30 MAY 2016 by ideonexus
The Universe is a Dark Forest for Civilization
The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eli... 1 
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notes30 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
The Violent Past of Otzi and Kennewick Man
In 1991 two hikers stumbled upon a corpse poking out of a melting glacier in the Tyrolean Alps. Thinking that it was the victim of a skiing accident, rescue workers jackhammered the body out of the ice, damaging his thigh and his backpack in the process. Only when an archaeologist spotted a Neolithic copper ax did people realize that the man was five thousand years old.2
Ötzi the Iceman, as he is now called, became a celebrity. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine and has been the subje... 1 notes
notes18 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
The Gevulot
‘It’s a nice thought.’ He offers her his hand. ‘I am Paul. I got a little lost: all those moving streets. I was hoping you could tell me the way out.’
A trickle of emotion bleeds through his rough visitor’s gevulot: a sense of unease, a weight, a guilt. Xuexue can imagine the old man of the sea sitting on his back. It feels very familiar. And suddenly it is more important to talk to the stranger than to smile at the robot.
‘Sure I can,’ she says. ‘But why don’t you stay for a little while? ... 1 notes
notesA device that provides privacy protection with anyone you interact with real or virtual.
02 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Imperialism and Feudalism are Mountains Weighing Down the...
There is an ancient Chinese fable called "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains". It tells of an old man who lived in northern China long, long ago and was known as the Foolish Old Man of North Mountain. His house faced south and beyond his doorway stood the two great peaks, Taihang and Wangwu, obstructing the way. With great determination, he led his sons in digging up these mountains hoe in hand. Another greybeard, known as the Wise Old Man, saw them and said derisively, "How silly ...Folksonomies: government revolution
Folksonomies: government revolution
1 notes
notesThe Chinese overthrew kings just as Americans and Europeans did.
11 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
How China and the West May Compliment One Another
The distinctive merit of our civilization, I should say, is the scientific method; the distinctive merit of the Chinese is a just conception of the ends of life. It is these two that one must hope to see gradually uniting.
Lao-Tze describes the operation of Tao as "production without possession, action without self-assertion, development without domination." I think one could derive from these words a conception of the ends of life as reflective Chinese see them, and it must be admitted that...
1 The West has science, which is the essence of rationality, while China has the ethics, an outlook on life that cherishes knowledge and happiness over material gains.
16 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
The Joy of Being Wrong
It does happen. I have previously told the story of a respected
elder statesman of the Zoology Department at Oxford when I was
an undergraduate. For years he had passionately believed, and
taught, that the Golgi Apparatus (a microscopic feature of the
interior of cells) was not real: an artefact, an illusion. Every
Monday afternoon it was the custom for the whole department to
listen to a research talk by a visiting lecturer. One Monday, the
visitor was an American cell biologist who presente...Dawkins describes a professor being convinced that he was wrong about something for many years and being thankful for convincing to the truth.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Sifting Through Photographs of Our Ancestors to See Evolu...
Find a picture of yourself. Now take a picture of your father and place it on top. Then find a picture of his father, your grandfather. Then place on top of that a picture of your grandfather's father, your great-grandfather. You may not have ever met any of your great-grandfathers. I never met any of mine, but I know that one was a country schoolmaster, one a country doctor, one a forester in British India, and one a lawyer, greedy for cream, who died rock-climbing in old age. Still, even if...A great thought-experiment that takes us all the way back to when our ancestor was a fish, but shows us that the neighbors of any ancestor looked identical.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Utnapashtim Origin of the Story of Noah's Ark
The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest stories ever written. Older than the legends of the Greeks or the Jews, it is the ancient heroic myth of the Sumerian civilization, which flourished in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago. Gilgamesh was the great hero king of Sumerian myth - a bit like King Arthur in British legends, in that nobody knows whether he actually existed, but lots of stories were told about him. Like the Greek hero Odysseus (Ulysses) and the Arabian he... 1 notes
notesThe Sumerian legend is clearly where the Old Testament gets its version of the story.
07 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
A Young Professor Plank
There is a story that once, not long after he came to Berlin, Planck forgot which room had been assigned to him for a lecture and stopped at the entrance office of the university to find out. Please tell me, he asked the elderly man in charge, 'In which room does Professor Planck lecture today?' The old man patted him on the shoulder 'Don't go there, young fellow,' he said 'You are much too young to understand the lectures of our learned Professor Planck'. 1 notes
notesAn amusing anecdote.
25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
The Parable of the Alchemist
And if again he descend to the consideration of those arts which are deemed curious rather than safe, and look more closely into the works of the alchemists or the magicians, he will be in doubt perhaps whether he ought rather to laugh over them or to weep. For the alchemist nurses eternal hope and when the thing fails, lays the blame upon some error of his own; fearing either that he has not sufficiently understood the words of his art or of his authors (whereupon he turns to tradition and a... 1 notes
notesAlchemists blame themselves when their experiments bare no fruit, but in the effort, they explore the natural world.
