Harvard’s multi-billion-dollar endowment hasn’t been making the grade.

Now Jane Mendillo is stepping down as head of Harvard Management Company, the entity that oversees the university’s $32 billion hoard.

Mendillo was named (paywall) president and chief executive of the college’s investment arm back in July 2008. She replaced Mohamed El-Erian, who had run Harvard’s money for a little more than a year,  racking up a stellar 23% return in his first year on the job, the Wall Street Journal reported (paywall). El-Erian then left to join giant bond fund manager Pacific Investment Management Company in 2007 (he has recently announced that he is leaving PIMCO).

Mendillo had the misfortune of taking the reins of HMC just as the markets were headed for a historic tumble. (The endowment posted a loss of 27% in 2008.) The endowment, which had totaled roughly $35 billion when Medillo took over, never quite recovered. But it is still, by far, the largest in the Ivy League.

Here’s an excerpt from New York Times, describing the performance of the Harvard’s endowment:

Over the five-year period ending June 30 of last year, the Harvard endowment had an annualized return of 1.7 percent, the worst among the Ivy League, according to data compiled by Charles A. Skorina, the founder of an executive search firm that specializes in hiring chief investment officers.

But actually, Harvard’s returns have put it—horror of horrors—behind some non-Ivy League schools too, including elite universities such as Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago.

Mendillo, a Yale University School of Management alum, didn’t comment on the reasons for her departure in an interview with the New York Times, other than to say that she feels the university has  “made a great recovery from the financial crisis, we’ve repositioned the portfolio and we’ve built a great team.”

Have I mentioned recently that we have a facebook group? Only badasses are allowed in. Good luck.

awakeningourtruth:

Best post EVER!!!

So, this weekend's news in the tech world was flooded with a "story" about how a "chatbot" passed the Turing Test for "the first time," with lots of publications buying every point in the story and talking about what a big deal it was. Except, almost everything about the story is bogus and a bunch of gullible reporters ran with it, because that's what they do. First, here's the press release from the University of Reading, which should have set off all sorts of alarm bells for any reporter. Here are some quotes, almost all of which are misleading or bogus:

The 65 year-old iconic Turing Test was passed for the very first time by supercomputer Eugene Goostman during Turing Test 2014 held at the renowned Royal Society in London on Saturday.

'Eugene', a computer programme that simulates a 13 year old boy, was developed in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The development team includes Eugene's creator Vladimir Veselov, who was born in Russia and now lives in the United States, and Ukrainian born Eugene Demchenko who now lives in Russia.

[....] If a computer is mistaken for a human more than 30% of the time during a series of five minute keyboard conversations it passes the test. No computer has ever achieved this, until now. Eugene managed to convince 33% of the human judges that it was human.

Okay, almost everything about the story is bogus. Let's dig in:

1. It's not a "supercomputer," it's a chatbot. It's a script made to mimic human conversation. There is no intelligence, artificial or not involved. It's just a chatbot.
2. Plenty of other chatbots have similarly claimed to have "passed" the Turing test in the past (often with higher ratings). Here's a story from three years ago about another bot, Cleverbot, "passing" the Turing Test by convincing 59% of judges it was human (much higher than the 33% Eugene Goostman) claims.
3. It "beat" the Turing test here by "gaming" the rules -- by telling people the computer was a 13-year-old boy from Ukraine in order to mentally explain away odd responses.
4. The "rules" of the Turing test always seem to change. Hell, Turing's original test was quite different anyway.
5. As Chris Dixon points out, you don't get to run a single test with judges that you picked and declare you accomplished something. That's just not how it's done. If someone claimed to have created nuclear fusion or cured cancer, you'd wait for some peer review and repeat tests under other circumstances before buying it, right?
6. The whole concept of the Turing Test itself is kind of a joke. While it's fun to think about, creating a chatbot that can fool humans is not really the same thing as creating artificial intelligence. Many in the AI world look on the Turing Test as a needless distraction.

Oh, and the biggest red flag of all. The event was organized by Kevin Warwick at Reading University. If you've spent any time at all in the tech world, you should automatically have red flags raised around that name. Warwick is somewhat infamous for his ridiculous claims to the press, which gullible reporters repeat without question. He's been doing it for decades. All the way back in 2000, we were writing about all the ridiculous press he got for claiming to be the world's first "cyborg" for implanting a chip in his arm. There was even a -- since taken down -- Kevin Warwick Watch website that mocked and categorized all of his media appearances in which gullible reporters simply repeated all of his nutty claims. Warwick had gone quiet for a while, but back in 2010, we wrote about how his lab was getting bogus press for claiming to have "the first human infected with a computer virus." The Register has rightly referred to Warwick as both "Captain Cyborg" and a "media strumpet" and has long been chronicling his escapades in exaggerating bogus stories about the intersection of humans and computers for many, many years.

Basically, any reporter should view extraordinary claims associated with Warwick with extreme caution. But that's not what happened at all. Instead, as is all too typical with Warwick claims, the press went nutty over it, including publications that should know better. Here are just a few sample headlines. The absolute worst are the ones who claim this is a "supercomputer."

• The Verge: Computer passes Turing Test for first time by convincing judges it is a 13-year-old boy
• Venture Beat: Talk to the computer that passed the Turing Test, a historic artificial intelligence milestone
• Yahoo Tech: Turing Test Bested, Robot Overlords Creep Closer
• NBC News: Turing Test: Computer Program Convinces Judges It's Human
• Washington Post: A computer just passed the Turing Test in landmark trial
• The Independent: Turing Test breakthrough as super-computer becomes first to convince us it's human
• PC World: An AI milestone: Chatbot passes Turing Test by posing as 13-year-old boy
• The Wire: For the First Time Ever, a Computer Passed Turing Test for Artificial Intelligence
• Gizmodo: A Computer Program Has Passed the Turing Test For the First Time
• ZDNet: Computer chatbot 'Eugene Goostman' passes the Turing test
• Ars Technica: Eugene—the supercomputer, not 13-year-old—first to beat the Turing Test
• The Guardian: Computer simulating 13-year-old boy becomes first to pass Turing test
• CNET: Computer fools humans, passes Turing Test
• Computerworld: Supercomputer passes Turing Test by posing as a teenager
• Science Alert: Meet the first computer to pass the Turing Test

Anyway, a lot of hubbub over nothing special that everyone seemed to buy into because of the easy headlines (which is exactly what Warwick always counts on). So, since we just spent all this time on a useless nothing, let's end it with the obligatory xkcd:

Original Source

loveneverdidrunsmooth:

kitsunehaku:

koolaidicecubes:

Wait what

Hold on a second what

PLOT TWIST. I did not see that coming.

Bless the Maker and His water.
Bless the coming and going of Him.
May His passage cleanse the world.
May He keep the world for His people. 

i saw a TED talk about increasing a very small thing by 4%

chromaticdebutante:

nowyoukno:

Now You Know there’s an emergency Hall and Oates hotline. (Source)

After cackling for a minute, I picked up the phone to call.

Shirley: That’s a long distance call.

Me: We have unlimited long distance.

Shirley: Oh yeah, I forgot.

I dialed. THIS IS A REAL THING!  There were 8 choices but I got so excited I hit one and ended up with a Hall and Oates song that I HAD NEVER HEARD BEFORE.

My Sunday is made.

Currently on view at Zadok Gallery in Miami, Fiction of the Fabricated Image is the latest body of work from Seoul-based artist Seon Ghi Bahk. Of particular note is this impressive series of architectural columns constructed from pieces of natural charcoal suspended on nylon threads. The work is part of the artist’s An Aggregation series that explores the complex relationship between nature and humanity, where Bahk suggests “nature” can be incorrectly viewed as simply a backdrop or tool used in the creation of civilization. You can see more over on Zadok Gallery where the installation will be up through August 25, 2014. (via My Amp Goes to 11, My Modern Met)

buy this print
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Samuel C. Spitale (a.k.a. “C-SPIT”) has created a great movie trailer that imagines what George Lucas‘ 1983 epic space opera film, Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, might have looked like if it ended up being directed by David Lynch.

In 1981 George Lucas approached David Lynch to direct the final installment of the STAR WARS trilogy. For years fans of Lynch and Lucas have wondered what that surreal vision would look like. Now we finally know…. in David Lynch’s RETURN OF THE JEDI.

via Welcome to Twin Peaks, Nerdcore

the-misha-metalocalypse:

expl0sive-cucumber:

skinnymini-13:

myresin:

THIS VIDEO

WATCH THIS VIDEO

WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS HOW WELL DONE THIS VIDEO WAS DONE TO SPREAD AWARENESS.

Everyone watch this

I WANT TO BREAK MY MOUSE WITH REBLOG

SERIOUSLY, EVERYONE REBLOG THIS.

The forecast for northwest France on June 6, 1944 stands as history's most important weather forecast.

src via escapist-fiction

eerieearthling:

This particular moment in Star Trek is actually quite important. A lot of people don’t realise that understanding something is not the same as approving of something. This particular episode (A Taste of Armageddon) had a civilization where war was fought on computers instead of on the battlefield and instead of people dying in combat they would send the calculated amount of “casualities” into a camp to die. Kirk is outraged completely by this and rightly should be, but Spock is not so overtly disapproving. He understands why they might think their solution is better for their civilization and takes the time to think about why they are doing it. Even though he can understand why, he still believes it is wrong for them to be doing it. 

There is a separation between understanding something and  approving of something that a lot of people seem to miss. 

Turning the tables a bit, photographer Myra Greene, who is black, set out to capture the essence of whiteness through photography. She explains,

Being asked to be in a photograph because of race has happened many times in my life.

I don’t think a lot of white people have been asked to do something because of their racial identity.

So she worked with a bunch of Caucasian acquaintances to create a series of photos of white people that captured their whiteness. This is, of course, a relatively futile endeavor…which is sort of the point.

The photos, compiled in her book My White Friends, might seem perfectly ordinary, but now that you know the motivation behind them, they are both funny and intriguing…

mimicryisnotmastery:

sharkeisha:

i’m going to need all these white female celebrities to stop bashing feminism and denouncing it just because they don’t have a clear understanding of what it actually is

This opinion is just as trashy and shitty as her music. Bye.

germannn:

Funny and bizarre German animal names

The German language is famous for some really long nouns (Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän comes to mind). This is because German nouns, verbs, prepositions and adjectives are like lego bricks; you can stick them together in almost any way to create new words that encapsulate new concepts. This gives the language a special ability to name just about anything. You could call it the German language’s lego brick-like quality, or Legosteineigenschaft (see what I just did there?).

But why does German rely on such an elaborate process to name things as simple as squirrels? When broken down into their separate components, the names of familiar animals mutate into bizarre new creatures.

The Uncanny X-Tiere

Comics are full of heroes with names like super, wonder, iron, ultra, bat or cat followed by -man, -woman, -girl or -boy. A lot of German animal names work the same way, where Tier – the word for animal – is preceded by a word describing that animal’s “super power”.

• Stinktier – stink animal (skunk)

• Faultier – lazy animal (sloth)

• Gürteltier – belt animal (armadillo)

• Murmeltier – mumbling animal (groundhog)

• Schnabeltier – beak animal (platypus)

• Maultier – mouth animal (mule)

• Trampeltier – trampling animal (bactrian camel). The verb trampeln means to trample or tread upon, whereas the noun Trampel is a clumsy oaf.

Sometimes suffixes get more specific than -tier, but still tend to describe the wrong animal:

• Schildkröte – shield toad (tortoise)

• Waschbär – wash bear (raccoon)

• Nacktschnecke – naked snail (slug)

• Fledermaus – flutter mouse (bat)

• Seehund – sea dog (seal)

• Tintenfisch – ink fish (squid)

• Truthahn – threatening chicken (turkey). Trut is onomatopoeic for the trut-trut-trut cluck of a turkey, but it’s also been hypothesized that the name comes from the Middle German droten which means “to threaten”.

No, I’m Pretty Sure That’s A Pig

Swine seem to be a popular yardstick in German animal taxonomy.

• Schweinswal – pig whale (porpoise)

• Seeschwein – sea pig (dugong). Not to be confused with the Seekuh, or sea cow, known in English as a manatee.

• Stachelschwein – spike pig (porcupine). The English word is actually just as literal; porcupine sounds a lot like “pork spine”.

• Wasserschwein – water pig (capybara)

• Meerschweinchen – ocean piglet (guinea pig). The ending -chen denotes something small. Add it to the end of Schwein and you get a little pig, or piglet. Since the stems Meer and Wasser are often interchangeable, it’s most likely that Meerschweinchen actually means little capybara.

Just Plain Weird

I’d like to end this list by giving one animal a category all to itself: the humble squirrel.

Eichhörnchen:

• little oak horn: Eiche (oak tree) + Horn (horn) + -chen (little)
• oak croissant: Eiche (oak tree) + Hörnchen (croissant)

alternate names:

• Eichkätzchen (regional name) and Eichkatzerl (Austria) – oak kitten

Calling a squirrel a “tree kitten” is reasonably literal, but where does “little oak horn” come from? It seems that the answer comes down to a misplaced h: Eichhörnchen comes from the Old and Middle German eichorn, which has nothing to do with oak trees or horns. In this case, the eich comes from the ancient Indo-Germanic word aig, which means agitated movement, combined with the now obsolete suffix -orn. Somewhere in history a superfluous h was added (along with the diminutive -chen ending) but the original meaning remained. Today, Hörnchen is a category of rodents that includes all squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, prairie dogs and flying squirrels.

Keep an eye on this spot for an upcoming post where we’ll delve deeper into the animal kingdom: branching out to birds, insects, reptiles, fishes and any other mammals we find crawling around.

Space is beautiful, enchanting, awe-inspiring, and utterly unforgiving. We celebrate the victories, but don't let a string of successes deceive you into thinking spaceflight is easy. A new documentary investigates the major malfunctions, technical and procedural, that led to NASA space shuttle explosions.

Read more...

popular shared this story from The ToastThe Toast.

---

“You’re a wizard, Harry,” Hagrid said. “And you’re coming to Hogwarts.”

“What’s Hogwarts?” Harry asked.

“It’s wizard school.”

“It’s not a public school, is it?”

“No, it’s privately run.”

“Good. Then I accept. Children are not the property of the state; everyone who wishes to do so has the right to offer educational goods or services at a fair market rate. Let us leave at once.”

***

“Malfoy bought the whole team brand-new Nimbus Cleansweeps!” Ron said, like a poor person. “That’s not fair!”

“Everything that is possible is fair,” Harry reminded him gently. “If he is able to purchase better equipment, that is his right as an individual. How is Draco’s superior purchasing ability qualitatively different from my superior Snitch-catching ability?”

“I guess it isn’t,” Ron said crossly.

Harry laughed, cool and remote, like if a mountain were to laugh. “Someday you’ll understand, Ron.”

***

Professor Snape stood at the front of the room, sort of Jewishly. “There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class. As such, I don’t expect many of you to appreciate the subtle science and exact art that is potion-making. However, for those select few who possess, the predisposition…I can teach you how to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death.”

Harry’s hand shot up.

“What is it, Potter?” Snape asked, irritated.

“What’s the value of these potions on the open market?”

“What?”

“Why are you teaching children how to make these valuable products for ourselves at a schoolteacher’s salary instead of creating products to meet modern demand?”

“You impertinent boy–”

“Conversely, what’s to stop me from selling these potions myself after you teach us how to master them?”

“I–”

“This is really more of a question for the Economics of Potion-Making, I guess. What time are econ lessons here?”

“We have no economics lessons in this school, you ridiculous boy.”

Harry Potter stood up bravely. “We do now. Come with me if you want to learn about market forces!”

The students poured into the hallway after him. They had a leader at last.

***

Harry and Ron stood before the Mirror of Erised. “My God,” Ron said. “Harry, it’s your dead parents.”

Harry’s eyes flicked momentarily over to the mirror. “So it is. This information is neither useful nor productive. Let us leave at once, to assist Hagrid in his noble enterprise of raising as many dragon eggs as he sees fit, in spite of our country’s unjust dragon-trading restrictions.”

“But it’s your parents, Harry,” Ron said. Ron never really got it.

Harry sighed. “The fundamental standard for all relationships is the trader principle, Ron.”

“I don’t understand,” Ron said.

“Of course you don’t,” said Harry affectionately. “This principle holds that we should interact with people on the basis of the values we can trade with them – values of all sorts, including common interests in art, sports or music, similar philosophical outlooks, political beliefs, sense of life, and more. Dead people have no value according to the trader principle.”

“But they gave birth to y–”

“I made myself, Ron,” Harry said firmly.

***

“Give me your wand, boy,” Voldemort hissed.

“I cannot do that. This wand represents my wealth, which is itself a tangible result of my achievements. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think,” Harry said bravely.

Voldemort gasped.

“There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.”

Voldemort began to melt. Harry lit a cigarette, because he was the master of fire.

“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. The minimum wage is a tax on the successful. The market will naturally dictate the minimum wage without the government stepping in to determine arbitrary limits.”

Voldemort howled.

“I’m going to sell copies of my wand at an enormous markup,” Harry said, “and you can buy one like everyone else.”

Voldemort had been defeated.

“He hated us for our freedom,” Ron said.

“No, Ron,” Harry said. “He hated us for our free markets.”

Hermione ached with desire for the both of them to master her, but nobody paid her any attention. They had empires to build.

Artwork by Amy Collier, who once saw Fabio at an airport. Fabio is an Italian model who has appeared on many classic romance novels, such as Love Me with Fury, Lovestorm, and More Than a Feeling. He is 6’3” barefoot; usually in cowboy boots.

Read more Ayn Rand’s Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone at The Toast.

Diga di Luzzone — дамба в Швейцарии высотой 165 метров. С недавнего времени стена дамбы была оборудована специальными выступами для тренировки скалолазов. На сегодняшний день это место является самым большим искусственным скалодромом в мире. Чтобы пощекотать себе нервы поднимаясь по отвесной стене, придется выложить порядка 20$…

источник

How soon is too soon to begin introducing basic gender theory and Lacanian self-definition to an infant? A primer.

BABY: dont want u
want daddy
ME: GENDER IS A SPECTRUM OF BEHAVIORS NOT A FIXED IDENTITY
STOP DENYING MY AGENCY
BABY: want juice
ME: I’M GONNA READ JUDITH BUTLER TO YOU AGAIN

 

BABY: [nurses]
ME: you realize youre literally consuming me
BABY: [nurses]
ME: wow
its like de Beauvoir never even wrote The Second Sex

 

[leans over baby's crib]
ME: DON’T YOU DARE DEVELOP ALONG FREUDIAN STAGES
BABY: [sleeps]
ME: ARE YOU IGNORING MY REGULATIVE DISCOURSES

 

BABY: [sleeps]
ME: wow
have you queered anything today

 

BABY: [cries]
ME: hey
HEY
we have talked about this
BABY: [cries]
ME: what is the function of the imaginary primordial enclosure formed by the imago of the mother’s body
you know this
i know you know this

 

ME: i dont care how you express your future sexuality
but dont you dare bring a post-structuralist into this house
BABY: [chortles]
ME: THIS IS SERIOUS

 

ME: IS GENDER A PERFORMANCE OR A CONSTRUCT
PUT DOWN THAT BUNNY AND ANSWER ME

 

ME: [holding car keys] okay, Baby
show me the difference between the symbol and the archetype
BABY: [claps]
ME: come on
what’s being displaced here

 

BABY: want fahh
want fahhh
ME: who wants fahh?
BABY: want fahh
ME: Is it I?
Are you learning the function of the I?
Are you ready for Lacan’s mirror stage?
BABY: want fahhh
ME: I didn’t think so

 

BABY: [eats a Cheerio]
ME: WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO REALIZE
THAT ‘THE REAL’ IS NOT NECESSARILY COEXISTENT WITH REALITY

 

BABY: [hands me 'Are You My Mother']
ME: DO YOU WANT ME TO READ THIS TO YOU
OR ARE YOU FINALLY READY TO CRITICALLY INTERROGATE THE TEXT
BABY: book

[Image via Wikimedia Commons]

Read more How To Talk To Babies About Gender Theory at The Toast.

Over at Buzzfeed, Burner Kimba Rose takes an amusing look at the similarities between Burning Man and having a baby. Nice one Kimba! Original post:

 

 

Filed under: Funny Tagged: 2014, baby, funny, ideas, kids, kimba, Party

You probably heard about the Facebook executive who complained about the proliferation of “stupid stories about how you should wash your jeans instead of freezing them.” It’s almost too easy to be snarky about a Facebook guy who worries the Internet is awash in silly sponsored content. 

Besides, we know that silly sponsored content is not a benign issue. MetaFilter founder Matt Haughhey has written thoughtfully about how Google’s opaque and inscrutable ranking systems have been killing his business. He admits that, “we were doing nothing in terms of SEO, as I find the whole business kind of gross." But because MetaFilter won’t play the ranking game, ad revenue has collapsed. Having thoughtful, high-quality content isn’t enough to get read.

The Internet is still full of great content. The problem is that the big Internet companies don’t do a good job of facilitating it. Well, that and advertisers and shameless self promoters are finding new and annoying ways to get in your face.

Last week, we wrote in defense of publishers’ right to get paid for advertising. But that’s just one part of the equation. The other half is providing a better way for quality content to be found. Or at least found without having to tart it up with stupid SEO tricks. 

I know that content syndication can be used and abused by some people for link building. But RSS is not an algorithm that can be gamed by advertisers and content hucksters. I know that it is still the best mechanism to find the content you want. You’re not going to be tricked into clicking on a link and you’re not having your newsfeed polluted with promoted content. 

And I think it is time to start talking about this. Sometimes I get the feeling RSS developers think of themselves caretakers of an established and respected institution. You know, the kind of institution that can keep catering to a dwindling number of dedicated and sophisticated followers but doesn’t bother attracting new users. RSS is not new technology. But it is outside of the mainstream content delivery that’s increasingly compromised by someone’s desire to sell you something. 

And if a Facebook executive is recognizing the mindlessness, other people are too. It’s time to reintroduce RSS to the world. How about telling people that there is a way to actually ask for content you want to see and actually have it delivered to you. It’s not a miracle or weird trick. Although it will probably seem that way to a few people. 

ex0skeletal:

end0skeletal:

Happy Owls!

Because everyone needs smiling owls in their life.

Every time I read about the synapse, the all-important junction between two neurons, the cartoon above pops into my head. It shows the gist of how a synapse works: An electrical pulse enters the cell on the left and activates those little blue balls, called vesicles, to release their chemical contents, called neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitters spill out into the space between the cells, called the cleft, and activate those blue rectangles, called ion channels. The channels trigger the cell on the right to fire its own electrical pulse, or action potential, and this message travels on to the next cell. It’s pretty neat. Our brains are full of trillions of synapses, each with the capability of converting an electrical signal into a chemical one and back again.

My doodle is conceptually useful for understanding many neuroscience studies. It helped me visualize, for example, how researchers record the messages of brain cells, and how the synapse plays a role in developmental disorders, and how the firing patterns of all of these synapses provide our brains with a sophisticated coding scheme.

The downside of the cartoon synapse is that it gives a false impression. It makes it seem as if the synapse is simple and all figured out, when actually it’s mostly baffling. I was reminded of its complexity by a study published in today’s issue of Science. Researchers in Germany used an array of techniques — including Western blot, mass spectrometry, electron microscopy, and super-resolution fluorescence microscopy — to create a three-dimensional model of a typical synapse in the adult rat brain. You’ll see in the video below that their new model doesn’t look much like my drawing:

To get the most out of the video, click on the white arrows in the lower right hand corner, which will expand it to full screen. The video shows the synaptic bouton, which is the left part of my cartoon. The glowing red “active zone” at the bottom is where the neurotransmitters get dumped into the cleft. Toward the end of the video you can see a close-up of a vesicle releasing its contents and then being recycled by the cell.

The model shows some 300,000 individual proteins, and remember — they’re all hanging out at a single synapse! The image below shows a cross-section of the bouton; each color corresponds to a different kind of protein. The active zone is again the glowing red part at the bottom.

(Click to enlarge)

More often than not, neuroscientists (and therefore, science writers covering neuroscience) tend to focus on a single protein at a time. For instance, I’ve written about that green guy, parvalbumin, because in certain neurons the protein seems to trigger high-frequency brain waves that have been linked to cognition. And that red SNAP-25 has been linked to ADHD, and the yellow VDAC has been proposed as a good target for chemotherapy drugs.

The only way to untangle this complex picture is to focus on its individual components, figuring out one piece at a time. But the next time you read about one of those pieces, recall how it fits into the whole, and be wowed.