Compassion Hurts. When You Feel Connected To Everything, You Also Feel Responsible For Everything. And

A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were in a hotel for a convention.

Then, in the middle of the night for no apparent reason, a fire breaks out in the engineer’s wastebasket. The engineer rushes over to the bathroom, empties out the ice bucket, fills it with water and pours it into the trash can, dousing the fire. Satisfied that the problem was solved, the engineer goes back to sleep.

Shortly thereafter, a fire broke out in the physicist’s wastebasket. The physicist rushes to the bathroom, whips out his calculator, frantically does a few computations, pulls out a cup, fills it to a precisely measured level, and rushes back to the wastebasket, pouring the water onto the fire. As the last drop hits the flame, the fire goes out. Satisfied that the problem was solved, the physicist goes back to sleep.

Finally, a fire breaks out in the mathematician’s room. The mathematician rushes to the bathroom, sees the ice bucket, sees a cup, sees the water faucet. Satisfied that the problem could be solved, he goes back to sleep.

R.Buckminster Fuller. Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity. Pelican. 1973.

Our universe is in many respects sublime. It prompts wonder but can be daunting — even frightening — in its complexity. Nonetheless, the components fit together in marvelous ways. Art, science, and religion all aim to channel people’s curiosity and enlighten us by pushing the frontiers of our understanding. They promise, in their different ways, to help transcend the narrow confines of individual experience and allow us to enter into — and comprehend — the realm of the sublime.

Cosmologist and particle physicist Lisa Randall on the sublime and the essential differences in how art, science, and religion make sense of the universe – wonderfully mind-expanding read. (via explore-blog)

Global temperatures are running far above last year’s record-setting level, all but guaranteeing that 2015 will be the hottest year in the historical record — and undermining political claims that global warming had somehow stopped.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the American agency that tracks worldwide temperatures, announced Wednesday that last month had been the hottest September on record, and in fact took the biggest leap above the previous September that any month has displayed since 1880, when tracking began at a global scale. The agency also announced that the January-to-September period had been the hottest such span on the books.

The extreme heat and related climate disturbances mean that delegates to a global climate conference scheduled for Paris in early December will almost certainly be convening as weather-related disasters are unfolding around the world, putting them under greater political pressure to reach an ambitious deal to limit future emissions and slow the temperature increase.

The immediate cause of the record-breaking warmth is a strong El Niño weather pattern, in which the ocean releases immense amounts of heat into the atmosphere. But temperatures are running so far ahead of those during the last strong El Niño, in 1997 and 1998, that scientists said the records would not be occurring without an underlying trend caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

“The bottom line is that the world is warming,” said Jessica Blunden, a climate scientist with NOAA, in Asheville, N.C. Source: NYTimes

“We can read even a correct proof, and be completely convinced of the logical steps of the proof, but still not have any understanding of the whole. Like being led, step by step, through a dark forest, but having no idea of the overall route.”

Eugenia Cheng (via cofinaldestination)

Maybe this is why I have trouble reading math textbooks sometimes? I can understand why a step is valid, but I get caught up on, “Wait, where are we going? Where are you taking me?”

(via ryanandmath)

today’s locations

wes anderson watched a violent movie…………………………………..once a single tear rolled down his cheek and onto the floor from it, a single flower grew when it blossomed, owen wilson’s tiny face appeared and it said wow

Happy Birthday Carl (1934 - 1996). Your legacy continues to shine.