A star polygon is a non-convex polygon which looks in some way like a star. Only the regular ones have been studied in any depth; star polygons in general appear not to have been formally defined. They should not be confused with star domains.
Pycortex WebGL MRI Viewer
WebGL in-browser interactive 3D map of the brain by James Gao:
This viewer shows how information about thousands of object and action categories is represented across human neocortex. The data come from brain activity measurements made using fMRI while a participant watched hours of movie trailers. Computational modeling procedures were used to determine how 1705 distinct object and action categories are represented in the brain.
Try it out here
Wittgenstein’s intellectual asceticism had a great influence on the philosophers of the English-speaking world. It narrowed the scope of philosophy by excluding ethics and aesthetics. At the same time, his personal asceticism enhanced his credibility. During World War II, he wanted to serve his adopted country in a practical way. Being too old for military service, he took a leave of absence from his academic position in Cambridge and served in a menial job, as a hospital orderly taking care of patients. When I arrived at Cambridge University in 1946, Wittgenstein had just returned from his six years of duty at the hospital. I held him in the highest respect and was delighted to find him living in a room above mine on the same staircase. I frequently met him walking up or down the stairs, but I was too shy to start a conversation. Several times I heard him muttering to himself: “I get stupider and stupider every day.
Two Liberal Arts Graduates Attempt to Explain the Setting Sun to a 2-Year-Old
Henry: “It’s gettin’ darker and darker.”
Me: “The sun goes away every night and then comes back in the morning.”
Sarah: “The sun is always moving, and sometimes it lights up certain parts of the earth, and other times it lights up the other parts. So when it’s nighttime here, it’s daytime somewhere else.”
Me: “Well, I think the earth is actually doing the moving.”
Sarah: “Right, yeah. Well, they’re both moving but the Earth’s movement is the relevant one to this particular issue.”
Henry: “It’s gettin’ darker and darker!”
Me: “The Sun is orbiting? Around what?”
Sarah: “Around the center of the Milky Way. I remember from Astronomy.”
Me: “You’re suggesting that we’re orbiting a sun that is itself orbiting the Milky Way.”
Sarah: “Yes, and in fact there is also a moon orbiting us.”
Henry: “The sun is moving?”
Me: “Well, the earth is moving; that’s why the Sun is going down.”
Henry: “We are moving?”
Sarah: “That’s correct, but the sun is also moving.”
Henry: “It’s gettin’ darker and darker.”
Abandoned Neuroscience Lab
Science is driven by progress and new discoveries, but sometimes reflection is just as important. Urban exploration is the act of visiting places you’re not supposed to go—places that are often derelict and haven’t seen life in years—and it seems fitting to rediscover a place of past discovery to see the memories held amongst the decaying rooms, abandoned apparatus and gathering dust. Sometimes they tell stories, like these photographs of an abandoned Moscow neuroscience laboratory, showing the remains of sophisticated Soviet-era experiments on human and animal brains.
Image Credit: Brusnichka
The more central claim—that stories increase our empathy, and “make societies work better by encouraging us to behave ethically”—seems too absurd even to argue with. Surely if there were any truth in the notion that reading fiction greatly increased our capacity for empathy then college English departments, which have by far the densest concentration of fiction readers in human history, would be legendary for their absence of back-stabbing, competitive ill-will, factional rage, and egocentric self-promoters; they’d be the one place where disputes are most often quickly and amiably resolved by mutual empathetic engagement. It is rare to see a thesis actually falsified as it is being articulated.
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| — | Can Science Explain Why We Tell Stories? : The New Yorker. Exactly. (via ayjay) |
