It's a Small World: Kepler Spacecraft Discovers First Known Earth-Size Exoplanets: Scientific American

It's a Small World: Kepler Spacecraft Discovers First Known Earth-Size Exoplanets: Scientific American

From a related article: The message is simple, says Sara Seager, a planet hunter at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the discovery team: Planets abound wherever we look. “We think every star has planets.”

That is consistent with a back-of-the-envelope calculation I made a year ago, http://bit.ly/aprDiM, that was itself backed up 2 weeks later by findings of a team of astronomers from Yale and the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute for Astrophysics (http://bit.ly/qU3Qel). In all, living in the era of powerful ground-based and space telescopes is really freakin cool, man!

Edge: WHAT MAKES PEOPLE VOTE REPUBLICAN? By Jonathan Haidt

Edge: WHAT MAKES PEOPLE VOTE REPUBLICAN? By Jonathan Haidt

This is a very illuminating essay on psychology that helps explain the bases of one's political leanings.

Ceding Liberty to Terror: Senate Votes Against Due-Process Rights - Conor Friedersdorf - Politics - The Atlantic

Too many people - sadly, but in some ways understandably - don't pay close attention to politics and public policy. As a citizen in this democracy, and to ensure the robustness of that democracy, you really should. Because when you do not, your passivity and inattention can cost you your liberty. As in, all of it and permanently.

Wednesday, 55 United States senators (43 Republicans and 12 Democrats) voted to make it lawful for the president to order any American held indefinitely as a terrorist, without formal charges, evidence presented in open court, a trial by jury, or a standard of "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." Effectively, they just voted for authoritarianism. If you think that's okay, by all means, carry on with the more important things in your life that divert your attention from the decisions that the people you elect to decide such things on your behalf make.