Aposentadorias de políticos

Aposentadorias e pensões de políticos consomem mais de R$ 2 bilhões no Brasil

Qualquer cidadão precisa trabalhar 30 ou 35 anos para se aposentar. Os políticos brasileiros, porém, não são cidadãos comuns e asseguram pensão especial com muito menos tempo.
No Congresso, 242 deputados e senadores conseguiram a aposentadoria a partir de oito anos de contribuição. Para governadores da maioria dos estados, basta um mandato de quatro anos. Em muitos casos, apenas alguns meses no cargo já garantem o privilégio.
A despesa é paga pelo contribuinte. O Instituto de Previdência dos Congressistas (IPC) foi extinto em 1999, mas continua a sangrar os cofres públicos. Tinha um enorme déficit atuarial – o popular rombo – quando foi liquidado. Como é costume no Brasil, a conta foi apresentada à “viúva”, à União.
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Quantum fraude

“We Honestly Have No Fucking Idea What We’re Doing”, Admits Leading Quantum Physicist

When asked how he got away with it for so long, he replied: “I found out a long time ago that everything can be proven with a mathematical equation. Now, I mean everything; from unicorns, fire-breathing dragons, God and even the G-spot. None of it is true. Me and the handful that know the truth have been riding the Quantum Physicist celebrity wave for quite some time now, but it must end – before someone gets hurt”.

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No big bang

Big Bang, Deflated? Universe May Have Had No Beginning

By Tia Ghose 

• 
• Mais

Fazer negócios

Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously, and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.
Walter Bagehot

Cerveja

Cerveja deixa homens mais inteligentes, diz pesquisa

São Paulo – Já dizia o cantor pernambucano Chico Science. “Uma cerveja antes do almoço é muito bom para ficar pensando melhor”. Uma pesquisa feita pela Universidade de Illinois, em Chicago, parece comprovar uma parte do verso da música citada acima. Independente da hora do dia, homens que bebem cerveja ficam mais inteligentes.

Os pesquisadores descobriram que, após ingerir algumas cervejas, os homens conseguiram resolver mais jogos de quebra-cabeças, e mais rápido, do que seus oponentes sóbrios, segundo o NY Daily News.   

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Dinheiro

"Of all contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money." -- Daniel Webster

Brasil no atoleiro

 Capa da Economist coloca "Brasil no atoleiro" e fala em maior bagunça desde anos 90 - InfoMoney
Veja mais em: http://www.infomoney.com.br/mercados/noticia/3888610/capa-economist-coloca-brasil-atoleiro-fala-maior-bagunca-desde-anos

Reposta ao materialismo ateístico

Answers to Atheistic Materialism - Does Richard Dawkins Exist? 

Aquinas School of Philosophy: http://www.aquinasphilosophy.com/
Dr. Dennis Bonnette offers a vibrant, authentic presentation of scientific materialism, a philosophy that destroys belief in God, the Creator – replacing Him with blind evolutionary forces. Then, he shows why this atheistic worldview – flaunted by biologist Richard Dawkins – is fatally flawed both in terms of common sense and rational analysis. A powerful defense of classical Christian philosophy is then presented. Dr. Bonnette received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and has taught philosophy at the university level for over forty years. He is author of Origin of the Human Species: Third Edition (2014) available from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Human-Sp...
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Masculino, branco

Psychologists say white men benefit from these unconscious biases

By Drake Baer 

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Productivity gap

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Colonialismo

 Mais

Aproveita do seu café

8 True Benefits of Drinking Coffee You Didn’t Know About

It's not just fruits and vegetables packed with benefits

Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/coffee-benefits-study/#ixzz3SZ68pkBW
Follow us: @naturalsociety on Twitter | NaturalSociety on Facebook

A guerra como ela é

The real war will never get in the books.
Walt Whitman
Mais
Veja também

Mercado de trabalho

• Robert Reich 

Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley; author, 'Beyond Outrage'
Why We're All Becoming Independent Contractors

The rise of "independent contractors" is the most significant legal trend in the American workforce -- contributing directly to low pay, irregular hours, and job insecurity.
Mais

Guerra civil

O jornal espanhol El País afirma que poderá haver guerra civil no Brasil

By: Francisco Castro on 06:24 / comment : 12

O jornal espanhol El País publicou nesta quarta-feira (18/02) um artigo onde o correspondente Juan Arias traça um panorama da atual situação política brasileira e os reflexos na população: “O Brasil, em vez de se dividir, sempre se uniu no passado para defender as grandes batalhas democráticas. Foi assim nas manifestações de massa das ‘Diretas Já’, para pedir a volta do direito ao voto popular, e quando, juntos, os brasileiros saíram às ruas, vestidos de preto, para exigir o impeachment do então presidente Fernando Collor de Mello. O país nunca teve comichão pelo confronto popular”, afirma o jornalista.

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A fórmula do sucesso

Faith in your own powers and confidence in your individual methods are essential to success.

Roderick Stevens

Liberdade de expressão inclui o direito de ofender

Christopher Hitchens - Freedom Of Expression And License To Offend [2006] 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9YXF3W5sRE

Como enganhar

"You can fool all of the people all of the time if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough." -- Joseph E. Levine

Trabalho não, bolsa sim!

Moeda ouro

Duas mil moedas de ouro antigas no fundo do mar em Cesareia

AFP Mergulhadores acabam de encontrar no fundo do antigo porto de Cesareia, na costa mediterrânea, duas mil moedas de ouro de mil anos que constituem o tesouro numismático mais importante já encontrado em Israel, anunciou na terça-feira a autoridade nacional de antiguidades.

Os membros de um clube de mergulho fizeram a descoberta por acaso, depois que tempestades removeram o fundo do mar do antigo porto de Cesareia (noroeste de Israel).

"No início acreditaram que se tratava de uma ficha de jogo" e perceberam seu erro quando recolheram várias moedas, indicou a autoridade. Avisaram ao diretor do clube de mergulho, que, por sua vez, informou as autoridades das antiguidades.

Os mergulhadores da autoridade detectaram 2.000 moedas de dinares, meio dinar e um quarto de dinar, a mais antiga cunhada em Palermo (Sicília) na segunda metade do século IX. Muitas das moedas remontam a dois califas fatímidas que reinaram do fim do século X ao primeiro terço do século XI em um território que cobre grande parte da África do Norte, Sicília e parte do Oriente Médio.

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A tirania dos expertos

Palestra de William Easterly "The Tyranny of Experts"

William Easterly na London School of Economics sobre a tirania dos expertos na política de desenvolvimento 

Assista a palestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEFEmwp7NO8

Veja também: Liberdade como solução de desenvolvimento
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibJHEJrOs2s

Ganhar com dinheiro sujo

No Rio, Beija-Flor vence com 'Carnaval do ditador' 

Escola faturou seu 13º título ao levar para a Sapucaí homenagem à África. Enredo foi financiado pela ditadura brutal da Guiné Equatorial

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Veja também

IDHM Brasil

Desenvolvimento

São Paulo – As cidades a seguir, concorde-se ou discorde-se, são o que o Brasil tem de melhor nas áreas de educação, renda e expectativa de vida, segundo a ONU.
Elas integram o seleto grupo dos municípios com grau de desenvolvimento considerado “muito alto” no Índice de Desenvolvimento Humano Municipal (IDHM), divulgado hoje pelo Pnud, órgão das Nações Unidas, em parceria com o Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (Ipea) e a Fundação João Pinheiro.
Para tanto, elas têm IDHM superior a 0,8. A média do Brasil hoje é 0,727, considerado alto (mas não muito alto).
O indicador, que vai de 0 a 1 – e quanto mais próximo de 1, melhor - é semelhante ao famoso IDH calculado para os países do globo, mas algumas adaptações metodológicas tupiniquins foram feitas. Por isso, segundo o Pnud, não é possível comparar os números de países inteiros às cidades brasileiras.
O IDHM não mede exatamente qualidade de vida. Embora, claro, municípios com elevados índices de educação, longeva expectativa de vida e renda alta tendam a ser bons lugares para se viver.
Entre as capitais, venceu Florianópolis (SC), seguida de Vitória (ES). O levantamento é feito pela ONU a cada 10 anos, com base nos dados do Censo, do IBGE.
Clique nas fotos e confira as cidades que estão na dianteira do país. Além do valor de cada subíndice do IDHM, estão incluídas em cada cidade a expectativa de vida, em anos, e a renda, em reais.
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Canibalismo

Cannibalism can show up at the most unexpected points in history.
Most people don't associate cannibalism with the Soviet Union. But as Timothy Snyder describes in his book Bloodlands, the 1933 Stalin-imposed famine in Ukraine was so severe that cannibalism became surprisingly prevalent. The state had to set up an anti-cannibalism squad, and hundreds of people were accused of eating their neighbors or, in some cases, their family members. (Ron Rosenbaum shares many of the gruesome details in a book review for Slate.)
That grisly episode makes vivid the deprivations of the early Soviet era. That many Americans may have never heard of it illustrates another fact about cannibalism — it's something no one ever wants to think about. It's relegated to disgust, tabloid voyeurism, and lame jokes, and those all contribute to a general ignorance of the subject.
Historians and anthropologists, however, have tried to study the history and science of cannibalism over the years: why it happens, when it occurs, and who's affected. It tests the ultimate boundaries of cultural relativism, health, and ritual. Though this list isn't at all comprehensive, it catalogs some of the unusual things about cannibalism you might have missed.
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Deirdre McCloskey sobre Piketty

Measured, Unmeasured, Mismeasured, and Unjustified Pessimism: A Review of Piketty’s Capitalism in the Twentieth Century

ROGGE LECTURE: DEIRDRE MCCLOSKEY (NOVEMBER 15, 2014)   

Assista:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4mE-X140aA

Bolsa família

Bolsa Família bateu recorde no ano da reeleição

Ano da reeleição foi recorde para o Bolsa Família: R$ 27,8 bilhões

Publicado: 16 de fevereiro de 2015 às 0:00 - Atualizado às 0:07

Por: Redação

Nunca se gastou tanto com o programa Bolsa Família quanto no ano em que a presidente Dilma Rousseff foi eleita pela segunda vez. Em 2014, quando o governo gastou R$ 21 bilhões a mais do que permitia a Lei de Diretrizes Orçamentárias (LDO), foram destinados ao Bolsa Família quase R$ 27,2 bilhões, quase o dobro dos gatos do programa no último ano do governo Lula, que totalizaram R$14,3 bilhões.
Em comparação a 2011, primeiro ano do governo Dilma, em 2014 a despesa aumentou em R$ 10 bilhões ao longo de quatro anos. Leia na Coluna Cláudio Humberto.
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Fim do Império britanico

Revealed: why the real Downtown Abbeys went into decline after WW1

A new book reveals how the cost of war, death duties and the burden of income tax forced many aristocratic families ot sell their stately homes after the First World War 

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Tecnologia

dezembro
2009

TECNOLOGIA

Como cai um avião

O avião é o meio de transporte mais seguro que existe. Mas algo sempre pode dar errado. Quais são os principais riscos de voar? E o que realmente pode acontecer durante um acidente?

por Bruno Garattoni e Sylvia Estrella 

"Senhores passageiros, sejam bem-vindos. Em nome da SincereAir, a companhia aérea que só fala a verdade, peço sua atenção para algumas instruções de segurança. Primeiramente, gostaríamos de parabenizar os passageiros que estão sentados no fundo da aeronave - em caso de emergência, sua chance de sobreviver será bem maior. Durante a decolagem, o encosto de sua poltrona deverá ser mantido na posição vertical. Isso porque, em nossa nova e moderna frota de aeronaves, as poltronas da classe econômica são tão apertadas que impedem a evacuação da aeronave em caso de emergência. Na verdade, se a segurança fosse nossa maior prioridade, colocaríamos todos os assentos virados para trás. Metade do ar dentro da cabine é reciclado, o que nos ajuda a economizar combustível. Isso poderá reduzir a taxa de oxigênio no seu sangue, mas não costuma ser perigoso - e geralmente causa uma agradável sonolência. Mantenha o cinto de segurança afivelado durante todo o voo - ou você poderá ser vítima de turbulência, que é inofensiva para a aeronave, mas mata 25 passageiros por ano. Lembramos também que o assento de sua poltrona é flutuante. Não que isso tenha muita importância: a probabilidade de sobreviver a um pouso na água com um avião grande é mínima (geralmente a aeronave explode ao bater na água). Obrigada por terem escolhido a SincereAir, e tenham todos uma ótima viagem!"
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Quem somos nós?

"O cérebro não sabe a diferença entre o que você está vendo e uma lembrança, o que significa que você pode estar apenas vivenciando "memórias, projeções de pensamentos que sua mente criou, lembranças de vidas futuras codificadas na sua alma ou lembranças de universos paralelos". Conforme escreveu QOHELET (Salomão): "O que existe, já existiu e o que existirá já existe agora".

QUEM SOMOS NÓS - DOCUMENTÁRIO LEGENDADO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJIYrIWJ76o

Estado quebrado

Brazil: A Failing State

Posted February 12, 2015 by admin & filed under How to learn languages with songs and the media.

I digress from my usual topics on language learning to discuss my recent trip to Brazil that left me stunned at how the country is going downhill.

Brazil has been a country that I’ve adored ever since I went to Brazil the first time about 15 years ago, when I lived in Argentina. On my second visit to Brazil, I went to Rio de Janeiro and the city took my breath away in a way that only one other place had done in the past. I literally forgot about my life when I was there. I was so mesmerized by the beach, mountains, islands, fresh fruit juices and experimenting different creative sandwiches, like tuna with raisins, that I forgot about my life in Argentina. I forgot about my work, my responsibilities. It was an absolutely incredible experience. It was like the gods had made this beautiful place in Brazil to make people forget about life.

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Bolsa família

Ciência falsificada

The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever

New data shows that the “vanishing” of polar ice is not the result of runaway global warming 

By Christopher Booker

10:15PM GMT 07 Feb 2015

27811 Comments

When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records – on which the entire panic ultimately rested – were systematically “adjusted” to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified.

Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.

This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world – one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record.
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Educação de elite

Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League The nation's top colleges are turning our kids into zombies

By William Deresiewicz

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118747/ivy-league-schools-are-overrated-send-your-kids-elsewhere

William Deresiewicz is the author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and The Way to a Meaningful Life, coming out August 19 from Free Press. He taught at Yale from 1998 to 2008.

Jihad vs Crusades

Jihad vs Crusades
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_To-cV94Bo

veja também

How the Crusades Saved Europe and America 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMjUFBYEzqQ

Mitos das cruzadas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imTY5izhTDo

We are often told of the greatness of the Islamic Golden Age. But how much actual gold was there? And why does Islam do so poorly in intellectual work today?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwXtTwNvWXc

Big bang

Big Bang nunca aconteceu, diz estudo

Superinteressante  |  De Fábio Marton

Publicado: 13/02/2015 23:39 BRST Atualizado: 14/02/2015 08:37 BRST

• 
  nte77

Há 13,8 bilhões de anos, toda a matéria existente esteve concentrada em um ponto ínfimo, chamado singularidade. Lá, as leis da física que conhecemos hoje não se aplicavam. De repente, a singularidade explodiu: bang! Um bang grandão, o maior de todos. Da mesma matéria na singularidade vieram as galáxias, o sol, você, seu cachorro e a tela em que lê isso agora.

Esse é o modelo mais aceito para a origem de tudo, e tem sido assim desde 1931, quando o físico e padre Georges Lemaître propôs que, se o universo estava se expandindo, quer dizer que um dia esteve todo no mesmo lugar.

Talvez tenhamos nos enganado por oito décadas. 

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Os 10 países mais ricos e os mais pobres

10 of the richest countries in the world (ranked in order based on their GDP per capita)

Read more: http://wallstcheatsheet.com/business/10-of-the-richest-and-poorest-countries-in-the-world.html/?a=viewall#ixzz3RpqQX0cF

Idade Média

The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages Hardcover – September 10, 2013

by Ian Wood (Author)The Early Middle Ages, which marked the end of the Roman Empire and the creation of the kingdoms of Western Europe, was a period that was central to the formation of modern Europe. This period has often been drawn into a series of discourses that are more concerned with the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries than with the distant past.

In The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages, Ian Wood explores how Western Europeans have looked back to the Middle Ages to discover their origins and the origins of their society. Using historical records and writings about the Fall of Rome and the Early Middle Ages, Wood discovers how these influenced modern Europe and how the continent thought about itself. Wood asks, and answers, the important question: why is early medieval history, or indeed any pre-modern history, important? This volume promises to add to the debate on the importance of medieval history in the modern world.

Neanderthaler

Our lost cousins, the Neanderthals

New research suggests they were far more similar to us than we thought. So why did our nearest relations really disappear?

Sebastian Willnow/AFP via Getty Images/file 2004

Almost human: A photographer snapped pictures of a reconstruction of a Neanderthal at a German museum in 2004.

By Ruth GrahamGlobe Correspondent  February 13, 2015

In the nearly 160 years since humans first stumbled on evidence of Neanderthals in Europe, we have struggled to know what to think about these now deceased cousins of ours. “The more we learn about this beast-man the stranger he becomes to us,” the science-fiction writer HG Wells wrote in a 1921 story titled “The Grisly Folk,” which depicted Neanderthals as hideous primitive cannibals. “As well might we try to dream and feel as a gorilla dreams and feels.” For Wells, the real-life story had a happy ending: Some time after humans migrated into their territory from the south, the Neanderthals, who had flourished in Eurasia for at least 200,000 years, vanished from the earth.

With their large brains and human-like skeletons, Neanderthals have always been recognized as special. Though they are not our direct ancestors—their branch of the family tree has been cut off permanently—they are more similar to Homo sapiens than any other extinct mammals of their era. But something killed them off, and since we discovered their remains, the question of exactly why they died and we lived has enthralled us. “It’s highly controversial. There are all kinds of theories,” said Pat Shipman, a retired adjunct professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University. “And there’s not a lot of resolution.”
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Operação Barbarosa

The Chief Culprit: Stalin's Grand Design to Start World War II Paperback – March 15, 2013

by VIKTOR SUVOROV (Author)
Bestselling author Victor Suvorov probes newly released Soviet documents and reevaluates existing material to analyze Stalin's strategic design to conquer Europe and the reasons behind his controversial support for Nazi Germany. A former Soviet army intelligence officer, the author explains that Stalin's strategy leading up to World War II grew from Vladimir Lenin's belief that if World War I did not ignite the worldwide Communist revolution, then a second world war would be needed to achieve it. Stalin saw Nazi Germany as the power that would fight and weaken capitalist countries so that Soviet armies could then sweep across Europe. Suvorov reveals how Stalin conspired with German leaders to bypass the Versailles Treaty, which forbade German rearmament, and secretly trained German engineers and officers and provided bases and factories for war. He also calls attention to the 1939 nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany that allowed Hitler to proceed with his plans to invade Poland, fomenting war in Europe.
Suvorov debunks the theory that Stalin was duped by Hitler and that the Soviet Union was a victim of Nazi aggression. Instead, he makes the case that Stalin neither feared Hitler nor mistakenly trusted him. Suvorov maintains that after Germany occupied Poland, defeated France, and started to prepare for an invasion of Great Britain, Hitler's intelligence services detected the Soviet Union's preparations for a major war against Germany. This detection, he argues, led to Germany's preemptive war plan and the launch of an invasion of the USSR. Stalin emerges from the pages of this book as a diabolical genius consumed by visions of a worldwide Communist revolution at any cost--a leader who wooed Hitler and Germany in his own effort to conquer the world. In contradicting traditional theories about Soviet planning, the book is certain to provoke debate among historians throughout the world.
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Liberdade de espressão

Christopher Hitchens gives a talk in Canada on Free Speech in November 2006. This is the end of the twenty minute speech originally from One Good Move: http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive...

Hitchens makes some great points that usually are overlooked, and should be fully and completely remembered (or, in worst cases, realized).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIU96N7ciXM

Bom apetite - continuamos com a liberalização da ditadura nutricional

Alerta sobre consumo de gordura não tem base científica, diz estudo

Diretrizes médicas que recomendam limitar o consumo de comidas como carne vermelha e manteiga "nunca deveriam ter sido introduzidas", afirmam pesquisadores

Dieta: cartilhas atuais recomendam que 7 a 10% das calorias diárias venham da gordura saturada (Thinkstock/VEJA)

Diretrizes médicas que recomendam limitar o consumo de alimentos como carne bovina e manteiga para evitar doenças cardiovasculares não têm fundamento científico. A afirmação é de uma pesquisa publicada nesta semana no periódico Open Heart.

Há mais de trinta anos, países como Estados Unidos e Grã-Bretanha recomendam que seus cidadãos consumam com moderação gordura saturada, encontrada em alimentos de origem animal, sobretudo carnes vermelhas e derivados de leite. De acordo com as diretrizes desses países, no máximo 10% do total de calorias ingeridas no dia deve vir desse tipo de gordura.

Para pesquisadores da Universidade do Oeste da Escócia, no entanto, os dados que motivaram essa recomendação eram falhos e inconclusivos. Eles chegaram a essa conclusão depois de revisar seis estudos realizados com quase 2 500 homens na época em que as diretrizes foram elaboradas. As seis pesquisas investigaram a redução nas mortes e no nível de colesterol promovidas por dietas com baixa ingestão de gordura.
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Santa solidão

Por que as mentes mais brilhantes precisam de solidão

Entrar em contato consigo traz benefícios. Darwin recusava todos os convites para festas. E do isolamento nasceu o primeiro computador Apple

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Platonismo na economia

Vídeo apresentação sobre o platonismo na economia como parte da séria sobre os sete pecados mortais da economia
Assista:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWF6dfD46E8

Panspermia

UK Scientists: Aliens May Have Sent Space Seeds To Create Life On Earth

The Huffington Post  |  By Lee Speigel

University of Buckingham

Scientists in the U.K. have examined a tiny metal circular object, and are suggesting it might be a micro-organism deliberately sent by extraterrestrials to create life on Earth.
Don't be fooled by the size of the object in the microscopic image above. It may appear to look like a planet-sized globe, but in fact, it's no bigger than the width of a human hair.
The University of Buckingham reports that the minuscule metal globe was discovered by astrobiologist Milton Wainwright and a team of researchers who examined dust and minute matter gathered by a high-flying balloon in Earth's stratosphere.
"It is a ball about the width of a human hair, which has filamentous life on the outside and a gooey biological material oozing from its centre," Wainwright said, according to Express.co.uk.
"One theory is it was sent to Earth by some unknown civilization in order to continue seeding the planet with life," Wainwright hypothesizes.
That theory comes from a Nobel Prize winner.
"This seeming piece of science fiction -- called 'directed panspermia' -- would probably not be taken seriously by any scientist were it not for the fact that it was very seriously suggested by the Nobel Prize winner of DNA fame, Francis Crick," said Wainwright.
Panspermia is a theory that suggests life spreads across the known physical universe, hitchhiking on comets or meteorites.
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Idade Média

Were the Middle Ages, also known as the Dark Ages, characterized by oppression, ignorance, and backwardness in areas like human rights, science, health, and the arts? Or were they marked by progress and tolerance? Anthony Esolen, an English Literature professor at Providence College, explains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqzq01i2O3U

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10 mitos da história americana

10 American History Myths You Probably Believe

07:22  Amazing  No comments

Despite its brevity, US history has provided us with numerous colorful characters and significant events to examine. From quirky inventors to red-blooded patriots, the annals of this country’s history are filled with wondrous tales and exploits of those before us. And, of course, more than a few myths have snuck their way in, as well.

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Os sete pecados mortais da economia

Video clip do Antony Mueller sobre
"Os sete pecados mortais da economia"
Assista no youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWF6dfD46E8

A origem do dinheiro

“O dinheiro não é produto da convenção dos homens engajados em atividades econômicas, nem um produto resultante de atos legislativos... Foram indivíduos, membros de um povo, que, aumentando a consciência de seus interesses econômicos, adquiriram também a consciência de que a troca de mercadorias menos vendáveis por aquelas mais vendáveis representa progresso notável na busca de seus interesses econômicos específicos, e assim surgiu o dinheiro em numerosos centros culturais independentes entre si, acompanhando o desenvolvimento progressivo da economia.”

Carl Menger

Décadas de sofrimento por nada

The US is about to drop its decades-old warning against cholesterol

'Cholesterol is not considered a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.'

• By Vlad Savov 
• Every five years, the United States government updates a set of Dietary Guidelines intended to help its citizens make healthier food choices. These guidelines also help inform how companies package and market their products. The 2015 edition, as noted by The Washington Post, will mark perhaps the biggest change since the original 1977 advice by dropping the warning about cholesterol consumption. One of the six core goals since the 1970s has been to limit the intake of cholesterol to less than 300mg per day, however the present Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) does not believe that cholesterol consumption is something we need to be worried about.
  Foods high in cholesterol — such as eggs, offal, and seafood — have long been considered contributors to the risk of heart disease, however research seeking to establish any causative link between them and undesirable health outcomes has been equivocal. In the absence of a proper scientific consensus and given that the human body produces a lot more cholesterol than it takes in via the diet, the DGAC has decided that "cholesterol is not considered a nutrient of concern for overconsumption." That's not to say that cholesterol is completely innocuous, and having it clog up your arteries is still a threat to heart health, but the amount of it that you consume is no longer thought to be important enough to restrict.
  Nobody's really sure about what the healthiest diet is; or if such a thing exists
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Falsa dieta

Food fat warnings 'should not have been introduced'

Official warnings against the consumption of saturated fats are based on flawed data and should not have been introduced, claims new research 

By Gregory Walton

11:30PM GMT 09 Feb 2015

Controversial new research has suggested that official warnings against the consumption of saturated fats like those found in butter and full-fat milk are based on flawed evidence and should not have been introduced.

The article published in the BMJ’s Open Heart journal argues that dietary guidelines adopted by British authorities in the early 1980s and still in use today are based on “very limited evidence”.

The British Dietetic Association recommend that men should consume no more than 30g of saturated fat daily while women are advised to consume no more than 20g.

High levels of saturated fats are found in fatty red meats, biscuits and cakes as well as dairy products including butter, cheese and cream.

The reports authors, led by University of the West of Scotland researcher Zoë Harcombe, claim that an analysis of the original evidence used to justify saturated fat warnings has exposed serious flaws in how the original data was gathered.
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A nova dieta

So what foods should you be adding to your shopping basket?
Butter and lard
Full fat yoghurts
Full fat milk
Pies
Cakes and biscuits (within reason, of course)
Fatty cuts of meat
Sausages
Bacon
Cheese and cream
Chocolate

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No big bang

YSICS

Quantum Equations Suggest Big Bang Never Happened

February 10, 2015 | by Stephen Luntz

photo credit: NASA. A new model of the universe suggests that spacetime recedes infinitely into the distance, rather than starting from a single event

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Two physicists are trying to revive one of the great debates of twentieth-century science, arguing that the Big Bang may never have happened. Their work presents a radically different vision of the universe from the one cosmologists now work with.

The term Big Bang was created by astrophysicist Fred Hoyle as a way to mock the theory. Hoyle thought of the universe as like an endlessly flowing river, saying “Things are they way they are, because they were the way they were.” However, the weight of evidence—particularly the discovery of the cosmic background radiation—led the scientific community to overwhelmingly favor the idea that the universe came into being from a single, infinitely dense point.

Nevertheless, the problem of what, if anything, came before the Big Bang has continued to trouble many scientists, along with questions about how it actually occurred.

"The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there," says Dr. Ahmed Farag Ali of Benha University, Egypt. In collaboration with Professor Saurya Das of the University of Lethbridge, Canada, Ali has created a series of equations that describe a universe much like Hoyle's; one without a beginning or end. Part of their work has been published in Physics Letters B, while a follow-up paper by Das and Rajat Bhaduri of Manchester University, Canada, is awaiting publication.

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Ensino online

The disruptive potential of online learning: Comparing the cost and quality of online and traditional education

David Deming, Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz, Noam Yuchtman 05 February 2015

With the potential to bring higher education to the masses, online learning has been hailed as revolutionary. The worry is that the quality of education will be diluted. This column presents evidence that online learning can bring substantial cost savings without much drop in quality – but employers do not value an online degree as highly, especially when coming from a private institution.

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Online learning has been viewed as the disruptive innovation in higher education today, with traditional classroom instruction at risk of being replaced by superstar professors teaching elabourate courses developed by teams – or by Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offering instruction to students worldwide (see, e.g., Christensen and Eyring 2011, Cowen and Tabarrok 2014). Even if they do not revolutionise higher education, online courses are a potentially important source of cost savings in higher education, with the primary channel being reduced labour costs through larger class size and less face-to-face interaction (Bowen 2012).

The potential for disruption can be seen in the tremendous recent growth in the granting of online bachelor’s degrees – 2012 saw 23 large for-profit online campuses award nearly 75,000 bachelor’s degrees in the United States, more than 5% of the total and nearly twenty times as many online bachelor’s degrees as were granted just a decade before.  Although the growth of online education has until recently occurred mostly in the for-profit sector, public institutions are increasingly competing for students online – perhaps in response to cost pressures (Hoxby 2014).

What do we know about the performance of online education thus far? Scholars have been stymied in evaluating online education because:

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