Discounting the future less
A bird in the hand In the absence of a conveniently pithy definition from elsewhere on the internet, to discount the future means to place… Read More »Discounting the future less
Search Results for: do it now
Neutrino Bombshell
Neutrinos… nicknamed ghost particles because of their uncanny properties… are the most abundant particles in the Universe — around 100 trillion pass harmlessly through your… Read More »Neutrino Bombshell
Steve Levitt on teaching, learning and having fun
So, there aren’t really any incentives to teach well [as an economics professor]. No one really cares how you teach. But what I quickly learned… Read More »Steve Levitt on teaching, learning and having fun
Technology (27): Cosmology, totems and resistance to technological change among the Yir-Yoront aboriginal people
… the totemic system serves very effectively in inhibiting radical cultural changes. The closed system of totemic ideas explaining and categorizing a well–known universe as… Read More »Technology (27): Cosmology, totems and resistance to technological change among the Yir-Yoront aboriginal people
Looking for the mouse: Clay Shirky on cognitive surplus
This is a transcript from a talk given in 2008, also featuring Gilligan’s Island and Gin… I was being interviewed by a TV producer to… Read More »Looking for the mouse: Clay Shirky on cognitive surplus
Hannah Arendt on labour and consumption, automation and Utopia
… the developments of the last decade, and especially the possibilities opened up through the further development of automation, give us reason to wonder whether… Read More »Hannah Arendt on labour and consumption, automation and Utopia
Not long ago; or, Little by little (10): Switzerland’s iodine revolution
At the turn of the 20th century, the Swiss were plagued by strange, interlinked medical conditions, which existed elsewhere to a degree, but in Switzerland… Read More »Not long ago; or, Little by little (10): Switzerland’s iodine revolution
Niels Bohr [via Werner Heisenberg] on breaking with Newton and the poetry of atoms
Heisenberg prefaces Physics and Beyond with the note that “needless to say, conversations cannot be reconstructed literally after several decades….” [Niels Bohr, as recalled Heisenberg]:… Read More »Niels Bohr [via Werner Heisenberg] on breaking with Newton and the poetry of atoms
Lesslie Newbigin on man’s contradictions
Lesslie Newbigin lived and worked in South India from 1936 to 1974, and originally wrote this in Tamil. Wherever and whenever we look at man,… Read More »Lesslie Newbigin on man’s contradictions
James Carse on culture as art
Not necessarily entirely true, but generative. Since culture is itself a poiesis, all of its participants are poietai—inventors, makers, artists, storytellers, mythologists. They are not,… Read More »James Carse on culture as art