Texas Rep. Ron Paul, fresh off a win in the Illinois Republicans presidential candidate straw poll, is ruling out an independent bid for the White House, saying he doesn’t want to go that route. “I have no intention doing that. That doesn’t make sense to me to even think about it, let alone plan to do that,” Paul told “Fox News Sunday.” Asked why, Paul responded: “Because I don’t want to do it. That’s the reason.” But Paul said that if he’s not the nominee, he’s not certain that he would support the GOP nominee. “Probably not unless I get to talk to them and find out what they believe in. But if they believe on expanding the wars, if they don’t believe in looking at the Federal Reserve; if they don’t believe in real cuts, if they don’t believe in deregulation and better tax system, it would defy everything I believe in,” Paul said. “And so, therefore, I would be reluctant to jump on board and tell all of the supporters that have given me trust and money that all of a sudden, I’d say, all we’ve done is for naught. So, let’s support anybody at all … even if they disagree with everything that we do,” Paul added. The three-time presidential candidate, and one-time Libertarian nominee, gave as an example Herman Cain, whose recent scrutiny over alleged sexual harassment claims isn’t what bothers Paul. “The allegations against his program, he’s liking, you know, the Federal Reserve and his national sales tax — yes, they are very legitimate and his support for bailouts, those …

Peter Galison is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University; his doctoral dissertations were at Harvard in the history of science and in particle physics (electroweak theory). Galison’s work explores the complex interaction between the three principal subcultures of physics–experimentation, instrumentation, and theory, and all focus on the role of visualization and materiality in scientific work. Among his books are: How Experiments End (1987), Image and Logic (1997), Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps (2003), L. Daston, Objectivity (2007) and (among other co-edited volumes) The Architecture of Science, Picturing Science, Producing Art, Scientific Authorship, and Einstein for the 21st Century. To explore the relation of scientific work with larger issues of politics, he has made two documentary films: “Ultimate Weapon: The H-bomb Dilemma” (2000), and, with Robb Moss,”Secrecy” (about national security secrecy and democracy), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008. At present, he is completing a book, Building Crashing Thinking (on technologies that re-form the self) and has just begun a new documentary film project on the long-term geological storage of nuclear waste, “Nuclear Underground.” AboutTEDx, x = independently organized event In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx …