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How Texas Lost the World's Largest Super Collider

When the discovery of the last particle in the Standard Model of physics, the Higgs boson, was announced in the spring of 2012 many physicists, afflicted by an anxiety special to their profession, soon began hedging that same announcement. Most were reluctant to claim outright that what they’d…

11 years ago

When psychologists become builders - Vol. 25, Part 8 ( August 2012)

thepsychologist.org.uk

I have managed to use Lego in a professional capacity – mostly in assessment exercises, but also as the basis for a spatial reasoning test. These isolated moments represent the high points of my practice. Everything else is dull and monochrome by comparison. Alan Redman (Current Chair of the British…

11 years ago

Finding the Higgs Leads to More Puzzles

nytimes.com

Near the end of “The Tempest,” in what has been taken as Shakespeare’s farewell speech, the sorcerer Prospero breaks his staff and declares, “Our revels now are ended.” And he goes on: “These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air: and ...leave not a…

11 years ago

Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong

theatlantic.com

Here's a pocket history of the web, according to many people. In the early days, the web was just pages of information linked to each other. Then along came web crawlers that helped you find what you wanted among all that information. Some time around 2003 or maybe 2004, the social web really kicked…

11 years ago

For Influential Content Marketing, Go Beyond Your Brand Fans

contentmarketinginstitute.com

At most of the events I attend, I rarely get to see other people speak. Often, I’m shuttled in to do a keynote or workshop, and then quickly leave for the next event. Last week was different. I had the pleasure of seeing Scott Stratten ( @unmarketing ) speak at the 2012 DMA Annual Conference . Scott…

11 years ago

The Simple Trick to Achieving Your Goals

blog.idonethis.com

In the last six months, I’ve experimented with a simple strategy that has improved my work and my health. Using this one basic idea, I’ve made consistent progress on my goals every single week — without incredible doses of willpower or remarkable motivation . I want to share how I use this strategy…

11 years ago

Non opprimere i figli con l'idea della scuola (N. Ginzburg)

interruzioni.com

Al rendimento scolastico dei nostri figli, siamo soliti dare un'importanza che è del tutto infondata. E anche questo non è se non rispetto per la piccola virtù del successo. Dovrebbe bastarci che non restassero troppo indietro agli altri, che non si facessero bocciare agli esami; ma noi non ci…

11 years ago

I morti - La Rivista Intelligente

larivistaintelligente.it

Da bambina adoravo i morti. A casa di mio padre erano laici e sabaudi e sarcastici fino al midollo, dunque anche i santi erano morti, e la prima ricorrenza spariva risucchiata nel cupo realismo della seconda. Ci vediamo dopo i morti, si diceva, e anche Aspettiamo i morti a tirare fuori i cappotti.…

11 years ago

L’ingegner Rachid, Hafid e la filosofia | Ilda Curti

ildacurti.it

Rachid si è laureato oggi in ingegneria civile. I portici della citta, e tutti noi con loro, sono abituati a vedere lui e i suoi fratelli. Simpatici, buffi, un po’ paraculi. Intelligenti e scanzonati vendono accendini, braccialettini di cotone, sciarpe pashmina-finta che Abdul mi vende a dispetto…

11 years ago

Pocahontas (1995) : être femme et indienne chez Disney | Le cinéma est politique

lecinemaestpolitique.fr

Pocahontas et Mulan , sortis respectivement en 1995 et 1998, sont souvent décrits comme une tentative de la part de Disney de réagir aux accusations de racisme, notamment dans Aladdin et Le Roi Lion , et de sexisme, notamment dans La Petite Sirène et La Belle et Le Bête . Tous deux des succès…

11 years ago

Il y a 75 ans, le Nobel de physique récompensait… une incroyable erreur | Passeur de sciences

passeurdesciences.blog.lemonde.fr

5.66k Shares Share on Facebook 5.66k Tweet Lundi 7 octobre s’ouvre la grande parade annuelle des prix Nobel , avec la catégorie « physiologie ou médecine ». Suivront la physique (le 8 octobre), la chimie (le 9), la littérature (le 10), la paix (le 11) et les sciences économiques (le 14). 2013 est…

11 years ago

How Google Converted Language Translation Into a Problem of Vector Space Mathematics | MIT Technology Review

technologyreview.com

Computer science is changing the nature of the translation of words and sentences from one language to another. Anybody who has tried BabelFish or Google Translate will know that they provide useful translation services but ones that are far from perfect. The basic idea is to compare a corpus of…

11 years ago

What I would have written • Dustin Curtis

dcurt.is

September 25, 2013 What I would have written I’ve been thinking about this damn essay for about a year, but I haven’t written it because Twitter is so much easier than writing, and I have been enormously tempted to just tweet it, so instead of not writing anything, I’m just going to write about what…

11 years ago

How 'Flipping' the Classroom Can Improve the Traditional Lecture | Teaching and Learning Excellence

tle.wisc.edu

Share this This is from the Chronicle of Higher Education and discusses how instructors are reinventing the lecture. A number of faculty across our own campus are exploring these approaches, and I look forward to hearing what they have learned regarding implementation and the sorts of student…

11 years ago

wait but why: Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy

waitbutwhy.com

Say hi to Lucy. Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y. I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group—I call them Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A…

11 years ago

Escaping the Cycle of Scarcity

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work. “Scarcity” is a new book that does something that I didn’t think possible: it says something new about why people are poor — and what to do about it. Here’s what’s not new: Poor people have more self-destructive habits than middle-class…

11 years ago

Il racconto di Domenico Quirico “Io, tra bombe, fughe e umiliazioni”

lastampa.it

L a notte era dolce come il vino: l’8 aprile ad al Qusayr, Siria, per raccontare un altro capitolo della guerra siriana, dove la Primavera della rivoluzione sembrava poter durare per sempre e capovolgere il mondo. E invece sono stati 152 giorni di prigionia, piccole camere buie dove combattere…

11 years ago

Backreaction: The Limits of Science

backreaction.blogspot.com

There’s been some buzz going through the blogosphere, following an essay by Steven Pinker on “Scientism” . On the one side of the debate are those who believe scientism is a higher state of consciousness, and on the other side those who think it’s a scientifically transmitted disease with a…

11 years ago

A Brief History of the Hashtag, and Other Unusual Punctuation Marks

newyorker.com

In his new book, “ Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks ,” Keith Houston reveals the stories behind esoteric punctuation marks, from the pilcrow (¶) to the manicule (☞) to the octothorpe, a.k.a. the hashtag. Many of these have their roots in ancient…

11 years ago

The One Question You Must Ask Before You Invest

forbes.com

The most striking finding in behavioral finance is how astonishingly overconfident most investors are. This would be trivial if they were playing Monopoly , but becomes tragic when investors play with real money and their futures hang in the balance. Extreme, soul-chastening circumspection is called…

11 years ago

Instagram and self-esteem: Why the photo-sharing network is even more depressing than Facebook. - Slate Magazine

slate.com

You know you want this life. Photo by Soft_Light/iStockphoto It’s a truism that Facebook is the many-headed frenemy, the great underminer. We know this because science tells us so. The Human–Computer Institute at Carnegie Mellon has found that your “passive consumption” of your friends’ feeds and…

11 years ago

Why Don't We Teach Students How to Learn?

priceonomics.com

Everyone remembers spending days studying for college exams only to have forgotten all the material by the next semester. So what is the point of taking the classes and working so hard? That is the question taken up by physics PhD student Mark Eichenlaub on Quora in response to the question, "Do…

11 years ago

Di guerre e giornalismo, nel 2013 | Il Post

ilpost.it

Mi ha infine scritto. Cioè: dopo oltre un anno, un attacco di tifo e un proiettile al ginocchio, ha visto la televisione, il mio direttore, e ha pensato che l’italiana rapita fossi io, e mi ha infine scritto. Mi ha scritto: ma se hai internet, non è che twitti il sequestro? Cioè, poi uno torna la…

11 years ago

Instagram Video and the Death of Fantasy - NYTimes.com

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Over the weekend, I went to a sunset picnic on a rooftop in Brooklyn. The evening couldn’t have been more picturesque — a group of stylish women chatting and lounging on blankets, framed against a lavender and glittering cityscape. I pulled out my phone to capture the moment. I opened Instagram,…

11 years ago