A potlatch was essentially a gift-giving feast common in the pacific northwest before a ban by the Canadian government made the practice illegal. Hearing this word in Enlightment Now by Steven Pinker immediately transported me back to a book I read when I was younger. It was about one man who went to live among, […]
There are multiple mentions of von Neumann probes in The Future of Humanity by Michio Kaku. This hypothetical probe could be the way that humans branch out into the stars. These self-replicating spacecrafts would go to a distant planet and use any raw materials present to generate copies of itself which could then be sent out […]
There is a French saying, L'esprit de l'escalier (the wit of the staircase) that means to think of the perfect reply too late. Made me think of the Simpson’s episode where the perfect comeback hits Marge as she drives away from the gas station. I believe it was from the episode where she buys a […]
The Second law of thermodynamics states that the overall entropy of the system increases over time. Entropy is, more or less, energy dispersal. It is the reason a glass of ice water will eventually reach the same temperature of the room around it. In his book Enlightment Now, Steven Pinker uses this law to claim […]
