Новости за 28.09.2016

A number theorist reviews The Man Who Knew Infinity, Matt Brown’s film about the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, and his Cambridge mentor, G.H. Hardy. “Hardy recalled visiting Ramanujan in a nursing home in Putney: ‘I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one’. Ramanujan replied: ‘No, it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways'”

A psychologist seeks a biological basis for pedophilia. “Pedophilia could stem from a cross-wire effect, where stimuli that should not be processed as erotic — the sight of a child — are sent to the wrong parts of the brain. That contradicts ideas that pedophilia results from childhood abuse or poor parenting, or that pedophiles are just naturally sadistic people. The disorder is unspeakably monstrous in the eyes of society, but from a clinical, neuroscience perspective it’s a communication error”

Demanding, beautifully-written essay teasing out Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar and showing how it led to a new appreciation of the part played by noun-cases in English, Chinese and other languages where case was thought to be rarely marked or wholly absent. “Case enters into linguistics as both a parameter and a principle. The case parameter is by default off. There is nothing to notice in Chinese. Finnish is different. There is something to notice”

The euro is “a modern tragedy”, imposing intolerable pressures on European economies. Sooner or later the eurozone will come apart. “Divorce is likely, probably when a fringe party of some shade of ugliness wins an election. The easiest withdrawal would be if Germany returned to the Deutschmark, but given Germany’s history this will not happen. The euro will eventually unravel in the face of social pressures, in much the same way as Schengen has unravelled: through acrimonious disorder”

Voters in the United States do not elect the president directly. Each state chooses “electors” pledged to a particular candidate. These electors make up the Electoral College that elects the president. Electors sometimes change sides in the Electoral College, and there is no federal law preventing them from doing go. Small states are over-represented in the Electoral College, as they are in Congress. A vote in California is worth less than a third of a vote in Wyoming

Diary of a month in Clausnitz, in eastern Germany, where villagers tried to blockade an arriving bus full of refugees. “Agriculture is important here and many families have known each other for generations. Clausnitz is typical for what Germany used to be, quite a long time ago. And the people who live here realize that. The refugees divided the town into two camps: half wants to help the refugees and half wants to be rid of them. In that regard, Clausnitz is extremely representative of the Germany... Читать дальше...

Rabbits rarely kill each either. Neither do bats or whales. Lions, tigers, and bears kill each other more frequently, but not nearly as often as primates do. Modern humans kill at a rate which is fairly typical for primates, though high for mammals in general — roughly 2% of human deaths are intra-species murder, down from 12% in medieval times. The most murderous mammals are meerkats: “Almost one in five meerkats, mostly youngsters, lose their lives at the paws and jaws of their peers”

The Shang kings of ancient China sought guidance from the gods by inscribing questions on the shoulder-bones of oxen, cracking the inscribed bones with hot irons, and divining the gods’ answers from the shapes of the cracks. “The pantheon they addressed included nature powers, predynastic powers, a supreme power called Di, and the legendary ancestor Ku, one of whose consorts gave birth to the founder of the dynasty after swallowing an egg left by a dark bird”

Hard-nosed look at Elon Musk’s plan to populate Mars within the coming decade. It is at the outer edge of possible, and it will probably cost two or three times Musk’s budget of $10 billion — but it is possible, and it leaves far more expensive and far less ambitious government programmes in the dust. Musk argues that we must conquer space not merely to advance science but to ensure human flourishing: “It is about releasing the masses into space, and letting them create a new life in space”