Quote of the Day

"All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them."

- Letter to Roger C. Weightman, declining to attend 50th anniversary of Independence day because of his health, this was Thomas Jefferson's last letter, he died on July 4th, 1826, June 24, 1826

The Higgs Boson Explained

via Q3D


The Higgs Boson Explained from PHD Comics on Vimeo.

Quote of the Day

"Can there be anywhere else in the world that is such an assault on the senses? India is an assault on the senses. It's like a wave; resist and you go under, ride it out and you arrive at the others side."

- Evelyn Greenslade, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

What Studies Of Monkeys And Apes Taught Alex Dehgan About Washington & International Diplomacy

"As the first full-time Science and Technology Adviser to the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development in 20 years, Alex Dehgan looks for opportunities to deploy U.S. scientific and technological can-do types to help solve address persistent issues of global concern. He discusses why he’s drawn to chaotic environments, why studying primates is good practice for working in Washington, and why there should be more field biologists in corner offices.

Alex Dehgan: 
Tropical field biologists are some of the most adaptable people you will meet. In the rainforests of Madagascar, we were frequently an entire day’s walk from the nearest road, and two days from the capital. We had at our peak, a group of 22 people with 50 porters, tracking 12 species of lemurs, in addition to surveying aerial and terrestrial predators, measuring botanical diversity through tree transects, and understanding predation from human hunters. There was no electricity, and no running water. Although there’s a whole bunch of advanced planning, and backup systems if you can’t figure out how to adapt one thing to use it for something else that has broken, you can’t survive in the field. Things break all the time because of the extreme conditions of the environment. We worked through the cyclone season, which could be highly disruptive--I lost a motorcycle in quicksand once. There are challenges with the governments and understanding the culture, and people get sick. I managed to get cerebral malaria, regular malaria, schistosomiasis, giardia--you name it. How do you set up a system that’s resilient to those kind of disruptions? That’s something field biologists have to do really well--particularly those working in tropical environments – in order to succeed. I’m always surprised there aren’t more field biologists starting up companies."

- More Here

Sleep With Music To Remember Melodies

"Want to nail that tune that you've practiced and practiced? Maybe you should take a nap with the same melody playing during your sleep, new provocative Northwestern University research suggests. The research grows out of exciting existing evidence that suggests that memories can be reactivated during sleep and storage of them can be strengthened in the process."

- More Here

Quote of the Day

"Larry's the worst person you want designing your product- he's very smart but not your average user'. To avoid this situation, Chan had a strategy of  giving him shiny objects to play with. At the beginning of one Google Voice product review, for instance, he offered Page, and Brin as well, the opportunity to pick their own phone numbers for the new service. For the next hour the founders brainstormed sequences that embodied mathematical puns, while the product sailed through the review."

- Steven Levy, In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

Atul Gawande On Widening That Moral Circle

The major social advances of the past three centuries have required widening our sphere of moral inclusion. During the nineteenth century, for instance, most American leaders believed in a right to vote—but not in extending it to women and black people. Likewise, most American leaders, regardless of their politics, believe that people’s health-care needs should be met; they’ve sought to insure that soldiers, the elderly, the disabled, and children, not to mention themselves, have access to good care. But many draw their circle of concern narrowly; they continue to resist the idea that people without adequate insurance are anything like these deserving others.

And so the fate of the uninsured remains embattled—vulnerable, in particular, to the maneuvering for political control. The partisan desire to deny the President success remains powerful. Many levers of obstruction remain; many hands will be reaching for them.

For all that, the Court’s ruling keeps alive the prospect that our society will expand its circle of moral concern to include the millions who now lack insurance. Beneath the intricacies of the Affordable Care Act lies a simple truth. We are all born frail and mortal—and, in the course of our lives, we all need health care. Americans are on our way to recognizing this.

- More Here

Do Humans Speak Dog?

“Imagine a dog. He’s a very thoughtful dog and he can hear humans barking," says Bellos. "He can hear that amongst the funny noises humans make there are a number of signals with fixed meanings like ‘walk,’ ‘sit, ‘heel,’ and he ponders as to whether the rest of the noise they make is just barking.”

It's a joke, of course, but one with a point. For Bellos, the condition for the existence of a language -- “what we think of as a language" -- is its translatability. "So the boundary between our species and others is indeed an unbridgeable gulf until we learn to translate them.” The gap between human and dog is not about grammar or syntax, but about how deeply we can grasp each other's meaning.

Broadly, a language is a mode of expression. "The argument that only human language is language and that animal communication systems, however sophisticated they are -- and some of them are quite sophisticated -- are not languages because they consist of discrete signals is a circular argument," he argues. "It’s a self-fulfilling thing. And I think we should be a little bit more interested in the complexity and the variability of animal communication systems and less rigid about this distinction between what is a language and what is not a language."

- David Bellos

A Stoics Flowchart

Quote of the Day

"I say that every prince must desire to be considered merciful and not cruel. He must, however, take care not to misuse this mercifulness. … A prince, therefore, must not mind incurring the charge of cruelty for the purpose of keeping his subjects united and confident; for, with a very few examples, he will be more merciful than those who, from excess of tenderness, allow disorders to arise, from whence spring murders and rapine; for these as a rule injure the whole community, while the executions carried out by the prince injure only one individual. And of all princes, it is impossible for a new prince to escape the name of cruel, new states being always full of dangers.… 
Nevertheless, he must be cautious in believing and acting, and must not inspire fear of his own accord, and must proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence does not render him incautious, and too much diffidence does not render him intolerant. From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved more than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting. For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger, and covetous of gain ; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours; they offer you their blood, their goods, their life, and their children, as I have before said, when the necessity is remote; but when it approaches, they revolt. And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined, for the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is merited but is not secured, and at times is not to be had. And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligation which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails."

- Niccolo Machiavvelli, The Prince