The New Yorker: Death of a Prosecutor

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/death-of-a-prosecutor

Uranium – Twisting the Dragon’s Tail

In light of recent news stories on nuclear deal, I found this NPR video highly informative and enjoyable to watch.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365535134/

To find life in the universe, a new initiative to help us hear the signals

 


PBS report:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/find-life-universe-new-initiative-help-us-hear-signals/

Breakthrough Initiative:

http://www.breakthroughinitiatives.org/

SETI Institute:

http://www.seti.org/

SETI@home; become involved in scientific experiment


http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

The New York Times Editorial: Beyond Mourning for Charleston

 I found NY Times' editorial on June 20 broadly descriptive of the tragedy in Charleston and the  issues surrounding it. 

 

The horrific church shooting in Charleston, S.C., leaves the nation at an all too familiar juncture — uncertain whether to do something positive to repair society’s vulnerabilities or to once again absorb an intolerable wound by going through what has become a woeful ritual of deep grief followed by shallow resolve to move on toward … what? Toward the inevitable carnage next time.

The factors emerging in the mass murder of the nine churchgoers, who took the shooter into their prayerful midst, are a confluence of some of the nation’s most glaring problems: the empowerment of a steady stream of enraged people exercising their easy right to bear arms; the odious racism that haunts society’s darkest corners; and the public’s general sense of impotence, as needed solutions are left up to a political system undermined by retrograde and timorous officials more interested in their own survival than in the broader welfare.

The details emerging on how the suspected shooter might have been inspired by the white supremacy movement are another warning that the nation’s long history of racial brutality is far from healed. How much black lives matter was the question posed during the recent police shootings of African-Americans. This question is posed anew, in most grotesque fashion, in Charleston. Honest and creative answers are possible, but only if the American people — white and black — are galvanized to force politicians to make tangible improvements that go beyond vigils and speeches.

Anyone who has been to modern, progressive Charleston would be struck by a visit to its old slave market. This museum, which recounts historic abuses from a time when black people were chained as chattel, rings with the truth of how elusive full racial accord remains in America. The state’s nostalgic but poisonous flaunting of Confederate flags from a war that was waged over the issue of human bondage adds insult to the historic injuries still felt.

Perversely but tellingly, while other flags at the state Capitol in Columbia were lowered to half-staff in mourning for the shooting victims, the Confederate flag remained at full staff, reportedly under the sole control of state legislators. Many of them, of course, make a staunch defense of that flag part of their election campaigns.

Of all the factors at the heart of the church massacre, the issue of easy access to guns should be the most amenable to reform. President Obama pointed out how our nation remains shamefully exceptional among modern nations, racking up tens of thousands of gun deaths a year. “Once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” he said.

The laws of the land enable this continuing national tragedy. Congress issued a bitter lesson to the president when it rejected his proposals for greater gun safety after the 2012 massacre of 20 schoolchildren in Connecticut. Mr. Obama should marshal full political force in reviving the demand for action by Congress — a point the public strongly supports, even though Congress continues to be enslaved to the desires of the gun lobby.

In this moment of grief, there’s a measure of practical comfort to be taken from the warning of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” It’s increasingly clear that King understood and embodied the sufferings of not just African-Americans but an entire nation still haunted by racism and mindless violence.

Beyond this latest grief, however, he epitomized unyielding dedication to political progress. “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability,” he cautioned, “but comes through continuous struggle.” This remains the nation’s only course after the horrendous murders in Charleston.

 

NY Times: A Crisis at the Edge of Physics

 

 

Whether or not you agree with them, the professors have identified a mounting concern in fundamental physics: Today, our most ambitious science can seem at odds with the empirical methodology that has historically given the field its credibility.

Brilliant Madness

John Nash the Princeton University mathematician whose life inspired the film "A Beautiful Mind," and his wife died in a car crash. 

“It is very hard to be subject to any illness, particularly a mental one. However, we must always remember these illnesses have nothing to do with our spirit or our inner relation to God. It is a great pity that as yet so little is really known of the mind, its workings and illnesses that afflict it; no doubt, as the world becomes more spiritually minded and scientists understand the true nature of man, more humane and permanent cures for mental diseases will be found.

“You must always remember, no matter how much you or others may be afflicted with mental troubles and the crushing environment of these State Institutions, that your spirit is healthy, near to our Beloved, and will in the next world enjoy a happy and normal state of soul. Let us hope in the meantime scientists will find better and permanent cures for the mentally afflicted. But in this world such illness is truly a heavy burden to bear!”

(From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, April 12, 1948)

There are a great many as you know mental diseases and troubles at present, and the one thing Bahá’ís must not do is take a defeatist attitude toward them. 

(From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, January 12, 1957)

Proton beams are back in the LHC

http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2015/04/proton-beams-are-back-lhc

Holocaust remembrance on the 70th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation

http://www.ushmm.org/learn/introduction-to-the-holocaust/path-to-nazi-genocide

به سوی نسل کشی نازی ها

Highlights of President Obama's farewell speech in India

 

We know from experience that nations are more successful when their women are successful.

These are facts. So if nations really want to succeed in today’s global economy, they can’t simply ignore the talents of half of their people.

Every daughter deserves the same chance as our sons. And every woman should be able to go about her day – to walk the street, or ride the bus – and be safe and be treated with the respect and dignity that she deserves.

Together, we can stand up against human trafficking and work to end the scourge of modern-day slavery

The peace we seek in the world begins in human hearts; it finds its glorious expression when we look beyond any differences in religion or tribe and rejoice in the beauty of every soul. 

He (Gandhi) said, ‘for me, the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree’. Branches of the same majestic tree.

No society is immune from the darkest impulses of men. India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith.

Many countries, including America, grapple with complex questions of identity and inequality. Right now, in crowded neighbourhoods not far from here, a man is driving an auto-rickshaw, or washing somebody else’s clothes, or doing the hard work no one else will do. A woman is cleaning somebody else’s house. A young man is on a bicycle delivering lunch. A little girl is hauling a heavy bucket of water. Their dreams, their hopes, are just as big and beautiful and worthy as ours.

I know the argument made by some — that it’s unfair for countries like the United States to ask developing nations and emerging economies like India to reduce your dependence on the same fossil fuels that helped power our growth for more than a century, but here’s the truth — even if countries like the United States curb our emissions, if countries that are growing rapidly like India with soaring energy needs don’t also embrace cleaner fuels, then we don’t stand a chance against climate change.