The Asteroid Nemesis Is Named After A Greek Goddess Who Wields An Apple Branch, Lash And Sword. She Is

The problem comes from people whose opinions are actually misconceptions. If you think vaccines cause autism you are expressing something factually wrong, not an opinion. The fact that you may still believe that vaccines cause autism does not move your misconception into the realm of valid opinion. Nor does the fact that many other share this opinion give it any more validity… You can be wrong or ignorant. It will happen. Reality does not care about your feelings. Education does not exist to persecute you. The misinformed are not an ethnic minority being oppressed. What’s that? Planned Parenthood is chopping up dead babies and selling them for phat cash? No, that’s not what actually happened. No, it’s not your opinion. You’re just wrong.

Yes, Your Opinion Can Be Wrong | Houston Press

This whole article.

Education does not exist to persecute you. 

(via witch-boots)

When the big Blue Marble photograph was first seen, there was this idea that it was going to change people’s view of ecology and everyone was going to become an environmentalist because of it. It was a big deal to see that image and now it’s just become so commonplace that no one even thinks about how incredible it is to look down on Earth from that perspective or just the technology it takes to create that image.

In the space of 40 years, we’ve come from this very primitive satellite that was taking photographs and scanning the pictures one line at a time, which took hours, to being able to just go online. It’s changed people’s perspective on space. People don’t think about distance anymore. It’s almost as if the geographic distance has evaporated.

It puts space in front of us as thing that we operate in but no longer think about. I think that’s why people get so frustrated in their cars when they want to get someplace quickly, because they’re so used to thinking distance doesn’t exist.  We’ve become spatial animals, we’ve become people that really track ourselves everywhere we go. When you go for a run, you’ve got your little Nike thing hooked to your cell phone. When you’re on Twitter you can use its place location wherever you’re tweeting from.

An interview with John Hessler, a cartography expert at the Library of Congress and one of the people behind the new book, Map: Exploring The World.

[Maps: Left: A Map of Vesuvius (1832) by John Auldjo. Right: Hurricane Katrina Flooding Estimated Depths and Extent (2005) (University of Otago, NOAA)]

“We have an opportunity to re-think how we regulate city activities for the public interest. I think the big opportunity is to harness the data streaming out of all of these activities and use it to enable a more permissive, but more accountable, “2.0” regulatory regime.”

- Nick Grossman

By focusing on peer-to-peer urbanism, we would be able to create more functional and enjoyable communities while using less resources through sharing — both on and offline. By working collaboratively, there’s an opportunity to create solutions for the masses at a lower cost for the government, and therefore for tax payers. It’s problem solving by community.

Check out the interesting examples of user-generated urbanism, agile urbanism, and today’s peer-to-peer urbanism movement in Nick’s post. 

(via loyalcx)

Earthprints: Aletsch Glacier

One of Europe’s biggest glaciers, the Great Aletsch, coils 14 miles through the Swiss Alps - and yet this mighty river of ice could almost vanish in the lifetimes of people born today because of climate change. The glacier, 900 meters (2,950 feet) thick at one point, has retreated about 3 km (1.9 miles) since 1870 and that pace is quickening, as with many other glaciers around the globe.

That is feeding more water into the oceans and raising world sea levels. It was only after I got down onto the ice, with spikes on my boots for grip and often roped to my guide for safety, that I appreciated the full scale of the glacier, on the south side of the Jungfraujoch railway station.

And yet even the Great Aletsch glacier, the biggest in the Alps and visible from space, is under threat from the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from factories, power plants and cars that are blamed for global warming. (REUTERS) Photography by Denis Balibouse/REUTERS Read: Vast Alpine glacier could almost vanish by 2100 due to warming See more photos of the Great Aletsch and our other slideshows on Yahoo News.

Welcome to my world. Check out this new virtual reality tour of my home on Mars, Gale Crater. It was made by @latimes. (You’ll want some headphones.)

http://graphics.latimes.com/mars-gale-crater-vr/

In the San Joaquin Valley, a legacy of shortsighted land-use planning has intensified the water crisis for poor residents.

[Image: Laura Bliss/CityLab]

Ubiome is an unusual startup. The three-year-old sequences the collected microbes in the human body and sells $89 kits to those curious to understand their own microbiome better. Now uBiome founders and academics Jessica Richman and Zachary Apte — who’ve raised $6.5 million from investors like Andreessen Horowitz for the San Francisco company — are taking an even more unusual step. They’re launching an AngelList Syndicate to fund other microbiome startups.

uBiome’s Founders Launch A Microbiome Syndicate on AngelList | TechCrunch

An Urbanizing Planet

The video, entitled An Urbanizing Planet, takes viewers on a stunning satellite-viewed tour around our planet. By combining more than 10 datasets, and using GIS processing software and 3D graphic applications, the video shows not only where urbanization will be most extensive, but also how the majority of the expansion will occur in areas adjacent to biodiversity hotspots.

The video was produced to present the framework of a new book Global Urbanization, Biodiversity, and Ecosystems: Challenges and Opportunities — A Global Assessment. The scientific foundation of the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook project, the book presents the world’s first assessment of how global urbanization and urban growth impact biodiversity and ecosystems. It builds on contributions by more than 200 scientists worldwide.