October 2009
Seven questions that keep physicists up at night -... →
How does complexity works ?
From the unpredictable behaviour of financial markets to the rise of life from inert matter, Leo Kadananoff, physicist and applied mathematician at the University of Chicago, finds the most engaging questions deal with the rise of complex systems. Kadanoff worries that particle physicists and cosmologists are missing an important trick if they only focus on...
“Finally someone has combined the inconvenience of the SLR form-factor with the...”
– Stu Maschwitz
on Red
Quantum Mechanics and the Paradoxes of... →
John Conway explains how quantum mechanics works.
3 tags
“Call me when your web app can interact with my other software, talk to my...”
– Andy Matuschak
on web apps.
ditto
patdryburgh:
Dear Tumblrers,
If I’m not following you, it’s because I’ve subscribed to you in my RSS Reader, where I will actually read what you have to say. It’s mostly photoblogs that I “follow” here.
Awkwardness averted.
Pat
“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the...”
– Andy Warhol
Spirit Of Ecstasy →
bestofwikipedia:
The Spirit of Ecstasy is the name of the hood ornament on Rolls-Royce cars. It is in the form of a woman leaning forwards with her arms outstretched behind and above her. The Spirit of Ecstasy carries with it a story about a secret passion between John Walter Edward Scott-Montagu and his secret love Eleanor Velasco Thornton, his secretary. (via @yjon)
“We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I...”
– W.H Auden
★ Regarding Joe Wilcox’s ‘iPhone Cannot Win the... →
John Gruber :
I try my best to shy away from the term “smartphone”, because I don’t know what it means exactly. There are already people calling the iPhone, Pre, and Android models “super smartphones”. What we’re talking about are handheld networked computing devices.
I call them magic wands.
Spread the word about the benefits of advertising... →
An interesting defense of advertising, if reframed as shaping behaviour around the object of desire.
There are two ways to improve a product: change its material properties or change the way consumers respond to it. Advertising works in the second way. In many cases it is fantastically successful. The pleasure of consuming some products, such as Chanel perfume and Nike trainers, is largely due...
“All it requires are photons, neurons and a great idea.”
– Rory Sutherland on the creation of symbolic value
“We are created sick and commanded to be well. Wishing that it was true, would be...”
– Christopher Hitchens, on religion
“In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement...”
– Oscar Wilde
“On Halloween, I make people pay me not to dress as Sean Connery
from ZARDOZ and...”
– Warren Ellis
“When a whale dies, it falls down through the ocean slowly, over the course of a...”
– Miranda July (via)
2 tags
