Category Archives: truth

Darren Naish

AllYesterdaysIt should be noted that there are some disagreements at the level of reconstructing skeletons and musculature, and that improvements and tweaks are frequently being made. We mostly agree on the positions of muscles, for example, but the sizes of some of the muscles involved are variable in living animals and there is sometimes no reliable way of determining their size in fossil animals.
The real complication in reconstructing fossil animals is that there’s all the soft stuff that goes on top of the musculoskeletal system. Integument is the great unknown for many fossil animals; its preservation is rare and infrequent, and even when it’s preserved, it may be massively distorted or rearranged relative to its position in life. This is important, since the shape and size of the integument can radically change the appearance of the living animal relative to its underlying musculature and skelton.
We are therefore presented with a huge diversity of ‘known unknowns‘ and ‘unknown unknowns‘ – the gate is open for all manner of bizarre possibilities as goes the life appearances of fossil animals.

Wiktionary, Pigs in Maputo

PigsInMaputothere’s a grain of truth in every joke

people convey truth in jokes

in each joke there is a share of the truth

there is truth in every joke

there is a bit of truth in every joke

there is a bit of joke in every truth

伊藤若冲

売茶翁_若冲筆売茶翁

11歳で出家。肥前 龍津寺の化霖禅師から禅を学ぶ

57歳の時、化霖が遷化すると、寺を法弟に任せ上洛

61歳で、「仏弟子の世に居るや、その命の正邪は心に在り。事跡には在らず。そも、袈裟の仏徳を誇って、世人の喜捨を煩わせるのは、私の持する志とは異なっている」として売茶の生活に入る。茶を喫しながら考え方の相違や人のあり方と世の中の心の汚さを卓越した問答で講じ、簡素で清貧な生活をするが為に次第に汚れていく自己をも捨て続ける行を生涯つづけようとしている。

売茶翁の行動は、当時の禅僧の在り方への反発から、真実の禅を実践したものであったと言われる。禅を含む仏教は、寺請制度により、お布施という安定した収入源を得て安逸に流れつつあった。また禅僧の素養として抹茶を中心とした茶道があったが、厳しい批判眼を持つ売茶翁の目には、形式化したものに映った。そのため茶本来の精神に立ち返るべく、煎茶普及の活動に傾注したとも言われる。

American Dialect Society

In its 17th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted “plutoed” as the word of the year, in a run-off against climate canary. To pluto is to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet.

Cyril Northcote Parkinson

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Data expands to fill the space available for storage.
Storage requirements will increase to meet storage capacity.

The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource.
The reverse is not true.

The amount of time which one has to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete the task.

Richard Wilkinson, Kate Pickett

… differences in average income or living standards between whole populations or countries don’t matter at all, but income differences within those same populations matter very much indeed … what matters in rich countries may not be your actual income level and living standard, but how you compare with other people in the same society. Perhaps average standards don’t matter and what does is simply whether you are doing better or worse than other people …
… men have an incentive to achieve as high a status as possible because their sexual competitiveness depends on it … men use violence when their status is threatened, and more so when there is little status to defend. … The association between inequality and violence is strong and consistent. The evolutionary importance of shame and humiliation provides a plausible explanation of why more unequal societies suffer more violence.

Борис Волынов, Александр Скворцов

Борис Волынов:
宇宙へ行くと生きとし生けるものへの思いが変わります。命がとても短いものだと気づくんです。

Александр Скворцов:
地球の美しさと、はかなさがわかった。人間の力は破壊でなく、創造に向けるべきだと。私たちの子ども、そしてまたその子どもが安心して美しい地球で生き続けられるよう、環境を守り、生命をつないでいかなければならない。そう、心から実感しました。

Mari Takenouchi, なかにし

Mari Takenouchi: すべては軍事産業から来ています。原発も核兵器を作るためにもともとつくられた技術。基地問題もそして放射能汚染を含む大規模環境破壊も、すべて軍事産業から来ている。これらをすべて違法にできないか。世界中で。

なかにし: 横槍を入れるようですが、インターネットは元々アメリカの軍事技術です。

Mohamed Morsy

Egypt would like to stress that the international system will not get fixed as long as the application of double standards remains. We expect from others, as they expect from us, that they respect our cultural particularities and religious points of reference, and not seek to impose concepts that are unacceptable to us or politicize certain issues and use them as a pretext to intervene in the affairs of others.

Kanishka

What we believe is at times exclusive of what we understand. We tend to believe what we were taught and what is accepted by majority of the society to be correct. Why do we so strongly believe in things we do not understand?

田幸和歌子

尾崎紅葉の『金色夜叉』――作者名と作品名、「貫一・お宮」の名前などは知っているという人が多いだろう。
また、熱海の海岸で貫一が宮を蹴り倒す場面、「来年の今月今夜になったならば、僕の涙で必ず月は曇らして見せるから」という名ゼリフも、テレビやマンガなどのパロディで知っているという人も多いかもしれない。
だが、作品を全編通して読んだことのある人は、かなり少ないと思う。

Steve Jones

Biologists have a dirty little secret: while practically everyone knows of The Origin of Species (and owes much to it), almost nobody has read it.

Marcel Junod

原爆投下約1カ月後の広島に約15トンの医薬品を届け、被爆者の治療に尽力したスイス人医師、故マルセル・ジュノー博士の生涯を描いたアニメ作品「ジュノー」。
ジュノー博士は赤十字国際委員会(ICRC)の派遣員としてスペイン内戦や第2次世界大戦で捕虜や被災者を救護。ICRC駐日代表として連合国軍総司令部(GHQ)と交渉し、医薬品を調達して広島に駆けつけた。

Max Huber

Thus it is our task to form a third front above and cutting across the two belligerent fronts, a third front which is directed against neither of them, but which works for the benefit of both. The combatants of this third front are interested only in the suffering of the defenceless human being, irrespective of his nationality, his convictions or his past. They fight wherever they can against all inhumanity, against every degradation of the human personality, against all injustice directed against defenceless human beings. It is for these fighters that Dr. Junod has coined the expression ‘the third combatant’.

Alain

Le sourire est la perfection du rire. Car il y a toujours de l’inquiétude dans le rire, quoique aussitôt calmée ; mais dans le sourire tout se détend, sans aucune inquiétude ni défense. On peut donc dire que l’enfant sourit mieux encore à sa mère que sa mère ne lui sourit ; ainsi l’enfance est toujours la plus belle. Mais dans tout sourire il y a de l’enfance ; c’est un oubli et un recommencement. Tous les muscles prennent leur repos et leur aisance, principalement ces muscles puissants des joues et des mâchoires, si naturellement contractés dans la colère, et déjà dans l’attention. Le sourire ne fait pas attention ; les yeux embrassent tout autour de leur centre. En même temps la respiration et le coeur travaillent largement et sans gêne, d’où cette couleur de vie et cet air de santé. Comme la défiance éveille la défiance, ainsi le sourire appelle le sourire ; il rassure l’autre sur soi et toutes choses autour. C’est pourquoi ceux qui sont heureux disent bien que tout leur sourit. Et l’on peut, d’un sourire, guérir les plaies de quelqu’un qu’on ne connaît pas. C’est pourquoi le sourire est l’arme du sage, contre ses propres passions et contre celles d’autrui. Il les touche là dans leur centre et dans leur force, qui n’est jamais dans les idées ni dans les événements, mais dans cette colère armée qui ne peut sourire.

Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken; Ashay Dharwadker

In 1976, K. Appel and W. Haken announced a “computer proof” of the four-color conjecture, using 1200 hours of computer calculations that could not be verified by humans, even in principle.

In 2000, Ashay Dharwadker announced a new proof of the four-color theorem that appears to have stood the test of time.

admin

This gloomy picture raises a profound problem for anyone in politics: “If I don’t win, I can’t make a difference, so I have to do whatever it takes to win.” …
The issues are complicated and people just don’t have the time to understand them. “I’ve worked all day, so forget global warming and the debt ceiling and bring on dinner already.“ They are attracted to a leader who appears to have the answers, and the more certain the leader appears the better, even if that leader is wrong! It’s the easy way out, and who can blame them? They don’t have the time. But wait, they have time to stream hours of their favorite shows, they text endlessly, and invest solid time in social media. They do have time and energy for things that interest them. What if they found you interesting?

Valérie Pécresse

Il fallut plus de trois siècles et des centaines de pages de démonstration pour remplir cette fameuse marge… Quant à Poincaré, plus sobre, il s’est contenté de commenter ainsi l’énoncé de sa conjecture : « mais cette question nous entraînerait trop loin ».
Voici, Mesdames et Messieurs, une merveilleuse définition des mathématiques : la science des questions qui nous entraînent trop loin.

Immanuel Kant

Alles, was die Natur selbst anordnet, ist zu irgendeiner Absicht gut. Die ganze Natur überhaupt ist eigentlich nichts anderes, als ein Zusammenhang von Erscheinungen nach Regeln; und es gibt überall keine Regellosigkeit.

Joseph Heath

The total number of green traffic lights must be the same as the total number of red traffic lights, because one person’s green light just is someone else’s red light. The same is true of economic exchange. Every time someone sells something, someone else must buy something. Why? Because the only way to sell something is to sell it to someone else. This may seem obvious, but a staggering percentage of the popular commentary on all sorts of economic issues loses track of this elementary equivalence.

Gene Weingarten

He emerged from the metro at the L’Enfant Plaza station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.
It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L’Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.
Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he’s really bad? What if he’s really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you? What’s the moral mathematics of the moment?

Honesty (Billy Joel)


If you search for tenderness
it isn’t hard to find.
You can have the love you need to live.
But if you look for truthfulness
You might just as well be blind.
It always seems to be so hard to give.
Honesty is such a lonely word.
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard.
And mostly what I need from you.

>Evan Ratliff

>The Soviet biology establishment of the mid-20th century, led under Joseph Stalin by the infamous agronomist Trofim Lysenko, outlawed research into Mendelian genetics. But Dmitry Belyaev and his older brother Nikolay, both biologists, were intrigued by the possibilities of the science. “It was his brother’s influence that caused him to have this special interest in genetics,” Trut says of her mentor. “But these were the times when genetics was considered fake science.” When the brothers flouted the prohibition and continued to conduct Mendelian-based studies, Belyaev lost his job as director of the Department of Fur Breeding. Nikolay’s fate was more tragic: He was exiled to a labor camp, where he eventually died.
Secretly, Belyaev remained dedicated to genetic science, disguising his work as research in animal physiology.

>Soyfer, V. N.

>Lysenkoism caused serious, long-term harm to Soviet knowledge of biology. It represented a serious failure of the early Soviet leadership to find real solutions to agricultural problems, throwing their support behind a charlatan at the expense of many human lives.

Lysenko speaking at the Kremlin in 1935. Behind him are (left to right) Stanislav Kosior, Anastas Mikoyan, Andrei Andreev and Joseph Stalin.

>Kiyoshi Takenaka, Caren Bohan

>

Japan has denied a White House statement that Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told U.S. President Barack Obama he would put all goods and services on the negotiating table for trade liberalisation.
The White House stood by its statement, issued on Saturday, despite Japan’s denial.

>坂井広志

>

 12日昼(日本時間13日朝)にホノルル市内で行われた日米首脳会談の米側の報道発表をめぐり、とんだハプニングが起きた。
 米側の報道発表資料には環太平洋戦略的経済連携協定(TPP)について「野田佳彦首相が『すべての物品およびサービスを自由化交渉のテーブルに載せる』と述べた」と書かれていた。
 これに対し、外務省は「そのような発言を首相が行った事実はない」として、米側の報道発表を否定する報道発表をして火消しに躍起となった。外務省によると、首相は「昨年11月に策定した『包括的経済連携に関する基本方針』に基づいて高いレベルでの経済連携を進める」と述べただけだという。
 外務省が米側に説明を求めたところ、米側は同基本方針に「センシティブ品目(自由化に慎重な品目)について配慮を行いつつ、すべての品目を自由化交渉対象とし…」と書かれていたことを踏まえ、報道発表したと説明。誤解を認めたという。

>Robert M. Solow

>

Why does public discussion of economic policy so often show the abysmal ignorance of the participants? Why do I so often want to cry at what public figures, the press, and television commentators say about economic affairs?

>Captain Obvious

>

Captain Obvious states the obvious. This means that his statements are self-evident.
  • The future is coming.
  • Indeed, current events may become past events, but always remember that there will, now and always, be future events in the future.
  • Computers don’t work after they break.
  • No matter how today turns out, there’s always tomorrow.
  • Simply because you can’t see something doesn’t mean you can’t hear or smell it.
  • If something gets hard that means it won’t be easy anymore.
  • If you hate someone that can most likely indicate that you don’t like them.
  • Someone has, at some time, had sex with someone else.
  • When your thirsty nothing feels better then drinking liquid!
  • Well, I say! These boots are made for walking.
  • The best cure for hunger is food!

>Robert A. Heinlein

>Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.

A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”

>Thomas Sowell

>One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again. Do we need to keep repeating the same mistakes forever?

Two things that seldom seem to go together are genius and common sense. When I try to think of people with both, the first name that comes to mind is Milton Friedman. But it is a struggle to try to come up with more names after that.

The “self-esteem” dogma has triumphed so completely in our educational system that you have all sorts of people spouting off about all sorts of things that they know little or nothing about. Just recently, letters have come to me from people diagnosing individuals they have never laid eyes on — saying that Andrea Yates was insane and that Einstein was autistic — even when there is nothing to indicate that they have any expertise for diagnosing anybody.

Most Americans living below the official poverty line have air conditioning, microwaves and VCRs. About half have a car or truck. Moreover, most of the people in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution in 1975 have also been in the top 20 percent at some point since then. … People who are genuinely poor all their lives still exist, but only about 3 percent of the American population remains in the bottom 20 percent for as long as a decade.

George Carlin

  • The reason I talk to myself is that I’m the only one whose answers I accept.
  • Religion is just mind control.
  • The status quo sucks.
  • I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven’t tried that for a while. Maybe this time it’ll work.
  • I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
  • There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.
  • Weather forecast for tonight: dark.

>Pablo R. Picasso

>

Todo el mundo quiere comprender la pintura. ¿Por qué no intentan comprender el canto de los pájaros? ¿Por qué a la gente le gusta una noche, un flor, todas las cosas que rodean al hombre sin tratar de comprenderlas? En el caso de la pintura, en cambio, se quiere comprender. Que comprendan sobre todo que el artista obra por necesidad … Quienes intentan interpretar un cuadro, casi siempre se equivocan.

>Carl Marziali

>

Air and water meet over most of the earth’s surface, but exactly where one ends and the other begins turns out to be a surprisingly subtle question.
A new study in Nature narrows the boundary to just one quarter of water molecules in the uppermost layer – those that happen to have one hydrogen atom in water and the other vibrating freely above.
Such molecules straddle gas and liquid phases, according to senior author and USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences associate professor Alexander Benderskii, who said the free hydrogen behaves like an atom in gas phase, while its twin below acts much like the other atoms that make up “bulk” water.
The finding matters for theoretical reasons and for practical studies of reactions at the water’s surface, including the processes that maintain a vital supply of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

>Lillian R. Lieber

>

“The past is antiquated
You must be progressive.”
“The past as wonderful,
The new-fangled fads are
A sign of decadence”
To do this vividly,
we use pictures whenever possible.
And top do it
clearly,
we use the clearest language
man has invented:
Mathematics.

>A. W. Castleman, Jr.

>

Some years ago, my students and I discovered a new class of molecular clusters termed Metallo-Carbohedrenes or Met-Cars for short. They are comprised of eight early transition metal atoms bound to twelve carbons. In view of their potential use as new electronic and optical materials, as well as predicted value as new catalysts, they have attracted wide interest in the chemistry community. Work is underway in our laboratory to investigate their molecular properties, reactivity, and routes for synthesis in the solid state. Excitation experiments using femtosecond lasers are providing new insights into the coupling of electronic and vibrational modes on the ultra short time scale, and are elucidating their photoinduced behavior.
Along the lines of exploring the physical basis for catalysis, my group is also engaged in a number of studies of the reactivities of transition metal compound clusters of widely varying composition and types, with particular attention to oxygen transfer reactions. Investigations are also under way to learn how the small cluster building blocks lead to different morphologies of growing particles that are of interest in wide-ranging areas from photocatalysis to developing new cluster assembled nanoscale materials.

>Pennsylvania State University

>Transforming lead into gold is an impossible feat, but a similar type of “alchemy” is not only possible, but cost-effective too. Three Penn State researchers have shown that certain combinations of elemental atoms have electronic signatures that mimic the electronic signatures of other elements. According to the team’s leader A. Welford Castleman Jr., Eberly Distinguished Chair in Science and Evan Pugh Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Physics, “the findings could lead to much cheaper materials for widespread applications such as new sources of energy, methods of pollution abatement, and catalysts on which industrial nations depend heavily for chemical processing.”

Ralph Vinc

People who forecast for a living (economists, stock market forecasters, weathermen, government agencies, etc.) have a notorious history for incorrect forecasts, but most decisions anyone must make in life usually require making a forecast about the future.

Ed Spielman, Jerry Thorpe, Herman Miller

  • Under heaven, all can see beauty as beauty, only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good, only because there is evil. Therefore, having and not having a rise together, difficult and easy compliment each other. High and low rest upon each other. Front and back follow one another. Be like the sun, and what is within you will warm the earth.
  • Shape clay into a vessel, it is the space within that gives it value. Place doors and windows in a house. It is the opening that brings light within. Set spokes within a wheel. It is the emptiness of the hub that makes them useful. Therefore, be the space at the center. Be nothing. And you will have everything to give to others.
  • Perceive the way of nature, and no force of man can harm you. Do not meet a wave head on. Avoid it. You do not have to stop force. It is easier to redirect it. Learn more ways to preserve, than to destroy. Avoid, rather than check. Check, rather than hurt. Hurt, rather than maim. Maim, rather than kill. For all life is precious. Nor can any be replaced.
  • I seek not to know all the answers … but to understand the questions.

>良寛

>

其の人此に有り、好んで無用の貨を集む、惟自身の快を取りて、従他妻子の罹。
客来れば俄かに之を羅ね、宛として陶家の児の如し、将に謂ふ好箇手と、傍人のわらひを免れず。

>芭蕉

>

去年の秋、かりそめに面をあはせ、今年五月の初め、深切に別れを惜しむ。その別れにのぞみて、一日草扉をたたいて、終日閑談をなす。その器、画を好む。風雅(俳諧)を愛す。予こころみに問ふことあり。「画は何のために好むや」、「風雅のために好む」と言へり。「風雅は何のために愛すや」、「画のために愛す」と言へり。その学ぶこと二つにして、用をなすこと一なり。まことや、「君子は多能を恥づ」といへれば、品二つにして用一なること、感ずべきにや。画はとって予が師とし、風雅は教へて予が弟子となす。されども、師が画は精神徹に入り、筆端妙をふるふ。その幽遠なるところ、予が見るところにあらず。予が風雅は、夏炉冬扇のごとし。衆にさかひて、用ふるところなし。ただ、釈阿・西行の言葉のみ、かりそめに言ひ散らされしあだなるたはぶれごとも、あはれなるところ多し。後鳥羽上皇の書かせたまひしものにも、「これらは歌にまことありて、しかも悲しびを添ふる」と、のたまひはべりしとかや。されば、この御言葉を力として、その細き一筋をたどり失ふことなかれ。なほ、「古人の跡を求めず、古人の求めしところを求めよ」と、南山大師の筆の道にも見えたり。「風雅もまたこれに同じ」と言ひて、燈火をかかげて、柴門の外に送りて別るるのみ。

>一遍

>

生ずるは独り、死するも独り、共に住するといえど独り、さすれば、共にはつるなき故なり
身を観ずれば水の泡 消ぬる後は人もなし 命を思へば月の影 出で入る息にぞ留まらぬ

>伊勢物語

>

昔、男ありけり。その男身をえうなきものに思ひなして、「京にはあらじ、あづまの方に住むべき国求めに」とて行きけり。もとより友とする人ひとりふたりしていきけり。道知れる人もなくてまどひいきけり。三河の国八橋といふ所にいたりぬ。そこを八橋といひけるは、水ゆく河の蜘蛛手なれば、橋を八つわたせるによりてなむ八橋といひける。その沢のほとりの木の陰におりゐて、乾飯食ひけり。その沢にかきつばたいとおもしろく咲きたり。それを見て、ある人のいはく、「かきつばたといふ五文字を句の上にすゑて、旅の心をよめ」といひければ、よめる、
 
  から衣きつつなれにしつましあればはるばるきぬる旅をしぞ思ふ
 
と詠めりければ、みな人、乾飯の上に涙おとしてほとびにけり。

>唐木順三

>日本には昔から今にいたるまでなぜかくも無用者が多いのか、質において高い者が、なぜ意識して無用者となったのか、日本の高級な思想や文学がなぜ世の無用者によってかたちづくられてきたのか。

>Rajiv Sethi

>It has sometimes been argued that the Nash prediction in the finitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma (and in many other environments) is counterintuitive and at odds with experimental evidence. However, experimental tests of the equilibrium hypothesis are typically conducted with monetary payoffs, which need not reflect the preferences of subjects over action profiles. In other words, individual preferences over the distribution of monetary payoffs may not be exclusively self-interested. Furthermore, the equilibrium prediction relies on the hypothesis that these preferences are commonly known to all subjects, which is also unlikely to hold in practice.
To address this latter concern, the concept of Nash equilibrium has been generalized to allow for situations in which players are faced with incomplete information. If each player is drawn from some set of types, such that the probability distribution governing the likelihood of each type is itself commonly known to all players, then we have a Bayesian game. A pure strategy in this game is a function that associates with each type a particular action. A BayesNash equilibrium is then a strategy profile such that no player can obtain greater expected utility by deviating to a different strategy, given his or her beliefs about the distribution of types from which other players are drawn.
Allowing for incomplete information can have dramatic effects on the predictions of the Nash equilibrium concept. Consider, for example, the finitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma, and suppose that each player believes that there is some possibility, perhaps very small, that his or her opponent will cooperate in all periods provided that no defection has yet been observed, and defect otherwise. If the number of stages n is sufficiently large, it can be shown that mutual defection in all stages is inconsistent with equilibrium behavior, and that, in a well-defined sense, the players will cooperate in most periods. Hence, in applying the concept of Nash equilibrium to practical situations, it is important to pay close attention to the information that individuals have about the preferences, beliefs, and rationality of those with whom they are strategically interacting.

>Roger A. McCain

>

If there is a set of strategies with the property that no player can benefit by changing her strategy while the other players keep their strategies unchanged, then that set of strategies and the corresponding payoffs constitute the Nash Equilibrium.
… In fact, any dominant strategy equilibrium is also a Nash Equilibrium. The Nash equilibrium is an extension of the concepts of dominant strategy equilibrium and of the maximin solution for zero-sum games.

>John Forbes Nash, Jr.

>Let (S, f) be a game with n players, where Si is the strategy set for player i, S=S1 X S2 … X Sn is the set of strategy profiles and f=(f1(x), …, fn(x)) is the payoff function for x \in S. Let xibe a strategy profile of player i and x-i be a strategy profile of all players except for player i. When each player i \in {1, …, n} chooses strategy xi resulting in strategy profile x = (x1, …, xn)then player i obtains payoff fi(x). Note that the payoff depends on the strategy profile chosen, i.e., on the strategy chosen by player i as well as the strategies chosen by all the other players. A strategy profile x* \in S is a Nash equilibrium (NE) if no unilateral deviation in strategy by any single player is profitable for that player, that is

\forall i,x_i\in S_i, x_i \neq x^*_{i} :  f_i(x^*_{i}, x^*_{-i}) \geq f_i(x_{i},x^*_{-i}).

A game can have either a pure-strategy or a mixed Nash Equilibrium, (in the latter a pure strategy is chosen stochastically with a fixed frequency). Nash proved that if we allow mixed strategies, then every game with a finite number of players in which each player can choose from finitely many pure strategies has at least one Nash equilibrium.

When the inequality above holds strictly (with > instead of \geq) for all players and all feasible alternative strategies, then the equilibrium is classified as a strict Nash equilibrium. If instead, for some player, there is exact equality between x^*_i and some other strategy in the set S, then the equilibrium is classified as a weak Nash equilibrium.

Karl Popper

Inductivist methodology supposed that one can somehow move from a series of singular existential statements to a universal statement. That is, that one can move from ‘this is a white swan’, ‘that is a white swan’, and so on, to a universal statement such as ‘all swans are white’. This method is clearly deductively invalid, since it is always possible that there may be a non-white swan that has eluded observation (and, in fact, the discovery of the Australian black swan demonstrated the deductive invalidity of this particular statement).

It is always possible to change the universal statement or the existential statement so that falsification does not occur. On hearing that a black swan has been observed in Australia, one might introduce the ad hoc hypothesis, ‘all swans are white except those found in Australia’; or one might adopt another, more cynical view about some observers, ‘Australian bird watchers are incompetent’.

Albert Camus

L’intelligence dans les chaînes perd en lucidité ce qu’elle gagne en fureur.

L’absurde, c’est la raison lucide qui constate ses limites.

De toutes les écoles de la patience et de la lucidité, la création est la plus efficace. Elle est aussi le bouleversant témoignage de la seule dignité de l’homme: la révolte tenace contre sa condition, la persévérance dans un effort tenu pour stérile.

塩谷喜雄

人々が原発に抱いていた漠然とした不安は、福島原発の事故によって、圧倒的な現実となった。10万人を超す人々が地域社会と生活を奪われ、人生に多くの困難を抱え込まされている。
いわれなき理不尽な不幸を人が受け入れるには、真実を知ることが最低条件だと思う。天災ではなく、明らかな手抜かりと対応の失敗による事故なのに、事故現場はすぐ眼前にあるのに、避難民が納得できるような事故の全体像はいまだに「報道」されていない。メディアが流すのは、刑事責任が問われる当事者の発表をただなぞった、「広報」の類がほとんどだ。
圧倒的な現実として露呈した原発システムの破綻、その実像をとらえて、分析して、評価するのが、科学ジャーナリズムの役割である。そこに切り込まなければ、原発を包む黒い霧は晴れない。何やらまがまがしい印象だけが独り歩きして、事故前と同じように、遠くにかすんで内実は不明の巨大な伏魔殿が、そのまま存続することになる。
推進と廃止の二項対立から距離を置くという名目で、各原発の個別具体的なリスクを見極めず、原発システム全体に共通する構造的な欠陥もほとんど見逃してきた科学ジャーナリズムは、これだけの圧倒的な現実もまた、やすやすと看過し、広報の担い手に徹するのだろうか。

3月11日に福島第一原発で何が起きたのか。すべてはここから始まる。ここをすっ飛ばした収束・復興議論は、いかにもっともらしくても、いかに厳かでも、科学的、技術的には無意味である。
科学や技術を都合のいい道具としか位置づけていない日本、政治・経済の哲学も判断基準も、科学とは無縁だ。そのくせ研究開発の成果だけはいただこうというご都合主義の魂胆が、原発事故で立ちいかなくなっていることだけは確かだ。

>Timothy Garton Ash

>

Facts are subversive. Subversive of the claims made by democratically elected leaders as well as dictators, by biographers and autobiographers, spies and heroes, torturers and postmodernists. Subversive of lies, half-truths, myths; of all those ‘easy speeches that comfort cruel men’.
… Facts subvert the lies of oppressors but also the heroic self-images of countries and individuals. Poland’s image of itself as a pure victim of history is shaken by the true story of the murder of Jews by Poles in the village of Jedwabne. The United States’ cherished claim to moral exceptionalism stumbles over the photographs of torture in the prison at Abu Ghraib. Britain’s post-imperial illusions fare little better. Even great political writers, held up to us as moral authorities, are not immune.
… The first job of the historian and of the journalist is to find facts. Not the only job, perhaps not the most important, but the first. Facts are cobblestones from which we build roads of analysis. They are mosaic tiles that we fit together to compose pictures of past and present. There will be disagreement about where the road leads and what reality or truth is revealed by the mosaic picture. The facts themselves must be checked against all the available evidence. But some are round and hard – and the most powerful leaders in the world trip over them.

Ha-Joon Chang

There are many different elements in the MDGs, especially as each goal has a number of ‘targets’ that span across different sub-issues, but most of them relate to reducing poverty and improving education and health in poor countries.
… Laudable these goals and targets may be, their sum total does not amount to development in the sense we are talking about, as they pay no serious attention to the transformation of productive structure and capabilities.
… The emphasis in this vision is very much on the trinity of increased aid, debt reduction, and increased trade. Debt reduction and increased aid are simply enabling conditions, rather than those that determine the contents of development.
… Thus seen, the MDG envisages ‘development without development’. Most of what it takes as ‘development’ is really provision of basic needs and poverty reduction.

>Dan Balz, Bob Woodward

>

9:32 a.m.
The Vice President in Washington: Underground, in Touch With Bush
Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, summoned by the White House to the bunker, was on an open line to the Federal Aviation Administration operations center, monitoring Flight 77 as it hurtled toward Washington, with radar tracks coming every seven seconds. Reports came that the plane was 50 miles out, 30 miles out, 10 miles out-until word reached the bunker that there had been an explosion at the Pentagon.
Mineta shouted into the phone to Monte Belger at the FAA: “Monte, bring all the planes down.” It was an unprecedented order-there were 4,546 airplanes in the air at the time. Belger, the FAA’s acting deputy administrator, amended Mineta’s directive to take into account the authority vested in airline pilots. “We’re bringing them down per pilot discretion,” Belger told the secretary.
“[Expletive] pilot discretion,” Mineta yelled back. “Get those [expletive] planes down.”
Sitting at the other end of the table, Cheney snapped his head up, looked squarely at Mineta and nodded in agreement.

>Norman Mineta

>

There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, “The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to, “The plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the vice president, “Do the orders still stand?” And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” Well, at the time I didn’t know what all that meant.

>森瀧市郎

>

核兵器を絶対否定してきた私たちは、平和利用をも否定せざるをえない核時代に突入しているのであります。『核兵器絶対否定』を叫んできた私たちは、いまやきっぱりと『核絶対否定』の立場に立たざるをえないのであります。『平和利用』という言葉にまどわされて『核絶対否定』をためらっていたら、やがて核に否定されるでありましょう。
先日の国際会議で私があえて提起したテーゼは、『核分裂エネルギーを利用する限り、人類は未来を失うであろう』ということでありました。くりかえして申し上げます。『核分裂エネルギーを利用する限り、人類は未来を失うであろう』と。
巨大エネルギー、巨大開発、巨大生産、そして巨大消費という形態をとる核時代の産業文明は、いまこそその価値観を一大転換しなければなりません。価値観の転機とは何か。一言でいえば、すべて巨大なるものは悪であり、のろわれたるものである、いと小さきもの、いとつつましきものこそ美しいものであり、よいものであるということであります。シューマッハー博士の言葉を借りると”ビッグ・イズ・イービル(悪)、スモール・イズ・ビューティフル”ということであります。
私たちは巨大なる核エネルギー産業文明によって子孫のものまで使いはたし、プルトニウムのようなやっかいきわまる遺産を子孫に残すべきではありません。

>荘子

>

  • 行不知所之、居不知所為、与物委蛇而同其波。是衛生之経已。
  • 狗不以善吠為良。人不以善言為賢。
  • 人生天地之間、若白駒之過郤、忽然而已。
  • 与其誉堯而非桀也、不知両忘而化其道。
  • 至人乃能遊於世面不僻、順人面不失己。
  • 古之得道者、窮亦楽、通亦楽。所楽非窮通也。
  • 人所取畏者、衽席之上、飲食之間。而不知為之戒者、過也。
  • 人皆知有用之用、而英知無用之用也。
  • 至人之用心若鏡。不将不迎、応而不蔵。故能勝物而不傷。
  • 水行莫如用舟、面陸行莫如用車。
  • 自伐者無功、功成者堕、名成者虧。
  • 君子之交淡若水、小人之交甘若醴。

>Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis

>

Venkman: Einstein did his best stuff when he was working as a patent clerk!
Stantz: You know how much a patent clerk earns? Personally, I liked the University; they gave us money and facilities, we didn’t have to produce anything. You’ve never been out of college. You don’t know what it’s like out there. I’ve worked in the private sector — they expect results.
Melnitz: Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full-trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster, and the theory of Atlantis?
Zeddemore: If there’s a steady paycheck in it, I’ll believe anything you say.

>United States Office of Strategic Services

>

His (Hitler’s) primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

>Adolf Hitler

>

All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true within itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

>桐生政次

>

拝啓残暑凌ぎ難き候に御座候にも拘らず益御健勝奉大賀候扨小生「他山の石」を発行して以来ここに八個年超民族的超国家的に全人類の康福を祈願して筆を執り孤軍奮闘又悪戦苦闘を重ねつつ今日に到候が最近に及び政府当局は本誌を国家総動員法の邪魔物として取扱い相成るべくは本誌の廃刊を希望致居候故小生は今回断然これを廃刊することに決定致候初刊以来終始かはらぬ御援助を賜はり居候御厚情を無にすることは小生の忍び能はざるところに有之候へども事情己むを得ず御寛恕を願上候時偶小生の痼疾病咽喉カタル非常に悪化し流動物すら燕下し能はざるやうに相成やがてこの世を去らねばならぬ危機に到達致候故小生は寧ろ喜んでこの超畜生道に堕落しつつある地球の表面より消え失せることを歓迎致居候も唯小生が理想したる戦後の一大軍縮を見ることなくして早くもこの世を去ることは如何にも残念至極に御座候

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

I believe together we can reform the way the world is managed. We can restore the tranquility of the world.
Have any of us used an atomic bomb against the defenseless citizens of any other country?
Have any of our countries played a part in the creation of 9/11 under whose pretext Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded and more than one million people have been killed or wounded?

>小出裕章

>

過去にいろいろな原発事故が起きるたびに、対策を施してきたが、対策はいくら立てても無駄だ。
次の事故は、我々がまったく想定もしなかった要因によって引き起こされるからだ。

>Mark Hertsgaard

>

The very first book I wrote was called Nuclear Inc. And the very first time I heard the phrase “global warming” was in 1981 from a nuclear power industry executive, who told me, at a time when all the environmental activists were saying, “Oh, nuclear is dead because of Three Mile Island and no orders.” And I was investigating the industry. And he said, “Oh, no, we’re not dead. You just wait. Wait ’til the turn of the century, and people are going to realize how bad coal is for them and how bad it is for something called global warming.” I said, “What is global warming?” This was 1981. And the nuclear industry was saying then that global warming was going to save their bacon. It is very ironic to me to see George Monbiot and other environmentalists now bringing that prophecy to bear—to fruit.
The reality is, going nuclear will make climate change worse, not better. And that is not because of safety or proliferation. You know, if nuclear worked the way that it’s supposed to in theory, that’s why Jim Hansen is in favor of it. But look at the economics. It costs so much money to build a plant, it takes so long to build that plant, that by the time you’ve got it online, if you invested that same amount of money in energy efficiency, you would get seven times more greenhouse gas emission reductions. So, let’s spend the money where it’s going to give us the biggest bang for the buck, and that is not nuclear. I’m not saying this for any ideological reasons. I’m not opposed to it, in general. But how it works in reality, this is not the answer.

>Ralph Lawrence Carr

>If you harm them, you must harm me. I was brought up in a small town where I knew the shame and dishonor of race hatred. I grew to despise it because it threatened the happiness of you and you and you.

>Газета «Труд»

>

Данные переписи населения, проведенной в девяти странах мира, показали, что религиозные взгляды их жителей Австралии, Австрии, Ирландии, Канаде, Нидерландах, Новой Зеландии, Финляндии, Чехии и Швейцарии постепенно исчезают.
Ученые использовали математическую модель получения данных, которая позволяет объяснить взаимосвязь между количеством верующих людей и социальными мотивами, побуждающими человека обратиться к религии. Результаты работы, были представлены на конференции Американского физического общества в Далласе и показали, что религия в ряде стран обречена на практически полное исчезновение.

>Jason Palmer

>

A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
The team’s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.
The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.
The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

>Richard Wiener, Haley Yaple, Daniel Abrams

>

Applications of Statistical and Nonlinear Physics to Social Systems
Modeling the decline of religion
People claiming no religious affiliation constitute the fastest growing “religious” minority in many countries throughout the world.
Here we use a minimal model of competition between social groups to explain historical data on the growth of religious non-affiliation in 85 regions around the world. We also describe numerical experiments that support the validity of the model. According to the model, for societies in which the perceived utility of not adhering is greater than the utility of adhering, religion will be driven toward extinction.

Steve Jobs

… almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.