llàgrimes en la pluja

“Don’t fight the trail. Take what it gives you,” he began. “Lesson two - think easy, light, smooth and fast. You start with easy, because if that’s all you get, that’s not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don’t [care] how high the hill is or how far you’ve got to go.

“When you’ve practiced that so long that you forget you’re practising, you work on making it smooooooth. You won’t have to worry about the last one - you get those three, and you’ll be fast.”

Michael Randall Hickman, aka Micah True, “Caballo Blanco”

Ultra-running: Who was the mysterious White Horse?

Posted at 2:06pm #cites #esports

You cannot reason people out of positions they didn’t reason themselves into.

Ben Goldacre, in “Bad Science”

Posted at 7:23am 23 notes #cites

…si hi ha dos centenars d’estats i a cada estat li hagués de correspondre una sola llengua, els lingüicides serien feliços: en sobrarien 5.800 de les més de sis mil llengües que hi ha al món. Una fotesa, equivalent a perdre el 96,6% de la biodiversitat del planeta.

Jesús Tuson

Posted at 10:35pm 28 notes #cites #llengua

Des que es va trobar petroli en el subsòl del Delta, a finals dels anys cinquanta, les companyies, ja sigui Shell, Agip, Total, Texaco, Chevron o les nigerianes, practiquen impunement la crema de gasos a l’atmosfera

Xavier Montanyà - L’or negre de la mort

Posted at 10:57pm 29 notes #cites #política #societat

Back in graduate school, the clinical focus had always been on how the lack of parental attunement affects the child. It never occurred to any of us to ask, what if the parents are too attuned? What happens to those kids?

How to Land Your Kid in Therapy, by Lori Gottlieb

Posted at 7:39pm 22 notes #cites #societat #educació

It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.

Noam Chomsky - My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death

Posted at 10:21pm 19 notes #cites #política

The average ranking of American students reflects this. The problem is not public schools; it is poverty. And as dozens of studies have shown, the gap in cognitive, physical, and social development between children in poverty and middle-class children is set by age three.

Got Dough? Public School Reform in the Age of Venture Philanthropy By Joanne Barkan

Posted at 10:28am 18 notes #cites #educació #societat #material

Peer review surely does “work”, to some extent - but is the work it does actually useful? Does it really filter out bad papers or does it on the contrary act to stifle originality? There are lots of things to say about this, but I will just say this for now: it’s important to distinguish between whether peer review is good for science as a whole, and whether it’s good for journals.

Does Peer Review Work?

Posted at 11:04pm #cites #ciència

La major part dels castellans gosen dir públicament que aquesta nostra província no és Espanya, i, per ço, que nosaltres no som verdaders espanyols… A més d’això tenen una altra cosa pitjor, i és que volen ser tan absoluts i tenen les coses pròpies en tant i les estranyes en tan poc, que pareix que són ells vinguts a soles del cel i que la resta dels homes és el que és eixit de la terra. I és allò bo, que si a les històries verdaderes donem fe, trobem que no hi ha nació en Espanya que tan arrimada i enfosquida sia estada en tot temps com la castellana.

Cristòfol Despuig, 1550 (segons Jaume Fàbrega a El Temps, 6 de gener de 2009)

Posted at 6:52pm #cites #material

A new hypothesis often excites people; the “null hypothesis”—nothing’s out there, the prediction was wrong—not so much.

David Berreby, Three Cheers for Failure!

Posted at 4:40am #cites #ciència

Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.

Hellhole. Is long-term solitary confinement torture?

Posted at 11:04pm #cites #psicologia #material

In 2009, according to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, 19,551 people died in the United States as a direct result of the prescription drugs they took. That’s just the reported number. It’s decidedly low, because it is estimated that only about 10 percent of such deaths are reported. Conservatively, then, the annual American death toll from prescription drugs considered “safe” can be put at around 200,000. That is three times the number of people who die every year from diabetes, four times the number who die from kidney disease. Overall, deaths from F.D.A.-approved prescription drugs dwarf the number of people who die from street drugs such as cocaine and heroin. They dwarf the number who die every year in automobile accidents. So far, these deaths have triggered no medical crusades, no tough new regulations.

Deadly Medicine (Vanity Fair)

Posted at 2:31am #cites #medicina #política #material

It is the American people who should be outraged that its government has transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies.

Pravda

David R. Hoffman
Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru

Posted at 5:53pm #cites #política

‘If they quit smoking their depressive symptoms go down and if they relapse, their mood goes back to where they were,’ he said. ‘An effective antidepressant should look like that’.

Kicking the Habit: Study Suggests That Quitting Smoking Improves Mood

Posted at 2:02pm #cites #medicina