Minimum Wage

MYTH: We will always be able to remain fully employed as a nation and it is desirable to do so.

TRUTH: We need massive underemployment to get rid of trivial unnecessary jobs in the economy and make it more efficient in the future by offering free education in a technical field as a realistic hope of future employment to those unemployed and destitute who have a desire to put in the effort and who have the ability and who will try to achieve a greater level of quality education.

With a safety net for the unemployed and destitute there will be no need for a minimum wage because if it is too low then citizens will remain unemployed and destitute supported with basic needs delivered door to door but no vehicle transportation.

Instead without a minimum wage employers will be able to hire teenage offspring to do fast food, clerical help, custodial work, deli work, urban farming, safe factory jobs, and other safe jobs at minimal hourly rates for about 4 hours a day so that they get training in the work ethic on the job with financial help from the family. Children of the employed will have the opportunity to learn basic job and people skills which will be very useful in the employment world where it is frequently said that you can’t get a job without experience.

Transportation to an from work can be done by specialty van, bicycles, and scooters with parental permission.

Teenage offspring of the employed will get all the job experience which they need and then some! We will also be once again in a competitive position with developing countries like China and Russia.

There may be some that feel that there would be less time for school if they worked. Shorten the school day by four hours a day because offspring aren’t learning useful job skills in school anyway and a liberal arts education is overrated and is largely an inefficient trivial pursuit expensive bureaucracy to boot.

Teenage offspring of the unemployed and destitute should not qualify for part time work because it would motivate the adults to have more offspring and send them out to earn spending money for the unemployed and destitute. Instead the teenage offspring of the unemployed and destitute should be spending more time on education which will benefit them later in life.

I don’t believe in using profane language but I use fuck here to get the message across to those working people that I love so much such as furniture movers. Those people have bodily difficult jobs carrying heavy furniture every day and it is a hard boring job. Many of them use fuck and motherfucker every forth word or so and I empathize with them.

I am a man for the working people because I have been there and seen it and experienced it with my own body sweat. Yea, I can also move medium weight furniture. I am not afraid of dirty difficult jobs or any job because different jobs are necessary and to be admired. I worked my butt off doing a speedy job by moving speedily with about three to five boxes at a time strapped to my back. Did I get rewarded for that extra work? No! I was working for minimum wage and there was no incentive to work efficiently and make the customer happy with a speedy move.

The truth is that most of those minimum wage jobs are unjust and in about 10 to 20 years there should be very few minimum wage jobs that robots can’t do better. Most of those minimum wage workers should be educating themselves on the internet for better technologically based jobs. Education retraining in science and technology over the internet at home or in school should be financed by the federal government and the instruction for the audio visual education should be provided by private firms also potentially funded by foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. All the recipients of this free internet education would be the unemployed and destitute and all students in public schools and community colleges and universities.

The truth is that most minimum wage jobs should be robotized and humans should not be trapped into working at minimum subsistence levels for long durations. That kind of work is truly dehumanizing and an unjust exploitation and minimization of the full potential of the human body and mind!!!!!!

WE DON’T NEED A MINIMUM WAGE IF WE PASS LAWS GUARANTEEING A SAFETY NET FOR ALL UNEMPLOYED AND DESTITUTE ADULTS AND THAT INCLUDES RECENT SCHOOL GRADUATES WHO CAN’T FIND EMPLOYMENT IN THE WORKPLACE. ONLY FOOD STAMPS ARE NOT ENOUGH HELP FOR THE UNEMPLOYED AND DESTITUTE STRANGERS AND FAMILY OFFSPRING!!!!!!

READ MY BOOK CHANGES IN WELFARE LAWS WHICH ARE NEEDED TO STOP OR KILL THE MINIMUM WAGE MYTH OR HISTORICAL LIE!!!!!!

If you liked this evergreen truth blog then read more of them, about 1200 so far, or read one or more of my evergreen truth books, especially COMMON SENSE, rays of truth in a human world filled with myths and deceptions.

For a complete readily accessible list of blogs and titles go to twitter.com/uldissprogis.

Enjoy!!!!!!

If you enjoyed this blog then here is a list of my most popular ones which you may also enjoy!!!

http://uldissprogis.com/zlist-of-my-most-popular-blogs/

Read this person’s blog. I reposted this because I believe in the hard science that has placed animals in environments where they receive 3 hots and a cot for no effort. The end result is that they begin to expect this every day and will quit working as long as it is given to them. Humans are no different and the excuses do not hold because they all cede personal responsibility to someone else and assume that everyone is fucking mindless. Hate fucking Wall Street? Then quit cooperating, stop watching the fucking Kardashians and do something about your own predicament! 

Educate!!!!!!!

The fact of the matters that I will describe are the following; as long as the nation’s concentration remains on creating a slave labor force that is completely dependent on the billionaires for subsistence, the uneducated will eventually breed out the educated and then we will have nothing but a dumbed down mass of followers clamoring for jobs that pay very little with the idiot worker feeling fortunate just to be employed. Incredibly, the push for socialized medicine has made the effort to socialize education wither and die on the vine. The masses of sheeple who rely on the Government for subsistence are now celebrating the Obamacare achievements while students and potential students everywhere in the U.S continue to struggle to get the education that would keep the country on the cutting edge of science and technology.

 

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a conference featuring Dr.Neil deGrasse Tyson and was, of course, astounded by the man’s brilliance; you cannot be in Dr. Tyson’s presence without feeling that you are in a room with one of the world’s most incredible minds. During this event, he described all of the wonders that science has created and discovered as well as all of the damage religion has wrought as well as the completely preventable damage we have caused the planet over the course of the last few hundred years. He also presented a slide that showed all of the countries that are leading in scientific research. These countries were blown up like balloons to illustrate their significance on the globe, with the U.S being a very prominent player. Fast forward ten years and the next slide shows the U.S very much a deflated insignificant player on the world scientific stage. This, he said, was due to the deliberate dismantling of our educational system by the very pieces of shit that WE elected to lead us!

Now he did not say that these fucking roaches were pieces of shit, that was me, but he did say that there seemed to be a concentrated effort to dumb down the American people, and when 50% of doctorate and post doctorate student bodies in the most prominent U.S universities are foreign born, then yes, this country DOES have a definite problem! Our students here in this country cannot seem to afford an education, and higher ed is not even PUSHED in this country as it should be. I tell my children that college IS NOT a choice but a requirement in our family, because to ignore it is to aspire toward poverty and mediocrity at best! We have one of the worst education systems in the modern world in one of the richest countries, yet no one is outraged!

The Left end of the spectrum is too busy trying to use fuzzy warm feelings to trick the public into thinking that their latte-swilling asses aren’t corporate shills as are their Republican counterparts, and the Right is too busy stirring up the few closed minded people left in that irrelevant party to go against those godless Liberals! These assholes work for the same billionaires and are destroying the country while peripheral issues continue to cloud the treachery that is being wrought by both parties right under our noses! People are so busy blaming each other’s political representatives to realize that once the smoke has settled, it will be too late to salvage the wreckage and take care of the important issues. Education needs to be at the front of the line, not medicine. If the Left was not in bed with Corporate America then Obamacare would be a single payer system, and I know that you need to start somewhere, but education will solve MOST of these other problems with the advancement and evolution of the human mind. Forsake education and we devolve into a third world irrelevant nation stepping back into superstitious belief instead of into reason. Religion was borne of ignorance and will reappear in force if education is ignored.

Personally, if it were up to me alone, I would scrap the disastrous welfare system and initiate a WORKfare system designed to repair the inequalities in under served areas and to educate the masses. Giving someone something to be proud of is one of the most incredible motivators that exists. Giving one a handout creates dependency and squalor, just look at any Section 8 housing complex to prove this fact. Spend taxes to get people independent and the economy will improve fostered by the opportunity that it would provide. Crime will decrease and diversity will flourish if careers and futures are established, but this is heresy to those in power who make millions off of the slaves that they are creating to continuously restock their underclass.

A small piece of personal history. I used to wade into dumpsters to collect cans and other scrap metal to sell when I was 11 years old. At 14 I entered the work force full time just to feed myself, obtaining whatever job that I could as my mother irresponsibly moved us around homeless from state to state. When I reached 18, I finally got off of the street from living behind a gas station while holding down a 60hr a week job busing tables. I went into the Army to get college money and ended up with my degree and 7 years of college under my belt by the time that I was 27. I have a very hard time with self serving whiners who are able but scamming the system claiming that they can’t seem to catch a break when I, with no support, actively chose to forsake crime and drugs so that I could pull myself out of the streets. I know that everyone has a story, but the answer to achievement is in a hand up, not a hand out, and this all begins with socialized education made available to even the poorest of citizens. Maybe some of the idiots that are out there trying to raise the minimum wage so that they can stay in poverty but raise a family would choose not to pursue this illogical and unreasonable position if they were given access to adequate educational programs and assistance checks weren’t handed out to those who just can’t abstain from creating children that they cannot feed.

Our focus needs to change folks, and those who do not want to work but are able, or who would not accept an education program designed to get them employed should be left without a safety net. There are plenty of people out there who want to get out of a bad situation, so lets provide the hand up with education and expectation as well as true equality for everyone who contributes to the villages’ well being. That is it for this post and I am out!

Death with Dignity.

Married for a year, Brittany Maynard, 29, found she had aggressive brain cancer
She had six months to live, and she didn’t want her family to watch her dying in pain
Maynard and her family moved to Oregon to take advantage of the Death with Dignity law
She says nobody has the right to take away the option from someone who is terminally ill
Editor’s note: Brittany Maynard is a volunteer advocate for the nation’s leading end-of-life choice organization, Compassion and Choices. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, Dan Diaz, and mother, Debbie Ziegler. Watch Brittany and her family tell her story at http://www.thebrittanyfund.org. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) — On New Year’s Day, after months of suffering from debilitating headaches, I learned that I had brain cancer.
I was 29 years old. I’d been married for just over a year. My husband and I were trying for a family.

Brittany Maynard and Dan Diaz on their wedding day. She had been married a little more than a year when she was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Brittany Maynard shares a moment with her bridesmaids.
Our lives devolved into hospital stays, doctor consultations and medical research. Nine days after my initial diagnoses, I had a partial craniotomy and a partial resection of my temporal lobe. Both surgeries were an effort to stop the growth of my tumor.
In April, I learned that not only had my tumor come back, but it was more aggressive. Doctors gave me a prognosis of six months to live.
Because my tumor is so large, doctors prescribed full brain radiation. I read about the side effects: The hair on my scalp would have been singed off. My scalp would be left covered with first-degree burns. My quality of life, as I knew it, would be gone.
After months of research, my family and I reached a heartbreaking conclusion: There is no treatment that would save my life, and the recommended treatments would have destroyed the time I had left.
I considered passing away in hospice care at my San Francisco Bay-area home. But even with palliative medication, I could develop potentially morphine-resistant pain and suffer personality changes and verbal, cognitive and motor loss of virtually any kind.

Brittany Maynard and Dan Diaz
Because the rest of my body is young and healthy, I am likely to physically hang on for a long time even though cancer is eating my mind. I probably would have suffered in hospice care for weeks or even months. And my family would have had to watch that.
I did not want this nightmare scenario for my family, so I started researching death with dignity. It is an end-of-life option for mentally competent, terminally ill patients with a prognosis of six months or less to live. It would enable me to use the medical practice of aid in dying: I could request and receive a prescription from a physician for medication that I could self-ingest to end my dying process if it becomes unbearable.
I quickly decided that death with dignity was the best option for me and my family.
We had to uproot from California to Oregon, because Oregon is one of only five states where death with dignity is authorized.
I met the criteria for death with dignity in Oregon, but establishing residency in the state to make use of the law required a monumental number of changes. I had to find new physicians, establish residency in Portland, search for a new home, obtain a new driver’s license, change my voter registration and enlist people to take care of our animals, and my husband, Dan, had to take a leave of absence from his job. The vast majority of families do not have the flexibility, resources and time to make all these changes.
I’ve had the medication for weeks. I am not suicidal. If I were, I would have consumed that medication long ago. I do not want to die. But I am dying. And I want to die on my own terms.
I would not tell anyone else that he or she should choose death with dignity. My question is: Who has the right to tell me that I don’t deserve this choice? That I deserve to suffer for weeks or months in tremendous amounts of physical and emotional pain? Why should anyone have the right to make that choice for me?

Now that I’ve had the prescription filled and it’s in my possession, I have experienced a tremendous sense of relief. And if I decide to change my mind about taking the medication, I will not take it.
Having this choice at the end of my life has become incredibly important. It has given me a sense of peace during a tumultuous time that otherwise would be dominated by fear, uncertainty and pain.
Now, I’m able to move forward in my remaining days or weeks I have on this beautiful Earth, to seek joy and love and to spend time traveling to outdoor wonders of nature with those I love. And I know that I have a safety net.
I hope for the sake of my fellow American citizens that I’ll never meet that this option is available to you. If you ever find yourself walking a mile in my shoes, I hope that you would at least be given the same choice and that no one tries to take it from you.
When my suffering becomes too great, I can say to all those I love, “I love you; come be by my side, and come say goodbye as I pass into whatever’s next.” I will die upstairs in my bedroom with my husband, mother, stepfather and best friend by my side and pass peacefully. I can’t imagine trying to rob anyone else of that choice.

-I read these stories, as always, with compassion towards the people involved. I see Assisted Suicide, or Death with Dignity as a human right and oppose any religious meddling by the myth believers that would force their sick, twisted beliefs upon these people who are just trying to die with dignity instead of suffering. The scourge of the bible needs to be forever removed from the scientific practice of medicine and sensibility and logic need to always be in place. If the god of the bible were actually all powerful, I believe that he would do something about much of the suffering of the world, instead I believe IT to be an impotent myth that needs to be swept into the dust bin of history.  90% of people are followers and less than 10% are forward thinkers. The 90% drag down the forward thinkers with ridiculous bullshit such as religion, fads and the inability to come together on important matters such as the threat of Global Warming, something that the idiot bible beaters seem to always refute because the don’t believe in science. 

Neil deGrasse Tyson!!

Hello all!

I return from seeing Dr. Tyson in person at the Schnitzer Auditorium in Portland, OR. I am pleased to say that he went WAYYY overtime and was the most engaging speaker that I have seen yet! Dr. tyson spoke of the incredible work that NASA and other agencies performed in the 60’s and 70’s. He told of the wane in scientific research that is on the horizon and of the gutting of the public school system that is causing it. You know, the intentional destruction of the very system that kept us a cutting edge scientific power for many years but is on the downslide now, that system!

He spoke of the shortsightedness of greed and divisiveness that is growing the 1% and killing exploratory research which is directly responsible for the growth in industry of OTHER countries. He quoted Dawkins and chastised those who let dogma interfere with scientific research and emphasized the need to return to innovation and education. He directly correlated religion with scientific oppression and denial, and addressed the violence that it’s divisive nature produces. Dr. Tyson also made the point that it is cognitive dissonance, NOT stupidity that allows intelligent people to get degrees in science yet hold onto the myth of a supreme being. Never did he belittle believers, but he also did not align himself with atheism. The brilliance of this position is that it allows him to teach science to religious people which often leads to their de conversion and allows them to enter reality without as much difficulty as having to be told that god is only a myth.

Atheists with nothing to lose and no wish to have a platform from which to speak in the religious community, appreciate Dr.Tyson and already know that gods are a myth created by men afraid of the dark and of death. Dr.Tyson, on the other hand, wants very much to bring scientific truth to these people that plant their heads in the sand, and by getting them interested in truth, he creates more people based in reality and not in the fantasy world of unseen specters. I see and very much appreciate his approach and see that it is a wonderful effort to wake people up without insulting the mythology that they believe in.

Most people are followers, and will do what they are told. Those with their heads in reality tend to resist the crowd mentality better than those who believe in the nonsense of the bible and other books, so when led to the light, the rest of the truth usually breaks the trance that these people have been in for years.

A.I

Nick Bostrom: What would happen if machines surpassed human intellect?
Bostrom: By 2050 we may have a 50/50 chance of achieving human-level A.I.
He says We want an A.I. that is safe and ethical, but it could get beyond our control
Bostrom: Superintelligent machines could present major existential risks to humans
Editor’s note: Nick Bostrom is professor and director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University. He is the author of “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies” (OUP). The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) — Machines have surpassed humans in physical strength, speed and stamina. What would happen if machines surpassed human intellect as well? The question is not just hypothetical; we need to start taking this possibility seriously.
Most people might scoff at the prospect of machines outsmarting humanity. After all, even though today’s artificial intelligence can beat humans within narrow domains (such as chess or trivia games), machine brains are still extremely rudimentary in general intelligence.
Machines currently lack the flexible learning and reasoning ability that enables an average human to master any of thousands of different occupations, as well as all the tasks of daily life. In particular, while computers are useful accessories to scientists, they are very, very far from doing the interesting parts of the research themselves.

Nick Bostrom
But this could change. We know that evolutionary processes can produce human-level general intelligence, because they have already done so at least once in Earth’s history. How quickly engineers achieve a similar feat is still an open question.
By 2050 we may, according to a recent survey of leading artificial intelligence researchers, have a 50/50 chance of achieving human-level machine intelligence (defined here as “one that can carry out most human professions at least as well as a typical human”).
Even a cursory glance at technological development reveals multiple paths that could lead to human-level machine intelligence in this century. One likely path would be to continue studying the general properties of the human brain to decipher the computational structures it uses to generate intelligent behavior. Another path would be the more mathematical “top-down” approach. And if somehow all the other approaches don’t work, scientists might simply brute-force the evolutionary process on computers.
Google buys into artificial intelligence Recycling with artificial intelligence Could robots take over Earth?
Regardless of when and how we get there, the consequences of reaching human-level machine intelligence are profound, because human-level machine intelligence is not the final destination. Machine intelligence would reach a recursive tipping point after which the design and improvement of such intelligence would no longer be in human hands.
The next stop from human level intelligence, just a short distance farther along the tracks, is machine superintelligence. The train might not even decelerate at Humanville Station: It is likely instead to swoosh right past.
This brings us to what I think may well be the most important task of our time. If there will eventually be an “intelligence explosion,” how exactly can we set up the initial conditions so as to achieve an outcome that is survivable and beneficial to existing persons?
In “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies,” I focus on the dynamics of an intelligence explosion; what will happen if and when we gain the ability to create machine superintelligence? This topic is largely ignored and poorly funded. But we must keep at it: How could we engineer a controlled detonation that would protect human values from being overwritten by the arbitrary values of a misbegotten artificial superintelligence?
The picture that emerges from this work is fascinating and disconcerting. It looks like there are major existential risks associated with the creation of entities of greater-than-human intelligence. A superintelligence wouldn’t even need to start with a physical embodiment to be catastrophically dangerous. Major engineering projects and financial transactions on Earth are mediated by digital communication networks that would be at the mercy of an artificial superintelligence.

Placing an online order for an innocent-looking set of advanced blueprints or fooling its creators into thinking it is benign could be an initial step, followed by the possibility of permanently altering the global biosphere to pursue its preferences.
The control problem—how to engineer a superintelligence to be safe and human-friendly—appears to be very difficult. It should be solvable in principle, but in practice it may not be solved in time for when the solution is needed. The difficulty is compounded by the need to get it right on the first try. An unfriendly superintelligence would not permit a mulligan. Remember HAL from “2001: A Space Odyssey”? Let’s try to avoid that.
If we could solve the technical problem of constructing a motivation system that we can load with some terminal goal of our choosing, a further question remains: Which goal would we give the superintelligent A.I.? Much would hinge on that choice. In some scenarios, the first superintelligence becomes extremely powerful and shapes the entire future according to its preferences.
We want an A.I. that is safe, beneficial and ethical, but we don’t know exactly what that entails. Some may think we have already arrived upon full moral enlightenment, but is is far more likely that we still have blind spots. Our predecessors certainly had plenty — in the practice of slavery and human sacrifice, or the condoning of manifold forms of brutality and oppression that would outrage the modern conscience. It would be a grave mistake to think we have reached our moral apogee, and thus lock our present-day ethics into such powerful machines.
In this sense, we have philosophy with a deadline. Our wisdom must precede our technology, and that which we value in life must be carefully articulated—or rather, it must be pointed to with the right mathematics—if it is to be the seed from which our intelligent creations grow.

-This actually does need to be addressed due to human greed and laziness. People will sign off on this if it saves them money and if it makes life easier. Let me tell you, I love my smart phone but am very aware that ‘The Man’ knows my every move because of it and because of my computer. I have just given up the protest because the computer makes my life easier. 

Tell me, what the fuck do you people actually think that a sentient machine will do to an inferior being that it considers irrelevant? Read up on the process of logical thought taken to extremely literal standards and you have a machine that would not give a second thought to our extinction! 

The REAL story behind the universe, not the myth.

An amazing person!

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ABOUT :: BIOGRAPHY

Carolyn Porco is the leader of the imaging science team on the Cassinimission presently in orbit around Saturn, a veteran imaging scientist of theVoyager mission to the outer solar system in the 1980s, and an imaging scientist on the New Horizons mission on its way to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Carolyn has co-authored over 115 scientific papers on a variety of subjects in astronomy and planetary science and has become a regular public commentator on science, astronomy, planetary exploration, and the intersection of science and religion. Her popular science writings have appeared in such distinguished publications as the London Sunday Times, The New York Times, the Guardian, Astronomy magazine, the PBS and BBC websites, the Arizona Daily Star, Sky and Telescope, Scientific American, and American Scientist.

Carolyn’s research over the past 40 years has ranged across the outer solar system to the interstellar medium. The majority of her time has been spent studying the planetary rings encircling the giant planets and the interactions between rings and orbiting moons. In particular, she has been responsible for the discovery of one of the Neptune ring arcs; for elucidating the behavior of the non-axisymmetric rings and ring edges in the rings of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; and for predicting in 1993 (along with then University of Arizona graduate student Mark Marley) that acoustic oscillations within the body of Saturn could produce specific wave features in Saturn’s rings. This prediction was verified 20 years later using Cassini observations, resulting in the first demonstration that planetary rings could serve as a seismograph and ultimately provide the means to improve knowledge of a planet’s internal structure.

Carolyn has also been responsible for leading the Cassini imaging team in a host of seminal discoveries on Jupiter and its ring during Cassini’s flyby of that planet in 2000/2001, and on Saturn and its rings and moons since the spacecraft’s arrival there in 2004.

In recent years, Carolyn has increasingly turned her attention to the study of Enceladus, the small Saturnian moon whose south polar region was found, in images taken by her Cassini team, to be the site of over 100 tall geysers of icy particles erupting from four distinct, deep fractures crossing the region. This and other Cassini findings point to a sub-surface, salty, organics-rich sea beneath the south polar terrain as the geysers’ source, making Enceladus home to the most accessible extraterrestrial habitable zone in the solar system.

Carolyn continues to be active in the presentation of science to the public as the leader of the Cassini Imaging Team. She is the creator/editor of the team’sCICLOPS website where Cassini images are posted, and she writes the site’s homepage “Captain’s Log” greetings to the public. Carolyn is a popular public lecturer and speaks frequently on the Cassini mission and planetary exploration in general. She has appeared at such renowned cross-disciplinary conferences as TED (2009, 2007) and PopTech (2006, 2005). She is the CEO and President of Diamond Sky Productions, LLC.

For the 1997 film Contact, based on the novel by fellow astronomer Carl Sagan, Carolyn served as the consultant on the main character, Ellie Arroway. In 2008, she was invited by J.J. Abrams, the director/producer of the 2009 release, Star Trek, to join the film’s production crew as a consultant on planetary imagery.

Carolyn was responsible for the proposal to honor the late renowned planetary geologist Eugene Shoemaker by sending a portion of his cremains to the moon aboard the Lunar Prospector spacecraft. She also conceived of the epitaph, engraved on a thin brass foil, which accompanied the ashes to the moon.

Carolyn played instrumental roles in the taking of three iconic photographs of planet Earth from the outer solar system. She participated, along with Carl Sagan, in planning the 1990 “Portrait of the Planets” taken with the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which included the famous Pale Blue Dot image of Earth. Later with Cassini, she and her team took one of Cassini’s most beloved images of Saturn and its rings during the planet’s solar eclipse, with Earth visible in the distance. And she is the creator of The Day The Earth Smiled, an event that took place on July 19, 2013, when Cassini once again pointed sunward to image Saturn, its rings and the Earth. This time, however, a long-distance photo of Earthwas taken with the full advance knowledge of members of the public, who were invited to take part in a day of reflection and celebration of humanity’s place in the cosmos.

Carolyn has been the recipient of a number of awards and honors for her contributions to science and the public sphere. She is the namesake of Asteroid (7231) Porco, which was named to honor her work in planetary science. In 1999, she was selected by the London Sunday Times as one of 18 scientific leaders of the 21st century, and by Industrial Week as one of “50 Stars to Watch”. In 2009, New Statesman named her as one of the “50 People Who Matter Today.” In 2010 she was awarded the Carl Sagan Medal, presented by the American Astronomical Society for Excellence in the Communication of Science to the Public. And in 2012, she was named one the 25 most influential people in space byTIME magazine.

-Seth Andrews of The Thinking Atheist just interviewed her and she is the most incredible person! Voyager, Cassini, Humanist of the Year, technical adviser on TWO of my favorite movies? This person has lived life to the fullest and is good without gods! What a refreshing interview.

There has to be an ouster of science deniers!

Green billionaire prepares to attack ‘anti-science’ Republicans
By Peter Hamby, CNN National Political Reporter
updated 7:36 AM EDT, Thu May 22, 2014

Bill Nye battles with CNN host
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Billionaire’s environmental group is targeting Senate, governors’ races
Focus is on races with contrast between pro-environment vs. “anti-science” candidates
Critics accuse Tom Steyer of hypocrisy, saying he made his money on fossil fuels
Washington (CNN) — An environmental advocacy group backed by hedge fund tycoon Tom Steyer is set to unleash a seven-state, $100 million offensive against Republican “science deniers” this year, a no-holds-barred campaign-style push from the green billionaire that could help decide which party controls the Senate and key statehouses come November.
The Steyer-backed outside group, NextGen Climate, has billed itself as a progressive, pro-environment counterbalance to the wealthy oil and gas industry — as well as the primary foil to the pro-business Koch brothers and their well-funded conservative donor network.
The outfit, launched last year by the San Francisco billionaire, has already pledged to spend heavily this midterm year in Iowa to assist the Democratic Senate nominee Bruce Braley, and in Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott is facing a difficult re-election fight against Democrat Charlie Crist.
Red news, blue news: Climate change Rubio: Scientists wrong on climate White House: Climate change to get worse
Steyer’s 2014 map now includes Senate races in Michigan, New Hampshire and Colorado as well as governor’s races in Maine and Pennsylvania, home to two of the most endangered Republican governors in the country, Paul LePage and Tom Corbett.
“This is the year, in our view, that we are able to demonstrate that you can use climate, you can do it well, you can do it in a smart way, to win political races,” said Chris Lehane, the longtime Democratic consultant advising Steyer.
Lehane and NextGen political strategist Sky Gallegos revealed their 2014 strategy Wednesday in a briefing with reporters in Washington.
‘Pro-climate action’ vs. ‘anti-science’
Absent from their list of 2014 targets: must-win Senate races for Democrats in conservative-leaning states such as Arkansas, Alaska, North Carolina, Louisiana and Kentucky. That’s because Democrats on those ballots have expressed support for the Keystone XL pipeline, the coal industry, offshore drilling or hydraulic fracturing — all nonstarter issues for environmentalists.
Instead, Lehane said the 501(c)4 group will play in races that feature a stark choice between “pro-climate action” candidates — all Democrats — and “anti-science” Republicans who have questioned the veracity of climate change or supported the interests of the oil and gas industry.
GOP candidates in the NextGen cross hairs — Scott in Florida, Terri Lynn Land in Michigan, Scott Brown in New Hampshire and Cory Gardner in Colorado — hew closely to the “Republican troglodyte brand,” Lehane argued.
“They are anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-science,” he said. “It’s a tough brand to win elections around.”
The group said that climate can be successfully used as a wedge issue — Lehane framed it as a moral clash between “right and wrong” — to boost turnout among Democratic voting groups that tend not to show up in midterm election years, specifically young voters, Hispanics and African-Americans.
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As in the Virginia governor’s race last year — when Steyer spent nearly $8 million on a campaign to disqualify GOP nominee Ken Cuccinelli with a combination of TV, mail and field operations — the efforts will extend beyond the TV airwaves and include what they call “nano-targeting” to tailor messaging to discrete voting groups.
“We are not some super PAC that’s going to come in, throw up some ads and leave,” Lehane said. “You can come into these states and really run a total campaign.”
Focusing on hyper-local issues
Lehane said the effort, which is budgeted at around $100 million but could grow, will focus attention on hyper-local issues — such as drought in Iowa or flood insurance costs in Florida — that could influence voter perceptions in key pockets of each state. Pollution-related health concerns such as asthma and clean drinking water hit home for lower-income voters, he said.
It wasn’t lost on reporters that the NextGen map featured multiple states that figure prominently in presidential races — Iowa, New Hampshire and Florida among them. Lehane said that was by design. “Almost all of these states align with being really important presidential states either in the primary process or the general election,” he said, promising that Steyer will be active throughout the 2016 campaign.
When the 2016 presidential primary campaigns lurch into overdrive next year, NextGen will continue to call attention to turnout-driving local issues — and on attacking Republican candidates. Steyer has already funded an ad in Florida attacking Sen. Marco Rubio, one of many possible GOP White House aspirants, as a tool of oil lobbyists. “We look forward to a conversation with the Rubios of the world,” Lehane said of the group’s 2016 plans, without revealing specifics.
The outside air cover should come as welcome news to Democratic candidates in their target states who are drowning in a flood of TV ads from conservative groups such as the Koch-endorsed Americans for Prosperity. But the campaign may put some Democrats in a bind.
In Colorado, for instance, Lehane said NextGen will attack Gardner by showcasing his support for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and the adverse health effects of natural gas extraction on suburban communities. But the strategy could force Democratic Sen. Mark Udall to take a definitive stand on a divisive state issue that pits the business community against environmentalists, an important slice of the Democratic base. Meanwhile, the state’s Democrat governor, John Hickenlooper, has been cautiously supportive of the gas industry as a revenue and jobs creator.
Charges of hypocrisy
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As the founder of the hedge fund Farallon Capital Management, Steyer made part of his fortune from investments in fossil fuels, including foreign coal investments, which has prompted charges of hypocrisy from the Koch-affiliated groups he’s fond of condemning.
“Tom Steyer’s investments at Farallon have lined his pockets with millions of dollars from the foreign coal industry,” said James Davis, a spokesman for Freedom Partners, the Koch-backed political network. “Now he wants to burden the American people with new energy regulations to protect his current green energy investments. He’s already attempting to buy the votes of Senate Democrats on Keystone, which will cost America thousands of good-paying jobs. Surely the media will call him out on the hypocrisy of his claims.”
Lehane said Steyer ordered his investments be diverted from coal and tar sands when he stepped down from Farallon in 2012 but was not aware if he had investments in other energy sectors.
But the primary difference between Steyer and conservative mega-donors, Lehane said, is that Steyer is not personally profiting from his political efforts. “He is giving all the money away,” he said. “He doesn’t have stand to gain some economic benefit by spending money that translates into his own personal economics.”
Lehane added, “We are spending a drop in the big oil bucket as compared to the fossil fuel industry, especially the Koch brothers. All Tom is trying to do is try to balance and level the playing field. We are never going to have as much money as the other side.”

-Please go to http://www.yearsoflivingdangerously.com to see some of the frightening realities facing us today due to man-made climate change, and watch the bald-faced deniers tout their god as the answer and the politicians stick their heads in the sand! This is very real, and as I have said before, I have done MY research and applied skepticism and have come up with the same disturbing conclusions as the pro-climate change faction. Most of the deniers are, in fact, Republicans and their signatures are all over renewable energy repeal bills currently being considered or written.

ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is working with other groups to insert political bills at various levels that will effectively dismantle most renewable energy initiatives in an effort to further the shale oil and LNG industries which are polluting the North America right now. These organizations have absolutely nothing but loyalty to the top %1, and do not even see the little man starving to death due to drought and ensuing bankruptcy! The people that make up these councils are ultra-rich people who are sealing deals to secure their masters and peers that next billion dollars while farms disappear and industry withers in the heartland, and many of the heartlanders believe that the sky fairy is going to deliver them! We, the scientifically literate, need to act at our levels and participate as much as possible in the political machinations that will defeat and dismantle the deniers’ initiatives! We need to demonstrate, donate, write and even disrupt when necessary, the job sites, conventions, legislative sessions and meetings of those who would profit off of the destruction of our planet. 

We can act now or see our planet become a poisoned unlivable wasteland with too little resources to feed even half of the population, or we can sit back and swallow the Kool-Ade that says that climate change is natural. Be careful on the waiting game though, there isn’t much time before it’s too late to stop what is already in motion. Readers, I give you The Keeling Curve URL to analyze for yourselves the cO2 concentrations in our atmosphere.

Michael Faraday

I find it amazing that a devout Christian inadvertently proved that science was superior to mythology, but was born at a time where he didn’t think to question the ridiculous teachings of the Bible. The irony is that the incredibly brilliant Dr. Richard Dawkins and other well noted scientists/atheists have spoken many times at Faraday’s Christmas lectures at The Royal Institute of Britain, where Faraday spent his life. Bravo science, always ahead of the Almighty,(hahahahahahahahahahahaha!).

The Selfish Gene.

The selfish gene describes the essence of the human race in the genius of the Richard Dawkins book of the same name. As a reader of the Four Horsemen, as they are called, Hithchens, Dawkins, Harris and Dennett, I am stricken by the almost clairvoyant observation into the nature of mankind and it’s complete relevancy in the genre of the study of our base nature. Humanity likes to deem itself special in the world of mammals because of the ability to build societies and reason over the lower forms of animals, but they fail to realize that their predilection for self preservation places them pretty much at the base as with any other life form.

Humans are treacherous, feeding off of and hunting themselves in just as savage a way as the most base form of life. They think that because they can record their history that they are a bit more evolved than those species that lack a serial killer, but that is the ultimate weakness, the chink in the armor. Please Chinese people, don’t take offense in my offhanded use of the word chink. 4:20 people still describe their hazy eyes as this.

Altruistic demonstrations are but a built in nature for protecting the species and not an actual show of sacrifice for the individual. As described in The Selfish Gene, these acts benefit the race and are necessary to continuing genetic superiority and have nothing to do with a higher form of being, only a proliferation of a superior gene. Primitive beings have throughout the ages proscribed natural occurrences to supernatural deities but have gleaned through science a more sensible explanation for these things as technology progressed to advance civilization.

Fringe fanatical belief sects still reject the reality of science and posit their completely unfounded notions as to the origins of man, but these are as ancient a fallacy as the Greek and Roman myths of old who held to that which could never ever stand the test of logic and reason. God, in the Abrahamaic notion, is as fantastical as Apollo and Zeus in the foolish supposition that He could have been the creator of the known universe. The scholars of the time were not even regaled with His knowledge that the Earth was round, let alone that the ark couldn’t possibly have performed the way that the fable describes.

Christians are burdened with the task of refuting impossible statistics and continuing the circuitous arguments of the likes of William Lane Craig and Cye Ten Bruggencate. When did God begin? Where was his beginning? No answer! If the Universe can’t come from nothing, the same rules apply to your God!! Read The Selfish Gene and learn from it! I could care less about PC feelgood bullshit! Personal responsibility is where it’s at, euthanasia is awesome and fuck your feel good take on people opting out of responsibility! If you can’t get your shit together than there sure as Hell shouldn’t be a safety net to catch you!