10 FEB 2018 by ideonexus
Game Play Informs Real World Play
For Molly, computer play in a simulated world connected strongly with off-line play. It reinforced her desire to create fictional worlds of her own. And it helped sharpen her understanding of that creative endeavor. In evaluating the imaginative and creafive worth of childhood activities, of course, this is the gold standard: that reading or watching television, that trips to the theater, to art and science ce museuns, an and id yyes, that play with computer games should stimulate personal en... 1 
notes
notesThis is like how Sagan incorporates game rules in his imaginative play or how playing Skyrim inspired me to go hiking.
30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
It is No Accident that We Inhabit a Veritable Paradise
Imagine a spaceship full of sleeping explorers, deep-frozen would-be
colonists of some distant world. Perhaps the ship is on a forlorn mission to save the species before an unstoppable comet, like the one that killed
the dinosaurs, hits the home planet. The voyagers go into the deep-freeze
soberly reckoning the odds against their spaceship's ever chancing upon
a planet friendly to life. If one in a million planets is suitable at best, and
it takes centuries to travel from each star to the nex... 1 notes
notes11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Dinosaur: A Poem
Behold the mighty dinosaur,
Famous in prehistoric lore,
Not only for his power and strength
But for his intellectual length.
You will observe by these remains
The creature had two sets of brains—
One in his head (the usual place),
The other at his spinal base.
Thus he could reason 'A priori'
As well as 'A posteriori'.
No problem bothered him a bit
He made both head and tail of it.
So wise was he, so wise and solemn,
Each thought filled just a spinal column.
If one brain found the pressure s...
1 About how dinosaurs have two brains, one in the rear (don't know if this is true or not, but I remember hearing this).
07 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Molecules of Water and Air Passed Through Famous People
Take water. It's simple, common, and vital. There are more molecules of water in an eight-ounce cup of the stuff than there are cups of water in all the world's oceans. Every cup that passes through a single person and eventually rejoins the world's water supply holds enough molecules to mix fifteen hundred of them into every other cup of water in the world. No way around it: some of the water you just drank passed through the kidneys of Socrates, Genghis Khan, and Joan of Arc.
How about ai...Best explanation for why the H2O in a glass of water has molecules that passed through the kidneys of historical figures (even dinosaurs).
13 APR 2012 by ideonexus
The Geological Strata Could Not have been Put Down At the...
Surely, somewhere, at least one courageous trilobite would have paddled on valiantly (as its colleagues succumbed) and won a place in the upper strata. Surely, on some primordial beach, a man would have suffered a heart attack and been washed into the lower strata before intelligence had a chance to plot a temporary escape.... No trilobite lies in the upper strata because they all perished 225 million years ago. No man keeps lithified company with a dinosaur, because we were still 60 million ...Folksonomies: faunal succession
Folksonomies: faunal succession
1 notes
notesOtherwise we would, somewhere, find a trilobite in an upper strata or a human with the dinosaurs.
18 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Pride in Evolutionary Ancestry
How I hate the man who talks about the 'brute creation', with an ugly emphasis on Brute. Only Christians are capable of it. As for me, I am proud of my close kinship with other animals. I take a jealous pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to think that I was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees and that my frame has come down through geological time via sea jelly and worms and Amphioxus, Fish, Dinosaurs, and Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in the Garden of ...Folksonomies: evolution enlightenment
Folksonomies: evolution enlightenment
Cummings takes pride in descending from arboreal ancestors and distant jellyfish.
16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Birds to Reptiles
Because reptiles appear in the fossil record before birds, we can guess
that the common ancestor of birds and reptiles was an ancient reptile,
and would have looked like one. We now know that this common ancestor
was a dinosaur. Its overall appearance would give few clues that it was
indeed a “missing link”—that one lineage of descendants would later give
rise to all modern birds, and the other to more dinosaurs. Truly birdlike
traits, such as wings and a large breastbone for anchoring ...Folksonomies: evolution
Folksonomies: evolution
1 notes
notesBirds and reptiles share many resemblances, meaning they have a common ancestor, which is dinosaurs.
19 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Species Divisions are Complicated
Zoologists have traditionally divided the vertebrates into classes: major divisions with
names like mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. Some zoologists, called 'cladists',* insist that a
proper class must consist of animals all of whom share a common ancestor which belonged to that
class and which has no descendants outside that group. The birds would be an example of a good
class. All birds are descended from a single ancestor that would also have been called a bird and
would have sha...
1 The ancestors are birds are reptiles, but in the fossil record where do we draw the line between them?
