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How Quantum Suicide Works"
A man sits down before a gun, which is pointed at his head. This is no ordinary gun; it's rigged to a machine that measures the spin of a quantum particle. Each time the trigger is pulled, the spin of the quantum particle -- or quark -- is measured. Depending on the measurement, the gun will either fire, or it won't. If the quantum particle is measured as spinning in a clockwise motion, the gun will fire. Nervously, the man takes a breath and pulls the trigger. Go back in time to the beginning of the experiment. But, wait. This thought experiment is called quantum suicide.
7th Grader mimics Nature
13 year old copies Nature to Improve Solar Performance Thirteen year old Aidan Dwyer was walking in the woods in Upstate New York in the winter and noticed a spiral pattern to tree branches. Aidan realized the tree branches and leaves had a mathematical spiral pattern that could be shown as a fraction. After some research he also realized the mathematical fractions were the same numbers as the Fibonacci sequence. "On the oak tree, the Fibonacci fraction is 2/5, which means that the spiral takes five branches to spiral two times around the trunk to complete one pattern. Other trees with the Fibonacci leaf arrangement are the elm tree (1/2); the beech (1/3); the willow (3/8) and the almond tree (5/13) Aidan's backyard in Northport, NY. The 7th grader next wondered why nature used such a pattern? Aidan discovered that the Fibonacci pattern helps deciduous trees, in higher latitudes, efficiently track the Sun and collect the most sunlight even in the thickest forest, on the cloudiest days.
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Procrastination
The Misconception: You procrastinate because you are lazy and can’t manage your time well. The Truth: Procrastination is fueled by weakness in the face of impulse and a failure to think about thinking. Netflix reveals something about your own behavior you should have noticed by now, something which keeps getting between you and the things you want to accomplish. If you have Netflix, especially if you stream it to your TV, you tend to gradually accumulate a cache of hundreds of films you think you’ll watch one day. This is a bigger deal than you think. Take a look at your queue. Psychologists actually know the answer to this question, to why you keep adding movies you will never watch to your growing collection of future rentals, and it is the same reason you believe you will eventually do what’s best for yourself in all the other parts of your life, but rarely do. A study conducted in 1999 by Read, Loewenstein and Kalyanaraman had people pick three movies out of a selection of 24. Sources:
Infinite Ink: Writing and publishing about computing, mathematics, science, and philosophy
Placebo Buttons
The Misconception: All buttons placed around you do your bidding. The Truth: Many public buttons are only there to comfort you. You press the doorbell button, you hear the doorbell ring. You press the elevator button, it lights up. You press the button on the vending machine, a soft drink comes rattling down the chute. Your whole life, you’ve pressed buttons and been rewarded. The thing about buttons, though, is there seems to be some invisible magic taking place between the moment you press them down and when you get the expected result. Maybe there’s a man inside who pulls out the can of soda and puts it in the chute. You just don’t know, and that’s how conditioning works. The problem here is that some buttons in modern life don’t actually do anything at all. According to a 2008 article in the New Yorker, close buttons don’t close the elevator doors in many elevators built in the United States since the 1990s. Placebo buttons are a lot like superstitions, or ancient rituals. Sources:
Science
Politics Explained
FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk. PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all of the cows. BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. FASCISM: You have two cows. PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. PURE ANARCHY: You have two cows. LIBERTARIAN/ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. (Original source unknown . . . this version expanded and Illuminated by SJ.)
Technology News
Today's NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Aug. 28, #178
Bananas and Monkeys
Original source unknown. (But the story appears to have some basis in fact.) Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Now, put away the cold water. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water.
The Experience and Perception of Time
What is ‘the perception of time’? The very expression ‘the perception of time’ invites objection. Insofar as time is something different from events, we do not perceive time as such, but changes or events in time. But, arguably, we do not perceive events only, but also their temporal relations. Kinds of temporal experience There are a number of what Ernst Pöppel (1978) calls ‘elementary time experiences’, or fundamental aspects of our experience of time. Duration One of the earliest, and most famous, discussions of the nature and experience of time occurs in the autobiographical Confessions of St Augustine. Augustine's answer to this riddle is that what we are measuring, when we measure the duration of an event or interval of time, is in the memory. Whatever the process in question is, it seems likely that it is intimately connected with what William Friedman (1990) calls ‘time memory’: that is, memory of when some particular event occurred. The specious present Time order Φ-β-κ
Top 10 Schools of Philosophy
Miscellaneous Through history, various forms of philosophy have developed. Many have fallen by the wayside but a number have stuck. This is a list of the top 10 schools of philosophy. 10. Nothing exists; Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it can’t be communicated to others. - Gorgias (485-375 BC) Solipsism is the idea that one can only know that one’s self exists and that anything outside the mind, such as the external word, can not be known to exist. Solipsism is often associated with nihilism and materialism. 9. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. - Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Determinism is the philosophical theory that every event, including human cognition and behaviour, decision and action, is determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. 8. - John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) 7. - Epicurus (341-270 BC) 6. - Thomas H. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
