I solved the deficit! Who knew it would be so simple? Brilliant execution by the New York Times of an online widget that makes it easy to understand the impact of various budget-cutting and income-increasing options.

Of course, I didn’t have to deal with the consequences of these decisions for my reelection bid, and I didn’t have lobbyists camped outside my door offering wads of cash for said bid. Not the most realistic simulation, but one that more people should take a look at.

(via jeffbridges)

I hope I have kids like this.

bishopia:

(Click image to enlarge)

On Saturday, February 19th, the House of Representatives voted 235-189 to pass a continuing resolution that eliminates funding for public broadcasting. I put together this handy chart on why PBS is worth saving. Find out how you can fight back at 170 Million Americans.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am Creative Director for PBS KIDS but a life-long supporter/watcher of PBS ;)

I got a very sweet email yesterday from a woman named Lauren, who sent me a link to this awesome infographic. She said that my “readers” might enjoy it, so I expect both of you to reblog it immediately!

And I couldn’t write a post about pi without also mentioning my good friend from high school, Luke Anderson, and his outstanding website teachpi.org. He also wrote a π tribute rap to the tune of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” then a bunch of high school students made a video for it. Strange, I know, but it got him an article in Newsweek, so that’s something.

jeffbridges:

During this season of Epiphany we celebrate the manifestation of Christ on Earth, and in particular the visit of the foreign Magi with their three—mostly impractical—gifts to the infant Jesus. Also during this time, Eastern churches celebrate Jesus’ baptism. Both of these moments mark the manifestation, or “epiphany,” of the second person of the Trinity as a human being in Jesus Christ.

But together, these two moments also mark a significant gap in what the Gospels tell us about the life of Jesus. John and Mark both entirely leave out any mention of a young Jesus, beginning their narrative just prior to his adult baptism. Matthew describes King Herod’s “Massacre of the Innocents” and the family’s flight to Egypt, but says nothing specifically about Jesus between the Magi and the River Jordan. Only Luke offers us any glimpse into the post-infant Jesus, relating how as a twelve-year-old he spent three days at a temple in in Jerusalem, listening and questioning the teachers, who were very impressed with his grasp of the material (Luke 2:41-50).

Also according to Luke, “Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work” (Luke 3:23). That means that for thirty years of his life on Earth, the Word made flesh was doing something other than “his work,” or as the English Standard Version translates it, “his ministry.” So what the heck was he doing? (more after the jump…)

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jeffbridges:

I’m not one of those Christians who condemns evolution, or thinks that God put dinosaur bones in the ground to test our faith—I don’t think humans ever ran screaming from a T-Rex. However, I think it’s important to consider the limits to the kind of knowledge we get from various ways of knowing, including science.

Take, for instance, the edges of our universe. As Columbia professor of physics and mathematics Brian Greene points out in his New York Times piece, “Darkness on the Edge of the Universe,” we can only see as far out from our planet as light can travel in the amount of time the universe has existed. For example, if the universe were five light years across, but had only existed for one year, then only objects one light year away or closer would be visible to us—meaning a great deal of the universe would simply be unobservable.

To complicate matters, according to Greene the universe is currently expanding at an ever increasing rate, meaning that eventually space itself will be so big that distant stars will move away so quickly and so far from us that they’ll simply disappear. Eventually, this will lead to a night sky entirely devoid of starlight. (Don’t worry, our sun will have almost assuredly burned itself out by then, and our great-grandchildren will have long since passed away.)

Future astronomers, then, will be left to wonder whether to believe stories of night skies filled with twinkling celestial lights, or to trust their own observations of an “island” solar system—an observation we now know to be factually wrong. (more after the jump…)

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Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat

The best four minutes on religion and politics I’ve ever seen. Thank you, Stephen Colbert.

Key Quote: “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition, and then admit that we just don’t wanna do it.”

(via jeffbridges)