Earlier quoted context omitted.
One bad movie pays more than a year in the lab.
That's not fair, he has been in tons of bad movies!
Directs some of them, too.
Natalie Portman - Scientist
151–160 of 177 posts
Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also Brian Cox (there must be something in the UK water about turning out musicians/physicists): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_(physicist)
Also Tom Scholz of Boston. MIT-trained mechanical engineer, worked for Polaroid, and then left to found one of great classic rock bands.
In that vein, all three members of the J. Geils Band were engineering students at my college (WPI) ;)
And apparently the lead singer/guitarist/keyboardist for OK Go (although I think that was after I left)
Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do not say 'backed up by medical knowledge' unless you plan on citing sources. I don't have much time right now, but I did find a good starting point: http://www.ajcn.org/content/53/6/1561S.abstract "In this regard, the proneness to store energy primarily as fat or as lean tissue is a major determinant of the response to a caloric surplus." Also: http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v8/n7/abs/oby200063a.html Talks about…
I have a hard time understanding why people don't like admitting that just as we differ on the outside (beauty, fitness) we are also different on the inside (metabolism, disease susceptibility) I can only speak for myself, but "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" sums it up pretty well for me. Beautiful to whom ? Fit for what ? Susceptible to which diseases ? Concrete example: Carrying a gene for sickle-cell diseas…
it is awesome that people differ. Everyone has advantages and disadvantages but people aren't equal. Some people will have lots of advantages with minimal disadvantages, and yet others will have the opposite. I don't understand why people like to deny this.
Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist
#154That was an interesting article. I wish more of the media would highlight Natalie Portman's scientific cred. The last sentence, "You can be a scientist, but if you want your name in lights, you’d better play one on TV." made me a little sad. Eventually, we get what we celebrate; if we celebrate being a cheerleader (or a beauty queen) more than being a scientist, then we'll get more of those. I don't know how much pro…
Nobody is idly "celebrating" any actor. What people celebrate are people who entertain them. Scientists are not entertaining. Fundamentally, it's a selfish activity.
Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist
#155Nice article. Two sentences jumped out at me. First: “There are very few who are as inherently bright as Natalie is, who have as much intellectual horsepower, who work as hard as she did. She didn’t take a single thing for granted.” then: If anything, stories like Ms. Portman’s show that great success, like DNA, is constructed of a few basic building blocks: tenacity, focus, and the old Woody Allen line about just sh…
To this day, when I see phrases like, "intellectual horsepower", I cringe. We "smarties" aren't that much smarter than most other people, if we are at all. I don't think this is true at all. People who are average intelligence or below can be very successful but have no chance of succeeding in high level intellectual pursuits. People who are smart don't understand this, because to them learning anything is just a mat…
I think at the upper levels of intelligence, you are talking about the engineering limits of the brain as a physical thinking machine. Everything is working as well as it can; in this case, I suspect the difference between the top 100th percentile and the top 10th is not all that great. That's not to say there isn't a competitive advantage, just that it levels off, like it does in athletics.
Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist
#156I'd like to take this opportunity to point out another "scientist" (minor) actor not mentioned in this article: - speaks Swedish, English, Spanish, some German, some French, some Japanese, and some Italian - awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - has a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney (1982) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolph_lundgren
Or how about this fellow who has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry, a PhD in law, and was an Olympic swimmer but is best known for his movies where he gets into fights with other guys (pretty much everybody in my age bracket in Germany and some other European countries knows him). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Spencer Edit: He is also a jet pilot, helicopter pilot, holder of multiple patents, and a startup foun…
I also say, 'Wow'. Pretty much everyone in Australia in my age bracket knows him too. Funny that Terrence Hill was always cast as the smart guy and Bud as the dumb companion.
Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist
#157Nice article. Two sentences jumped out at me. First: “There are very few who are as inherently bright as Natalie is, who have as much intellectual horsepower, who work as hard as she did. She didn’t take a single thing for granted.” then: If anything, stories like Ms. Portman’s show that great success, like DNA, is constructed of a few basic building blocks: tenacity, focus, and the old Woody Allen line about just sh…
Well, yes, intelligence needs to be trained, shaped, refined. But are you saying that there is no difference between humans when it comes to their maximum potential? I think everybody has an 'intelligence ceiling', and that ceiling can only be asymptotically approaches by study, hard work, circumstances etc. But that doesn't take away from the (imo) fact that there is a ceiling and that some people, no matter what th…
I think the issue here is that you're saying "if person A is good at math person B may never be able to get as good at math". This I would agree with, but I think person B might be able to get better in some area than person A ever could.
Equal in that sense, not identical.
Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
This recent submission and its discussion is relevant to your claim, "General factor of intelligence g, a Statistical Myth": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2210147 I disagree with your claim about Lebron James, but I don't think there's enough data for an evidence-based debate. I do think, however, that people want to believe that others who operate at the genius level in various activities have genetic gifts. I…
Why is it so easy to accept that pretty much everything in our bodies is genetic but not intelligence? I don't see why it would be any different. We already know that the brain is not just one big 'computing mass' but instead consists of many thousands of extremely specialized systems interconnected in a genetically-determined way shaped over thousands of years of evolution. If some of these systems are missing or no…
>Why is it so easy to accept that pretty much everything in our bodies is genetic but not intelligence?
Because intelligence is much less understood than most of the rest of our bodies. For example, there have been various discoveries that seem to indicate our language has an effect on what we can know and understand [1, 2, etc.]. Perhaps there are dramatic differences in what each of our brains are capable at the "hardware" level, but the "software" (language) dampens the effect.
[1] The Piraha can't learn numbers after a certain age because they have no words to describe them
[2] An article a few months back about deaf people growing up without any language ended up bringing out the fact that some asian languages have words to describe some aspect of color that westerners do not. Babies are able to see the difference but gradually lose the ability as they grow up with no way of expressing it.
Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
This recent submission and its discussion is relevant to your claim, "General factor of intelligence g, a Statistical Myth": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2210147 I disagree with your claim about Lebron James, but I don't think there's enough data for an evidence-based debate. I do think, however, that people want to believe that others who operate at the genius level in various activities have genetic gifts. I…
What I find odd is that most people want to believe everyone is born equal. They want to believe this so badly they ignore any evidence to the contrary. For example, I can eat anything and won't gain weight, yet someone else is morbidly obese on the same diet. I can glance at something once and memorize it easily whereas else may have to spend hours and hours. We are not born equal, BUT we can improve ourselves.
> We are not born equal, BUT we can improve ourselves.
Why would you think we're equally able to improve ourselves, either?
Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried asking him? A hand-written letter might just work.
I yet may do just that. I have, at various times, had speculative versions running around in my head. Recently a good colleague of mine died very suddenly. I realised that there was so much I had wanted to ask him about, and never got the chance. Last year I got to spend an afternoon with one of my childhood - and adulthood - heroes. That was just 2 months before he died. If you put up a piece of A0 paper marked off…
Please post about your progress.