Zitat des Tages von Kyle Hill:
Why would you envy a man who doesn't know the names of all the planets, is a 'high functioning' sociopath, and has no friends? Because Sherlock Holmes thinks in all the ways we wish we could.
Galileos still exist in science. Sometimes a lone proponent of a new idea turns out to be right.
The recipe for a human doesn't fill up a shopping list as you may suspect. Just twenty-two elements can describe almost all of the molecules that are, at this moment, you.
Bigfoot does not exist because there would be evidence left behind - hair, feces, bones, kills, offspring, a carcass - if it did.
I was in China when Pokemon fever hit, and I got it bad. But as I got older, I didn't stay with it. My binder full of rares has since disappeared. I have refused to play the other games like the newest 'Pokemon X/Y' out of some misplaced hipster angst.
Science is a highly technical and intellectual endeavor. Any theory or fact or discovery has an ocean of depth to it. You can always go deeper with science, and you can always ask a new and interesting question. That's what makes a topic nerdy: depth.
Reality is on a delay. For you, nothing is now. Realizing this fact is unsettling. If we can only react to the past, how do we manage to navigate the present? It's easy to spiral into a treatise on free will while in the fetal position, overthinking our forever past.
Making the leap from Monsanto's business practices - whatever you may think of them - to the 'dangers' of GM foods is a mistake in logical reasoning. It is akin to saying landscape paintings are potentially evil because the painter was a serial killer.
When the first episode of 'Mythbusters' aired in 2003, I couldn't drive a car. I couldn't see a R-rated movie. I was 14 years old, and I couldn't do much of anything. But 'Mythbusters' taught me that I could do science.
I have a save file in 'Final Fantasy XII' that is 125 hours long. I have gotten into legitimate arguments over the rules governing the tapping of mana in 'Magic: The Gathering.' I don't like hugs or parties, high school sucked for me, and Nathan Fillion deemed something I wrote his 'Favorite 'Firefly' fanboy rant to date.'
What is basically just an IQ score has roots in education, socioeconomic status, genetics, and environmental factors. Looking at any one of these roots doesn't give you a full picture of the tree, but it does tell you that a tree is there.
Picking apart a story for its scientific underpinnings doesn't diminish it, it enhances it, makes us dream of the possibilities it proposes. I think appreciating the magic of reality, going from 'can't happen' to 'could happen,' is the fundamental appeal of science fiction.
Cancer is real-time evolution, and your body is the selective pressure.
Jesus walking on water is an allegory, not fluid mechanics. God destroying the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah is a warning, not a historical battle. Doubting Thomas is an example, not a person. The story of Noah, with all of its scientific and historical impossibilities, can be read the same way.
Sherlock is a portrait of humanity - he takes nature's gift of thought and runs with it, bringing along all the human struggles, fears, and insecurities. He's the hero we could see ourselves being.
How the original 'Cosmos' affected me personally was long-term. I wasn't born early enough to see the original series, but after getting a hold of it in my teen years, it was one of the driving forces behind my passion for science.
We are all cognitive misers. Our brains do not expend mental resources thoroughly examining problems when snap judgments will do.
Whether we know it or not, each of our decisions is influenced by what we want to see or think.
It is as though nature is a wonderful symphony that science sits in awe of. It looks closely at each player, how the tubas are tuned and how the strings are strung. Creationism lets out a loud 'shush' at such excitement. Just enjoy the show and stop asking questions.
It's okay to take that reservoir of passion that you have and let it flow into whatever you love. Experiment, question, replicate, be critical, be nerdy, be yourself.
We tend to accept information that confirms our prior beliefs and ignore or discredit information that does not. This confirmation bias settles over our eyes like distorting spectacles for everything we look at.
If you wanted to travel backwards in time, you're out of luck. We have theories on how it might be possible to do so, but they all involve wormholes and black holes and other stuff that would probably kill you. If you want to travel forward in time, you just have to go really fast.
No matter how many times you've seen the movies and the TV shows that have a protagonist leaping in the path of a bullet, physics forbids such sacrifice. Because of a bullet's radical speed, you can't jump in front of it, but you could get in its way. It's not as dramatic, but it does save lives.
You can do crunches all day long, and you abs will indeed get bigger and stronger, but you will never see them. The only way to see the muscles you work so hard for is to lose weight globally - across your entire body.