Quotes Tagged "science"

Was ist Wahnsinn ? Die Vernunft eines Einzelnen. Was ist Vernunft ? Der Wahnsinn vieler.

The difference between 495 and 620 nanometres on the length of a light wave is the difference between blue and red. The difference between 54 and 56 kilos of uranium is the difference between a very toxic paperweight and a nuclear explosion. Pg 298

Computers are ridiculous. So is science in general. CHURCH_TURING Thesis, Theodore Rosak Version This view is prevalent among certain people who see in anything smacking of numbers or exactitude a threat to human values. It is too bad that they do not appreciate the depth and complexity and beauty involved in exploring abstract structures sch as the human mind, where, indeed, one comes in intimate contact with the ultimate questions of what to be human is.

I don't believe in the glory and the dream. I believe in statistics.

Combat anime.

Eventually the potato's undeniable advantages over grain would convert all of northern Europe, but outside of Ireland the process was never anything less than a struggle. ... Louis (XVI) hatched an ingenious promotional scheme. He ordered a field of potatoes planted on the royal grounds and then posted his most elite guard to protect the crop during the day. He sent the guards home at midnight, and in due course the local peasants, suddenly convinced of the crop's value, made off in the night with the royal tubers.

This universality of physical laws tells us that if we land on another planet with a thriving alien civilization, they will be running on the same laws that we have discovered and tested here on Earth—even if the aliens harbor different social and political beliefs. Furthermore, if you wanted to talk to the aliens, you can bet they don’t speak English or French or even Mandarin. Nor would you know whether shaking their hands—if indeed their outstretched appendage is a hand—would be considered an act of war or of peace. Your best hope is to find a way to communicate using the language of science.

That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school—we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated. Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition. In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists... You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

Only three of the naturally occurring elements were manufactured in the big bang. The rest were forged in the high-temperature hearts and explosive remains of dying stars, enabling subsequent generations of star systems to incorporate this enrichment, forming planets and, in our case, people. For many, the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements is a forgotten oddity—a chart of boxes filled with mysterious, cryptic letters last encountered on the wall of high school chemistry class. As the organizing principle for the chemical behavior of all known and yet-to-be-discovered elements in the universe, the table instead ought to be a cultural icon, a testimony to the enterprise of science as an international human adventure conducted in laboratories, particle accelerators, and on the frontier of the cosmos itself.

Natural selection has a new aspect, one that is psychological denial. Such denial where the “individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the truth even though society as a whole, which he is apart, suffers”.

With only one proton in its nucleus, hydrogen is the lightest and simplest element, made entirely during the big bang. Out of the ninety-four naturally occurring elements, hydrogen lays claim to more than two-thirds of all the atoms in the human body, and more than ninety percent of all atoms in the cosmos, on all scales, right on down to the solar system. Hydrogen in the core of the massive planet Jupiter is under so much pressure that it behaves more like a conductive metal than a gas, creating the strongest magnetic field among the planets.

The element carbon can be found in more kinds of molecules than the sum of all other kinds of molecules combined. Given the abundance of carbon in the cosmos—forged in the cores of stars, churned up to their surfaces, and released copiously into the galaxy—a better element does not exist on which to base the chemistry and diversity of life. Just edging out carbon in abundance rank, oxygen is common, too, forged and released in the remains of exploded stars. Both oxygen and carbon are major ingredients of life as we know it.

Funny isn't it? The power of story. It's why I picked up a pen. I slay monsters, too.

অন্য সব প্রাণীর মত মানুষেরও প্রাথমিক চাহিদা খাদ্য, বাসস্থান আর বংশবৃদ্ধি। কিন্তু চতুর্থ আর একটা কারণের জন্য মানুষ অন্যদের থেকে আলাদা হয়েছে- জিজ্ঞাসা। চাঁদ পৃথিবী থেকে কতটা দূরে তা নিয়ে বাঘের কোন মাথাব্যাথা নেই। প্রজাপতি বা গণ্ডার কোনদিন অভিকর্ষ নিয়ে চিন্তা করেছে বলে জানা যায় না। কিন্তু মানুষ করেছে। বনে কেন আগুন লাগে, চাকা কেন গড়ায়, পাখি কেন ওড়ে, মাছ কেন জলে থাকে ইত্যাদি নানা জিজ্ঞাসা চিরটাকাল মানুষকে জ্বালিয়ে এসেছে, আরও কত জ্বালাবে কে জানে? মানুষ এই সব প্রশ্নের উত্তর খুঁজতে চেয়েছে, বেশ কিছু খুঁজেও পেয়েছে, আর পেয়ে নিজেকে মোটামুটি জ্ঞানী বলেই মনে করে; যদিও এই বিশ্বের শতকরা ৯৬ ভাগই তাঁর অজানা। তাই সেই জিজ্ঞাসার শেষ আজও হয় নি। আমাদের স্কুল- কলেজ আর সাধারণ জ্ঞান বইগুলো বেশ মজার। তাঁরা আমাদের এই জিজ্ঞাসার উত্তর দিতে চেষ্টা করে, এবং অনেক ক্ষেত্রেই ভুল উত্তর দেয়। আর আমরাও ছাপার অক্ষর পরম ব্রহ্ম মেনে তাঁদের ধ্রুবসত্য হিসেবে মেনে চলি।

Tech StartUp is Innovation War(Awesome one) and Innovation is Everything and Everything is Software!

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, less than half of us get the annual flu vaccine, even though each year in the United States the flu kills up to twenty thousand people and lands over one hundred thousand in the hospital, and the vaccine can typically prevent or at least soften the blow of the virus if it’s contracted. In a bad year, when the flu is especially virulent, up to sixty thousand people in the United States will die if they are unvaccinated. Tens of thousands of Americans perish in car crashes each year, and more than half of those people weren’t wearing seat belts. Nearly a quarter of teenagers in fatal accidents are distracted by their cell phones; every day eleven teenagers die as a result of texting while driving (car crashes are the leading cause of death of teens in the United States). And vanity must trump sanity when it comes to tanning: more than 3.5 million individuals are diagnosed with skin cancer yearly and nearly ten thousand of them die. Today one in five deaths in the United States is now associated with obesity. Over the two-year period of the Ebola virus “outbreak,” there was one U.S. death. So, indeed, éclairs are scarier than Ebola.

There is no time to discuss the fact that this horrible, horrible system is not working, or to assert that we are neither criminals or machines. There are only endless medication orders, given by exhausted people with nobody better than us to depend on.

When reeling a fish in to not simply feel “the power of wildness intimately but the same time recognize the right of that wildness to continue”.

The highest faith there is, is faith in objective reality.

The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.