Fascinating thought experiment now has a more precise answer:
Suppose you dug a tunnel through the center of Earth, jumped in, and let gravity pull you through. How long would it take you to reach the other side of the planet? For decades, physics students have been asked to calculate that time and have been taught that the correct answer is 42 minutes. Now, a more realistic analysis has lopped 4 minutes off that estimate.
Robert Kuttler is pessimistic about meaningful democracy in the U.S., as I am. In his article, "Why the 99% keeps losing, he gives the following reasons:
How do happy people stay happy? Eric Barker reports on an important technique: By deploying attention in more effective ways.
Your happiness is determined by how you allocate your attention. What you attend to drives your behavior and it determines your happiness. Attention is the glue that holds your life together… The scarcity of attentional resources means that you must consider how you can make and facilitate better decisions about what to pay attention to and in what ways. If you are not as happy as you could be, then you must be misallocating your attention… So changing behavior and enhancing happiness is as much about withdrawing attention from the negative as it is about attending to the positive.
Lee Camp comments on the way the U.S. fails to support college education. Spot on. Then he skewer Obama by reference to 1994 Cheney. Excellent.
Wendy Thomas Russell came out as an atheist flu years ago and has found it to be a positive experience. "I can candidly say that, for me personally, being “out” has been one of the most surprisingly gratifying choices I’ve ever made." Here are her four main reasons: 1. It turns out I really enjoy shattering people’s assumptions. 2. I like religious people more now. 3. I’m setting a great example for my child. 4. I’m opening the door for others.