Democrats are trying to make HIV testing a requirement for pregnant women.

From Schultheis: HIV testing for pregnant moms rewards ‘sexual promiscuity’

Democrats were outraged Wednesday morning when Republican state Sen. Dave Schultheis said he planned to vote against a bill to require HIV tests for pregnant women because the disease “stems from sexual promiscuity” and he didn’t think the Legislature should “remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior.” The Colorado Springs lawmaker then proceeded to cast the lone vote against SB 179, which passed 32-1 and moves on to the House.

I think Eric will like this guy:

I’m trying to think through what the role of government is here. And I am not convinced that part of the role of government should be to protect individuals from the negative consequences of their actions.

I was originally planning on doing a post on the theory of generations to follow up “The History of America’s Future“, but I stumbled upon Dave Sohigian’s “The Gen X Files.” He’s got some really awesome webinars set up. Take a peek:

Generations Explained: Understand Generational Cycles in just 10 Minutes for a quick overview of the subject

Talkin’ bout My Generation for a more in-depth look at generational cycles

How Generations Predict the Future for a better understanding of how predictions are made

The Millennial Generation’s Rebellion for more information about Millennials

I came across this clip of comedian Louis C.K. on Conan recently, and thought it might drum up some conversation & lulz.

For some reason, embedding was disabled… Louis C.K. on Conan

Whenever I hear politicians and talking heads defend the stimulus, there are some talking points that really bother me.  Continue reading this post…

Original Article: BROADWAY CARS CAN TAKE A WALK

In a stunning Midtown makeover, Mayor Bloomberg is expected to announce today that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd to 47th streets and from 32nd to 35th streets will be torn up starting Memorial Day and transformed into pedestrian plazas, an experiment that will last through the end of the year.

To accommodate downtown traffic through Times Square, Seventh Avenue will be widened from three to four lanes at 45th Street, said one source briefed on the plan last night.

Officials are hopeful that the removal of the 45th Street crossover between Broadway and Seventh Avenue will allow for smoother traffic flow down Seventh Avenue, now one of the most congested roadways on the planet.

Drivers on Broadway would have to turn off onto 47th Street or side streets north of it.

Here are some close-ups of the affected areas:
47th to 42nd
35th to 32nd

Here’s a quick analysis of it:

Continue reading this post…

I was born on Jupiter. Earth people, New York to California:

In a paper published recently in the International Journal of Astrobiology, the researchers concluded that based on what they saw, at least 361 intelligent civilizations have emerged in the Milky Way since its creation, and as many as 38,000 may have formed.

Duncan Forgan, a doctoral candidate at the university who led the study, said he was surprised by the hardiness of life on these other worlds.

“The computer model takes into account what we refer to as resetting or extinction events. The classic example is the asteroid impact that may have wiped out the dinosaurs,” Forgan said.

“I half-expected these events to disallow the rise of intelligence, and yet civilizations seemed to flourish.”

Original article: Galaxy may be full of ‘Earths,’ alien life

I was sifting through my email (”the email, the email, what, what the email“) and forgot how much I loved going through my DVICE newsletter. DVICE is a portfolio site of SciFi.com and always has really fun news about the tech world. A post that caught my eye today was about the Polaroid PoGo instant camera. I’m sure most of you know that Polaroid is famous for its instant film cameras (”shake, shake it shake, shake it like a Polaroid“) but maybe some of you don’t know that they’ve recently stopped selling instant film. Sad for some in the photography community but there are alternative solutions that I recently learned about. Continue reading this post…

I’m currently enrolled in a course called Nature Writing.  No, we don’t just write about how the environment is dying and that we need to stop global warming, but rather it is a class that encourages us to ask thought provoking questions and reflect on them.  In our first class we were made aware of a couple named Helen and Scott Nearing and enlightened of their philosophy to living a good life.  I will share the major points we discussed:

A life should be grounded in ideas, people, nature… not things.  Here are some ideas that the couple embraced:

Continue reading this post…

From the article Beauty and the brain, women use more than men:

“It is well known that there are differences between brain activity in women and men in cognitive tasks,” said researcher Camilo J. Cela-Conde of the University of Baleares in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. “However, why should this kind of difference appear in the case of appreciation of beauty?”

The answer seems to be that when women consider a visual object they link it to language while men concentrate on the spatial aspects of the object, Cela-Conde said in an interview by e-mail.

He noted, however, that this doesn’t explain why — and how — the human capacity to appreciate beauty evolved.

Pretty interesting. I definately don’t think of “words” when I look at art. I usually “mentally deconstruct” it, sort of like if I were looking at a time-lapse video of the art.

What do you guys think of?