Preface to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, written by J. M. D. Meiklejohn, the translator:

A previous translation of the Kritik exists, which, had it been satisfactory, would have dispensed with the present. But the translator had, evidently, no very extensive acquaintance with the German language, and still less with his subject. A translator ought to be an interpreting intellect between the author and the reader; but, in the present case, the only interpreting medium has been the dictionary.

Indeed, Kant’s fate in this country has been a very hard one. Misunderstood by the ablest philosophers of the time, illustrated, explained, or translated by the most incompetent,— it has been his lot to be either unappreciated, misapprehended, or entirely neglected.

{ via Jeremy Stangroom | Continue reading }

photo { Aaron Wojack }

Ron Jude: emmett is a book that brings form to a selection of my old, random photographs. (…) The heart of the project has to do with ideas about existence and the past. It’s structured to echo how we try to piece together coherent narratives through fragments of memory. (…)

Ed Panar: To me Same Difference is sort of an anti-project. I wanted to see what happened if you forgot about the rules, or never knew them in the first place. When you start noticing your own ‘rules’ or, habits of working, things start to become ambiguous pretty quickly. Why do we prefer doing things one way to another? What if we were to discover the basis for our strategies was arbitrary? If these pictures aren’t connected, can that be a point of connection? Photographs are so insanely open anyway. Even in the most constrained situations they will always be about more than the author was aware of in the moment.

{ Conversation between Ed Panar and Ron Jude | Ahorn |Continue reading }

photo { Ron Jude }

Häxan (English title: The Witches or Witchcraft Through The Ages) is a 1922 Swedish/Danish silent film written and directed by Benjamin Christensen.

Based partly on Christensen’s study of the Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th century German guide for inquisitors, Häxan is a study of how superstition and the misunderstanding of diseases and mental illness could lead to the hysteria of the witch-hunts.

The film was made as a documentary but contains dramatized sequences that are comparable to horror films. With Christensen’s meticulous recreation of medieval scenes and the lengthy production period, the film was the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made, costing nearly two million Swedish krona. Although it won acclaim in Denmark and Sweden, the film was banned in the United States and heavily censored in other countries for what were considered at that time graphic depictions of torture, nudity, and sexual perversion.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Despite persistent urban myths to the contrary, chewing gum is, technically speaking, edible. However, doctors do agree that it is not usually wise to swallow it, due to the risk of “gum-based gastrointestinal blockages.” Given that in 2005, Americans chewed, on average, 160-180 pieces or about 1.8 lbs of gum per person, per year, with relatively few swallowing incidents, the resulting post-masticatory waste probably adds up to more than 250,000 tons annually.

Inevitably, disposing of this sticky mass poses some challenges. (…) Discarded chewing gum debris forms the dominant decoration of the urban floor.

{ Edible Geography | Continue reading }

{ A leopard that mauled 11 people in a fierce showdown with Indian villagers has died of knife wounds after being captured. }

The next time you feel angry at a friend who has let you down, or grateful toward one whose generosity has surprised you, consider this: you may really be bargaining for better treatment from that person in the future. According to a controversial new theory, our emotions have evolved as tools to manipulate others into cooperating with us.

Until now, most psychologists have viewed anger as a way to signal your displeasure when another person does you harm. Similarly, gratitude has been seen as a signal of pleasure when someone does you a favour. In both cases, emotions are seen as short-term reactions to an immediate benefit or cost.

But it’s more cunning than that, says John Tooby, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Anger, he says, has as much to do with cooperation as with conflict, and emotions are used to coerce others into cooperating in the long term. (…)

All this suggests that anger and gratitude – and perhaps other emotions, too – may be tools for turning up a partner’s mental cooperation control dial.

{ NewScientist | Continue reading }

A few weeks ago, a woman asked me for advice about her teenage daughter. “She wants to be a writer,” the mother said. “What should we be doing?” (…)

First of all, let her be bored. Let her have long afternoons with absolutely nothing to do. (…)

Let her be lonely. Let her believe that no one in the world truly understands her. Give her the freedom to fall in love with the wrong person, to lose her heart, to have it smashed and abused and broken.

{ Molly Backes | Continue reading }

related { Weird Writing Habits of Famous Authors. }

photo { Thatcher Keats }

Let’s try something for a second: Why don’t you think back on the story of your life. While you are thinking back, try to remember why you got to the job you did, the city you now live in, the neighborhood, the relationships, etc. Most likely you–and most people for that matter–took a long winding road to where you are now. It’s also likely that you can pinpoint a few critical decisions you made in the past that have really shaped who you are today, and what you did to get here.

We often construct these life narratives. (…) How true are these narratives really? Do we really know the two or three critical points in our lives that changed everything and made us the people we are today? Psychological science says no. (…)

Nisbett and Wilson concluded, based on this research, that we have strong motivations for prediction and control of our social environments. That is, we’re thinking creatures who want to know how stuff works, and as such, we are constantly constructing theories that could plausibly explain what is happening in our environments. The reality though is that these theories are never really tested or confirmed, and so they are often fabrications–based on our own beliefs about how the world works rather than on how the world actually works (which may be more chaotic than we’d like to admit).

{ Psych Your Mind | Continue reading }

{ During economic downturns, consumers usually spend less on what the Fed calls “discretionary services” — items like education, entertainment, restaurant meals and insurance. But in the chart above, it’s clear that consumers today are cutting back much more sharply. Part of the reason: In previous years, households often added debt to continue spending. Now the bill has come due. | NY Times | full story }

The killer whale (Orcinus orca), commonly referred to as the orca, is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family. Killer whales are found in all oceans, from the frigid Arctic and Antarctic regions to tropical seas.

Killer whales are regarded as apex predator, lacking natural predators and preying on even large sharks. [List of apex predators]

Wild killer whales are not considered a threat to humans.

Killer whales distinctively bear a black back, white chest and sides, and a white patch above and behind the eye. Calves are born with a yellowish or orange tint, which fades to white.

Males and females have different patterns of black and white skin in the genital area.

There are three to five types of killer whales that may be distinct enough to be considered different races, subspecies, or possibly even species. The IUCN reported in 2008, “The taxonomy of this genus is clearly in need of review, and it is likely that O. orca will be split into a number of different species or at least subspecies over the next few years.”

• Type A looks like a “typical” killer whale, a large, black and white form with a medium-sized white eye patch, living in open water and feeding mostly on minke whales.

• Type B is smaller than Type A. It has a large white eye patch. Most of the dark parts of its body are medium gray instead of black, although it has a dark gray patch called a “dorsal cape” stretching back from its forehead to just behind its dorsal fin. The white areas are stained slightly yellow. It feeds mostly on seals.

• Type C is the smallest type and lives in larger groups than the others. Its eye patch is distinctively slanted forwards, rather than parallel to the body axis. Like Type B, it is primarily white and medium gray, with a dark gray dorsal cape and yellow-tinged patches. Its only observed prey is the Antarctic Cod.

• Type D was identified based on photographs of a 1955 mass stranding in New Zealand and six at-sea sightings since 2004. Immediately recognizable by its extremely small white eye patch, shorter than usual dorsal fin that curves back, and bulbous head (similar to a pilot whale). Its geographic range appears to be circumglobal in subantarctic waters between latitudes 40°S and 60°S. And although nothing is known about the Type D diet, it is suspected to include fish because groups have been photographed around longline vessels where they reportedly depredate Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides).

Types B and C live close to the ice pack, and diatoms (algae) in these waters may be responsible for the yellowish coloring of both types. Mitochondrial DNA sequences support the theory that these are separate species that have recently diverged.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

bonus:

{ On December 24, 2009, a 6,600-pound orca killed trainer Alexis Martínez at a marine park in the Canary Islands. Two months later, trainer Dawn Brancheau was killed by an orca at SeaWorld Orlando. Should Martínez’s death have served as a warning about the lethal potential of killer whales being trained for our entertainment? Tim Zimmermann investigates. | Outside | full story }

{ Stranger moves into foreclosed home, citing little-known Texas law }

images { 1. Young Kyu Yoo | 2. John Portman }

More than a billion people cannot count on meeting their basic needs for food, sanitation, and clean water. Their children die from simple, preventable diseases. They lack a minimally decent quality of life.

At the same time, more than a billion people live at a hitherto unknown level of affluence. They think nothing of spending more to go out to dinner than the other billion have to live on for a month. Do they therefore have a high quality of life? Being able to meet one’s basic needs for food, water, and reasonable health is a necessary condition for having an adequate quality of life, but not a sufficient one.

In the past, we spent much of our day ensuring we would have enough to eat. Then we would relax and socialize. Now, for the affluent, it is so easy to meet our basic needs that we lack purpose in our daily activities—leading us to consume more, and thus to feel we do not earn enough for all that we “need.”

{ What does quality of life mean? And how should we measure it? Our panel of global experts weighs in. | World Policy Institute | Continue reading }

Times have not been good for electronic media giant Sony. The New York Times recently carried a short article that reported the company has lost 37 percent of its market value over the last six years. It has been hit by one disaster after another. Future projections do not look good either.

While there are many explanations that analysts offer to explain the dismal performance of this once stellar company, there is one explanation that is never mentioned: the Curse of the DaVinci Code.

It has been six years since Sony began production of the movie, The DaVinci Code, based on the bestselling yet now forgotten book with the same title by Dan Brown. The book’s blasphemous affirmations denied the Divinity of Christ and claimed He was married to Saint Mary Magdalene and had children, which offended countless faithful at the time. Numerous books and studies debunked these absurd and horrific theses along with others that author Dan Brown nevertheless affirmed were true.

From the moment production began, it appears as if the Curse of the DaVinci Code descended upon Sony and there it still remains.

{ The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property | Continue reading }

For decades, policy makers have tried and failed to get Americans to eat less salt. (…)

This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure.

In May, European researchers reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease.

These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }

drawing { Jean-Michel Basquiat, Salt, 1981 }

Almost everyone has experienced one memory triggering another, but explanations for that phenomenon have proved elusive. Now, University of Pennsylvania researchers have provided the first neurobiological evidence that memories formed in the same context become linked, the foundation of the theory of episodic memory. (…)

“Theories of episodic memory suggest that when I remember an event, I retrieve its earlier context and make it part of my present context,” Kahana said.  “When I remember my grandmother, for example, I pull back all sorts of associations of a different time and place in my life; I’m also remembering living in Detroit and her Hungarian cooking. It’s like mental time travel. I jump back in time to the past, but I’m still grounded in the present.” (…)

“By examining the patterns of brain activity recorded from the implanted electrodes,” Manning said, “we can measure when the brain’s activity is similar to a previously recorded pattern. When a patient recalls a word, their brain activity is similar to when they studied the same word.   In addition, the patterns at recall contained traces of other words that were studied prior to the recalled word.”

“What seems to be happening is that when patients recall a word, they bring back not only the thoughts associated with the word itself but also remnants of thoughts associated with other words they studied nearby in time,” he said.

{ Penn News | Continue reading }

artwork { Cy Twombly, Poems to the Sea, 1959 }

Researchers have shown that we sit near people who look like us.

The effect is more than just people of the same sex or ethnicity tending to aggregate — a phenomenon well documented by earlier research.

The new finding could help explain why it is that people so often resemble physically their friends and romantic partners (known as “homophily”) — if physically similar people choose to sit near each other, they will have more opportunities to forge friendships and romances. (…)

A further possibility is that seeking proximity to physically similar others is an evolutionary hang-over — an instinct for staying close to genetically similar kin.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

In recent years, the search for an Earth-like planet orbiting another star has been the most exciting in science. The world has waited with baited breath for the discovery of another Earth.

But the discovery of Earth 2.0 has been a damp squib. Not because astronomers haven’t found one; on the contrary! The problem is they’ve found too many candidates. And these have turned out to be so unlike Earth that it’s hard to imagine that any of them can be a convincing twin.

We’re left, like the starving donkey equidistant between two bails of hay, unable to decide on what to celebrate.

The top candidates so far are these:

* Gliese 4581 g, the fourth rock from a red dwarf some 20 light years from Earth in the constellation of Libra

* GJ 1214 b, a sub-Neptune-sized planet orbiting a star in the constellation of Ophiucus 40 light years away

* and HD 28185 b, a gas giant in a near circular orbit that is entirely within the habitable zone of a Sun-like star in the constellation of Eridanus. This planet’s moons, if it has any, may be good candidates for ‘other Earths’

Today, we can add another strange planet to the list: 55 Cancri f, one of five planets known to orbit an orange dwarf star some 40 light years away in the constellation of Cancer.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | Continue reading }

photo { Constantin Brancusi, Bird in Space, ca. 1936 }

“Everything we do involves making choices, even if we don’t think very much about it. For example, just moving your leg to walk in one direction or another is a choice – however, you might not appreciate that you are choosing this action, unless someone were to stop you from moving that leg. We often take for granted all of the choices we make, until they are taken away,” says Mauricio Delgado at Rutgers University.

{ APS | Continue reading }

Here is an obvious truth overlooked by too many: Almost all companies die. They have a theoretically infinite lifespan, but eventually, their day in the sun passes, their parts are sold off for scrap, they fade into the dim dusty pages of history. Sure, Europe has centuries old breweries and specialty foods companies, but they are notable because they are exceptions.

Think back to the original Dow Jones Industrials, filled as it was with Steam and Leather Belt companies, all gone bankrupt nearly a century ago. How many of the original companies in the DJIA are still even in existence?

Microsoft was once technology’s behemoth, the 800 pound gorilla, an unstoppable anti-competitive monopolist. And today? It was a great 20 year run, but it’s mostly over. They still have the cash horde and engineering chops to create a smash hit like the Kinect, and they are a cash cow, but the odds are, their glory days are behind them.

While some companies manage to have a second act — Apple and IBM are notable examples — they too, remain the exception.

Today, tech companies’ lifespans are measured in internet years. Any firms dominance of any given space is likely to cover a much smaller period — way less than a decade in real time. The obvious poster child for this syndrome? MySpace. Even mighty Google is seeing market share growth in search slip as competitors nip at its heels.

All of which leads me to the question of the day: Has Facebook missed its IPO window? (…)

There are signs that Google Plus is a worthy competitor: They quickly amassed 10 million users, and that is while they are in Beta.

{ Barry Ritholtz | Continue reading }

drawings { Wes Lang }

We don’t name babies to honor people any more. (…)


The 2008 election saw the historic election of America’s first black president. As you might expect, this event was commemorated in names. Approximately 60 more babies were named Barack or Obama than the year before. How big a deal was that? Well, it means hero naming for the new president accounted for .00001 percent of babies born, or one in every 71,000. Neither Barack nor Obama ranked among America’s top 2,000 names for boys. In other words, the effect was so trivially small that you would never notice it unless you went searching for it. Recent presidents with more familiar names, like Clinton, fared even worse on the name charts.



Now roll back the clock to the presidential election of 1896. Democrat William Jennings Bryan inspired a dramatic jump in the names Jennings and Bryan. Those jumps accounted for one in every 2,400 babies born  — an effect 30 times bigger than Obama’s. It was enough to rank both names in the top 300 for the year. And in case your American history is a little shaky: Bryan lost the election.


{ The Baby Name Wizard | Continue reading }

photo { Mustafah Abdulaziz }