This Is What It’s Like To Dive Between Two Continents

PBS NewsHour has a new science video series called ScienceScope - and their first episode is all about smells!

Scientists, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the White House Brain Initiative, are trying to understand how smells travel, and how we detect them. They simulate the turbulent wafting of an order with dye in water. The hope is that this research will lead to smell-detecting robots that could replace search dogs. 

Images courtesy of PBS NewsHour/Brian Gill/Nsikan Akpan

Watch: Nevada State Sen. Pat Spearman lights up Donald Trump and Mike Pence at the DNC

This is still—and may always be—the ultimate example of right-wing hypocrisy.

The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato. Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies

Stephen Hawking’s quote speaks to the heart of why basic income has become such a popular idea in one vital industry in recent years.

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The Easterbunny Comes to NGC 4725 

At first called “Easterbunny” by its discovery team, officially named Makemake is the second brightest dwarf planet of the Kuiper belt. The icy world appears twice in this astronomical image, based on data taken on June 29 and 30 of the bright spiral galaxy NGC 4725. Makemake is marked by short red lines, its position shifting across a homemade telescope’s field-of-view over two nights along a distant orbit. On those dates nearly coincident with the line-of-sight to the spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, Makemake was about 52.5 astronomical units or 7.3 light-hours away. NGC 4725 is over 100,000 light-years across and 41 million light-years distant. Makemake is now known to have at least one moon. NGC 4725 is a famous one-armed spiral galaxy.

Credit: Bob English

(via kids are weird. kids are awesome.)

Now that we’ve left behind the philosophy of religion, it’s time to start exploring what other ways might exist to find meaning in the world. Today we explore essentialism and its response: existentialism. We’ll also learn about Jean-Paul Sartre and his ideas about how to find meaning in a meaningless world.

Keep reading

Eye Study Underscores the Long Lasting Benefits of Controlling Diabetes

NIH-funded study shows less diabetic retinopathy progression among those who underwent intensive glycemic control.

The research is in Diabetes Care. (full access paywall)

#UnfairAndLovely: South Asians Fight Back Against The Stigma Surrounding Dark Skin 

One of the campaign starters had the best thing to say about it, too.