Folks went apeshit over Stephen Hawking speaking his belief that
heaven is a fairy tale. Some crazy fool insisted the
rapture was today. And the world turned on. And on it will turn.
Why did these two non-stories capture so much attention in a world where so many other things should have more weight? Why would anyone be surprised an atheist wouldn't believe in heaven and a true believer might go a bit overboard and think he could predict the second coming?
Modern physics has disproved direct realism: There is no locally realistic description of our world possible. Although I have already explained this differently at several places, for example by refusing 'real stuff' as being a good explanation for what is ‘at the bottom’, it is worth to prove it once rigorously. Let me present the simplest established proof in the simplest possible version that I can come up with. Everybody claiming interest in the interplay between science and philosophy should have gone through this proof at least once and I did my utmost to make it as easy as possible: Only three angles are considered and probabilities almost completely avoided by instead talking about natural numbers like 50.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists doesn't like births outside expensive hospitals and recently issued a statement disapproving of the practice. Regardless, mothers, Caucasian at least, are not listening and a new analysis shows that home births, common throughout history but declining since 1990, jumped up again after 2004. An increase of 20 percent.
28,357 home births occurred in 2008 - 0.67 percent of the approximately 4.2 million births in the United States, which may sound negligible but it is the highest reported proportion since 1990. This change was largely driven by a 28 percent increase in home births for white women, for whom more than 1 percent of all births now occur at home.
In the movies, aliens and evil empires want to kill us. Despite their advanced technology, they end up landing ground troops to do so. Worse, the forces of evil-- alien or human-- tend to be lousy shots. How unrealistic is this?
1) Aliens who come to earth want to kill us.This isn't unreasonable.
"Hawking's Conclusion" is that aliens are hostile, "looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach".
To reach the NBA Finals, Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder needs to pass more, especially to his teammate Kevin Durant. That would be the message that two researchers would send to Thunder coach, Scott Brooks, if given the chance. Matt Goldman, a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, and Justin Rao, a research scientist at Yahoo Labs recently named Westbrook as the biggest “chucker” in the NBA because of statistics showing that he shoots much more often than he should, while Durant is classified as an undershooter, whose team would benefit from him taking more chances.
