Reinhold Niebuhr quote

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. ... Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”

From David Brooks NYTimes editorial

Response to the Chinese Mother post

[A]s Erma Bombeck said, no mother is arrogant because she knows that, regardless of her other accomplishments in life, at any moment she may get a call from the school principal saying that her child rode a motorcycle through the auditorium.

From Why American Mothers are Superior

Essay from "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother"

Things a Chinese Mother will not let her children do:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.


excerpt from the Wall Street Journal Online.

Akin's Laws of Spacecraft design

31. (Mo's Law of Evolutionary Development) You can't get to the moon by climbing successively taller trees.

via a University of Maryland Engineering Professor

Janelle Monáe - Tightrope

Tried to embed the video, but it was blocked. It's worth going to her site to watch it.

Partial Solar Eclipse and transit of the International Space Station

via Thierry Legault

Ken Block's Gymkhana THREE, Part 2; Ultimate Playground; l'Autodrome, Fr...

I was not aware that cars could be driven this way.

Douglas Adams: Parrots the Universe and Everything

Inception Script Sketch

from an interview with Christopher Nolan by his brother

via In Contention

Galileo's Moon Drawings

Not clear whether he sketched them, or whether they were just illustrations he included in a folio of his other astronomical work.

"In either case, it is rather beautiful. But it didn’t seem that way to many people at the time. It was a shock and an affront to suggest that God’s heavenly objects were not perfect but pocked and roughened with craters and protuberances like some ordinary rock of the earthly realm. This would all come to a head when Galileo visited the pope in 1616 …"

via Tom Christensen

Winter Solstice Eclipse tonight

The full moon will pass through Earth's shadow, changing from gray to a rusty, red color.

Why red? NASA describes it this way:

A quick trip to the Moon provides the answer: Imagine yourself standing on a dusty lunar plain looking up at the sky. Overhead hangs Earth, nightside down, completely hiding the sun behind it. The eclipse is underway. You might expect Earth seen in this way to be utterly dark, but it's not. The rim of the planet is on fire! As you scan your eye around Earth's circumference, you're seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once. This incredible light beams into the heart of Earth's shadow, filling it with a coppery glow and transforming the Moon into a great red orb.

If you're not much for staring at the sky, at least glance up once: early Tuesday morning at 12:17 a.m. That's when the eclipse will be most striking, according to astronomers.

Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais

Why I'm an athiest.

via WSJ

Space Program in One Tufte-Friendly Chart

Click on the image to see the whole thing.

via National Geographic

Facebook Connections

From the Facebook Blog

Prevention may not be a good way to reduce overall health care costs

Paper's conclusion: Although effective obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases, this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures.

Machine with Roller Chain - Arthur Ganson

No comment necessary -- this is just great all by itself.

Machine with Concrete - Arthur Ganson

A machine waiting to be used as a metaphor for something.

15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.

I like this because it reminds me how articulate young people can be, and resets the bar where it should be.

Quote of the day -- Anias Nin

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

via The Positivity Blog

How to give bad news after a job interview

Good advice on giving appropriate information in a kind way after an interview.

via Nathan Marz.