Don't look now, but a certain subject is making a comeback in American universities, and one reason is that it offers an extremely important skill in an era characterized by the need to incorporate and make sense of a wide range of information.
David E. Schrader, executive director of the American Philosophical Association, a professional organization with 11,000 members, said that in an era in which people change careers frequently, philosophy makes sense. 'It’s a major that helps them become quick learners and gives them strong skills in writing, analysis and critical thinking,' he said.
Saying that widespread adoption of prediction markets by U.S. corporations has been slowed because of their uncertain legal nature, Justin Wolfers points out that the issue has recently drawn the attention of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Are
prediction markets legitimate business tools, an alternative set of securities markets requiring SEC regulation, illegal betting markets, allowable games of skill, or something else altogether?
As most of our literary attention is often given to the bard, William Shakespeare (and rightly so) I thought it only fitting to spend some time discussing one given the title "The father of English Poetry", Geoffrey Chaucer. If Chaucer and Shakespeare were side by side, Shakespeare would get the limo and Chaucer would be left to search for a cab.
Now for the answer to question you probably weren't asking today: How does zero gravity affect the flight of a boomerang?
The Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, released this video showing that that answer is "not much." As Universe Todaypointed out, while microgravity had little effect on the "roomerang," it isn't the same as space, which has zero gravity and is a hard vacuum besides. Aerodynamics are useless there. JAXA on the same mission released a fleet of paper airplanes to see how that they might fare during a descent through Earth's atmosphere.
Physics has a long history of breakthroughs fueled by conceptual ambition. Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein could conceptualize problems and answers by building abstract models using the accurate symbology of math, or drawing upon artful metaphors to visualize the unknowable. As Lehrer has pointed out elsewhere, one of Niels Bohr's central insights was that the world of electrons was essentially a Cubist world.
Does the ability to learn come at a cost to health? According to Carl Zimmer at Science Times, that's the conclusion from research showing that for some animals, being smart doesn't equate with living longer. The big idea, as one biologist in the story suggests, is this:
Dr. Kawecki suspects that each species evolves until it reaches an equilibrium between the costs and benefits of learning. His experiments demonstrate that flies [which he has trained to associate some foods with nourishment and some with predators!] have the genetic potential to become significantly smarter in the wild. But only under his lab conditions does evolution actually move in that direction. In nature, any improvement in learning would cost too much.
That cost is measured in other ways as well. Using the example of human infants, which come into the world in an obvious state of helplessness, another researcher put it this way:
'We use computers with memory that’s almost free, but biological information is costly,' Dr. Dukas said. He added that the costs Dr. Kawecki documented were not smart animals’ only penalties. 'It means you start out in life being inexperienced,' Dr. Dukas said.
"Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter Isn’t Better" is well worth a few moments of your time.
In the latest in a series of terrific TED presentations filmed and posted to YouTube, particle physicist Brian Cox explains why the Large Hadron Collider matters.
Twelve particles of matter stuck together by four forces of nature interact in ways that have resulted in the mind and the eyes you are now using to read this post. To complete the mathematical equations in the Standard Model, which, as Cox says, elegantly describes why the sky is blue and could, given enough computing power, suggest why DNA is shaped the way it is, particle physicists want to uncover the Higgs Boson, which the last remaining undiscovered particle predicted by the Standard Model.
He concludes the 17 minute video with a three minute description of what particle physics means to him. Pointing to the stage props around him, he memorably says that everything from Saturn V rockets, to great literature to DNA to science itself "are the things that hydrogen atoms do when given 13.7 billion years." What's more, this narrative, which has only come into focus in the past fifty years, leaves him feeling privileged to be a part of this moment in history.
But to answer the question with which he begun, the LHC matters, he says, because it will write the next chapter of the creation story. Enjoy.
He’s one of five goats born on my central Kentucky farm about a month ago. I wouldn’t want him to hear this, but he’s not the cutest of the lot. That distinction belongs to Luna, one of the females. She’s petite, light brown with silky sprays of white on her flanks, and erect ears that make her look like a tiny donkey. She’s my daughter’s pet.
Truth is, they’re all pets, the two mother goats included. My family has the luxury of keeping goats on our eleven acres just because we want to. We don’t need the milk the mothers produce and, honestly, would probably be more than a little appalled to try drinking it. That’s how insulated we are from the rougher edges of rural living.
A log of fresh goat cheese—from nearby Capriole farm perhaps—nicely sealed in plastic? Sure!
In a brief post at Terra Nova, Ren Reynolds wonders what the societal impact will be of a generation of game players that self-identify as "gamers." Without providing any answers - are there any now? - I just thought it was an interesting question, as was the title of his blog post.
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