Original Periodic Table, by Dmitri Mendeleev (1869)
Just as Da Vinci’s anatomy drawings helped doctors visualize what they were working on, so too did Dmitri Mendeleev’s efforts to organize what we knew of the elements into a rational data table. Mendeleev established the periodic table in the mid-nineteenth century, organizing the known elements and predicting more that have since been discovered. This table first appeared in a form that doesn’t look much like a table - it comes from a manuscript draft. The Periodic Table, which all schoolchildren memorize today, is one of the earliest examples of an infographic helping people to understand a scientific discipline.
I usually hate top 10 list articles, but this one is quite good.
On foreign policy, the right-wing critiques have been the most unhinged. Romney accuses the president of apologizing for America, and others all but accuse him of treason and appeasement. Instead, Obama reversed Bush’s policy of ignoring Osama bin Laden, immediately setting a course that eventually led to his capture and death. And when the moment for decision came, the president overruled both his secretary of state and vice president in ordering the riskiest—but most ambitious—plan on the table. He even personally ordered the extra helicopters that saved the mission. It was a triumph, not only in killing America’s primary global enemy, but in getting a massive trove of intelligence to undermine al Qaeda even further. If George Bush had taken out bin Laden, wiped out al Qaeda’s leadership, and gathered a treasure trove of real intelligence by a daring raid, he’d be on Mount Rushmore by now. But where Bush talked tough and acted counterproductively, Obama has simply, quietly, relentlessly decimated our real enemies, while winning the broader propaganda war. Since he took office, al Qaeda’s popularity in the Muslim world has plummeted.
–Andrew Sullivan, How Obama’s Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics (via evangotlib)
A great read. I’ve always thought that Obama was playing chess while his opponents were all playing checkers, though I now realize just how long we’re going to have to wait until we see definitive proof of it.
Via Maxistentialism
A goddamn Christmas miracle
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
I sat up in bed with a gleam in my eye,
Hoping to peep on St. Nick in the sky.Then all of a sudden I heard a great crash,
And whom did I spy all covered in ash?
It was jolly old Santa, that corpulent elf,
With a sack full of presents to place ‘neath my shelf.I noticed a package so shiny and black,
With Helvetica typeface and crisp plastic wrap;
‘Twas Cards ‘Gainst Humanity that Santa did hold—
The very same version that Amazon sold!“Please, Santa,” I urged, “won’t you stay for a joke
And sample this card game for horrible folk?”
How his red cheeks went white as he plucked up a card
And read “Ho ho… jerking off into a pool of children’s tears?!”Santa died on the spot with a grimace of pain
As a wee little vessel did burst in his brain;
The reindeer went feral, they ran and they bucked
And were smash’d by a FedEx delivery truck.Cards Against Humanity is back in stock - ruin Christmas for your loved ones for just $25.
The ignoramus wing of the Republican Party has for some time now been purveying a caricature of the intellectual as someone who is elitist, arrogant, smugly certain, impractical, and out of touch with the common man if not with reality itself.
In fact, anyone who actually has met (say) a college professor knows that most are earnest, deeply knowledgeable in their field while cautious about the inherent limits of human knowledge, open to differing opinions while instinctively skeptical toward crackpot ideas. Of course there are exceptions but as a rule true scholarship leads to humility, not arrogance, and the recognition that most problems we face as individuals and societies are complex, involve usually difficult and imperfect trade-offs between equally worthy but incompatible goals, and that having one’s own ideas challenged is a necessary ordeal on the road to truth. Real intellectuals, as opposed to hucksters, do not sign “Ph.D.” after their name.
I have been perplexed for some time why Newt Gingrich is routinely acknowledged even by his bitter enemies within the Republican Party as a “genius,” but the answer turns out is simple: he acts exactly like one of those obnoxious elitist intellectual know-it-alls that the right-wing no-nothings think is the hallmark of an intellectual. He is constantly reminding us of his doctorate in history; he routinely claims he understands issues more deeply than anyone else; he has made a career of denouncing or (when he had the authority) eliminating professional expertise that might challenge his own certain pronouncements; and he is a veritable fount of crackpot “big” ideas (mining minerals on the moon, protecting the United States from sci-fi doomsday scenarios, and “fundamentally transforming” everything as a first step to doing anything.
Another useful rule of thumb: real geniuses, as opposed to simple egomaniacs, do not generally refer to themselves in the third person.
– Stephen Budiansky (via Andrew Sullivan)
Very deep.
I once took a class that spent a good deal of time talking about 17th century attitudes towards the reality of objects seem only in a telescope and objects seen only in a microscope. The connection between the two is of huge historical and philosophical importance.
About me
I'm a graduate student in physics at MIT, specializing in cosmology and a Stanford alumnus. I'm a native of Highland Park, IL and this tumblr is largely for keeping in touch with friends from home.
