All Quotes

"If a body gives of the energy L in the form of radiation, its mass decreases by L/c2."

"-- Your points about the subtleties of the gigabyte example are correct, very apt, and interesting! In some of my unpublished work I am strong on distinguishing very carefully between "potentiality" (yor word) versus "actuality", and not just in physics, but especially in mathematics. The very ease with which our brains take potentials to their limits and then treat them as existing realities is both an interesting efficiency aspect of how capacity-limited biological cognition works, and a warning of the dangers of being sloppy about the difference. Computer science flatly forces one to face some of these realities in ways that bio-brain mathematical abstractions do not. This is why I think it is very healthy for mathematicians to contemplate what happens if they convert their abstract equations into software."

"In any case, issues such as the ones you mention are where the real fun begins! While a short essay is great for introducing a new landscape to a broader audience, there is a lot more going on underneath the hood, as you have just pointed out with your comments on both Einstein's mass equation and my gigabyte file example. An essay is at its best more like a billboard enticing viewers to visit new land, including at most a broad, glossy, overly simplified view of what that new land looks like. The real fun does not begin until you start chugging your vehicle of choice over all the &%$^# potholes and crevices that didn't show up in that enticing broad overview!"

"-- I would note that while in principle it may be possible to find any random sequence of numbers somewhere in pi (wow, that would be an interesting proof or disproof...), there is a representation cost for the indices themselves that must be also be taken into account. A full analysis of the potential of pi or other irrational numbers as data compression mechanisms would be mathematically fun, and who knows, might even end up pointing to some subset of methods with actual compression value. The latter to me seems unlikely, though, since the computation cost is likely to get huge pretty quickly."

"-- As an everyday passionate Hume in being, I Kant speak all that knowledgeably about the biological structures behind how our minds perceive reality. But I try hard to avoid the subconscious assumptions of truth that Popper up so often in physics and even math, when all one can really do is prove that at least some of these assumptions are false. Thus when writing for a broad audience, I try hard to make it easier for the reader to follow an argument and stay focused on it by simply explaining any necessary philosophical point "in line" and as succinctly as possible. The less satisfying alternative would be to give them a hyperlink to some huge remote body of literature that would then require a lot of reading on their part before they could even get back to the original argument... which by that point they have likely forgotten... :)"

"-- I am also surprised that I did not mention your baryon mass idea in my comment, since I certainly was thinking about them when I wrote the comment! I guess I was just more focused on the experimental constraints on the idea?"

"-- On the Standard Model being "relatively compact", that is, say, in comparison to string theory. But oi indeed, my emphasis was very definitely on the word "relatively"! The Standard Model as it stands is a huge, juicy, glaringly obvious target for some serious Occam outtakes and Kolmogorov compressions."

"By the way, as someone who is deeply convinced that space, a very complex entity if you think about it, is emergent from simpler principles, I found your constructive approach to it interesting."

"The cultures within the space now known as Zimbabwe do not have writing systems that are formally recognized."

"There were pictograms painted on rock faces or walls and also beaded adornment with codified meaning."

"I was not taught about any of these ways of articulating myself."

"Writing and reading has always come with this colonial layer, even when we are reading local languages typeset using roman characters."

"My way of articulating myself has come with this colonial layer of using English, using written form, and reading texts that are set in global characters."

"I come into a space of teaching, I’m thinking about typography and letterform from that position."

"Thinking through publications like Saki Mafundikwa’s Afrikan Alphabets, which focuses on and privileges them as modes of established and systematized meaning making and communication."

"As an Arab, I know how food can be so central to a family’s life. I truly felt scared. What would happen when people found out I was Arab"

"The students of this venerable program receive an education unrivaled in vision, breadth, and relevance one that challenges them to exceed their own aspirations. *Pursuing this means that the program itself will continue to promote and advance the creative flourishing of the art and practice of graphic design internationally."

"In my practice, I try not to look at African material culture as something that is antiquated."

"I look at them on a continuum of technologies."

"It could go up up up up up and then this is just free."

"Reordering knowledge, narratives and representations from and about the African continent."

"How suitable is this model for the context we inhabit?"

"Especially as we are coming out of the post-colonial moment, a moment in which we were defining ourselves largely based on a western model."

"I’m interested in the way that art can transform societies."

"When I studied Russian history, I was mostly interested in the Russian Revolution, the revolutionary nature of Russian literatures and arts."

"I think we’re going through something similar here in Accra right now."

"In Accra, there are new manifestations of art and new communities in the process of formation."

"That dynamism and conversation is rapidly coming together to create a crucible, a catalyst for change, that mirrors our economic and political changes."

"It makes life harder in that you never get to rest."

"When you finish with one work, you immediately go to another."

"It’s hard to juggle three or four different things, and in a way, I wish I was a one activity type of person, because my mind and body are never at rest."

"At the same time, each realm somehow enriches the other and gives each more dimension."

"There is no criteria to participate in any of the RLabs workshops, you just have to be unemployed, have time to attend all sessions and always smile."

"The main aim of RLabs is to create spaces where people can be impacted, empowered, and transformed through HOPE, technology and innovation, training, and economic opportunities."

"We believe education is key to bringing about the eradication of poverty."

"RLabs is about equipping and building capacity in someone that gives that person hope."

"And once we’ve done that, figure out how to leverage that capacity to create something meaningful, such as a livelihood, a better job, or starting self-employment. *Our training ranges from basic computing stuff, basic entrepreneurship, small business management courses, and so forth, right up to coding, UI/UX, and some data analytics."

"The African continent is being flooded at the moment, with some of the big tech players grabbing good talent here for their businesses."

"We lose our developers very quickly because they can get three, four, or five times the salary at Google, Amazon, or Facebook."

"The other challenge that we face is when it comes to opportunities. Many of these companies are unwilling to take entry level developers and create a pipeline. Instead, they want to take the cream of the crop, the top-tier group."

"The adoption of mobile technology has given us the opportunity to scale our impact through leveraging this channel as a vehicle for change."

"As much as people use technology to communicate and to be informed, we believe we can also maximize it to drive education, entrepreneurship and development services to those who need it most."

"Everything we do is still core to our vision of developing [and transforming] through innovation, technology, education and entrepreneurship."

"More than 21,000 South Africans have participated in the program so far, which has been replicated in other countries, including the US, where they recently incorporated it Waco, Texas."

"In the search for knowledge in science and engineering, the worst intellectual crime one can commit is to prejudice one’s results, to prejudge how something will turn out. However, this is precisely what we are doing when we fail—from elementary school to graduate school—to encourage women and minorities to enter the fields of science and engineering."

"Educational opportunities for most minority youth, and hence their educational attainments, lag behind the chances, choices and performance of the nonminority"

"I enjoyed it immensely was never short on confidence."

"I frequently compelled individuals and groups to confront their own attitudes, behavior, and personal history."

"My heart was racing. I was sharing my secret. Sure, it was the tiniest bit of sharing, just three little words, ‘as an immigrant,’ but it felt like I was revealing so much"

"I have a lot of imposter syndrome, much like many other people do. I’m an immigrant. I’m a woman. I did not grow up in financial services. Coming into this role, I did have a lot of questions of, ‘Can I do this"