Human Assumptions and Prejudices

An excerpt from Orson Scott Card‘s Xenocide, where two aliens of different species are conversing.

< You spoke a moment ago as if you believed that human beings had actually acheived intelligence.>

< Clearly they have.>

…

< Self-delusion. Even at their best, they never, as individuals, rise above the level of manual laborers. Who among them has the time to become intelligent?>

< Not one.>

< They never know anything. They don’t have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that’s really going on is that they’ve got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo-knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts.>

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Big Bang Big Boom

This blows my mind.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Phosphenes and Psychedelic Patterns

An artist's depiction of a phosphene

When I was a young child, I used to love to close my eyes and rub them because it made a bunch of cool patterns appear. It turns out, the patterns of light you see when you rub your closed eyes hard are called phosphenes. Cool!

From Wikipedia:

The most common phosphenes are pressure phosphenes, caused by rubbing the closed eyes. They have been known since antiquity, and described by the Greeks. The pressure mechanically stimulates the cells of the retina. Experiences include a darkening of the visual field that moves against the rubbing, a diffused colored patch that also moves against the rubbing, a scintillating and ever-changing and deforming light grid with occasional dark spots (like a crumpling fly-spotted flyscreen), and a sparse field of intense blue points of light. Pressure phosphenes can persist briefly after the rubbing stops and the eyes are opened, allowing the phosphenes to be seen on the visual scene.

Delayed gratifaction as a predictor of success

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Egg improvements

Behold the power of Photoshop…

Since it is Sunday, let’s have a genetically photoshopped egg with a handy integrated eggholder. Not sure if these should be mass produced (if possible): Too painful for the chicken.

via Egg improvements – Next Nature.