress has decided to vote against scientific studies into medical marijuana. Marijuana is currently a schedule one drug, meaning it has no medical uses. Some lawmakers wanted to change this, but they were outnumbered and outvoted. Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.
“While there is increasing evidence that medical marijuana could be a viable alternative to opioids in terms of pain management, a new report indicates that Congress is still not prepared to give the scientific community the green light to dig any deeper into this progressive concept.
Earlier last week, the U.S. House Rules Committee voted against two proposed amendments that would have required a special pain management task force to consider how weed might be used as an alternative or in conjunction with prescription painkillers.
Both amendments, submitted by Representatives Dana Rohrabacher and Jared Polis, would have given Uncle Sam’s new painkiller detail, a crew consisting of various federal drug and health agencies, the opportunity to look into “the potential for marijuana to serve as an alternative to opioids for pain management,” as well as conduct research that compares “the medical application of marijuana and opioids for pain management.”
In an effort to sell the importance of allowing the task force to include medical marijuana in its review, Polis explained before the House Committee that medical marijuana has already shown significant promise in deterring overdose incidents stemming from the abuse of prescription narcotics.
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