What would happen if you switched Earth and Mars? The planets would start behaving chaotically.
"It's analogous to a coffee cup. If you see a cup that is filled exactly to the rim, you can reasonably conclude that some coffee got spilled over the side, and anything you do to the cup would probably spill some more."
Click the big SA to read the article. I don't know why G+ did it that way.

I've thought about haptics on and off since the first virtual reality craze in the late 1980s. I love projected ultrasonics for small interactions, but it always seemed to me that if you wanted to be able to move someone's limbs on impact, you would need to have some ability to tug on every limb of the body, which would mean a huge exoskeletal suit with linear actuators at each joint. But OF COURSE your body already HAS a linear actuator at each joint, called a muscle, and they are not that hard to activate! You could stumble down a mountain, have an armored fight with maces, feel the tug of wind as you fly through a storm... So fun.

Photos from my recent conference travel to Lyon, France.

The researchers talk about miniaturizing this to manipulate molecules, but going bigger and building a holodeck is also an option. This has come a long way in the last few years. I wonder whether it is possible to make the effect much stronger?

I think the fact that American fortunes tend not to persist for generation after generation should be a significant part of the discussion of income inequality. If these vast fortunes are being spent over a lifetime, it seems like the money really is helping the country or world as a whole, not just the few. But maybe I don't understand enough economics.
http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/topic/excellence_in_philanthropy/the_transience_of_american_wealth

A friend gave me this old account book. This page is from January 1869. Check out the last line. He bought a copy of Scientific American for 10 cents. I'm going to see if I can find that issue online. On another page, with no explanation, he drew a cross section of the great pyramid. He seems to have owned a chicken farm.

I have been slowly watching all of The West Wing on Netflix-- I just really like Aaron Sorkin's writing more than I dislike his preachiness. Anyway, it's always fun when Special Agent Caspar shows up to talk to the president. I like to pretend that the show is actually a prequel to the Marvel movies, and that "Caspar" is a codename for Coulson.
 http://io9.com/5943989/watch-shield-agent-coulsons-first-job-as-a-character-on-the-west-wing

I would like to understand more about this. How does the brain know to attach an eligibility trace to the command "Sit!" Is it because the dog realizes it has the human's attention when he says the word? How does that work neurologically? Does this cause, somehow, the feeling of disappointment when I expect a reward and don't get one?

Playing Twenty Questions With the Low Resolution Version of Douglas Hofstadter My Brain is Always Running As a Background Process:

Me: Is it an animal?
H: No.
Me: Is it a vegetable?
H: No.
Me: Is it a mineral?
H: No.
Me: Is it the specific game of Twenty Questions we are currently in the middle of playing?
H: ... Yes.