From past stupidity to future intelligence: Stephen Hawking speaks, not without irony, about AI at the new Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge. From his remarks: We spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let’s face it, is mostly the history of stupidity. So it is a welcome change that people [...]
Adding to life, in physics or metaphysics: does the number of years constitute our goal, or the vitality of the years? Physicist: ... without getting out my microscope, I judge that life is a finer thing than death, and I award the golden apple to life, seeing them both with their clothes on. Metaphysician: And I [...]
From Greece to China, with kouros: the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an may have found their footing through Greek artisans who migrated to China, a hypothesis supported by genetic research. From the article: A separate study shows European-specific mitochondrial DNA has been found at sites in China's western-most Xinjiang Province, suggesting that Westerners may have settled, lived [...]
The Convergence of the Twain (Lines on the loss of the "Titanic"): a poet meditates on the fateful meeting of science, ambition, and nature I In a solitude of the sea Deep from human vanity, And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she. II Steel chambers, late the pyres Of her [...]
Death by technology: how living with technology deprives us of silence, inwardness, and the ability to find the well-springs of life. And this condition has its own, overlooked history. From the article: The English Reformation began, one recalls, with an assault on the monasteries, and what silence the Protestants didn’t banish the philosophers of the Enlightenment [...]
The 17th-C. plague in London: now we know. How DNA (and Daniel Defoe) reveal the killer bacteria's identity in one of history's longest cold cases. From the article: Testing in Germany confirmed the presence of DNA from the Yersinia pestis bacterium - the agent that causes bubonic plague - rather than another pathogen. Some authors have previously questioned the [...]
The scientist, the thinker, and the artist: seeking truth though facts, ideas, and the shared but secret vision of humanity. A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. And art itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice [...]
In an recent study, Norwegian researchers funded by Microsoft discovered that using a pen stimulated more cerebral activity than typing on a computer. Drawing words makes the brain more prone to learning. From the article: Inspired by previous studies that suggested long-hand notetaking using a pen deepens the mind’s ability to retain and process information, van der [...]
Civilization's tricky situation: as we enter the autumnal season, the shadow self would be heard, as the gateway to introspection. Here history and imagination are in play. The so-called civilized man has forgotten the trickster. He remembers him only figuratively and metaphorically, when, irritated by his own ineptitude, he speaks of fate playing tricks on him [...]
The costs of learning: prudent parents have thought of better investments than financing the studies of their children I am thinking of something I heard in Bologna, where I was a student, from a certain honorable citizen, the father of a legal scholar, who told me more than once that there was nothing he regretted as much [...]
