24 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
DM as Collaborator with Players
Most games have a winner and a loser, but the Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game is fundamentally a cooperative game. The Dungeon Master (DM) plays the roles of the antagonists in the adventure, but the DM isn’t playing against the player characters (PCs). Although the DM represents all the PCs’ opponents and adversaries—monsters, nonplayer characters (NPCs), traps, and the like—he or she doesn’t want the player characters to fail any more than the other players do. The players...
1 21 JUN 2014 by ideonexus
Scientists are After the Adventure of Discovery
The creative scientist is in fact usually more concemed with the relations of things to one another than with the precise verbal analysis of what these things are. He seeks a representation of the world which continually grows by an extension or transformation of what is there akeady. Thus what many scientists are really after is the adventure of discovery itself. 1 
notes
notes21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Ira Remsen Experiments with Nitric Acid
While reading in a textbook of chemistry, ... I came across the statement, 'nitric acid acts upon copper.' I was getting tired of reading such absurd stuff and I determined to see what this meant. Copper was more or less familiar to me, for copper cents were then in use. I had seen a bottle marked 'nitric acid' on a table in the doctor's office where I was then 'doing time.' I did not know its peculiarities, but I was getting on and likely to learn. The spirit of adventure was upon me. Having... 1 notes
notesAn amusing anecdote.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Case for Robotic Space Exploration
In a dispassionate comparison of the relative values of human and robotic spaceflight, the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure. But only a tiny number of Earth's six billion inhabitants are direct participants. For the rest of us, the adventure is vicarious and akin to that of watching a science fiction movie. At the end of the day, I ask myself whether the huge national commitment of technical talent to human spaceflight and the ever-presen... 1 notes
notesOnly a tiny percentage of Earthlings get to go into space, for the rest of us it's a vicarious experience.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Earth is Overcrowded Psychologically
The Earth is overcrowded. Not yet in a literal sense: Our technology is
adequate to maintain comfortably a population significantly larger than our
present 3.6 billion. The Earth is overcrowded in a psychological sense. For that
restless and ambition-driven fraction of mankind that has blazed new paths for our
species, there are no new places to go. There are places inside of ourselves, but this
is not the forte of such individuals. There are the ocean basins, but we are not yet
committed to ...Folksonomies: space exploration overcrowding
Folksonomies: space exploration overcrowding
1 notes
notesEvery frontier is explored, there is only one place to go for adventure and that is outward.
06 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Mathematics as Exploration
Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost. Rigour should be a signal to the historian that the maps have been made, and the real explorers have gone elsewhere. 1 notes
notesSounds like an adventure.
21 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Challenging Inhibited Behavior in Children
But with the right balance, parents can modify even the most difficult side of their children's temperaments. As an example, consider those 15 percent or so of toddlers who are very inhibited—kids like Andrew, whose right frontal lobe explodes with anxiety whenever he's confronted by new people or a new environment. While many of these children don't change, about 40 percent do lose their extreme timidity by kindergarten. Researchers have observed that these are the youngsters whose parents...It is important to encourage inhibited children to challenge their fears and adventure into the world.
12 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
The Night Listening Game
The sound of the insect orchestra swells and throbs night after night, from midsummer until autumn ends and the frosty nights make the tiny players stiff and numb, and finally the last note is stilled in the long cold. An hour of hunting out the small musicians by flashlight is an adventure any child would love. It gives him a sense of the night's myster and beauty, and of how alive it is with watchful eyes and little, waiting forms.
The game is to listen, not so much to the full orchestra, ...Where a child is taught to distinguish the individual sounds of the insects from the swarm and seek them out to identify by flashlight.
06 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
Isaac Asimov on Star Trek
They speak about the mission of the Enterprise being "To boldly go--" a split infinitive I heard every single time--"To boldly go where no man has ever gone before" they mean it primarily, I suppose, in... territorially. They're visiting stars that no man has till then ever visited. Their going through vastnesses no man has ever penetrated. But in addition, they're meeting problems that man has not faced.
[What] Star Trek really presented was the brotherhood of intelligence. It mattered not...The prolific science fiction author explains what was so great and inspiring about the original television series.
01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus
Happenings: Impermanent, Impromptu Art
In this context of achievement-and-death, artists who make Happenings are living out the purest melodrama. Their activity embodies the myth of nonsuccess, for Happenings cannot be sold and taken home; they can only be supported. And because of their intimate and fleeting nature, only a few people can experience them. They remain isolated and proud. The creators of such events are adventurers too, because much of what they do is unforseen. They stack the deck that way. 1 notes
notesArt as an adventure, where success kills the artist.
