24 MAR 2016 by ideonexus
Tips for Parents to Encourage Reading
Read to your child. Try to read to your child every day. Read from a wide variety of materials and books.
Encourage writing. Encourage your child to scribble and pretend write if they are young. Encourage older children to write stories and letters and share them with the family. Have writing materials readily available.
Have reading material at home. Have a wide variety of books, children's magazines, and newspapers available for children to read or look at.
Get your child a libr...
1 24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Shotgun Seminar
At our Institute in Princeton we sometimes organize meetings which are announced as Shotgun Seminars. A Shotgun Seminar is a talk given by an Institute member to a volunteer audience. The subject of the talk is announced a week in advance, but the name of the speaker is not. Before the talk begins, the names of all people in the room are written on scraps of paper, the scraps are put into a box, the box is ceremoniously shaken and one name is picked out at random. The name picked out is the n... 1 
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notes17 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Science is Not Separate from Life
You look at science (or at least talk of it) as some sort of demoralising invention of man, something apart from real life, and which must be cautiously guarded and kept separate from everyday existence. But science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment. 1 notes
notesQuoting Rosalind Franklin.
05 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Gregory (Albert) Benford on Laws of the Universe
Why do the laws that govern [the universe] seem constant in time? One can imagine a Universe in which laws are not truly law-full. Talk of miracle does just this, invoking God to make things work. Physics aims to find the laws instead, and hopes that they will be uniquely constrained, as when Einstein wondered whether God had any choice when He made the Universe. 1 notes
notesPhysics seeks immutable laws, while religion sees a Universe where the laws bend to fit whatever god's will happens to be at the moment.
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 ... 1 notes
notesAnd, curiously, remarks on his momentary thoughts about how she could make herself more attractive.
10 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
Pride Turns Off a Scientific Audience
Pauling's talk was made with his usual dramatic flair. The words came out as if he had been in show business all his life. A curtain kept his model hidden until near the end of his lecture, when he proudly unveiled his latest creation. Then, with his eyes twinkling, Linus explained the specific characteristics that made his model the α-helix uniquely beautiful. This show, like all of his dazzling performances, delighted the younger students in attendance. There was no one like Linus in all t... 1 notes
notesWatson describes Pauling's lecture and his showmanship, which quietly infuriates his audience.
16 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Everyone Can Take an Idea
The words I am uttering penetrate your senses, so that every hearer holds them, yet withholds them from no other. Not held, the words could not inform. Withheld, no other could share them. Though my talk is, admittedly, broken up into words and syllables, yet you do not take in this portion or that, as when picking at your food. All of you hear all of it, though each takes all individually. I have no worry that, by giving all to one, the others are deprived. I hope, instead, that everyone wil...It is not like taking food, where we must leave some for others. Ideas may be taken and done with as we please.
10 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Teddy Roosevelt Considers the Night Sky
After an evening of talk, perhaps about the
fringes of knowledge, or some new
possibility of climbing inside the minds and
senses of animals, we would go out on the
lawn, where we took turns at an amusing
little astronomical rite. We searched until we
found, with or without glasses, the faint,
heavenly spot of light-mist beyond the lower
left-hand comer of the Great Square of
Pegasus, when one or the other of us would
then recite:
That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda.
It is as large as our......each night to feel appropriately small.
23 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
What Kind of Engineer is God?
Three engineers were having lunch one day, and the talk turned philosophical:
The first engineer wondered what kind of engineering help God had when He created humankind, and proposed "It must have been a mechanical engineer -- just look at the variety of movements in all the joints of the body!"
The second engineer responded, "No, I think it must have been an electrical engineer -- think of how the brain controls all the functions of the body via electrical impulses."
The third engineer t... 1 
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notesAn old joke with an insight into Creationism.
