Links

1. A nice video from the Royal Institution -- Levitating Superconductor on a Möbius strip:

2. Bruce Upbin in Forbes: Debunking The Narrative Of Silicon Valley's Innovation Might:

   This is going to sound completely heretical to everything Forbes has stood for over 96 years (and The Economist for a few decades longer than that) but here goes: The real innovation engine in the global economy is not the entrepreneurial class blazing capitalist trails through the thicket of government red tape and taxation. No. The real engine of innovation is government.

3. Feminist Philosophers excerpts the Chronicle story entitled Philosopher’s Downfall, From Star to ‘Ruin,’ Divides a Discipline -- the star philosopher is UMiami's McGinn, and his career turned towards ruin "after a graduate student complained that he behaved inappropriately toward her."

4. The state of Oregon in the US is debating a plan in which students will receive free university education "in return for agreeing to be taxed a set percentage of their income for the first twenty years after they leave college." Calling it "an audacious, innovative, terrible idea," Matt Reed provides many arguments against this plan.