The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge. By Maria Popova “The real enemy is the man who tries to mold the human spirit so that it will not dare to spread its wings.” In an age obsessed with practicality, productivity, and efficiency, I frequently worry that we are leaving little room for abstract knowledge and for the kind of curiosity that invites just enough serendipity to allow for the discovery of ideas we didn’t know we were interested in until we are, ideas that we may later transform into new combinations with applications both practical and metaphysical. This concern, it turns out, is hardly new. We hear it said with tiresome iteration that ours is a materialistic age, the main concern of which should be the wider distribution of material goods and worldly opportunities. Mr. Flexner goes on to contend that the work of Hertz and Maxwell is exemplary of the motives underpinning all instances of monumental scientific discovery, bringing to mind Richard Feynman’s timeless wisdom.
This lament, alas, is timelier than ever. Log In - The New York Times. The Cost Of Being An Unbeatable Evil Overlord. If there’s one thing that the movies have taught us it’s that evil never succeeds. Yet most of the time evil fails for silly reasons. In 1994 Peter Anspach published the 100 things he would do if he ever became an evil overlord.
They included such gems as: If my advisors ask “Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?” But while following such prescripts are likely to lead to evil-overlord levels of success, is it financially viable to do so? We went through each of the items on the list and looked at how money it would either cost (or save) to follow through with it. Watch out world. To complete our plans to become an Evil Overlord, we’d need a super-weapon and you can find our estimate of the cost of the Death Star over here. U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use 'Hiroshima' Tactics for 'Total War' on Islam | Danger Room. The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room.
Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.” The course, first reported by Danger Room last month and held at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, has since been canceled by the Pentagon brass. It’s only now, however, that the details of the class have come to light.
Danger Room received hundreds of pages of course material and reference documents from a source familiar with the contents of the class. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently ordered the entire U.S. military to scour its training material to make sure it doesn’t contain similarly hateful material, a process that is still ongoing. Venezuela: a land where it's always summer. Archivo - La viveza criolla. José Ignacio Cabrujas Jueves, 1 de mayo de 1997 Francis Bacon decía que no hay peor cosa que considerar sabios a los pícaros.
Latinoámerica, Venezuela, el Caribe, han tenido siempre la necesidad de mirarse a así mismos, de expresarse en un ícono. Los pueblos tienen una noción de sí mismos y gustan mucho de concretar esa noción, esa apariencia que los pueblos arrastran a lo largo de siglos, de sí mismos, concretarlo en maneras, en personajes, en actitudes, en leyendas, en mitos. Los venezolanos no somos una excepción al respecto. Quien tipifica, quien estereotipiza a un hombre mexicano, inmediatamente cae en la fatalidad de atribuirle los conceptos que pertenecen, de una manera específica, al ser de los mexicanos; la machura, el patriotismo excesivo, el nacionalismo delirante, pero cuando a México lo ven otros pueblos del mundo, lo ven como el ratoncillo de la Warner Bross, ágiles, astutos, pícaros, siesta, haraganería, flojera. Frente a él, la otra figura: Páez. ¿Por qué? Nacionales. Ten Economic Blunders from History - John S. Chamberlain.
Take cover when you hear a political leader talking about economic affairs. You can bet a bad decision is incoming. Luckily for the leaders, their meddling usually has a slow, erosive effect on the economy. Every so often, however, the great ones manage to land a real whopper that takes them down along with their whole country. Here are ten examples from history. 1. Charge Too Much and You Die In the year 301, the Roman emperor Diocletian issued the Edictum De Pretiis Rerum Venalium, i.e., the Edict on Prices of Foodstuffs, which rebalanced the coinage system and set maximums on wages and the prices of many types of goods, especially food. 2.
You know you are doing something wrong when your enemies become folk heroes like Robin Hood. 3. The fifth Khan of Persia was named "Gaykhatu," which means "amazing" in Mongolian. 4. 5. Price controls are stupid anytime, but it takes true idiocy to apply them in the middle of a siege. 6. In 1590 the Republic of Venice was in decline. 7. 8. 9. 10. Culture Got You Down? December 31, 2004, 8:00 PM By Chuck Klosterman More from this author "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend," E.M. Forster once wrote, "I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. " This quote teaches us a lot, particularly that dead British novelists made for good drinking buddies and horrible spies. But Forster's sentiment is worth considering. I recently had a conversation with someone about Sex and the City, a program I never actually watched.
Even though I had no real context for why she felt this way, I found her reaction fascinating. Almost a decade ago, I was browsing in a Barnes & Noble when I came across a book called Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana. Do you want to be happy? Now, it's quite possible you disagree with me on this issue. You're not wrong, but neither is the rest of the world. Perception of Time in Different Cultures.