February 2012
“Only one ship is seeking us, a black- / Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back /...”
– Philip Larkin: Next, Please (1951)
1 tag
“Once upon a time, 3 billion years ago, there lived a single organism called...”
– Life began with a planetary mega-organism | New Scientist
“I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping...”
– Rev. Tony Campolo
“Aquinas would say that our desire draws us towards a source of joy beyond the...”
– Tina Beattie, Thomas Aquinas, part 5: what does it mean to be human? Very interesting on consumerism and concupiscence.
3 tags
Debunking monkey prostitution
So I tweeted a link to this story on how capuchin monkeys “developed prostitution” once human scientists had introduced them to money. This was based on research by Keith Chen (an economist) and Laurie Santos (an evolutionary psychologist).
This has ended up becoming my most retweeted tweet ever. Which is unfortunate, because it seems the research is (to put it politely)...
“To love and admire anything outside yourself is to take one step away from utter...”
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.111.
“Almost the whole of Christian theology could perhaps be deduced from the two...”
– C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p.131.
(By way of a response to Oliver Burkeman’s column today on the Two Things.)
“The only way viewers can find relief from the stress of the most brutal scenes...”
– Tomáš Halík, via @eatingwords.
2 tags
“Vilest of all is the habit of throwing together several nouns into one ghastly...”
– From the hilarious article on Americanisms in The Economist’s style guide.
1 tag
Faster-than-light neutrino results were due to a... →
proofmathisbeautiful:
cab1729:
un:
discoverynews:
theweekmagazine:
And not just any mistake. A LOOSE CABLE.
“There was a good reason the measurements and reality weren’t lining up: a loose fiber optic cable was causing one of the atomic clocks used to time the neutrinos’ flight to produce spurious results.”
oops
KNEW IT!
oh damn! there goes that neutrino-walks-into-a-bar...
“[The proconsul] sought to persuade him to deny [Christ] … and say, ‘Away...”
– St Polycarp, bishop, martyr and ironist. The early Christians’ refusal to worship the Roman gods, especially Caesar, led to their being called “atheists”. “So’s your old man,” says Polycarp.