Herewith, a few cool things clogging the Intertoobz, rotorooted for your edification.
First: Would you like a complete (120 hours) video introduction to modern physics from a Stanford professor? How about for free? It's the sort of thing that (all too literally) keeps me up at night when I should be doing other things, things like writing. It goes from Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics and cosmology.
And speaking of, perhaps you've seen the excellent Justice series on PBS, which consists of lectures on moral philosophy via Harvard. If being a fan of this one makes me a geek, I'm willing to live with it. Absolutely absorbing–Michael Sandel is one of the most gifted college lecturers I've ever seen.
A preview:
And here's installment one of Statistical Mechanics from the physics courses, though at two hours it's a bit of a commitment:
Second: A good rundown of last night's debate in the Massachusetts Senate race.
Third: A man's search for the supposedly extinct (and extremely cool-looking, almost as cool as the elusive ilk, pictured below) Tasmanian tiger.
Fourth and lastly (it's a darn busy day 'round these parts): A look from a New Scientist editor at an over-thought, potentially precious discussion of the sort that philosophers often indulge about the nature of the Internet and what participating in it does to people's thinking. Not endorsing anything at the link, just saying it's interesting.
Said editor (Amanda Gefter) plucked this quotation from "neuro-philosopher" Thomas Metzinger. (Is it just me, or are occupations getting mighty specialized? What on earth is a neuro-philosopher?):
Here is something we are just beginning to understand — that the Internet affects our sense of selfhood, and on a deep functional level. …
If it is true that the experience of controlling and sustaining your focus of attention is one of the deeper layers of phenomenal selfhood, then what we are currently witnessing is not only an organized attack on the space of consciousness per se but a mild form of depersonalization. New medial environments may therefore create a new form of waking consciousness that resembles weakly subjective states — a mixture of dreaming, dementia, intoxication, and infantilization. Now we all do this together, every day. I call it Public Dreaming.
