1) What I learned from watching TV: Heard this female therapist in the BBC series Sherlock say that when remembering something, it’s not just the mind that remembers, but the body as well. 2) I was thinking about the term “straw man” while walking yesterday. See definition below: straw man ˌstrô ˈman/ noun: straw man … Continue reading “Two insights about RHS” by Mike Zonta, H.W., M.
Below this message is a review ofm a book, from the journal Nature, about the still-unresolved double-slit experiment. By ‘unresolved’ I mean having a satisfying sense of why this happens the way it does. Although we can describe the effects of the experiments, as described in the review, as showing that quantum particles also have wave … Continue reading Two slits and one hell of a quantum conundrum (from Michael Kelly)
December 7, 2016 (NewYorker.com) The book “The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds,” by Michael Lewis, tells the story of the psychologists Amos Tversky, left, and Daniel Kahneman, right. Photograph Courtesy Barbara Tversky In 2003, we reviewed “Moneyball,” Michael Lewis’s book about Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s. The book, we noted, had become … Continue reading “The Two Friends Who Changed How We Think About How We Think” by Cass R. Sunstein and Richard Thaler
Two black holes swirling around one another. LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Sonoma State (Aurore Simonnet). June 8, 2017 Something happened 3 billion years1 ago that changed the makeup of our prodigious universe forever. Two enormous black holes collided, resulting in an intense explosion and forming a solitary object 49 times as massive as our sun. The explosion formed … Continue reading “Scientists Have Recorded the Sound of Two Black Holes Colliding, and You Can Hear It Too” by Philip Perry (bigthink.com)
New Scientific Insights on the Source of Creativity Show How Social Networks Drive Ideas Einstein (center right) got by with a little help from his friends. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. by SAL RESTIVO | FEBRUARY 20, 2020 (zocalopublicsquare.org) In 2017, the “Genius” issue of National Geographic credited Albert Einstein’s ability to harness the power of his “own thoughts” to predict gravity waves, a century before … Continue reading EINSTEIN’S GENIUS WASN’T IN HIS BRAIN; IT WAS IN HIS FRIENDS
Jessica ZackJanuary 17, 2020 (SFChronicle.com) Peggy Orenstein never thought she’d write about boys. Over the past 25 years, in her New York Times Magazine articles, numerous opinion pieces and best-selling books — including the now-classic “Schoolgirls” (1994) about girls’ plummeting confidence in the middle school years and “Cinderella Ate My Daughter” (2011) which addressed the … Continue reading Peggy Orenstein wants you to talk with your boys about sex
A very natural kink in the advancement of artificial intelligence. Aeon|getpocket.com Ben Medlock Photo by lillisphotography / Getty Images. It’s tempting to think of the mind as a layer that sits on top of more primitive cognitive structures. We experience ourselves as conscious beings, after all, in a way that feels different to the rhythm … Continue reading The Body Is the Missing Link for Truly Intelligent Machines
The philosophers he influenced set the stage for the technological revolution that remade our world. The Atlantic|getpocket.com Chris Dixon Wikimedia / donatas1205 / Billion Photos / vgeny Karandaev / The Atlantic The history of computers is often told as a history of objects, from the abacus to the Babbage engine up through the code-breaking machines of World … Continue reading How Aristotle Created the Computer [and Translation]
The neurology of flow states. Nautilus|getpocket.com Heather Berlin Don’t look at the clock! Now tell me: How much time has passed since you first logged on to your computer today? Time may be a property of physics, but it is also a property of the mind, which ultimately makes it a product of the brain. Time … Continue reading What Time Feels Like When You’re Improvising
On Being with Krista Tippett Last Updated: December 12, 2019 (onbeing.org) “Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet / confinement of your aloneness / to learn / anything or anyone / that does not bring you alive / is too small for you.” David Whyte is a poet and philosopher who believes in the power of … Continue reading The Conversational Nature of Reality
