“Our problem is that we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology, and it is terrifically dangerous. It is now approaching a point of crisis overall, and until we understand ourselves—until we answer those huge questions of philosophy that the philosophers abandoned…we are running a very dangerous course.”
E.O. Wilson, biologist and “father” of Sociobiology, regarding the real problem of humanity; as quoted during Looking Back Looking Forward, an event hosted on September 9, 2009 at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre, which included an on-stage conversation between former academic rivals Wilson and Nobel-Prize-winning pioneer of the double-helix, molecular biologist James Watson.
Photo of Wilson in Puerto Rico by NOVA production manager, Jason Hendriksen during filming of the 2008 E.O. Wilson documentary, Lord of The Ants.
via Harvard Magazine
“When I moved from Los Angeles, I moved into what I thought was Santa Cruz. Then we had something stolen from our car, and we called the police, and it turned out we didn’t live in Santa Cruz; we lived in a town called Capitola. The post office thought we lived in Santa Cruz, but the police thought we lived in Capitola. I started investigating this, and a reporter on the local newspaper told me we didn’t live in either Santa Cruz or Capitola; we lived in an unincorporated area called Live Oak.
“Now, quantum mechanics is just like that, except that in the case of Santa Cruz, Capitola, and Live Oak, we don’t get too confused, because we remember: we invented the lines on the map. Quantum physics seems confusing because a lot of people think we didn’t invent the lines, so it seems hard to understand how a particle can be in three places at the same time without being anywhere at all. But when you remember that we invented all the boundaries, borders, and lines, just like the Berlin Wall, then quantum mechanics is no more mysterious than the fact that I live in three places at the same time.”
Robert Anton Wilson, when asked to explain quantum physics simply, always gets a smile out of me; both for his answer and for the apprehensive reaction of the translator(?) (as seen in the video) as Wilson prepares to answer.
I switched to archaeology, and I learned something I already knew: that man had been a maker and smasher of crockery since the dawn of time. And I went to my faculty adviser, and I confessed that science did not charm me, that I longed for poetry instead. I was depressed. I knew my wife and my father would want to kill me, if I went into poetry.
My adviser smiled. “How would you like to study poetry which pretends to be scientific?” he asked me.
“Is such a thing possible?” I said.
He shook my hand. “Welcome to the field of social or cultural anthropology,” he said.
—Kurt Vonnegut, describing his “conversion” to cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago. After all, “it offered the greatest opportunity to write high-minded balderdash.”
As seen in the Address to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, 1971, from his book, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons (Opinions).
What a joy it is to watch this. BICEP2 researcher, Chao-Lin Kuo, surprises husband-and-wife theoretical physicists, Andrei Linde and Renata Kallosh, with the news the thirty-some-year-old theory of cosmological inflation—a hypothesis of which Linde is one of the main authors—just received what could very well be a heaping dose of supporting evidence.
Yet, in light of such exciting, career-affirming news as this, Linde works to remain objective and irresolute, as gleaned from his cautious words @1:59:
If you are curious, Kottke.org has a quick-n-dirty explanation of the terse announcement Kou blurts out to Linde at his doorstep.
California artist Laura Jacobson takes clay pressings of industrial ephemera (such as circuit boards, plumbing fixtures, and auto parts), and shapes them into a thoughtful convergence of organic life and the inorganic artifacts of hominal society.
The top two images are from her Brain Scapes series, which is now a permanent installation at the Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging. This series, which ruminates upon human neurology, includes an etching of a neuron (Neuron No. 3, top), and a ceramic representation of MRI brain scans (Resonance Punctuated, center).
via Popular Science
I am in awe. Motion designer/director Chris Abbas used photography from NASA’s Cassini-Huygens spacecraft to create an absolutely beautiful, meditative short film of Saturn, her rings, and her moons, building motion from the publicly available archive of sequenced stills.
Interesting note: Vimeo user Hynee explains that the streaking star trails seen near the end and throughout are “navigation system calibration runs; the spacecraft uses spinning wheels to stabilize itself, and [they need] to be checked on.”
The music is 2 Ghosts I from Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I–IV album.
via @AlwaysWithHonor
Camera lenses sliced down the middle, here & here. The engineering revealed inside is fascinating.
You can purchase the top-pictured Lecia Tri-Elmar-M cutaway model on ebay for $995US.
via notcot
It’s very cold tonight, so we played with bubbles. If you blow them upwards enough they have time to freeze on the way down.
Slipweasel photographed soap bubbles freezing in -5°C. See them pop! (via Neatorama)