via 3 Quarks Daily: Natalie Wolchover in Quanta
![[No Caption]](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/WylieBeckert_RamseyTheory_1K.jpg)
With a surprising new proof, two young mathematicians have found a bridge across the finite-infinite divide, helping at the same time to map this strange boundary.
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via Boing Boing: Paul Brown, Free Software Foundation Europe
Software Heritage is an initiative that has made preserving software its main mission. Why is this important? Consider, if you will, the case of Gary Kildall's video game...
Legend has it that Gary Kildall, forefather of the modern personal operating system, created the first video game ever to run on the first microprocessor, the 4004, manufactured by a then fledgling company called Intel. He ran his game off a computer he had built around the chip mounted into a briefcase. Kildall would lug his case-computer to meetings (along with a 30-kilo teletype), run the game, and demo the hardware's features to prospective clients.
This happened back in the early seventies, still living memory for many of us. The chip has been preserved for posterity as the iconic device it is. But what happened to Kildall's game? Kildall himself died in 1994 and the game, along with much of his early code, has since been lost. We don't even know what the game-play was like.
What could we have learnt from the work of one of the most brilliant minds of contemporary computer history? What other valuable code has disappeared, carelessly overwritten, summarily erased, or fading away as the magnetic layer on an old floppy disk gradually degrades into dust?
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A second look at the poetry of T. S. Eliot
via Arts & Letter Daily: Marjorie Perloff in The Weekly Standard
This long-awaited critical edition of T. S. Eliot’s poems is a scholarly milestone, a watershed in publishing history. The elaborate notes Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue have provided for each line – indeed, each word – of each and every Eliot poem are so informative and the overviews for each stage of Eliot’s career contain so much of the poet's own germane commentary that one can now trace Eliot’s poetic development using no further aids than these two volumes.
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via 3 Quarks Daily: Amira Nowaira in The Guardian
It’s astonishing to read about the freedom of expression afforded to Muslims in the 10th century, in contrast to our own times.
Freethinking is perhaps not one of the strongest suits of modern Islam. For one thing, the list of books that have been banned for challenging prevalent religious orthodoxies and sensibilities during the past hundred years is disconcertingly long.
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via OUP Blog by A.M. Glazer
Walking home from school at about the age of seven or eight I picked up a pebble and dashed it to the ground. It split into two and I saw that inside was a series of coloured bands. Thus begun my lifelong fascination with the world of crystals, and this led eventually to having the opportunity to work professionally in this field. Many years ago I used to have my occupation ‘crystallographer’ on my passport: this often meant a long and sometimes tedious discussion with airport immigration officials. Eventually I changed it to ‘physicist’ as then I didn’t have to explain myself.
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via The National Archives Blog by David Gill
While many of us are no doubt aware of the successes of the British motoring industry in the 20th century, it’s easy to forget that at one point the UK was home to the major manufacturers of miniature toy cars as well.
The names of some of these – such as Spot On and Budgie – are all but forgotten now, but in the 1960s the big three of Matchbox by Lesney, Dinky by Mecanno and Corgi by Mettoy were the world leaders in their field. Of these three, Mettoy and their Corgi range were perhaps the company with the most interesting history, which itself we find recorded in several documents at The National Archives.
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via Big Think by Robby Berman
We know the necessary building blocks were all here, but the question of what made life actually happen on earth is one of the most compelling scientific questions there are. Was it a quick freak event in some muck somewhere? Ancient astronauts? God? A NASA scientist now says it may have been an extended barrage of intense solar flares that triggered a planet-warming – and life-supporting – greenhouse effect.
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via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
In Global proliferation of cephalopods a paper in Current Biology, an esteemed group of marine biologists reports that the population of octopuses (and other cephalopods) is booming thanks to its ability to adapt quickly to ocean acidification and temperature change, which is killing off other types of marine life at alarming rates.
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via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Kaplamino made this delightful Rube Goldberg-esque demo using magnets and steel balls.
See it here
Warning: it is addictive watching those little balls moving around.
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via 3 Quarks Daily: Jess Denham in The Independent
William Shakespeare at work in his study circa 1610 (original artist A H Payne) Getty Images
The Bard ran the gamut of human experience in his comedies, tragedies and sonnets, musing on life’s joys and sorrows and masterfully crafting words into timeless morsels of wisdom. From laying bare the futility of our existence in Macbeth (“a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”) and preaching the importance of integrity in Hamlet (“this above all; to thine own self be true”) to warning of speaking without thought in King Lear (“mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes”) and urging us to take control of our dreams in Julius Caesar (“it is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves”, Shakespeare’s grasp on the English language is arguably still peerless. Romantics and realists alike turn to his words on love for guidance through a realm of that baffles us all; parents drawn upon his cautions when bringing up their children; those in need of a moral compass find one in the pages of his plays; and “neither a borrower nor a lender be” remains the best excuse when your friend requests a bailout.
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via OUP Blog by Umut Özsu
The 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement has long been regarded as a watershed – a pivotal episode in the history of the Middle East with far-reaching implications for international law and politics. A product of intense diplomacy between Britain and France at the height of the First World War, this secret agreement was intended to pave the way for the final dissolution of Ottoman power in the region.
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via Big Think by Brandon Weber
Scientists have previously found that other primate species express vocalizations when eating – bonobos and chimpanzees – but now they’ve recorded the sounds of gorillas doing the same. In the other species, those sounds changed based on what was being eaten, how much, and who could hear them. Also, in bonobos and chimpanzees, everybody joins in on the mealtime songs, but gorillas have a different social structure and therefore, a different set of needs around meals and such.
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Why Spinoza still matters
via 3 Quarks Daily: Steven Nadler in Aeon
In July 1656, the 23-year-old Bento de Spinoza was excommunicated from the Portuguese-Jewish congregation of Amsterdam. It was the harshest punishment of herem (ban) ever issued by that community. The extant document, a lengthy and vitriolic diatribe, refers to the young man’s ‘abominable heresies’ and ‘monstrous deeds’. The leaders of the community, having consulted with the rabbis and using Spinoza’s Hebrew name, proclaim that they hereby ‘expel, excommunicate, curse, and damn Baruch de Spinoza’. He is to be ‘cast out from all the tribes of Israel’ and his name is to be ‘blotted out from under heaven’.
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via 3 Quarks Daily: Steven Nadler in Aeon
In July 1656, the 23-year-old Bento de Spinoza was excommunicated from the Portuguese-Jewish congregation of Amsterdam. It was the harshest punishment of herem (ban) ever issued by that community. The extant document, a lengthy and vitriolic diatribe, refers to the young man’s ‘abominable heresies’ and ‘monstrous deeds’. The leaders of the community, having consulted with the rabbis and using Spinoza’s Hebrew name, proclaim that they hereby ‘expel, excommunicate, curse, and damn Baruch de Spinoza’. He is to be ‘cast out from all the tribes of Israel’ and his name is to be ‘blotted out from under heaven’.
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