Category: misc
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North, South, and Slavs
A quote from Thomas Cahill, Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginning of the Modern World (Hinges of History) p. 190 “But there was a division even then between Europe north and Europe south. The south – Italy south of Lombardy, the parts of France that spoke Provencal, Spain, Portugal, and (to some extent)…
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Galen: Woman is a Mutilated Male
A quote from Thomas Cahill, Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginning of the Modern World (Hinges of History) p. 21-22 “The female body, on the other hand, was very deficient. In her mother’s womb, the female had received insufficient heat, so she was softer, more liquid, underdone. Periodic menstruation proved that she as…
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Inventing the Flat Earth
Quotes from Nancy Marie Brown, The Abacus and the Cross: The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages p. 129 ‘The error begins with the Italian poet Petrarch, who is known for two things: developing the sonnet, and coining the therm “the Dark Ages”. Sometimes called the first…
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Parapsychology in the Cold War
Quotes from David Kaiser, How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival p. 90 “The CIA, like other branches of the defense establishment, had begun to harbor fears of ‘psi gap’ vis-a-vis the Soviets, the consequences of of which could prove as devastating (according to some) as the missile gap and the…
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Neuroscience about Newton
Quotes from Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain p. 98 “In moment-to-moment activity, the interpreter [in the brain] is always dealing with the changing inputs from sites in the brain where activity is going on. Sitting under the apple tree, Isaac Newton, indulging in that most human…
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Von Neumann as a Hawk
Quotes from Peter Byrne, The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III: Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family p. 73-74 “And along with his fellow hydrogen bomb-engineers, Edward Teller and John Wheeler, von Neumann was certain that preparing to wage nuclear war was a historical necessity. Life magazine recalled in…
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Religious Robots
Quotes from Robert Geraci, Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality p. 133 “Ray Kurzweil believes that intelligent machines will be more spiritual than human being and believes that the future will include real and virtual houses of worship where intelligent machines will congregate (Kurzweil 1999, 153). Naturally, since all…
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Franklin flirting in France
Quotes from Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (Yale Nota Bene) p. 246-247 ‘Franklin liked to flirt, and here were ladies who enjoyed it as much as he did were seasoned practitioners of the art. They did not want avuncular advice like Polly Stevenson or Georgianna Shipley or Katy Greene. Instead, they piled him with extravagant…