February 2012
44 posts
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Why People Are Just Too Stupid for Democracy →
14-billion-years-later:
I hate politics. Now I have science on my side. It’s easily apparent that people are frequently delusional about their own intelligence, now a study shows that it’s not just their own character they’re mistaken about, but that of others too. This of course means that people are wholly incapable of selecting the best person to be a leader which in turn leads to mediocre...
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“Scientists do not trust what is intuitively obvious, because intuitively obvious...”
– Carl Sagan - Wonder and Skepticism. (via scipsy)
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“Blasphemy is a victimless crime.”
– Richard Dawkins
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I was thinking to post something about the latest people I got to know (on the internet, of course) who were particularly clever and interesting to me. So here we go.
James Randi, known as The Amazing Randi, magician and professional skeptic. I already knew his name because I read it on The Demon-Haunted World, the best book of Carl Sagan in my opinion. Anyway, the fact that he was a friend of...
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What the Higgs is going on?
exploringthecosmos:
People generally have an intuition for what mass* is, but no one quite understands it to the level that we would like. You can easily distinguish between an object that has little mass, say an ant, and an object that is very massive, like an elephant. The order of magnitude difference between the mass of an ant and an elephant is equivalent to that of the span of all masses...
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A Physics Interpretation of Your Boyfriends →
anticharm:
Where’s the girlfriend one? Anyway, damn right cosmology is the one you keep!! (Says the cosmologist.)
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LHC to run at 4 TeV per beam in 2012 →
anticharm:
It’s on! CERN decided today to go full throttle in 2012. This will be epic!
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Numbers
Studies have shown that accurate numbers aren’t any more useful than the ones you make up.
How many studies showed that?
Eighty-seven.
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Just found out that the Mayday signal derives from the french venez m’aider, meaning “come help me”. Not so mysterious after all.
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Illegal prime - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia →
cab1729:
An illegal prime is a prime number that represents information that it is forbidden to possess or distribute. One of the first illegal primes was discovered in 2001. When interpreted in a particular way, it describes a computer program that bypasses the digital rights management scheme used on DVDs. Distribution of such a program in the United States is illegal under the Digital...
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“Uncontrolled birth-rates are bound to lead to horribly increased death-rates. It...”
– Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (via mulattoalbinomosquitolibido)
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“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
– Christopher Hitchens (via sciencequotes)
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“The triumphs of science are due to the substitution of observation and inference...”
– ‘The impact of science on society’ by Bertrand Russell, p.89.
And a few pages above Russell write:
I am constantly asked: What can you, with your cold rationalism, offer to the seeker after salvation that is comparable to the cozy homelike comfort of a fenced-in dogmatic creed?
To this the...
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An Elementary Beginning to Elementary Particles
anticharm:
I have a problem. I hardly reread what I type, and tend to forget what has been discussed. So forgive me if I repeat myself, if I repeat myself, if I repeat myself. I typically just tell people that I like emphasizing different principles or factoids when I do this. I also like tying everything together, and in physics, everything does tie together for the most part. I’m telling you...
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From Observation to Insight: I wish homework... →
bloodredorion:
I wish homework wasn’t required, but suggested— That way if it’s easy for a student, the student doesn’t have to waste their time. I wish that classes encouraged you to think outside the box a little — Not punish you for solving a problem with a slightly different method, that still follows all…
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Who’s the scientist who most influenced you to go into science?
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