Rolling Stone interview with Bill Gates

Do you believe in God? 

I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill. But the mystery and the beauty of the world is overwhelmingly amazing, and there's no scientific explanation of how it came about. To say that it was generated by random numbers, that does seem, you know, sort of an uncharitable view [laughs]. I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know.

http://m.rollingstone.com/culture/news/bill-gates-the-rolling-stone-interview-20140313

Puppet strings in the theater of statistics

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/opinion/sunday/how-long-have-i-got-left.html?ref=opinion

Oxfam: 85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world

Winnie Byanyima, the Oxfam executive director who will attend the Davos meetings, said: "It is staggering that in the 21st Century, half of the world's population – that's three and a half billion people – own no more than a tiny elite whose numbers could all fit comfortably on a double-decker bus."

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/20/oxfam-85-richest-people-half-of-the-world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Distribution_of_Wealth,_2007.jpg

Driving the middle road

Capitalist systems are winning the world over including communist China and Russia, we recognize the invisible hand driving it forward, we don't want people to be addicted to social welfare and mooch off, we know it is not always going to be fair, there will be luck and perseverance and hard work and failures and sparks of innovation, and we know greed is good metaphorically speaking in that it greases the wheels of capitalism, we know government cannot be the means and the end to betterment.

However, unbridled, naked, reckless greed can as well drive us back to the jungle life whence we evolved from.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html?hp&rref=opinion

Polar Vortex

Anyone who didn't live within the polar vortex got to believe it was cold by the fact that it was so cold in Lexington KY that a prisoner who escaped state prison turned himself in to be able to warm up.

Scratch from MIT

Scratch, created from MIT, is a wonderful programming environment and platform that is kid friendly, to be able to learn and discover coding. In about an hour or two, created this elementary game with my elementary school going daughter. It's fun, expressive and uses real programming concepts with simplified constructs.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/16049942/

Perfect Failure

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/in-praise-of-failure/