“
In my one-day course, I show 3 rare books: a 1570 Euclid, a 1613 Galileo, and a 1704 Newton. Then my assistant carries each book, open to the title page, around the room so people can get a close look. We had a problem with people wanting to touch the pages of the wonderful books; and a few people would sulk if told they could not touch the pages. So now my assistant pointedly wears white cloth gloves while showing the books to signal that they should not be touched.
That is, unobtrusive instructions at point of use.
” — “Whites gloves = Don’t touch,” Edward Tufte, 6 March 2004Lera Boroditsky (Professor of Psychology, Stanford) talks about the old “does language determine how we think” question on Edge. Conducting experiments with the Kuuk Thaayorre, an Aboriginal people in northern Australia, she finds some remarkable things.
The Kuuk Thaayorre have an extraordinary sense of space. In their language, they speak not of turning left, right, ahead, or back, but about going north, south, east, or west—something they seem to do at all times and in all conditions (e.g., even if you blindfolded, spun, and then led them into your parents’ basement).
To test the theory empirically, Boroditsky showed her subjects a set of cards depicting “a man aging, a crocodile growing, or a banana being eaten.” English speakers arrange the cards from left to right. Speakers of Hebrew, from right to left. The Kuuk Thaayorre, on the other hand, reliably arranged the cards from east to west:
The Kuuk Thaayorre did not arrange the cards more often from left to right than from right to left, nor more toward or away from the body…Instead of arranging time from left to right, they arranged it from east to west. That is, when they were seated facing south, the cards went left to right. When they faced north, the cards went from right to left. When they faced east, the cards came toward the body and so on. This was true even though we never told any of our subjects which direction they faced. The Kuuk Thaayorre not only knew that already (usually much better than I did), but they also spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time.
That’s neat!
Faces of
monkeysapes.Capture of a page from James Mollison website (photographer) that has caught my attention by its visual power. Amazing, worth to take a look to the interactive page to see the details of each one of the faces. Good job.
(via wnycradiolab)
“If you want to go quickly go alone, if you want to go far go together.”
— African proverb (via brumieruss)
“The patients loved us for what we told them, not for what we could do for them.” — —Charles Janeway, Jr.
A useful trick for YouTube nerds: Deep linking. A weird name for a simple idea: Linking to a specific time point in a YouTube video. Here’s how it works.
Say you are watching the YouTube video where David Letterman is interviewing Borat Sagdiyev. You see that the address is,
Now say you want to show your friend the part where Borat high fives David Letterman. This happens at 1 minute and 6 seconds—but how do you get there?
Well, to the end of the address type &t=1m6s like this,
If you wanted to start the video at 2 minutes and 9 seconds, you would type &t=2m9s like this,
Now, you can send the web address in an email (or put it into a website) so that when a person clicks the link, it goes to the exact time. Nice!
via www.number27.org
“Formerly the self-reliant man looked inside himself for strength to accept the inevitable. Now he looked inside himself for strength to shape the possible.” — The American Virtue – a reading list of classics on self-reliance — In Character, A Journal of Everyday Virtues by the John Templeton Foundation
“The act of creation is maybe the most frictive thing going. Using the stuff is meant to be frictionless, but making it isn’t. And their happiness comes from friction. Most happiness probably comes from friction.” —
—Devin Friedman
An undergraduate tries a hard and unfamiliar computer course. | Harvard Magazine Mar-Apr 2011
“Writing is easy. Just put a piece of paper in the typewriter and start bleeding.” —
—Thomas Wolfe
Yale expert Fred Shapiro’s pick of choice Harvard quotations | Harvard Magazine Mar-Apr 2011
“I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce, and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry, and Porcelaine.” —
—John Adams, May 1780
Yale expert Fred Shapiro’s pick of choice Harvard quotations | Harvard Magazine Mar-Apr 2011
“Rituals are about transformation, the crossing of a threshold, and in the case of the bedside exam, the transformation is the cementing of the doctor-patient relationship, a way of saying: “I will see you though this illness. I will be with you through thick and thin.” It is paramount that doctors not forget the importance of this ritual.” —
—Abraham Verghese
From Treat the patient, not the CT scan in the NYT