31 OCT 2018 by ideonexus
Kayfabe
Although the etymology of the word is a matter of debate, for at least 50 years “kayfabe” has referred to the unspoken contract between wrestlers and spectators: We’ll present you something clearly fake under the insistence that it’s real, and you will experience genuine emotion. Neither party acknowledges the bargain, or else the magic is ruined.
[...]
The aesthetic of World Wrestling Entertainment seems to be spreading from the ring to the world stage. Ask an average Trump support... 1 
notes
notes07 AUG 2017 by ideonexus
Discussion Rhythm to Promote Student Participation
Teachers are partnering with students to establish a new rhythm in classroom questioning. This rhythm provides teachers and students with a silence for thinking at two crucial junctions in the questioning process:
• Wait Time 1: After a question is posed but before a student is called on to answer.
• Wait Time 2: Directly following that student’s response.
Almost 50 years ago, Mary Budd Rowe (1969) famously discovered multiple benefits associated with intentionally pausing at these tw...Folksonomies: education discussion
Folksonomies: education discussion
1 notes
notes22 JUN 2016 by ideonexus
The Importance of Old, Well-Written Articles
...we overvalue new writing, almost absurdly so, and we undervalue older writing. I feel this market failure keenly each day when I recommend a fine piece of writing that deserves to be read for years to come and yet will have at most two days in the sun.
You never hear anybody say, “I’m not going to listen to that record because it was released last year,” or, “I’m not going to watch that film because it came out last month.” Why are we so much less interested in journalism that...
1 If 99% of new content on the Web is worthless, how do we surface the old content for new eyes?
30 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
notes19 JAN 2016 by ideonexus
Chomsky on the Failure of Postmodernism to Simplify
Since no one has succeeded in showing me what I'm missing, we're left with the second option: I'm just incapable of understanding. I'm certainly willing to grant that it may be true, though I'm afraid I'll have to remain suspicious, for what seem good reasons. There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (...Folksonomies: postmodernism
Folksonomies: postmodernism
1 notes
notes30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Your Birth Star
Name any event in history and you will find a star out there whose light
gives you a glimpse of something happening during the year of that event.
Provided you are not a very young child, somewhere up in the night sky
you can find your personal birth star. Its light is a thermonuclear glow
that heralds the year of your birth. Indeed, you can find quite a few such
stars (about 40 if you are 40; about 70 if you are 50; about 175 if you are
80 years old). When you look at one of your birth year ... 1 notes
notes21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Realism in "A Song of Ice and Fire"
Game of Thrones takes place in a land that feels somewhat post-apocalyptic — there are occasional glimmers of hints that something really bad might have happened to Westeros long ago, and that's the reason for the irregular and attenuated seasons. But even more than that, we know Westeros is on the brink of a zombie apocalypse from the very first moment of the story. And part of the genius of Martin's slow-as-soil-erosion storytelling is that the zombie threat never quite arrives, but we ke... 1 notes
notesThe engaging storytelling is the result of its connection to how the world works with gray characters and glacial problems.
21 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
The NDEA had Broad Benefits, but Unquantifiable Benefits
The four NDEA Titles featured in this report contributed to general upward trends (e.g., in the rate of high school, college, and graduate completion; in the level of student preparedness in science, mathematics, and modern languages; in the number of teachers and degree-granting institutions; in the number of bachelors and doctoral degrees awarded; and in the number of scholarly publications by doctoral recipients) during the years that they were in force. Their provisions also contributed t...Folksonomies: quantification public policy
Folksonomies: quantification public policy
1 notes
notesThe National Defense Education Act improved science, technology, and college enrollment in the US, but its effects cannot be separated from the broader forces and trends going on during the time it was implemented. Future public policies intended to boost STEM must be implemented in such a way as to make their effects quantifiable.
28 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
Terraforming Venus
...build a round sunshield of lunatic aluminum, very thin material, only 50 grams per square meter and yet still totaling 3 x 1013 kilograms, the largest thing ever built by humans. Concentric strips give the sunshield flexibility and allow it to tack up into the solar wind to hold its position at the L1 point, where it will shadow Venus entirely. Deprived of insolation, the planet will cool at a rate of five K a year.
After 140 years, the CO2 atmosphere will have rained and snowed to the su...Folksonomies: teraforming
Folksonomies: teraforming
1 notes
notesA fictional account of incredible engineering.
17 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
Does the Future Need Us?
While we now know that Turing was too optimistic on the timeline, AI's inexorable progress over the past 50 years suggests that Herbert Simon was right when he wrote in 1956 "machines will be capable ... of doing any work a man can do." I do not expect this to happen in the very near future, but I do believe that by 2045 machines will be able to do if not any work that humans can do, then a very significant fraction of the work that humans can do. Bill Joy's question deserves therefore not to...Folksonomies: automation
Folksonomies: automation
1 If machines can do everything for us by 2045, what will we do?
