It certainly is. Buy it here.
Odds & Ends
Jonathan Haidt explains our contentious culture
From BillMoyers.com
Tweet of the Day
A better map of the world
The Gall-Peters projection map, showing the true relative size of the continents without the distortion of the traditional Mercator projection. (As usual, “The West Wing” got there first.)
A thought for New Year’s Day
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.
Seneca, On the Shortness of Life (via)
Sam Harris: The self is an illusion
The First Flight
The Atlantic has posted a series of remarkable photos of the Wright brothers’ early experiments in flight. Above:
First flight: 120 feet in 12 seconds, on December 17, 1903. This photograph shows man’s first powered, controlled, sustained flight. Orville Wright at the controls of the machine, lying prone on the lower wing with hips in the cradle which operated the wing-warping mechanism. Wilbur Wright running alongside to balance the machine, has just released his hold on the forward upright of the right wing. The starting rail, the wing-rest, a coil box, and other items needed for flight preparation are visible behind the machine. Orville Wright preset the camera and had John T. Daniels squeeze the rubber bulb, tripping the shutter.