In The Secret Miracle by Borges, a man condemned to death is granted an unusual reprieve by God. As he stands before the firing squad, the soldiers, his body, the world stop. Only his thoughts continue. In the year of mental time given, he labours on a play. At the point of completion, he is … Read more
What distance means for gaming, interplanetary dating & alien conversations The dizzying progress in increasing the speed of communication is brushing up against physical limits. The world may start to feel bigger. Consider the time sent to send a message between a sender in London and a receiver in New York: Between 1600 and the … Read more
There are some sets of symbols that, when interpreted, capture something significant about the way things work. This is one such set: Where m is a mass, v its speed and KE its kinetic energy. This is an equation that receives relatively little attention compared to more famous cousins, yet here we find both a … Read more
Unlike universal grammar — the hypothesis that humans have innate structural language rules — it is hard to find advocates for universal vocabulary. If we are not born with any semantic understanding of words, we must learn them. By watching how others use language we acquire knowledge of how words are intended to be used. … Read more