01 JAN 2017 by ideonexus

 The secret to succeeding with computers is to lutz with t...

The secret to succeeding with computers is to lutz with them. BART EISENBERG: Push buttons, move text, insert lines, hit control characters, add dot commands, bring up menus, invoke commands and invoke more of them. Try it backwards, try it sideways, try it upside down. The method, lf you can call it that, is vaguely scientific-in that you perform some action and observe the results. A playful attitude will get you further with these machines than weeks of serious endeavor.
Folksonomies: learning experimentation
Folksonomies: learning experimentation
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21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 If You Really Want to Know, You Go to Science

[I]magine you want to know the sex of your unborn child. There are several approaches. You could, for example, do what the late film star ... Cary Grant did before he was an actor: In a carnival or fair or consulting room, you suspend a watch or a plumb bob above the abdomen of the expectant mother; if it swings left-right it's a boy, and if it swings forward-back it's a girl. The method works one time in two. Of course he was out of there before the baby was born, so he never heard from cust...
Folksonomies: science magic
Folksonomies: science magic
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Sagan uses the example of a watch swinging over an expectant mother's belly to determine the sex of a fetus.

08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 Youth and Chemistry

It is only those who know a little of nature, who fancy they know much. I have heard a young man say, after hearing a few popular chemical lectures, and seeing a few bottle and squirt experiments: Oh, water—water is only oxygen and hydrogen!—as if he knew all about it. While the true chemist would smile sadly enough at the the youth's hasty conceit, and say in his heart: 'Well, he is a lucky fellow.'
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Sample of how a little knowledge promotes unwarranted certainty.

15 DEC 2011 by ideonexus

 Focus When Being Inundated with BS

Langmuir is the most convincing lecturer that I have ever heard. I have heard him talk to an audience of chemists when I knew they did not understand more than one-third of what he was saying; but they thought they did. It's very easy to be swept off one's feet by Langmuir. You remember in [Kipling's novel] Kim that the water jar was broken and Lurgan Sahib was trying to hypnotise Kim into seeing it whole again. Kim saved himself by saying the multiplication table [so] I have heard Langmuir l...
Folksonomies: rhetoric debate demagogery
Folksonomies: rhetoric debate demagogery
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Bancroft describes a Professor who he knew was wrong, but he had to stay focused through the lecture to not be hypnotized by the lecturer's nonsense.

03 APR 2011 by ideonexus

 A Selection of Nerd-Hating Quotes

Vivek Mishra: Nerds only do study and nothing else.They don't know how to love and they don't even know anything about friendship.They are fatso and are bloody psychos.Someone said that they are going to rule the world I think they are completely wrong because world is ruled by normal people who knows what is life all about. Kyle Gjefle: I hate nerds because they think that they're so better than everybody else and they are annoying and they are teacher's pets Milö Geary: Technology has mad...
Folksonomies: anti-intellectualism
Folksonomies: anti-intellectualism
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From the Facebook "I Hate Nerds" page.