According to Wittgenstein’s ruler: Unless you have confidence in the ruler’s reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler. The less you trust the ruler’s reliability, the more information you are getting about the ruler and the less about the table.
| Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
My Father, the Hitman D Magazine
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China just test-fired a massive solid-fueled rocket.
Why We Can’t Speak Second Or Third Languages Without An Accent
"As with chemistry, the important thing is not just how the elements behave in isolation, but how they come together. Each language has rules for these combinations, which native speakers (and many teachers) generally grasp but don’t or can’t explain." - The Economist
What People Today Misunderstand About Old Sufi Love Poetry
"What, then, do Rumi and his followers on the Sufi 'path of love' really mean when they say 'love'? The answer turns out to be more radical than even the most far-fetched of modern misreadings of this erotic spiritual tradition." - Psyche
The Professor Who Showed Us That Teaching Writing Is More Than Just Correcting Mistakes
Mike Rose at UCLA "heralded a paradigm shift in the way writing is taught in our educational system. … (He) asked teachers to understand students as whole people, with mixed feelings about academic writing, who are nonetheless trying to do a very difficult thing." - The New Yorker
Facebook sues programmer who allegedly scraped data for 178 million users
The man reportedly sold user info on the black market.
Penelope Lively On Her Writing Career And The Difference Between Novels And Short Stories
Lively, who's 88: "When I started, publishers didn’t expect a breakthrough with a first or second book. They were prepared to stay with an author for a long time. They seem to be more driven by marketing now." - The Guardian (UK)
A Harvard freshman made a social networking app called ‘The FaceTag.’ It’s sparked a debate about the ethics of facial recognition. Business Insider
Luxembourg legalizes growing of cannabis in EU first Deutsche Welle
Vladimir Putin Meets with Members of the Valdai Discussion Club (transcript) Valdai Discussion Club
The Myth of Russian Decline Foreign Affairs
An Oral History of ‘Счастливы Вместе,’ The Russian Remake of ‘Marrixxed… With Children’ Mel Magazine
Decision-Making under UncertaintyVerfassungsblog
“The Birdability Map is a crowdsourced map that describes in detail the accessibility features of birding locations all over the world. It is a work-in-progress, and anyone can contribute to it by submitting a Birdability Site Review.
The Poem That Provoked An FBI Investigation
"Dial-a-Poem received more than a million calls before it lost funding and ended in 1971. There were complaints of indecency, claims that the poems incited violence. The FBI investigated." - The Guardian (UK)
