Tag

pope francis

Technology

December 11, 2013

Pope Francis, the People’s Pope

What makes this Pope so important is the speed with which he has captured the imaginations of millions who had given up on hoping for the church at all. People weary of the endless parsing of sexual ethics, the buck-passing infighting over lines of authority when all the while (to borrow from Milton), “the hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed.” In a matter of months, Francis has elevated the healing mission of the church—the church as servant and comforter of hurting people in an often harsh world—above the doctrinal police work so important to his recent predecessors. John Paul II and Benedict XVI were professors of theology. Francis is a former janitor, nightclub bouncer, chemical technician and literature teacher.

Congrats Pope Francis It’s good to see TIME name someone that goes over and beyond in their role as the 2013 “Person of the Year”.

Norway is digitizing all its books and making them free to read online

It’s similar to the mass digitization efforts in the UK and Finland, but Norway has taken the extra step of making agreements with many publishers to allow anyone with a Norway IP address to access copyrighted material.

I absolutely applaud Norway for leading the way with this procedure.

Science & Medicine, Technology

September 7, 2013

The 10 commandants for happiness and success

Don’t compare yourself to others.

Only surround yourself with brilliant and positive people.

Don’t be afraid to fail, failure is the best thing that could happen to you.

Find your vocation and have pleasure doing it.

Be careful when listening to people.

Be generous, share when you can.

Stay healthy, eat healthily, exercise and balance your life.

Don’t be afraid to disappoint anyone.

Don’t watch TV and don’t follow the media too much.

Have strong values and stick to them, no matter what.

These are some excellent points that we should all live our lives by. The last one happens to be my favourite.

New connections can allow these cells to operate at solar concentrations of 70,000 suns

“We have discovered that by inserting a very thin film of  into the connecting junction of stacked cells we can virtually eliminate voltage loss without blocking any of the solar energy,” says Dr. Salah Bedair

Essentially, scientists will be able to harness significantly more solar energy in the same square footage of panels. More efficient and effective renewable energy coming soon to a roof near you!

Infectious diseases don’t care about ‘why’ you choose to be unvaccinated

Most people have not lived in a time of plagues or remember their effects. Most people do not read history or look at the morbidity and mortality of vaccine-preventable illnesses in the third world. But the reality is that vaccine-preventable illness are still there and the barriers to prevent their return are surprisingly fragile. It doesn’t take much thinning of herd immunity to allow vaccine-preventable illnesses to come storming back.

Sadly, we live in a time to people in America being too comfortable. We have the likes of Jenny McCarthy wrongly linking vaccinations to her child’s autism.

Tesla Model S outperforms an Aston Martin

It is the future… today. It offers most of the usability of the world’s best luxury saloons, but with no tailpipe emissions and a fraction of the running costs. And it handles too.

Just look at those corner turns and acceleration. Simply exhilarating.

Elon Musk is pretty much Tony Stark

The system uses the Leap Motion controller to track hand gestures. Implementations of the system include a version using 3D glasses, a free-standing glass projection (as seen in Iron Man) and the Oculus Rift headset for the full virtual reality experience. To top it all off, the team then printed the part in titanium using a 3D laser metal printer.

What can’t Elon do? He is so going to Mars in his lifetime.

Pope Francis tells G20 to not engage in military action in Syria

“To the (G20) leaders present, to each and every one, I make a heartfelt appeal for them to help find ways to overcome the conflicting positions and to lay aside the futile pursuit of a military solution.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

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