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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 1ceecda | In his book Opticks, Newton made it clear that he did not believe that the laws of nature by themselves were sufficient to explain the universe's existence-God was the creator and sustainer of all the atoms that make up the cosmic matter: "For it became him [God] who created them [the atoms] to set them in order. And if he did so, it's unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World, or to pretend that it might arise out of a Chao.. | Mario Livio | ||
| aeec569 | Moreover, Galileo argued that by pursuing science using the language of mechanical equilibrium and mathematics, humans could understand the divine mind. | Mario Livio | ||
| 7b77ed6 | Unlike classically spinning bodies, such as tops, however, where the spin rate can assume any value fast or slow, electrons always have only one fixed spin. In the units in which this spin is measured quantum mechanically (called Planck's constant) the electrons have half a unit, or they are "spin-1/2" particles. In fact, all the matter particles in the standard model-electrons, quarks, neutrinos, and two other types called muons and taus-a.. | Mario Livio | ||
| 7ef51c6 | Galois's ideas, with all their brilliance, did not appear out of thin air. They addressed a problem whose roots could be traced all the way back to ancient Babylon. Still, the revolution that Galois had started grouped together entire domains that were previously unrelated. Much like the Cambrian explosion-that stunning burst of diversification in life forms on Earth-the abstraction of group theory opened windows into an infinity of truths... | Mario Livio | ||
| a5b419c | Indeed, the genius of Abel and Galois could be compared only to a supernova-an exploding star that for a short while outshines all the billions of stars in its host galaxy. | Mario Livio | ||
| 16a3d3e | One of the string theory pioneers, the Italian physicist Daniele Amati, characterized it as "part of the 21st century that fell by chance into the 20th century." Indeed, there is something about the very nature of the theory at present that points to the fact that we are witnessing the theory's baby steps. Recall the lesson learned from all the great ideas since Einstein's relativity-put the symmetry first. Symmetry originates the forces. T.. | Mario Livio | ||
| ec80a30 | While composite faces tend, by construction, to also be more symmetric, Langlois found that even after the effects of symmetry have been controlled, averageness was still judged to be attractive. These findings argue for a certain level of prototyping in the mind, since averageness might well be coupled with a prototypical template. | Mario Livio | ||
| c1672da | Creators are hard-driving, focused, dominant, independent risk-takers. | Mario Livio | ||
| c4570fd | Tolerance of ambiguity is a necessary condition for creativity. | Mario Livio | ||
| a5335b8 | The teleological argument, or argument from design, attempts to furnish evidence for God's existence from the apparent design of the world. | Mario Livio | ||
| cea9b4d | Accordingly, Pacioli's book also starts with a discussion of proportions in the human body, "since in the human body every sort of proportion and proportionality can be found, produced at the beck of the all-Highest through the inner mysteries of nature." | Mario Livio | ||
| 2ad6c20 | Supersymmetry is a subtle symmetry based on the quantum mechanical property spin. | Mario Livio | ||
| 9677a82 | The spirit of revolution and the power of free thought were Percy Shelley's biggest passions in life." One could use precisely the same words to describe Galois. On one of the pages that Galois had left on his desk before leaving for that fateful duel, we find a fascinating mixture of mathematical doodles, interwoven with revolutionary ideas. After two lines of functional analysis comes the word "indivisible," which appears to apply to the .. | Mario Livio | ||
| 28bc7d7 | When Jung first advanced this idea, most physicists did not take it seriously (although one eminent physicist of the time, Wolfgang Pauli, felt it was important enough to coauthor a book with Jung on the subject entitled The Interpretation and Nature of the Psyche). But now that the existence of nonlocal connections has been established, some physicists are giving Jung's idea another look. * Physicist Paul Davies states, "These non-local qu.. | Michael Talbot | ||
| 2def01a | I want to see all oppressed people throughout the world free. And the only way we can do this is by moving toward a revolutionary society where the needs and wishes of all people can be respected.' With these words the radical philosophy professor Angela Davis paraphrases Isaiah's ancient messianic dream of the lion that will peacefully lie down with the lamb in a completely good world. But what the Biblical prophet perhaps could not know i.. | desire-for-perfection isaiah | Paul Watzlawick | |
| 5638594 | Ow." Pulling out the Magic 8 Ball, Judy asked a question, shaking it hard: "Dear Magic 8 Ball: Could this summer get any worse?" The window cleared: Without a doubt." | Megan McDonald | ||
| 95f7a96 | fair! You guys had | Megan McDonald | ||
| f1aa411 | summer ever. RARE! Judy passed a note to Rocky before Mr. Todd came back. | Megan McDonald | ||
| f630cac | Judy Moody did not want to give up summer. She | Megan McDonald | ||
| 383b5d8 | I'm in the Toad Pee Club! | Megan McDonald | ||
| 359bff8 | Knife, Fork, Spoon. Rock, Paper, Scissors. It's the Rule of Three. | Megan McDonald | ||
| 1f1ba2a | Frank Pearl eats paste, | Megan McDonald | ||
| da88fc5 | Speculators make me nervous," I managed to say in a slow soggy tone. "What needless suspicion," he said. "To speculate is to imagine. To wonder." At least I think that's what he said, before a shape sank past in my murky sight--a watery shape, a descending turtle--and then I knew where I seemed to be, in my honest old Pontiac, ninety feet deep. There sure enough was the ovoid speedometer, there my drifting blue hand. A bit of my brain belie.. | Leif Enger | ||
| e3007f4 | Of course vindictiveness is an ugly trait and, yes, I do mean to forgive all these nice deserters; I mean, eventually, to say, to their ghosts if not their living faces, It's all right. I understand. I might've done the same. Not yet, though. Let me bear witness first. Two | Leif Enger | ||
| 3f6fb8b | Days later under northern skies he understood that its presence in the pickup only made him heartsick and he unloaded it cheap to the farmer, who, though confused by Spanish, understood burdens and the need to escape them. | Leif Enger | ||
| a64f342 | The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all. | Leif Enger | ||
| 3d44f3b | quixotically. | Leif Enger | ||
| 57980b4 | I wouldn't say that. Shad's a good man. Better than most of us, maybe. But he's ..." I shut my eyes, looked for adjectives, and could come up only with "not reliable," a choice I instantly regretted. Shad had plowed snow twenty years, in dangerous weather, for embarrassing pay. Reliable is exactly what he was. Yet it was also true he had a headful of spiders which woke now and then and altered his personal scenery. Somehow I'd managed to di.. | Leif Enger | ||
| 2043804 | It's never been hard for me to fall in love, a quality that has yet to simplify one single day of my life. | Leif Enger | ||
| 2179adf | Waltzer was stirred by the boy's assurance under stress. Waltzer believed in invented destiny and invented some then and there. | Leif Enger | ||
| b0b71f6 | I'd have sunk in the car if Marcus Jetty hadn't been doing a little late-season beachcombing. Marcus runs Greenstone Salvage and Tinker, a famous local eyesore of bike frames, tube amps, hula poppers, oil drums, and knobs of driftwood. He was picking along the jagged strand in his raincoat, eye on a fat cork from somebody's herring net, when a car approached on the highway above. He later described the sounds of a whining V6 and thumping ba.. | car-crash lake-superior | Leif Enger | |
| 8211630 | The man on the water stood forty yards out. | Leif Enger | ||
| 4cb644e | She kept looking away then back to me, as though at a nice surprise. This was maybe best of all. I never once expected to be someone's nice surprise. | Leif Enger | ||
| cd623e7 | one of her recent letters asks, Is it hubris to believe we all live epics? (Perhaps it is, but I suspect she's not actually counting on me for an answer.) | Leif Enger | ||
| e6f95e8 | I don't have the gift to aptly describe the rest of that evening, except to say it was a Christmas Eve beyond all gasping wishes, | Leif Enger | ||
| 37e010e | My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed--though ignoring them will change you also. | Leif Enger | ||
| d029681 | No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here's what I saw. Here's how it went. Make of it what you will. | Leif Enger | ||
| b830dc6 | Even as we sat, prying lids off milk bottles, we could hear the persecuted cooks banging around back in the kitchen, grandmas barking at each other, preparing the daily grotesque. | Leif Enger | ||
| f094c8a | He had the heartening bulk of the aging athlete defeated by pastry. He delivered all news as though it were good. Most welcome was his prediction that language would gradually return. | Leif Enger | ||
| cc0716f | A person never knows what is next -- I don't, anyway. The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all. | Leif Enger | ||
| 751062f | Sleep that day was a warm pool into which I dove and stayed, sporadically lifting my head to sense the world. | Leif Enger | ||
| 8378b9e | was working the cold up | Leif Enger | ||
| 087ffe7 | He had the heartening bulk of the aging athlete defeated by pastry. He delivered all news as though it were good. | Leif Enger | ||
| 1a2ef40 | Once in school, going down to lunch from our third-floor classroom, Valentino Vail had leaned over the banister without warning and loosed a cataract of orange vomit. The stairway was the usual open stack and Valentino's breakfast just dropped forever, three stories down, touching a good number of lives as it rocketed past and hitting the basement tile with a sound zookeepers must hear sometimes, around the elephants. | Leif Enger |