General mischief and occasional flashes of insight.
The problem with understanding the future is that humans naturally think about the future linearly, projecting technological increases in the next 10 years to mimic the last 10 years. In reality, the time needed for technology to double is constantly decreasing.
— Immortality Possible in Just 30 Years? | Inc. 5000 (via futuristgerd)
Don Kagan is my hero.
Donald Kagan is engaging in one last argument. For his “farewell lecture” here at Yale on Thursday afternoon, the 80-year-old scholar of ancient Greece—whose four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War inspired comparisons to Edward Gibbon’s Roman history—uncorked a biting critique of American higher education.
Universities, he proposed, are failing students and hurting American democracy. Curricula are “individualized, unfocused and scattered.” On campus, he said, “I find a kind of cultural void, an ignorance of the past, a sense of rootlessness and aimlessness.” Rare are “faculty with atypical views,” he charged. “Still rarer is an informed understanding of the traditions and institutions of our Western civilization and of our country and an appreciation of their special qualities and values.” He counseled schools to adopt “a common core of studies” in the history, literature and philosophy “of our culture.” By “our” he means Western.
ABOUT WANTS FOR SALE
Wants For Sale was started in July 2007 by Christine & Justin Gignac. All of the paintings on Wants For Sale are the price of the actual item shown in the painting, whether that’s “A Slice of Pepperoni Pizza” for $3.00 or “A Gold Watch” for $287.19. After each painting is sold, the original wanted item is purchased and photographed for this very website you are on right now. Prices of paintings can range anywhere from $0 to $1,000,000 and may be of general wants or part of a series like “A Vegas Vacation” or “As Seen On TV.”
Happy Birthday to the Man of Steel!
Superman first debuted 75 years ago in Action Comics #1, published April 18, 1938.
ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN: STAMP DAY FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN
Copyright by National Comics Publications and Superman Inc. and donated to the Treasury Department as a public service by Superman, Inc.
From the Moving Images files of the Department of The Treasury
H/T to the USPS Stamps Tumblr for the tip!
I foresee a run on Tylenol. Now rushing to local pharmacy to stock up.
New research suggests acetaminophen (Tylenol) may help individuals overcome non-specific fear and anxiety brought about by thinking about death or the human condition.
According to lead researcher Daniel Randles and colleagues at the University of British Columbia, the new findings suggest that Tylenol may have more profound psychological effects than previously understood.
Physicists have devised a new experiment to test if the universe is a computer.
A philosophical thought experiment has long held that it is more likely than not that we’re living inside a machine.
Professor Martin Savage at the University of Washington says while our own computer simulations can only model a universe on the scale of an atom’s nucleus, there are already “signatures of resource constraints” which could tell us if larger models are possible.
This is where it gets complex.
Essentially, Savage said that computers used to build simulations perform “lattice quantum chromodynamics calculations” - dividing space into a four-dimensional grid. Doing so allows researchers to examine the force which binds subatomic particles together into neutrons and protons - but it also allows things to happen in the simulation, including the development of complex physical “signatures”, that researchers don’t program directly into the computer. In looking for these signatures, such as limitations on the energy held by cosmic rays, they hope to find similarities within our own universe.
And if such signatures do appear in both? Boot up, baby. We’re inside a computer. (Maybe).
The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses – Walter Benjamin’s timeless advice on writing, 1928.
Time travel in movies
I love time travel in movies. It’s cause for so many great conversations.
And now I have a new unattainable goal in life: playing in sawdust with elephants.
(Source: faunasworld)
