Bill Nye the science guy :)
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Anyone else immediately think of this?
Click for the best sherlock tumblr ever.
(Source: blackinwhitesociety)
Neil DeGrasse Tyson Interview
Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is EMPATHY, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose-larger-than-the-self kind of understanding.
(Source: wakeful-dreamers)
Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don’t have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen — or indeed a citizen of any nation, the more so to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.
Never stop learning
(Source: we-are-star-stuff)
Everybody on the internet are sinners…
follow for the best atheist posts on tumblr
Best Anti-Smoking Campaign Ever
Occupy Pragmatism
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Spot on!
Thinking about not voting this year? It’s the Supreme Court, stupid.
Reblogging for massive importance
Sames thing goes for: Equal rights, fair pay, healthcare, women’s health and the environment etc etc… Just imagine the sate of the SCOTUS if today’s republicans get to appoint even ONE judge, let alone 3.
Jen Mann. Searching.
On Tumblr: http://jenmann.tumblr.com/
My physics major brother and I have this half-joking argument about once a month over whose major is better or does more for society, and he sent me this picture once as a peace offering.
Humanities is awesome. End of story.
(Source: twtrsymphony)
How the origin of mammals could be written in our genome … by viruses.
Every human being starts the same way, with a sperm and egg becoming one, 23 chromosomes from each parent contributing the genetic instructions that will one day make, well … you. But the genes, the actual DNA that writes for proteins, make up only about one one-hundredth of all the DNA in those 46 chromosomes.
A full 8% of the DNA in your genome, though, are the remains of ancient viruses. A certain type of virus called a “retrovirus” is capable of inserting its genome into its host, literally writing itself into your DNA. This is the family that HIV belongs to. If a retrovirus infects an egg and inserts its genome, it can get passed down to the next generation. We are full of these remnants, as inactive but still recognizable fossils of past infections.
Dr. Samuel Pfaff and his team were trying to come up with a list of genes that were turned on in a developing mouse embryo, just after sperm and egg had come together. In its earliest stages, an embryo’s cells can become any tissue (one of the ideas behind stem cell therapies). What genes make this possible?
It turns out that for over 100 genes, the switches (called “promoters”) that turned them on came from a very unlikely place: viruses. WHAT?! We know that these genes must be activated in order for an embryo to correctly develop, but the switches that control them come from ancient viral infections! The genes themselves? Purely mouse.
What an odd paradox of evolution!! We need these genes on at a very precise moment, and off a short while after that. If any of it goes wrong, no baby mouse. So evolution selects these viral sequences to be the control mechanism. Could an ancient infection have been the key to the very existence of mammals?
Carl Zimmer has more at The Loom.
(Source: comeonandachewithme)
