"For Darwin, the ability to modulate responses indicated 'the presence of a mind of some kind.' He also wrote of the 'mental qualities' of worms in relation to their plugging up their burrows, noting that 'if worms are able to judge…having drawn an object close to the mouths of their burrows, how best to drag it in, they must acquire some notion of its general shape.' This moved him to argue that worms 'deserve to be called intelligent, for they then act in nearly the same manner as a man under similar circumstances.'"
"Graph TV is a visualization tool which graphs tv show ratings by episode. Each season is assigned a different color and linear regressions are calculated for each season as well as for the entire series. Each point on the graph displays the episode title, rating, and other data. The data points are clickable and will open its IMDb entry. The graphs are also exportable for offline use."
3. Soviet space art: the best kind of retrofuturism.
"Artists from the Soviet Union didn't just imagine a worker's Utopia on Earth. They also thought that the great communist experiment would eventually reach other worlds, too. Here are some incredible works of art and conceptual design that put the Soviet Union in space."
"In the year 1800, Sir William Herschel discovered the existence of infrared by performing an experiment very similar to the one we show here. Herschel passed sunlight through a prism. As sunlight passes through the prism, the prism divides it into a rainbow of colors called a spectrum. A spectrum contains all of the colors which make up sunlight. Herschel was interested in measuring the amount of heat in each color. To do this he used thermometers with blackened bulbs and measured the temperature of the different colors of the spectrum. He noticed that the temperature increased from the blue to the red part of the spectrum. Then he placed a thermometer just past the red part of the spectrum in a region where there was no visible light and found that the temperature there was even higher. Herschel realized that there must be another type of light which we cannot see in this region. This light was called infrared."
"Dr. Goldstein's Plato starts his tour at Google because she thinks that tech entrepreneurs 'may be the new philosopher kings,' she says. 'They are the new elite.' At first, her Plato approves of the way that technology has democratized information. 'Then he realizes everybody's going to the sources that agree with them … and that is very dangerous for democracy,' she adds, admitting that 'there's a lot of me in that.' Dr. Goldstein says that she now forces herself to read news from sources she disagrees with, which has helped her to change her stance on a few issues. 'With technology, everyone has more of a voice, but … is it broadening our minds, or is it narrowing our minds?' she wonders. Reading Plato convinced her of the need to be able to change her own mind, even about Plato himself."
A quick programming note: I've been traveling, which explains the absence of 5IT this week. There'll be an edition tomorrow, but then I'm off on Thursday and Friday to celebrate my birthday with my family. How old am I? I have mostly stopped counting, but I noticed that I have a few grey chest hairs, so I must be pretty old.
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Another Type of Light Which We Cannot See
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