sandwall

Shockley and the transistor...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley

Pretty hilarious discussion of the Lockbit gang as a failing "organization"

Concur, 5meo typtamines are extremely potent and quite dangerous. Witnessed overdoses and while they weren't lethal, they certainly had the risk. Just because the compound doesn't kill, doesn't mean you can't die from a secondary or tertiary effect.

It's a red flag. Looks cool on the surface, but if it's what it appears, it should be subjected to a more rigorous review.

NIH funded articles are mandated to be public access, these are often available without journal typesetting:

https://www.nih.gov/health-information/nih-clinical-research...

Agree with questioning this. They are both brilliant, but that doesn't justify arrogance. IMHO, it detracts from his brilliance and clouds the clarity of his thoughts.

You're on the money with this one. Accurate table translations was an important enabling technology - same with slip-rings for full rotation

Yes, but this was only shown later -- The reconstruction algorithm for cone-beam was published in 1984 by research staff at Ford Motor Company. The Felkamp, Davis, and Kress algorithm was demonstrated as a natural extension of the fan-beam algorithm. -- first pencil beam, then fan-beam, finally cone-beam

Later, that was developed in 1984; CT's use collimated fan beams

Oldendorf and Damadian (MRI) are great examples of Nobel blunders -- my money is on Takahashi for his significant contributions:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3258406/

Steve Webb wrote an excellent book that traces the origins of radiological tomography:

https://www.amazon.com/Watching-Shadows-Origins-Radiological...

These are some notes of mine for a presentation on the subject (relative to radiotherapy): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-2VAFzmkGu25YJM_QFLDiUB9vRv...

Historians are all storytellers. Critical review is important. I really like this paper which starts by paraphrasing Jane Austen, "i think it quite odd history should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention" :

https://www.cmu.edu/epp/people/faculty/research/Fischhoff-Fo...

Story telling is how our society has transferred information since we started to communicate-- understanding the map is not the territory, nor should it be. A beautiful narrative can convey important kernels more efficiently than endless minutiae-- Awareness of this is important and elaborations are helpful for those interested in the details.

I'm reminded of, "The Glass Bead Game," which discusses an academic society that forgets the names of contributors since they're all just part of the flow of humanity

I agree with your comments 100%, I too read and enjoyed the book and found it very complementary to The Idea Factory

Morphogenesis is an interesting area of study, this is a beautiful example

https://bloom.bg/3q5IJXE

Agree, I believe it's because of the comments... also, tried resubmitting the correct link and it broke too, had to use a shortener: https://bloom.bg/3q5IJXE

I agree, diversifying energy sources seems to be the best policy. We've been sending radioactive materials into space for a long time (pu-batteries), albeit quite small amounts. -- Perhaps we should be "smurfing" fuel to the space station.

The book is OK, his concept is sound. He mixed weak faith based analogies in too much for my taste but it doesn't overly detract from the science. My criticism is not due to an atheistist tilt; the analogies felt forced and contrived, they were poor prose.

Overall his description of, "adaptive dissipation," is pretty solid. Our complex form (life) has developed to increase entropy. Nice discussion of thermodynamics and the flow of energy. We're all flames flickering in the light of the sun.

It would have been nice if he had touched on morphogenesis, proposed by Alan Turing, which also suggests reasons for complex biological forms.

Interesting, can you add some depth to that statement? I enjoyed the book, and found it useful in illustrating many cognitive biases.

I've gone on to read more of his work and agree the data is from, "WEIRD societies: Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic." (i.e. a lot of small study groups from ivy league schools) -- but nevertheless found the book enjoyable and useful

Read this first: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/19/1006365/if-then-...

Thought the NPR article was well enough to share, but preferred the MIT piece (albeit behind a paywall)

Have to agree, in some ways he helped drive the discussion to greater depth -- many questions aren't easy to answer and Gould didn't want to entertain them. I particularly liked Sacks vignette on patterns from migraines, revisited here:

https://migraine.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/patterns/

Sheldrake's discussion on magnetoreception was also of value; it wasn't perfectly accurate (nor as well understood then as it is today) but Gould was arbitrarily dismissive; see more on the really cool phenomena here:

https://www.sciencealert.com/birds-see-magnetic-fields-crypt...

Einstein said it well: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."

Daily Stoic

Wavelength shifting for cooperative effect. Very interesting and beautiful phenomenon. Fluorescence is pretty cool, 'fluorescent symbiosis,' is certainly new to me.

100% as a fellow non-HEP (practicing) physicist -- There's so much more to physics.

Science, at least from the funding perspective, has always leaned toward what's fashionable -- "nuclear" dominated following WW2, "particle" has had it's moment, and we're moving full force toward "quantum" (& "AI"!)

Scientists seeking funding bend themselves in knots to ensure they include all the key words in their grant applications

Risk aversion is rational behavior. However, it's not irrational concepts that succeed; rather, rational ideas that are counter-intuitive.

Most hospital PC's allow this as an alternative, also thumbprints.

We use: https://www.imprivata.com/

There's a parable...

If you meet an a__hole in the morning, you met an a__hole. If you meet a__holes throughout the day, you are the a__hole.

Moral of the story, if it's just one person, let them be. You don't have to win.

Love this. Reminds me of one of my favorite xkcd's on survivorship bias: https://xkcd.com/1827/

THIS, so much of this. We've moved beyond telecommunications as a luxury, it is a necessity in this day and age. IF competition can't make it accessible, we the people deserve the option to do so.

I think this statement is widely applicable ... "I'm not a good ____, I'm just good at googling things."

You name it, it fits. Knowing when and how to ask for help is essential to everything and an important skill for everyone.