Blog – page 55 of 75

Ninja via Dilbert.com

Below is a quote from John Gray’s review of David Brooks’ book, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement. He’s talking about how the recent economic crisis was supposed to be impossible because of the psychic ability of quantitative models to predict the future of the economy.

[M]any economists refused to accept that such a crisis was possible—captivated as they were by the belief that quantitative models could predict the future, sheltering the field from messy reality. Economists were thus incapable of perceiving the dangers that were mounting around them. The attempt to domesticate the uncertainties of the future by turning them into calculable risks was discredited by the crash. A mode of thinking that was supposed to be supremely rational has proved in practice to be little more than an exercise in harebrained cleverness.

How to deactivate a cat. aka, putting a cat in admin mode.

A veterinarian put standby a cat with a plier. (by fckjulien1000)

Grains of sand magnified to 250 times real size via Lost At E Minor: For creative people

Angry Birds Coffee Art, via Foodbeast

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,” and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.“

— John Adams

You Can’t Cross a Chasm in Two Small Steps

(via Lifehacker)

Previously, on 24 (by le nompourflickr)

Tim Black write in the Sp!ked Review of Books about how universities are deviating from their primary purpose: the pursuit of knowledge. However, universities now have the expectation to be economic engines, churning out smarter workers and economic producers.

An increase in the quantity of graduates will neither create a dynamic, wealth-producing economy nor will it create the conditions for the emergence of lots of dynamic, wealth-producing individuals. Universities are not what they are currently being cracked up to be. But that leads to another problem. So deeply entrenched is the belief that, to use the words of the 1998 Dearing report, ‘Higher education has become central to the economic wellbeing of nations and individuals’, that it is becoming increasingly difficult to recall what the purpose of institutions of higher education might be. Their autonomy as academic bodies, in which one ought to be free to pursue an interest in a subject area to a higher level, has been effaced by their thoroughgoing instrumentalisation as drivers of economic growth and social mobility.

Can applying the principles of computer hacking to the human body make for a better life?

Much as an engineer will analyse data and tweak specifications in order to optimise a software program, people are ­collecting and correlating data on the “inputs and outputs” of their bodies to optimize physical and mental performance. “We like to hack hardware and software, why not hack our bodies?” says Tim Chang, a self-quantifier and Silicon Valley investor who is backing the development of several self-tracking gadgets. Indeed, why not give yourself an “upgrade”, says Dave Asprey, a “bio-hacker” who takes self-quantification to the extreme of self-experimentation. He claims to have shaved 20 years off his biochemistry and increased his IQ by as much as 40 points through “smart pills”, diet andbiology-enhancing gadgets. “I’ve rewired my brain,” he says.

Will the internet ever replace books? Only if they’re able to replace a key and unique factor that up until now only books have successfuly been able to supply – linear concentration. Johann Hari has an article about the function of the book and how it will continue to persist in an age of distraction:

And here’s the function that the book – the paper book that doesn’t beep or flash or link or let you watch a thousand videos all at once – does for you that nothing else will. It gives you the capacity for deep, linear concentration. As Ulin puts it: “Reading is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction…. It requires us to pace ourselves. It returns us to a reckoning with time. In the midst of a book, we have no choice but to be patient, to take each thing in its moment, to let the narrative prevail. We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise.”

This passage from the David Means’ story “Tree Line, Kansas, 1934” has a fun explanation of the difference between a hunch and a gut feeling.

A gut feeling finally becomes a hunch when it is transmuted into the form of clear, precise, verbal statements uttered aloud to a receptive listener—internal or external—who responds in kind. A hunch twists inside the sinews and bones, integrating itself into the physicality of the moment, whereas a gut feeling can only struggle to become a hunch, and, once it does, is recognized in retrospect as a gut feeling.

zoomar:

This makes me very happy. Especially the wigs.

This is what happens when Youtube announces a 10 hour video limit.

(via YouTube ups the video limit to 10 hours. The Internet responds)

River Shiver - Pomplamoose (by PomplamooseMusic)

The Very, Very Many Varieties of Beer, via Pop Chart Lab

“If You Don’t Have Time to Do It Right, When Will You Have Time to Do It Over?” (via Lifehacker)

Butterfly Man - The Dark Net (by evangelistjfox)

I saw this video at the Ave Maria youth conference this weekend, and am amazed it hasn’t gotten more attention. It is a very well done parody of Batman, re-imagined as if he were attacked as a child by butterflies instead of bats.

Penguins are bad at logic

(via Funny Penguin - Fanpop)