The unsurprising confusion about ‘per capita’
A car cut me off on the highway the other day. The car was going nearly 100 mph.
Was the car a new Porsche 911 GT3 or a used Toyota Camry?
The thing is, there are more than 1,000 times as many Camrys on the road. But our instinct is to pick the vivid and distinctive answer.
The per capita crime rate in rural areas is often dramatically (sometimes five or ten times) higher than it is in most cities...
Eminent posts make great men greater, and little men less.
-Jean de La Bruyere, essayist and moralist (16 Aug 1645-1696)
A matrioshka brain[1][2] is a hypothetical megastructure of immense computational capacity powered by a Dyson sphere. It was proposed in 1997 by Robert J. Bradbury (1956–2011[3]). It is an example of a class-B stellar engine, employing the entire energy output of a star to drive computer systems.[4] This concept derives its name from the nesting Russian matryoshka dolls.[5] The concept was deployed by Bradbury in the anthology Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge.[6][7]
Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
-Russell Baker, columnist and author (14 Aug 1925-2019)
The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive, and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.
-Jean Piaget, psychologist (9 Aug 1896-1980)
