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“I have to say it’s a nice job perk that I can see old science fiction tropes come to life pretty much every day.”
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“So according to the old joke, a fed-up student asks the physics prof who’s going over kinetics in protracted detail, what good is all this? What will I ever use this for? To which the professor, not even looking up from where he’s writing on the board, says “This stuff saves lives.” The student balks for a second and then gets belligerent, demanding to know how first-year physics saves lives. The professor doesn’t even turn around, saying “it keeps idiots like you out of med school.”
Maya, you can’t read this yet, and it might be years before you know what half of it means, but I’m writing it down for the day you do.”
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“We received an astonishing number of responses to last week’s Casual Fridays study, which claimed to be able to identify what makes a good writer in just a few minutes.
Of course, I wasn’t actually very confident that a brief survey could actually identify the factors that make a good writer. But I did have a hunch that there were certain traits that were more likely to be associated with good writing.”
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“Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Pinker duel over balancing scientific rigor with relatable narrative,”
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Very cool museum dedicated to the art of the Himalayan region (India, Tibet, Nepal, China, Bhutan, etc.). Had the second-best explanatory text of any art museum I’ve ever been to.