05 JUN 2017 by ideonexus
Be Prolific
For example, Simonton cites the work of inventor Thomas Edison who accumulated a mind-boggling 2,300 patents over his lifetime.
He found that in the same year Edison applied for patents for the light bulb and the telephone (certainly both hits) he also filed for patents for 100 or so other inventions including the pneumatic pen (a partial miss), a talking doll (a definite miss) and a ghost detection machine (enough said).
In all likelihood, Edison never knowingly worked on something he thou... 1 
notes
notes31 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Hero of "Brave New World"
The hero of Brave New World is John, a young man
who grew up on an Indian reservation in New Mexico.
The reservation is inhabited by primitive peoples and
maintained by the benevolent world government as a
tourist attraction. It exists so that the civilized tourists
can observe from a distance the nasty and brutish lives
of people who have the misfortune to be unprotected
by the cushions and comforts of technology. On the
reservation, traditional religions and traditional customs
are tolerate... 1 notes
notes21 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Spelling and Grammar is Ancestor Worship
The fetishization of "correct" English -- which is to say, white, wealthy English -- is in direct opposition to everything that makes English such a glorious drunkard's debauch of a language.
English came to us from the inventive malapropism and linguistic entrepreneurship of its speakers: from Shakespeare, who coined words wholesale; to the working-class streets with their heterodox cursing and rhyming slangs.
To demand the immobilization of this restless, incontinent language is a form of b...
1 13 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Changing Spelling has Happened in the Past
Objection to simplified spelling has been made on the
supposition that it "wil cut us off from the literature
of the past," meaning that those taught in the new way
wil be unable to read the books red today. This can
not be so, because the present spelling wil be no more
difficult to read by one who has learnd to spel the new
way, than is the new spelling by one who has learnd
the old way. Children who hav learnd to spel in the
simplified way wil, in fact, read the books printed
toda...Technology, translation services, will make migration even easier.
12 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
The Printing Press and Dictionaries Crystallized Spelling
English spelling was at first practically fonetic, like
the spelling of Latin, Spanish, Italian, Polish, and
most other languages, and changed as pronunciation
changed. In its case, however, various causes com-
bined to interfere with this orderly process. Among
them wer the variations in the early dialects, the dif-
ferent spelling sistems of the Norman conquerors, the
later different spelling sistem of the imported Dutch
printers, the bungling attempts during the Renaissance
to mak...01 SEP 2014 by ideonexus
The Problem of Too Much Information in Literature
When I am reading Hamlet I often develop an urge to tell people about it, as if the Melancholy Dane's history had heretofore been classified as a top secret. I am bursting with information about Hamlet, so filled am I by the massive "evidence" presented by Shakespeare. So I sit down at my writing table and begin to put together an essay or a lecture in which I seem to extract a thesis out of the evidence in the play. I say "seem" because I think I actually begin with some kind of preconceived...Folksonomies: literature humanities
Folksonomies: literature humanities
1 notes
notes05 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Negative Capability
I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caugh...According to wikipedia: "...the capacity of human beings to transcend and revise their contexts." Here is the first use of the term by John Keats, where it sounds more like the ability to remain calm and rational in the face of uncertainty and not jump to conclusions without evidence.
23 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Why is Scientific Illiteracy Considered Acceptable?
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you...When failing to read Shakespeare is considered unacceptable?
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Hell for Scientists
I had at one time a very bad fever of which I almost died. In my fever I had a long consistent delirium. I dreamt that I was in Hell, and that Hell is a place full of all those happenings that are improbable but not impossible. The effects of this are curious. Some of the damned, when they first arrive below, imagine that they will beguile the tedium of eternity by games of cards. But they find this impossible, because, whenever a pack is shuffled, it comes out in perfect order, beginning wit... 1 notes
notesIs a place where the improbable occurs everywhere.
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Relationship Between Geology and Geography
All that comes above the surface [of the globe] lies within the province of Geography; all that comes below that surface lies inside the realm of Geology. The surface of the earth is that which, so to speak, divides them and at the same time 'binds them together in indissoluble union.' We may, perhaps, put the case metaphorically. The relationships of the two are rather like that of man and wife. Geography, like a prudent woman, has followed the sage advice of Shakespeare and taken unto her '... 1 notes
notesThey are intertwined, but there are strict boundaries.
