I can't promise you can keep my interest, but I will, for as long as it takes me to not forget this is here, respond to your embarrassing obsession.
What did you want to say to me?
TESTEMONAIL: Right and Discordianism allows room for personal interpretation. You have your theories and I have mine. Unlike Christianity, Discordia allows room for ideas and opinions, and mine is well-informed and based on ancient philosophy and theology, so, my neo-Discordian friends, open your minds to my interpretation and I will open my mind to yours. That's fair enough, right? Just claiming to be discordian should mean that your mind is open and willing to learn and share ideas. You guys are fucking bashing me and your laughing at my theologies and my friends know what's up and are laughing at you and honestly this is my last shot at putting a label on my belief structure and your making me lose all hope of ever finding a ideological group I can relate to because you don't even know what the fuck I'm talking about and everything I have said is based on the founding principals of real Discordianism. Expand your mind.
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Show posts MenuQuoteSpinach is no longer just a superfood: By embedding leaves with carbon nanotubes, MIT engineers have transformed spinach plants into sensors that can detect explosives and wirelessly relay that information to a handheld device similar to a smartphone.
This is one of the first demonstrations of engineering electronic systems into plants, an approach that the researchers call "plant nanobionics."
"The goal of plant nanobionics is to introduce nanoparticles into the plant to give it non-native functions," says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the leader of the research team.
In this case, the plants were designed to detect chemical compounds known as nitroaromatics, which are often used in landmines and other explosives. When one of these chemicals is present in the groundwater sampled naturally by the plant, carbon nanotubes embedded in the plant leaves emit a fluorescent signal that can be read with an infrared camera. The camera can be attached to a small computer similar to a smartphone, which then sends an email to the user.
Quote"Warning — I'm going to say some things here that aren't politically correct."
Or, "Oh, I'd better be careful, I might upset the PC police."
Or, in response to a complaint about bigotry and discrimination and dehumanization, "They're just being politically correct, I'm so sick of all that PC nonsense."
I hear this a lot. I hear it from writers, speakers, politicians, commentators, comedians. And I don't just hear it from overtly douchey asshats. I also hear it from people who are generally smart, thoughtful, decent, and clearly wanting to do good.
I hear this a lot. And whenever I hear it, it's like a red flag. It's like a red flag attached to sirens and klaxons and flashing red lights. It's like a guy on the side of the road jumping around with a giant sign — a sign that says, "This person is about to say something incredibly screwed-up."
When you use the phrase "politically correct," here's what you're saying.
You're saying, "I want to be able to say things that are damaging — and I don't want to be held accountable for it."
You're saying, "I don't want to have to think very carefully about the things that I'm saying. I want to say whatever pops into my head — and I don't want to think about whether it's unfair, inaccurate, bigoted, or otherwise harmful."
You're saying, "I want to say whatever pops into my head — and I don't want to think about whether it perpetuates harmful tropes or stereotypes."
You're saying, "In particular, I want to say whatever pops into my head about people who've gotten the short end of the stick for centuries — and I don't want to think about whether the things I say are bashing them with that stick one more goddamn time."
You're saying, "When people speak up about bigotry and discrimination and dehumanization, I don't want to have to think about the actual content of what they're saying."
You're saying, "When people speak up about bigotry and discrimination and dehumanization, I'm not going to engage with the content of what they're saying — I'm just going to dismiss it wholesale."
You're saying, "When people speak up about bigotry and discrimination and dehumanization, I'm not only going to dismiss what they're saying — I'm going to trivialize the very idea of them speaking about it and asking people to change."
QuoteCommunicating science to people who aren't scientists is very hard to do well. Nassim Taleb should be very good at it, based on his enormous book sales and even more enormous opinion of his own skills. But we all have our demons, and Taleb has succumbed to his. Rather than encouraging a healthy discussion about science, he's picked a side and declared all-out war on the people who disagree with him. Taleb even admits that his strategy is to prevent conversations from happening by abusing and insulting people who question him, and encouraging his followers to join in. What's the point of that strategy? It doesn't help communicate science, resolve legitimate questions about the facts, or even address the supposedly evil motives of his critics. All it really does is feel good. Nassim Taleb has chosen self-gratification over real engagement. Let's talk about why that's unproductive and unethical.
Taleb has been kicking up the dust lately on Facebook and Twitter, encouraging his readers to not even listen to people who disagree with his beliefs about GMOs. I caught an edge of it when I saw his contemptuous remarks about a scientist I follow, Kevin Folta:
QuoteIf you think the headline of this blog is unnecessarily inflammatory, you are right. It's an ad hominem way to deal with public discourse, and it's unfair to Nassim Taleb, the New York University statistician and risk analyst. I'm using it to make a point–because it's Taleb himself who regularly invokes such ugly characterizations of others.
Taleb rocketed to seer and cult celebrity status after his 2007 book on extreme risk, The Black Swan, was followed serendipitously by the 2008 global market crash and Great Recession.
Taleb has recently become the darling of GMO opponents. He and four colleagues–Yaneer Bar-Yam, Rupert Read, Raphael Douady and Joseph Norman–wrote a paper, The Precautionary Principle (with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms, released last May and updated last month, in which they claim to bring risk theory and the Precautionary Principle to the issue of whether GMOS might introduce "systemic risk" into the environment. Taleb portrays GMOs as a 'castrophe in waiting'–and has taken to personally lashing out at those who challenge his conclusions–and yes, calling them "imbeciles" or paid shills.
QuoteWatching Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan and other books, engage on twitter, is like being ringside at a verbal boxing match with the intellectual equivalent of Clubber Lang, the snarling, contemptuous boxer played by Mr. T in Rocky 3. In the movie, Clubber Lang was so mean and nasty the performance was almost a parody.
When you see Taleb go ballistic on Twitter, as he often does, you wonder similarly if the guy is truly an angry asshole of the highest order, or if it's just some performance schtick by an egghead scholar trying to liven up his day. Then again, he can't seem to help himself: The guy did get into it one time with a parody Twitter account. As one observer noted:
Taleb has a propensity for being quite combative on Twitter, on topics ranging from bonds to GMOs, and Taleb will fight with just about anybody.
Yeah, you could say that again. Some people, such as the economist Noah Smith, make allowances for Taleb's bad behavior:QuoteNassim Taleb is a vulgar bombastic windbag, and I like him a lot.
But Taleb is more than just a venomous, preening, brawler. It's not enough for him to slug it out with real and imagined adversaries (including journalists). He has to smear their reputations with innuendo. I learned this myself when I engaged with Taleb some months ago. I saw that he was circulating a paper on GMOs and I asked to interview him. He declined and then asked:Quote!! RT @nntaleb: @keithkloor BTW do you get (indirect) funding from GMO corporations? Can you state this here (which is on the record)?
— keith kloor (@keithkloor) August 13, 2014
QuoteIt's a remarkable performance
QuoteIn July 1976, Tureaud's platoon sergeant punished him by giving him the detail of chopping down trees during training camp at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, but did not tell him how many trees, so Tureaud single-handedly chopped down over seventy trees from 6:30 am to 10:00 am, until a shocked major superseded the sergeant's orders.
QuoteIn 1987, he angered the residents of a Chicago suburb, Lake Forest, by cutting down more than a hundred oak trees on his estate. The incident is now referred to as The Lake Forest Chain Saw Massacre.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._T
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QuoteErik Sorto, 34, has been paralysed from the neck down for the past 13 years. However, thanks to a ground-breaking clinical trial, he has been able to smoothly drink a bottle of beer using a robotic arm controlled with a brain implant. He isn't the first patient to control an arm with a neural prosthetic device. But this represents the first time the implant was placed in a region of the brain thought to control the intention to perform movements, rather than the ensuing mechanics of movement. This difference created surprisingly natural movements and has the potential to work for multiple robotic limbs.
QuoteWe analyse the evolution of the online interactions held by college students and report on novel relationships between social structure and performance. Our results indicate that more frequent and intense social interactions generally imply better score for students engaging in them. We find that these interactions are hosted within a "rich-club", mediated by persistent interactions among high performing students, which is created during the first weeks of the course. Low performing students try to engage in the club after it has been initially formed, and fail to produce reciprocity in their interactions, displaying more transient interactions and higher social diversity. Furthermore, high performance students exchange information by means of complex information cascades, from which low performing students are selectively excluded. Failure to engage in the rich club eventually decreases these students' communication activity towards the end of the course.
QuoteIt behooves us to be cautious when particularly taken with any philosopher's claims, and to consider whether our reaction is due to the logic of his claim or due to the poetry of his words. A beautifully-phrased sentence is an accomplishment in oratory, not philosophy, and the pleasure we take from it should not be mistaken for truth.
The philosopher must be like the architect: to write well is important, but not more important than building an edifice that will not collapse. Some philosophers construct dwellings that seem pleasant to the eye, but are traps for the unwary.
QuoteThe vajankle – as its name suggests – is the unholy union of a vagina and an ankle... and it's as disturbing as it sounds.
Unless you have a serious foot fetish that is, in which case, we'd imagine, it's serious good times.
Sin boutique – the website selling them – explains: 'These quirky feet have a vagina built right in at the ankle!'
They go on: 'The vajankle is in the left foot only. You can order the vajankle independently, or as a pair with the standard right foot.'
QuoteThe smells instantly rushed back this week when London's water authority announced that it had discovered the biggest fatberg yet, a 15-ton mound about the size of a school bus. Thames Water, the public utility that manages the sewers, gave it the historic and oddly momentous title of being "the biggest berg in British history."