Latest news with #Martians
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Business
- Boston Globe
Marina von Neumann Whitman dies at 90; carved path for women in economics
'As a woman, she will be outnumbered on the council 2 to 1, but not in terms of brains,' the president said in the Oval Office with Dr. Whitman and her family by his side. (The council's other members at the time were Herbert Stein and Ezra Solomon.) Advertisement Dr. Whitman was an academic economist by training -- she taught at the University of Pittsburgh and later at the University of Michigan -- but she alternated her work in the classroom with extensive stints in the public and corporate sectors. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Before joining the Council of Economic Advisers, she had worked for it as a staff economist and then served on the president's board overseeing price controls. In 1979, she joined General Motors as a vice president and chief economist. She later rose to become group vice president for public relations, making her one of the highest-ranking women in corporate America at the time. 'One of the things about being an economist is that you seldom get the chance to practice your profession as well as teach,' she said in her own Oval Office comments, following Nixon's. Advertisement She was the daughter of mathematician John von Neumann, a polymath who developed game theory, made critical early advances in computer science, and played a central role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. He was one of several Hungarian Jewish emigres who worked on the Manhattan Project -- others included Leo Szilard and Edward Teller -- who came to be known, jokingly, as the Martians, for their intellectual brilliance and supposedly exotic personalities. In her 2012 memoir, 'The Martian's Daughter,' Dr. Whitman wrote that her father's immense intellectual accomplishments drove her to excel, especially as a woman in a male-dominated field like economics. Were it not for him, she wrote, 'I might not have pushed myself to such a level of academic achievement or set my sights on a lifelong professional commitment at a time when society made it difficult for a woman to combine a career with family obligations.' Marina von Neumann was born March 6, 1935, in New York City. Her parents, members of what she called 'the Jewish but highly assimilated haute bourgeoisie' of Budapest, had emigrated from Hungary in 1933, after her father received a professorship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. They divorced when Marina was 2. Her mother, Mariette (Kovesi) von Neumann, studied economics in college and later worked as the office administrator for a science consortium. After her divorce, she married James Kuper, a physicist who became a department chair at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. Marina spent long stretches living with her father, whose Princeton home became a salon and way station for some of the country's leading intellectuals. Advertisement 'I was 15 before I realized this was not the normal American way of life,' she told The New York Times in 1972. The home, she added, was always filled with 'terribly interesting people and terribly interesting conversations.' She studied government at Radcliffe College, graduating at the top of her class in 1956. That same year, she married Robert F. Whitman, who was studying for his doctorate in English at Harvard. He died in 2024. Along with their son, Malcolm, a professor of developmental biology at Harvard, she leaves her half brother, George H. Kuper, and two grandchildren. Her daughter, Laura M. Whitman, an assistant professor of medicine at Yale University, died in 2023 at 59. Marina Whitman initially thought of becoming a journalist. But her first job after college, with the Educational Testing Service, ignited an interest in economics. She wanted to attend Princeton, but at the time, its acclaimed economics department did not accept female graduate students. Instead, she studied at Columbia University. After receiving her doctorate in 1966, she became a professor at Pittsburgh, where her husband taught English. They took leaves of absence in 1972, when she joined the Council of Economic Advisers, and moved to Washington with some intention of remaining there long term. But she resigned after just a year, disillusioned by the Watergate scandal that was beginning to unfold around Nixon. Dr. Whitman spent 13 years at General Motors. After she left in 1992, she taught at the University of Michigan's business and public policy schools. A lifelong Republican, she did not put herself forward as a feminist. But she did her part to prop open the doors she had gone through, for other women to follow. Advertisement 'There is a very small group of highly visible women who have now been offered a lot of boards,' Dr. Whitman told the Times in 1984. 'What has not developed as much as I hoped is going beyond that to a second wave. When I turn down offers, I sometimes have tried to suggest other women, but people do not react well to names they haven't heard before.' This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Early visions of Mars: Meet the 19th-century astronomer who used science fiction to imagine the red planet
Living in today's age of ambitious robotic exploration of Mars, with an eventual human mission to the red planet likely to happen one day, it is hard to imagine a time when Mars was a mysterious and unreachable world. And yet, before the invention of the rocket, astronomers who wanted to explore Mars beyond what they could see through their telescopes had to use their imaginations. As a space historian and author of the book 'For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet,' I've worked to understand how people in different times and places imagined Mars. The second half of the 19th century was a particularly interesting time to imagine Mars. This was a period during which the red planet seemed to be ready to give up some of its mystery. Astronomers were learning more about Mars, but they still didn't have enough information to know whether it hosted life, and if so, what kind. With more powerful telescopes and new printing technologies, astronomers began applying the cartographic tools of geographers to create the first detailed maps of the planet's surface, filling it in with continents and seas, and in some cases features that could have been produced by life. Because it was still difficult to see the actual surface features of Mars, these maps varied considerably. During this period, one prominent scientist and popularizer brought together science and imagination to explore the possibilities that life on another world could hold. One imaginative thinker whose attention was drawn to Mars during this period was the Parisian astronomer Camille Flammarion. In 1892, Flammarion published 'The Planet Mars,' which remains to this day a definitive history of Mars observation up through the 19th century. It summarized all the published literature about Mars since the time of Galileo in the 17th century. This work, he reported, required him to review 572 drawings of Mars. Like many of his contemporaries, Flammarion concluded that Mars, an older world that had gone through the same evolutionary stages as Earth, must be a living world. Unlike his contemporaries, he insisted that Mars, while it might be the most Earth-like planet in our solar system, was distinctly its own world. It was the differences that made Mars interesting to Flammarion, not the similarities. Any life found there would be evolutionarily adapted to its particular conditions – an idea that appealed to the author H.G. Wells when he imagined invading Martians in 'The War of the Worlds.' But Flammarion also admitted that it was difficult to pin down these differences, as 'the distance is too great, our atmosphere is too dense, and our instruments are not perfect enough.' None of the maps he reviewed could be taken literally, he lamented, because everyone had seen and drawn Mars differently. Given this uncertainty about what had actually been seen on Mars' surface, Flammarion took an agnostic stance in 'The Planet Mars' as to the specific nature of life on Mars. He did, however, consider that if intelligent life did exist on Mars, it would be more ancient than human life on Earth. Logically, that life would be more perfect — akin to the peaceful, unified and technologically advanced civilization he predicted would come into being on Earth in the coming century. 'We can however hope,' he wrote, 'that since the world of Mars is older than our own, its inhabitants may be wiser and more advanced than we are. Undoubtedly it is the spirit of peace which has animated this neighboring world.' But as Flammarion informed his readers, 'the Known is a tiny island in the midst of the ocean of the Unknown,' a point he often underscored in the more than 70 books he published in his lifetime. It was the 'Unknown' that he found particularly tantalizing. Historians often describe Flammarion more as a popularizer than a serious scientist, but this should not diminish his accomplishments. For Flammarion, science wasn't a method or a body of established knowledge. It was the nascent core of a new philosophy waiting to be born. He took his popular writing very seriously and hoped it could turn people's minds toward the heavens. Without resolving the planet's surface or somehow communicating with its inhabitants, it was premature to speculate about what forms of life might exist on Mars. And yet, Flammarion did speculate — not so much in his scientific work, but in a series of novels he wrote over the course of his career. In these imaginative works, he was able to visit Mars and see its surface for himself. Unlike his contemporary, the science fiction author Jules Verne, who imagined a technologically facilitated journey to the Moon, Flammarion preferred a type of spiritual journey. Based on his belief that human souls after death can travel through space in a way that the living body cannot, Flammarion's novels include dream journeys as well as the accounts of deceased friends or fictional characters. In his novel 'Urania' (1889), Flammarion's soul visits Mars in a dream. Upon arrival, he encounters a deceased friend, George Spero, who has been reincarnated as a winged, luminous, six-limbed being. 'Organisms can no more be earthly on Mars than they could be aerial at the bottom of the sea,' Flammarion writes. Later in the same novel, Spero's soul visits Flammarion on Earth. He reveals that Martian civilization and science have progressed well beyond Earth, not only because Mars is an older world, but because the atmosphere is thinner and more suitable for astronomy. Flammarion imagined that practicing and popularizing astronomy, along with the other sciences, had helped advance Martian society. Flammarion's imagined Martians lived intellectual lives untroubled by war, hunger and other earthly concerns. This was the life Flammarion wanted for his fellow Parisians, who had lived through the devastation of the Franco-Prussian war and suffered starvation and deprivation during the Siege of Paris and its aftermath. Today, Flammarion's Mars is a reminder that imagining a future on Mars is as much about understanding ourselves and our societal aspirations as it is about developing the technologies to take us there. Flammarion's popularization of science was his means of helping his fellow Earth-bound humans understand their place in the universe. They could one day join his imagined Martians, which weren't meant to be taken any more literally than the maps of Mars he analyzed for 'The Planet Mars.' His world was an example of what life could become under the right conditions. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Matthew Shindell, Smithsonian Institution Read more: A decade after the release of 'The Martian' and a decade out from the world it envisions, a planetary scientist checks in on real-life Mars exploration Dear Elon Musk: Your dazzling Mars plan overlooks some big nontechnical hurdles When will the first baby be born in space? Matthew Shindell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Herald Scotland
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
So what's the difference between Lego and a bottle of wine?
It depends on the status of both the ape and the men, of course. If the men include the sort of chaps who spend all their spare time on social media, discussing gorillas fighting humans, we're guessing they wouldn't be much cop in the three-dimensional real world, away from their mobile phone screens. Meanwhile, a gorilla spends very little of his free time on social media, which gives him an immediate advantage in a scrap. Now, imagine if the big fuzzy simian also has an advanced degree in mechanical engineering. A long shot, true, but you never know… Just before the mighty ape is attacked by the 100 blokes, he uses his university training to rapidly cobble together a rudimentary aeroplane, which he proceeds to hop into, before escaping his violent human persecutors. This way nobody gets hurt, which surely is the best result for both the gorilla and the human rabble. For as far as the Diary is concerned, violence should always be eschewed in favour of a more harmless pursuit, such as reading the following classic tales from our archives… Bolshie bouncer An elderly office boss admitted to us that he was persuaded by his young employees to accompany them to a trendy nightspot, where the doorman stopped him and said: 'Sorry bud. You've had too many.' 'What, drinks?' asked the boss. 'No, birthdays,' said the steward. Spellcheck Posh supermarket Waitrose was bombarded with messages claiming it was pretentious, after asking folk on social media to explain why they shopped there. The remarks reminded an Edinburgh reader of the boy in the private school uniform overheard asking his dad in Waitrose: 'Does Lego have a 't' at the end, like Merlot?' Food for thought A reader in a city centre sandwich shop was behind a young girl who had a stack of about a dozen sandwiches which she was buying – presumably sent out on behalf of her colleagues at work. As the large pile of cardboard boxes cascaded on to the counter, the bored assistant automatically asked: 'Sitting in or taking away?' The young girl snapped back: 'How fat do you think I am?' ET or not ET The late TV astronomer Sir Patrick Moore was once asked if he'd ever spotted a UFO. 'Yes,' he admitted. 'In my observatory one day. I saw a huge fleet of perfect flying saucers.' He added: 'The Martians have arrived, I thought. Then I discovered what it really was… pollen.' Hot, not bothered Shopping at his local greengrocer's, a reader heard another customer complain to the owner that the iceberg lettuces seemed small. 'The icebergs?' replied the owner with a fatalistic shrug. 'It's global warming.'
Buzz Feed
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
People Who've Been Blocked By Celebrities On Social Media Are Sharing What Happened, And I Can't Stop Reading This
The internet is the marketplace for free thoughts. Unfortunately, it's also a place where these thoughts can be disguised behind an avatar with no actual repercussions. And while it isn't a crime to tell a politician or a celebrity that they suck, it could undoubtedly get you blocked on social media — something that a few people have learned one way or another. A post on the r/AskReddit sub recently invited users to share their experiences getting blocked by celebrities, and oh my, this sh*t is hilarious. Usual suspects like Elon Musk appear on the list, along with more surprising individuals, like Tony the Tiger. 1. "When the Mars Rover played a Black Eyed Peas song on Mars, I tweeted, 'Great, now the Martians will definitely be hostile,' and got blocked by I didn't even mention him or anything so I'm kind of at a loss as to how he saw it, lmao." 2. "Seven or eight years ago, I used to follow Busy Phillips on Instagram because I thought she was cute and funny. However, EVERY day, she would post intense close-up videos of herself working out. Like on all fours, pouring sweat, staring into your soul." "No talking, just three or more 'stories' of grunting and sweat. I didn't understand it. Now, looking back, she was definitely getting paid by whatever workout studio she was filming from. One day, she posted a survey basically asking if she should stop posting these weird videos. I voted yes and she blocked my ass. What a strange woman." 3. " Mario Lopez accidentally followed me probably a decade ago on Twitter. I sent him a DM like two weeks later saying thanks for the follow, and then was blocked, lol." 4. "Not me, but my best friend got blocked by Tony the Tiger's Twitter account because she followed enough people who liked some furry content at some point, and whoever was running that account absolutely scorched the Earth to make sure no furries were following Tony." 5. "On Facebook, Death Cab for Cutie got hacked with some link, 'how to eat ass,' and it had a video. After that, many people, including me, kept commenting 'Death Cab for Booty,' and they blocked me for that." 6. "I got blocked on Twitter by O.J. Simpson in 2020 for asking him if he plans on purchasing the new Bronco in white when it's released." 7. "I was blocked by Mel B, aka Scary Spice." "She went on a talk show and talked about how she was invited to Megan and Harry's wedding. She said the Spice Girls were going to perform. She even went as far as to describe what the invitation looked like. All the other Spice Girls, when asked, said it was not true. Obviously, it never happened. A while later, Mel B posted a meme on her Instagram about how she hates dishonest people. I responded, 'Soooo how was the royal wedding?' BLOCKED." – u/tipseymcstagger 8. "I was massively into the Glee fandom back in the day. Dot Marie Jones (who plays Coach Beiste) would always tweet in CAPS and one day I just replied something like 'WHY DO YOU ALWAYS TYPE IN CAPS' and got blocked, lmao." 9. "Posted the picture of a younger, balder Elon Musk in a reply to him." 10. "Got blocked by Kid Rock for saying he looked like a less masculine version of Dr. Phil." 11. "I got blocked on Soulja Boy's Twitch when I asked in the chat when my Soulja Boy console would arrive because I never got any shipping info. He got really, really pissed about my question." 12. "My buddy got blocked by Tyler, The Creator. He was having a bipolar episode and thought Tyler, The Creator was putting hidden messages in his songs, saying that he was actually a Christian, and that if anyone figured it out, he would be best friends with them. So, essentially, my buddy was harassing Tyler, The Creator, telling him that he found his hidden message and was ready to be best friends with him. My friend is on medication now and doing much better." 13. "On Twitter, I asked Gene Simmons from KISS if the Kiss cologne smells like his nutsack or Paul Stanley's. He blocked me." 14. "Alec Baldwin blocked me on Twitter about 10 years ago. To be fair, I challenged him to a fight in my high school parking lot. Guess he didn't want no trouble." 15. "Told Mark Hoppus I was a big fan of his because 'Green Day was one of my favorite bands in middle school' on Twitter. Got blocked." 16. "Frank Ocean dropped out of Coachella two days before I was supposed to see him live, claiming he broke his ankle. So I DM'ed him saying, 'send me the X-rays' and he blocked me." 17. "Not really a 'celebrity,' but Joel Osteen blocked me on Instagram for calling him out on preventing people from taking refuge in his megachurch during the hurricane." 18. "Kim Kardashian blocked me and I can't remember why, but it's a badge of honor." 19. "Roseanne blocked me on Twitter about 15 years ago. I forget what she was saying, but it was a blanket statement about how people who disagreed with her on a certain subject were un-American. I made some comment about singing the National Anthem, and poof! I was blocked. You probably have to be a certain age to even get the reference." Araya Doheny / Getty Images for DailyWire+ – u/Tiny_Ear_61 20. "I told Ted Cruz to sit on a cactus on Twitter years ago. He blocked me, and then my account got banned. I appealed it with just, 'Come on guys, it's Ted Cruz,' and to my surprise they unbanned me." Kayla Bartkowski / Getty Images – u/No-Candy-8664 21. "Scott Baio blocked me for tweeting the following: 'Crazy how Scott Baio played a genius in Baby Geniuses 2 and plays a dumbass in real life, that's some impressive range.' Knowing he saw it delights me to this day." Michael Tullberg / Getty Images – u/BurgerCombo 22. "Ellie Goulding was talking about how meat was bad for you on Instagram. I — being the insufferable teenage debate brain I was — wrote an entire essay explaining why she was wrong, the benefits of eating meat, how morality is based on more than someone's diet, etc. I spent about half an hour constructing it. She simply replied, 'You have too much time on your hands' and blocked me. She wasn't wrong, lol." Taylor Hill / FilmMagic via Getty Images – u/SentryFeats 23. "I got blocked by Ron DeSantis because I spent two solid weeks on Twitter telling him to go fuck himself." Joe Raedle / Getty Images – u/SaltyIrishDog 24. "I got blocked by Hugh Jackman on Twitter several years ago." John Lamparski / GC Images via Getty Images "He'd posted a picture of himself golfing, and I thought it'd be funny to post something smart-ass like: 'Oh to be a rich cunt able to play golf and shit.' I would've blocked me too, tbh." – u/IamMooz 25. "I got blocked by the Smashing Pumpkins and Billy Corgan's Facebook pages because I pointed out that Billy looks like a grown-up Caillou and could benefit from some better-fitting clothes. I've been blocked for six years now." Kevin Winter / Getty Images for Audacy, Teletoon – u/sapphirerain25 26. Have you ever been blocked by a celebrity on social media? Share your story in the comments.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
37 People Online Who Made Me Want To Close My Laptop And Open A Bible (And I'm An Atheist)
We love Quora and have rounded up some very interesting conversations from it (like this one about people's biggest regrets in life), but I gotta be real — some Quorans seem more like they are REALLY out there. a look at what I mean (these are OUT THERE, right?): 1.A LOT of the parents on the site are disturbingly over-attached to their kids. WAAAY too attached (this poor daughter). WAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY too attached. 4.I do not think a lawyer is taking this case. I don't think a lawyer is taking this case either. this is...a lot! 7."Hypothetically": sec, folks... Just forwarding all of these to the authorities. guy has a lot of nerve, let me say that. me answer this one... No! It's not! the rich, folks. yes! By all means, let's get rid of the Department of Education! is SOOOOOO important. yay! More terrible parents! is with these people? — for the hell of it — here's a terrible spouse! another! this one, liberals! poor life sounds terrible. I've tried to break up all the bad parents entries so they're not all back to back, but there are just so many! so, so many! people are now just saying out loud every thought that enters their head, I see. if you could, why would you want to? 25.🙄 🙄 🙄 I'd like to know the answer to this one, too, LOL. YOU MANIAC!!! IT'S OVER!!!!!!!! seems there are some awful teachers out there, too. 29."I'm a 46-year-old man." OK. I would have taken other measures to fix this situation — like calling the cops! — before asking the internet: sir, should assume you are an awful husband. 33.I beg this person to go outside and touch some grass. thought we were done with the horrible parents? You thought wrong! That is true. 36.I think this person should start to exclusively drink warm beverages. lastly, if you haven't figured it out by now, we are all doomed as a species!
