How to Make Up Your Mind About an Issue

Living in a world of constant debate and disagreement, evaluating your own position on an issue of special or public importance[1] is sometimes straightforward when based on your beliefs, values, and general knowledge. However, other times it is much harder to make up your mind about an issue because the territory is new to you or to humanity in general, or there are many competing or controversial values and ideas that go into forming the issue under discussion or dispute. When making up your own mind about the issue, it's important to have studied the varied perspectives before reaching your own conclusion. Even then, you are best served by keeping an open mind about future directions and understandings as new information transpires.

In this article, you'll be presented with some basic elements on how to make up your mind about an issue, particularly where it is complicated, divisive, and perhaps even untested.

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First human-like robot to fly in space

Robonaut 2, which NASA hopes to launch Feb. 3 aboard the space shuttle Discovery on a flight to its permanent home on the International Space Station, will be the first humanoidlike robot to fly in space. Based on technology nurtured in part at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View and built jointly by the space agency and General Motors, the robot has a head, two arms and a humanlike chest and shoulders. It has fingers, thumbs and wrists with enough dexterity to grip a pen and write "hello."
Rob Heyde spent more than 10 years working as an engineer for computer giants Hewlett-Packard and Apple. But when manufacturing jobs began moving out of the valley, Heyde's career path went from high-tech to high in the sky above Silicon Valley. Heyde, 56, now spends three nights a week hovering above Santa Clara County and providing a bird's-eye view for cops on the city streets below.

Santa Clara County schools will receive nearly $821,000 for technology purchases, and San Mateo County schools will receive nearly $306,000, in the second phase of a settlement of an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.

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How to Prevent Migraines

The best option for people who suffer frequent or severe migraines is usually to try to prevent them. While prevention isn't always effective, there are a number of things you can do that have been proven to reduce the severity and frequency of migraines in many people. Here are suggestions for you to try.

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Distant Galaxies Confirm Dark Energy's Existence and Universe's Flatness

In the late 1990s, two teams of astronomers stunned the scientific community with the finding that the universe is accelerating in its expansion, somehow overpowering the constant pull of gravity that should be slowing it down. The culprit pressing the cosmic accelerator goes by the name "dark energy," which is an appropriately enigmatic moniker for something that remains so poorly understood.

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Farookians88-Photos

ESSAY FROM A CHILD

A teacher from Primary School asks her students to write a essay about what they would like God to do for them...
At the end of the day while marking the essays, she read one that made her very emotional. Her husband, that had just walked in saw her crying and asked her:

- What happened?

She answered - Read this. It's one of my students essays

Oh God, tonight I ask you something very special: Make me into a television. I want to take its place. Live like the TV in my house. Have my own special place, And have my family around ME. To be taken seriously when I talk.... I want to be the centre of attention and be heard without interruptions or questions. I want to receive the same special care that the TV receives when it is not working. Have the company of my dad when he arrives home from work, even when he is tired.
And I want my mom to want me when she is sad and upset, instead of ignoring me... And... I want my brothers to fight to be with me... I want to feel that family just leaves everything aside, every now and then, just to spend some time with me. And last but not least make it that I can make them all happy and entertain them...

Lord I don't ask you for much... I just want to live like every TV

At that moment the husband said: - 'My God, poor kid. What horrible parents!
She looked up at him and said: - 'That essay is our son's!!!

ISLAM IS ON THE MARCH

THE GLORIOUS MARCH OF ISLAM
The ideas that inspired the French Revolution and the Declaration of Rights that guided the framing of the American Constitution and inflamed the struggle for independence in the Latin American countries [and elsewhere] were not inventions of the West. They find their ultimate inspiration and source in the Holy Koran.
- “Making of Humanity” by Robert Briffault
Sometimes people wonder if Islam has run its course. The bullet has been fired. What remains is just the empty barrel. This is a dangerously false assumption. Dangerous because it deprives humanity of the only hope it has. An examination of history bears out the fact that Islam has not failed, Muslims have. And Muslims have failed because they abandoned the Quran in favor of manmade books written centuries later! The moment they return to the Book, the Muslims will attain their lost glory. Or, whichever nation for that matter, embraces the Quran will establish the ideal state on the planet. Let us recall what George Bernard Shaw had said, “Mohammad, the wonderful man - in my opinion he must be called the Savior of humanity.” — “I predict that tomorrow’s Europe will embrace Islam.” Thus, the exalted Messenger will prove to be the Savior of humanity as he did 14 centuries ago. His sublime Message is perfectly alive and well. The Divine Laws are not biased for or against any group of people. Any nation that adopts them reaps the harvest.
As we have discussed, all universe and our own planet have been created as parts of a Master Plan. They will keep moving to their appointed destinations. Likewise, the human civilization has been evolving throughout history. When the humans follow Divine Revelation, times are shortened and emergent evolutions take place. What would otherwise take centuries by trial and error, can materialize in years. In Sir Iqbal’s words, “Revelation economizes human effort.”
Without the benefit of the Quranic Light the world is still moving, though slowly, toward its destination of unity of mankind. Who is not aware of “globalization and the global village”? Evolution of the human civilization is taking place. Islam is on the march.
Now let us examine a few glittering examples from history and see how correct Robert Briffault is in his observations and conclusions. It is interesting to note that Aristotle had pointed out 2,500 years ago, “A time will come when human ways will coincide with Divine ways.”

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Searching for Another Earth

An international team of astronomers has discovered an exoplanet--one outside our solar system--that has a more Earthlike orbit than any alien planet discovered so far using the same technique.

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5 Websites To Help You Manage Your Grocery List

Grocery shopping is such a drag, isn’t it? I welcome anything that can get me in and out of the grocery story in a timely manner. My wife and I like to grocery shop together in order to get it done as quickly as possible. She heads for the items in the aisles and I head for all of the groceries around the edges (dairy, meat, fruit and veg, etc). Anything that helps.
An issue we often run into is keeping an up to date list of the items we are out of. Sometimes we are all ready to go and realize we haven’t made a list yet and we need to drop everything and check the cupboards and refrigerator for missing items. If there was a tool that would make keeping a list easier, our shopping day would go that much smoother.
Here’s 5 printable grocery list apps you can try out.

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Wash Your Hands With Plasma Gas

A new cleaning technology could replace or supplement the soap, water, and disinfectants used at hospitals to wash hands. Plasma gas sprayed on hands through machines developed by researchers in Germany can kill bacteria and other biological contaminants:
The technology is being developed in several laboratories. Gregor Morfill, who created several prototypes using the technology at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, says the plasma quickly inactivates not only bacteria but also viruses and fungi.
Dr. Morfill and his colleagues have tested their devices on hands and feet. “It works on athlete’s foot,” he said. “And the nice thing is, you don’t have to take your socks off. They are disinfected, too.”[...]
The first products to reach hospitals, after surface cleaners and instrument disinfectants, will probably be hand sanitizers, said Alexander Fridman, a professor and director of the Drexel Plasma Institute at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

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5 Free Online Services to Send an Email to a Fax Machine

Send and Email to a Fax.
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Chemical computer that mimics neurons to be created

A promising push toward a novel, biologically-inspired "chemical computer" has begun as part of an international collaboration.
The "wet computer" incorporates several recently discovered properties of chemical systems that can be hijacked to engineer computing power.
The team's approach mimics some of the actions of neurons in the brain.
The 1.8m-euro (£1.6m) project will run for three years, funded by an EU emerging technologies programme.
The programme has identified biologically-inspired computing as particularly important, having recently funded several such projects.
What distinguishes the current project is that it will make use of stable "cells" featuring a coating that forms spontaneously, similar to the walls of our own cells, and uses chemistry to accomplish the signal processing similar to that of our own neurons.
The goal is not to make a better computer than conventional ones, said project collaborator Klaus-Peter Zauner of the University of Southampton, but rather to be able to compute in new environments.

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China's High-Speed-Rail Revolution

China has begun operating what is, by several measures, the world's fastest rail line: a dedicated 968-kilometer line linking Wuhan, in the heart of central China, to Guangzhou, on the southeastern coast. In trials, the "WuGuang" line trains (locally built variants of Japan's Shinkansen and Germany's InterCity Express high-speed trains) clocked peak speeds of up to 394 kilometers per hour (or 245 miles per hour). They have also recorded an average speed of 312 kph in nonstop runs four times daily since the WuGuang's December 26 launch, slashing travel time from Wuhan to Guangzhou from 10.5 hours to less than three.
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