Beeker Northam | Blog

Closeness

When students were told that the task was imported from Greece, they came up with significantly more transportation possibilities.  They didn't just list buses, trains, and planes; they cited horses, triremes, spaceships, bicycles, and even Segway scooters.  Because the source of the problem was far away, the subjects felt less constrained by their local transport options.

Jonah Lehrer in the Panorama Magazine.

This fiction freezes the men

Maps attempt to integrate over time, that is, maps assume an average span of time. This means that nothing that moves is mapped, and therefore property is inherently preferred over humans…In order to restore truth to the map it is necessary to achieve a fiction of accuracy through an assumption, namely that the map is drawn at an exact instant of time. In this case, the time is June 20, 1915 at 2 p.m. on a sunny day. This fiction freezes the men and horses on the roads, the strawberry pickers in the fields, as well as the crops in rotation and the animals in pasture. This restores life to the dead map of property.

WILLIAM BUNGE

Discovered here via brainpicker.

Waving not apologising

On the bus this morning I saw a very small running man making his way at a clippy pace up Drury Lane.  He had proper gear and shorts on, and a rucksack that looked like it was for training purposes (not carrying his suit in).  Basically he had the appearance of a person who takes his running seriously.  Even without what I first saw him doing.

The reason I noticed him was the throng of pavement pedestrians scattering around him.  He was running through them flapping his hands imperiously at them like an impatient old woman batting away flies. 

Everyone was terribly upset, and stopped in the street to look after him with an injury that wasn't going to be redressed.  There was something a bit glorious about him, and the way his face registered no remorse, or even any kind of reaction.