16 NOV 2017 by ideonexus
Understanding the Education Customer
VCs and entrepreneurs tend to be well educated. Well educated people think about education as an investment. You put as many of your resources in to an investment as you can. It may take 20 years to pay off, but if the return-on-investment is high (which it is for education) then you invest. This group of people — if you’re reading this, you fall into this group — generally understand that education is an investment, and as a result are price insensitive and will optimize for quality (a highe... 1 
notes
notes30 MAY 2016 by ideonexus
Rebuking the "Good Old Days"
When you hear someone longing for the "good old days," take it with a grain of salt. (Laughter and applause.) Take it with a grain of salt. We live in a great nation and we are rightly proud of our history. We are beneficiaries of the labor and the grit and the courage of generations who came before. But I guess it's part of human nature, especially in times of change and uncertainty, to want to look backwards and long for some imaginary past when everything worked, and the economy humme... 1 notes
notes08 MAR 2016 by ideonexus
Physical and Actuarial Escape Velocities
The escape velocity cusp is closer than you might guess. Since we are already so long lived, even a 30% increase in healthy life span will give the first beneficiaries of rejuvenation therapies another 20 years—an eternity in science—to benefit from second-generation therapies that would give another 30%, and so on ad infinitum. Thus, if first-generation rejuvenation therapies were universally available and this progress in developing rejuvenation therapy could be indefinitely maintained, the...Folksonomies: longevity life-extension
Folksonomies: longevity life-extension
1 06 NOV 2014 by ideonexus
Matrioshka Brains
Matrioshka Brains (MB)1 are megascale computers constructed out of microelectronic and/or nanoscale components. MB may be constructed as shells around a star (internally powered Matrioshka Brains: IPMB) or may be constructed independently of a star if large amounts of power are harvested from stars in other locations and beamed to the MB (externally powered Matrioshka Brains: EPMB). A third variant, (self-powered Matrioshka Brains: SPMB) which generates power via controlled n...
1 27 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
Adventists Live Longer
In America here, life expectancy for the average woman is 80. But for an Adventist woman, their life expectancy is 89. And the difference is even more pronounced among men, who are expected to live about 11 years longer than their American counterparts. Now, this is a study that followed about 70,000 people for 30 years. Sterling study. And I think it supremely illustrates the premise of this Blue Zone project.
This is a heterogeneous community. It's white, black, Hispanic, Asian. The only t...Habits and characteristics of Adventists that may lend to their longer lifespans.
24 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
Television is Not a Passive Medium
Ever since viewing screens entered the home, many observers have worried that they put our brains into a stupor. An early strain of research claimed that when we watch television, our brains mostly exhibit slow alpha waves—indicating a low level of arousal, similar to when we are daydreaming. These findings have been largely discarded by the scientific community, but the myth persists that watching television is the mental equivalent of, as one Web site put it, “staring at a blank wall.” Thes...Folksonomies: parenting television
Folksonomies: parenting television
1 notes
notesOur brains enter a state similar to that of reading a book when watching TV. Children are able to make sense of TV and are actively engaged with it.
31 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Pro-Arguments for Simplified Chinese Characters
Proponents feel that simplified characters having fewer strokes makes it easier to learn.[7] Literacy rates have risen steadily in rural and urban areas since the simplification of the Chinese characters, while this trend was hardly seen during 30 years of Kuomintang (KMT) rule and 250 years of Manchurian rule before them, when the traditional writing system was dominant, though this rise in literacy may not necessarily be due to simplification alone.
Although Taiwan, which uses traditional C...A list of bullet points from wikipedia on how simplified chinese characters improve literacy and alleviate social oppression.
21 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Australopithecus afarensis' Hip Bone Indicates She Could ...
When Lucy’s hundreds of fragments were assembled, she turned out
to be a female of a new species, Australopithecus afarensis, dating back
3.2 million years. She was between 20 and 30 years old, 3.5feet tall,
weighing a scant 60 pounds, and possibly afflicted with arthritis. But
most important, she walked on two legs.
How can we tell? From the way that the femur (thighbone) connects to
the pelvis at one end and to the knee at its other. In a bipedally
walking primate like ourselves, the femur... 1 notes
notesThe bone tilts to bring the knees inward, like it does in humans, but not in chimps, who waddle because they are bow-legged.
31 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Do Not Praise Your Children's Intelligence
On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said,“I’m so proud of you. You’re so smart. They should have said, “I’m so proud of you. You must have really studied hard”. This appeals to controllable effort rather than to unchangeable talent. It’s called “growth mindset” praise.
More than 30 years of study show that children raised in growth-mindset homes consistently outscore their fixed-mindset peers in academic achievement. They do better in adult life, too. That’s not sur...Praise them for working hard because they can control that.
04 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Science Saves Lives
Even at its best, pre-modern medical practice did not save many. Queen Anne was the last Stuart monarch of Great Britain. In the last seventeen years of the seventeenth century, she was pregnant eighteen times. Only five children were born alive. Only one of them survived infancy. He died before reaching adulthood, and before her coronation in 1702. There seems to be no evidence of some genetic disorder. She had the best medical care money could buy.
Diseases that once tragically carried off...You can pray over a sick person, or give them medicine. All the ways medical science has reduced mortality.
