December 2010
The Caste Buster
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/magazine/02Striver-t.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
Umred was just another small town in the middle of nowhere, dusty and underwhelming. But Umred had begun to dream, townspeople told me, because of television, because of cousins with tales of call-center jobs and freedom in the city. Once Umred contracted ambition, blackouts became intolerable. A...
Another yet might be to remember and take to heart...
http://www.jstor.org./stable/pdfplus/27549022.pdf
American Culture, American Taste: Social Change...
http://www.amazon.com/American-Culture-Taste-Twentieth-Century/dp/B000WCNWNS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293828605&sr=8-1
In American Culture, American Tastes, Michael Kammen leads us on an entertaining, thought-provoking tour of America’s changing tastes, uses of leisure, and the shifting perceptions that have accompanied them throughout our nation’s history....
FIN-DE-SI?CLE AMERICA AND THE TWILIGHT OF CULTURE,...
http://www.jstor.org./stable/pdfplus/27549022.pdf
Kammen believes mass culture threatens to dominate, enervate, and homogenize life more pervasively and perniciously than all varieties of traditional popular culture that preceded it, and that we confuse them at our peril.
Entertainment has become “arguably the most pervasive, powerful and ineluctable force in our time,” Gabler...
This Year In Science →
hiremebecauseimsmart:
Dudes engineered macro-scale quantum behavior a la Schroedinger’s Cat
Neandertal genome sequenced
AIDS cure on the way?
a dozen rare diseases isolated in genome
quantum simulator — like a quantum processing unit
progress on protein folding
1,000 Genomes
RNA reprogramming
lab rat genomics
This Decade in Scientific Breakthroughs
junk DNA ≠ junk
The answer to the question “Why objectivity” lies...
A claim to objective knowledge is an absolute...
A Review of Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s...
http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/WQR/daston.pdf
Superstrings and experiment, Peter Galison
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hsdept/bios/docs/Theory_Bound.pdf
"Einstein, Poincaré & Modernity: a Conversation,"...
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay-einsteins-time.htm
Review of Peter Galison's "Image and Logic", by...
http://www.springerlink.com./content/x4gvl77166815365/fulltext.pdf
As for Einstein’s dissent from quantum mechanics,...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jun/14/the-other-einstein/?pagination=false&printpage=true
Remarkably, this is precisely where most current...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jun/14/the-other-einstein/?pagination=false&printpage=true
But for Einstein and others, who did not accept...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jun/14/the-other-einstein/?pagination=false&printpage=true
The key issue in the assessment of Einstein’s...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jun/14/the-other-einstein/?pagination=false&printpage=true
Einstein’s later work, beginning in the early...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jun/14/the-other-einstein/?pagination=false&printpage=true
GGD’s response:
Einstein’s Unified Field Theory Program
UGA’s Mathematical Physics seminar covered String Theory and its Applications to Algebraic Geometry in 2009-2010. We started with a review of General Relativity and my assignment was to cover Einstein’s Unified Field Theory...
First the young Einstein, the one who actually...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jun/14/the-other-einstein/?pagination=false&printpage=true
The Other Einstein, By Lee Smolin
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jun/14/the-other-einstein/?pagination=false&printpage=true
Among historians of science during the last...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2003/nov/06/clockwork-science/?pagination=false&printpage=true
The Honors Class: Hilbert's Problems and Their...
http://www.amazon.com/Honors-Class-Hilberts-Problems-Solvers/dp/1568812167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293818836&sr=8-1
In a memorable address given at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris in 1900, David Hilbert, perhaps the most respected mathematician of his time, developed a blueprint for mathematical research in the new century.
The collections of problems he...
Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps:Empires of...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2003/nov/06/clockwork-science/?pagination=false&printpage=true
A New Year's Resolution for the Rich, Sam Harris
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/a-new-years-resolution-fo_b_802480.html
11 years ago tonight my life changed forever when...
Wow. Just wow. I love you, too, and couldn't dream...
Einstein for the 21st Century: His Legacy in...
http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-21st-Century-Science-Culture/dp/0691135207/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293808982&sr=8-1
More than fifty years after his death, Albert Einstein’s vital engagement with the world continues to inspire others, spurring conversations, projects, and research, in the sciences as well as the humanities. Einstein for the 21st Century shows us why he remains a ...
Tolstoy’s What is Art?
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/tolstoy.html
Excerpts:
http://www.csulb.edu/~jvancamp/361r14.html
Cassius: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our...
All the World's a Stage
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing...
Not marble nor the guilded monuments (Sonnet 55)
Not marble nor the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme; But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. ‘Gainst death and...
Leaving Cockpit for Family
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/sports/autoracing/30motherhood.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print
In Europe, Mixing Union and Diversity
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/books/30book.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print
Troubles That Ring True for Women of a Certain Age
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/arts/television/27men.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print
The suspicion festers because the sensibility of the show is so genetically female, so catered to how women think men ought to live. Revolving around the relationship of three male friends with a long history, the series is warm, chatty, minutiae obsessed and almost hormonal in its swings from cool...
Shaping a Network With Oprah’s View
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/business/media/31oprah.html?pagewanted=print
“This network will be mind- and heart-food for people,” Ms. Winfrey said in an interview.
OWN is not just a symbolic move to cable from broadcast. It is also a bet by Ms. Winfrey and her backers at Discovery Communications that media will be more personalized in the future — beginning with a channel built around...
The Oxford Shakespeare, Edited by W. J. Craig, The...
http://www.bartleby.com/70/
The Harvard Classics & The Shelf of Fiction: ...
http://www.bartleby.com/hc/
Great Gooks-FREE!!
http://www.bartleby.com/
Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections...
http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html
THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparell’d in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5 It is not now as it hath been of yore;— Turn wheresoe’er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see...
Anyone who has not been buried in a vault for the...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0307377946/sr=8-1/qid=1293787504/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&qid=1293787504&sr=8-1
Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New...
http://www.amazon.com/Never-Say-Die-Myth-Marketing/dp/0307377946/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293787504&sr=8-1
Susan Jacoby, an unsparing chronicler of unreason in American culture, now offers an impassioned, tough-minded critique of the myth that a radically new old age—unmarred by physical or mental deterioration, financial problems, or intimate loneliness—awaits the huge baby...
Real Life Among the Old Old, By SUSAN JACOBY
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/opinion/31jacoby.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
Yet people my age and younger still pretend that old age will yield to what has long been our generational credo — that we can transform ourselves endlessly, even undo reality, if only we live right. “Age-defying” is a modifier that figures prominently in advertisements for everything from vitamins and...
All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics...
http://www.amazon.com/All-Things-Shining-Reading-Classics/dp/1416596151/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293786115&sr=8-1
In unrelenting flow of choices confronts us at nearly every moment of our lives, and yet our culture offers us no clear way to choose. This predicament seems inevitable, but in fact it’s quite new. In medieval Europe, God’s calling was a grounding force. In ancient Greece, a...
The Arena Culture, By DAVID BROOKS
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/opinion/31brooks.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
Dreyfus and Kelly start with Vico’s old idea that each age has its own lens through which people see the world. In the Middle Ages, for example, “people could not help but experience themselves as determined or created by God.” They assumed that God’s plans encompassed their lives the way we assume the...
Motivation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation
Motivation is the driving force which causes us to achieve goals. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but, theoretically, it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation. According to various theories, motivation may be rooted in a basic...
Flow
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29
Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.[1]
According to Csíkszentmihályi,...
Humanistic psychology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanistic_psychology
Humanistic psychology is a psychological perspective which rose to prominence in the mid-20th century, drawing on the work of early pioneers like Carl Rogers and the philosophies of existentialism and phenomenology. It adopts a holistic approach to human existence through investigations of meaning, values, freedom, tragedy, personal...
Happiness, life satisfaction, fulfillment and...
http://www.meaningandhappiness.com/
Debating Human Happiness, By Steven Pinker, Martin...
http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2072079
“The days that make us happy make us wise.” —John...
“The joyfulness of a man prolongeth his days.”...
“A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in...