04 NOV 2018 by ideonexus
Brian-Sutton Smith's Seven Rhetorics of Play
Play as Progress: Play is a way of turning children into adults. Play is valuable because it educates and develops the cognitive capacities of human or animal youth. Examples: All forms of children's play and animal play Play as Fate: Human lives and play are controlled by fate in the form of destiny, gods, atoms, neurons, or luck, but not by free will. Examples: Gambling and games of chance Play as Power: Play is a form of conflict and a way to fortify the status of those who control the p...14 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
The Benefits of Alchemy
But there is another alchemy, operative and practical, which teaches how to make the noble metals and colours and many other things better and more abundantly by art than they are made in nature. And science of this kind is greater than all those preceding because it produces greater utilities. For not only can it yield wealth and very many other things for the public welfare, but it also teaches how to discover such things as are capable of prolonging human life for much longer periods than ...Alchemy produces medicines and ways to produce useful compounds. It's not, as Bacon argues, just the frivolity.
10 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
Watson Describes a Talk by Rosalind Franklin
BY mid-November, when Rosy's talk on DNA rolled about, I had learned enough crystallographic argument to follow much of her lecture.. Most important, I knew what to focus attention upon. Six weeks of listening to Francis had made me realize that the crux of the matter was whether Rosy's new X-ray pictures would lend any sup-port for a helical DNA structure. The really relevant experimental details were those which might provide clues in constructing molecular models. It took, however, only a ...And, curiously, remarks on his momentary thoughts about how she could make herself more attractive.