The Octopus, Star Wars Complexity, LIGO and Manhole Covers in Space: Lux Recommends #18
By Sam Arbesman
Welcome to Lux Recommends #18, the newest edition of what we at Lux are reading and thinking about.
Articles
The hunt for the perfect save icon: Thoughts on the question of “Is using a floppy disk as a save icon still relevant?” — Zack
Everyone Hates Martin Shkreli. Everyone Is Missing the Point: Shkreli’s not a man in a vacuum. — Zavain
The Ethical Data Scientist: Core to data science is an assumption that modeling the past allows us to curate and predict the future. That is: the future will follow the same patterns as the past. But if the past is nuanced with patterns we seek to replace, displace, or improve upon how do we model those into our algorithms? “The ethical data scientist [should] strive to improve the world, not repeat it.” — Zavain
Web Design: The First 100 Years: Exponential curves stay exponential until they run into physical or economic barriers. What happens when they do? Are we ‘doomed’ for a series of exponential hangovers? — Zavain
Here’s What We’ll Do in Space by 2116: Some grand visions of what the future holds for space exploration, including this: “From our homes on Earth, we could all take virtual joyrides across the lunar surface, with these mini explorers acting as our distant eyes.” — Sam
Computer Analysis Reveals the Stunning Complexity of the Star Wars Expanded Universe: “To grasp the full extent of this hugeness, a team of data scientists used a new computer program to analyze it, revealing some unexpected things about the extended saga.”— Adam K
Meet the soft, cuddly robots of the future: “Rigid robots step aside — a new generation of squishy, stretchy machines is wiggling our way.” — Adam G
The true story of the fastest thing ever launched by mankind: “Somewhere out there, a manhole cover launched by a nuclear bomb is probably speeding away from Earth at about 125,000 mph.”— Sam
Books
The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness: Through the lens of the octopus, this books provides fascinating anecdotes and great insight into alien / animal intelligence. — Zack
Videos
NYT: LIGO Hears Gravitational Waves Einstein Predicted: An awe-inspiring, concise explanation of today’s monumental discovery, arguably the biggest in astrophysics in decades. The eLISA mission referenced in the video is absolutely amazing! — Jeff
Upside Down and Inside Out by OK Go: These guys are amazing, always creative and breath-taking…but this video is greatly timed with today’s announcement that LIGO research project was able to directly observe gravitational waves that Albert Einstein had predicted so many decades ago. Just think about two giant black holes colliding, distorting space-time continuum, and this video playing in some corner of that continuum! — Bilal
Science Facts
1–2% of the global annual energy supply is consumed in the Haber-Bosch process for producing ammonia. — Sam
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