28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Teachers Outnumber Ministry
Within 100 years the profession of teaching has grown from about one-twentieth to one-fourth of the [college] graduates… Since 1880 the line for teaching has crossed that of the ministry, and since 1890 that of law. Thus at the close of the century it is the dominant profession.From "Professional Distribution of College and University Graduates" (1912) by Bailey B(arton) Burritt.
20 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Taxonomies are Not Arbitrary, but Factual
Mayr lived exactly 100 years, producing a stream of books and papers up to the day of his death. Among these was his 1963 classic, Animal Species and Evolution, the very book that made me want to study evolution. In it Mayr recounted a striking fact. When he totaled up the names that the natives of New Guinea’s Arfak Mountains applied to local birds, he found that they recognized 136 different types. Western zoologists, using traditional methods of taxonomy, recognized 137 species. In other...Example of the natives of an island having nearly the same number of classifications of birds as the taxonomists who studies the species.
12 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
If We Only Saw the Stars One Night Every 100 Years
We lay and looked up at the sky and the millions of stars that blazed in darkness. The night was so still that we could hear the buoy on the ledges out beyond the mouth of the bay. Once or twice a word spoken by someone on the far shore was carried across the clear air. A few lights burned in the cottages. Otherwise, there was no reminder of other human life.... It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century or even once in a human generation, this litt...Everyone would come out to wonder at them. Instead we never look at them.