http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1101.html

Although I come from a different direction than Bruce on some issues, I find that when I read his analysis of anything, I usually think: “obviously”.

Scott’s has titled his lecture Physics in the 21st Century: Toiling in Feynman’s Shadow. Hmmm … I dunno … fifty more years of “toil” sounds kinda dark … hopefully at least some of the TEDxCalTech speakers will echo the memorable words of Steve Martin’s character Navin R. Johnson:

Waiter, take away these old STEM Roadmaps … bring us some *fresh* STEM Roadmaps! The freshest you’ve got. This year!

Because heck … don’t pretty much *all* of Feynman’s most famous lectures lay out fresh STEM roadmaps?

Seriously, we should all admire the courage of the speakers for even taking the stage at this event … because they’re going to have to share that stage with none other than Kongar-Ol Ondar:

Kongar-Ol Ondar (Tuvan: Коңар-өл Ондар) is a master Tuvan throat singer and a member of the Great Khural of Tuva.

As Feynman might have said … it’s gonna be terrific!

My heart goes out to the friends and families of those who lost their lives in that tragic fire. I am also saddened by the loss of all the land, trees and wildlife. I used to live in Oregon when the “Biscuit Fire” blackened over 500,000 acres of pristine wildlands, destroyed homes and wildlife and left a cloud of smoke over the entire area for about a month. No mercy should be shown to those who started these fires. This is inexcusable!

Hargittai’s scholarship is impeccable … his is perhaps the finest biography of Teller that will ever be written. And yet, the men and women in Hargittai’s narrative are (in essence) always described as angels — some fallen, some not. According to everything we know of human cognition, biology, and evolutionary history, this traditional view of “the angels of our nature” (to borrow Lincoln’s phrase) is so limited in scope, as to be grossly incorrect.

Jon Cohen’s Almost Chimpanzee is a popularization and update of classic works like Frans de Waal’s Chimpanzee Politics … and to Cohen’s credit, he describes chimpanzees and the researchers who study them with equal interest and dispassion.

When the scientific, political, technological, economic, and moral history of the 21st century is written … these two perspectives will merge … and this merging will be a mighty interesting process.

An essayist who writes engagingly on this topic is David Brin.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110111132721.htm

Given your concern about “a regime that essentially boycotts human rights”, you might find it illuminating to spend a week each in the streets of Mogadishu, Tehran, and perhaps Pyongyang, for some “real world experience”. It might be wise to leave a will.

It is largely thanks to leading scientists like Wilson and Goodall, that serious analyses of human cognition, religion, morality and politics no longer ignore human evolutionary history.

We all gain by this … both WIlson and Goodall “saw what everyone had seen, and thought what no one had thought”

Moreover, both Wilson and Goodall are politically active … their efforts focus on conservation, sustainment, and peacemaking … and they both think ahead, on timescales of centuries and millennia, and act with foresight. Good.

your participation in something funded by a regime that essentially boycotts human rights tells me a lot. Your continued participation and acceptance of honoria tells me a different things. your acceptance of such events is ultimately what tells me who you really are as a person.

but i will surrender any further debate on this topic. santana made a good point.

Ed Wilson’s recent novel Anthill is an extended meditation upon these difficult moral questions (p. 348):

Raff lived by three maxims. Fortune favors the prepared mind. People follow someone who knows where he’s going. And control the middle, because that’s where the extremes eventually have to meet.

What Wilson is suggesting in Anthill—and to his credit, he works through the scientific, social, and personal implications in an integrated, natural way—is that a question like “What is math and science?” has a broad range of feasible answers, among which one is “They are collective activities of primates.”

When we contemplate the burnt hills of Carmel and all that the burning means, or we similarly contemplate (say) the destruction of the mathematics community at Hilbert’s Göttigen, then we are led to take Wilson’s line of reasoning seriously.