02 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
Entropy in our Everyday Lives: Active Stability
Because things naturally move to disorder over time, we can position ourselves to create stability. There are two types of stability: active and passive. Consider a ship, which, if designed well, should be able to sail through a storm without intervention. This is passive stability. A fighter jet, in contrast, requires active stability. The plane can’t fly for more than a few seconds without having to adjust its wings. This adjustment happens so fast that it’s controlled by software. Ther... 1 
notes
notes10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Gamification Pickup and Deliver Mechanic
Dr. Boxer decides to create a game board that depicts a cell and pieces for 12 different materials that might be transported into or out of the cell. Students are assigned to teams and given the opportunity to place certain materials either in the cell or in the bloodstream (which surrounds the cell and through which these materials move around the board). He then adds a small role-playing element to the game by giving each team an identity (such as a moving company) and an objective separate...Folksonomies: education gamification
Folksonomies: education gamification
1 notes
notes23 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Why is Scientific Illiteracy Considered Acceptable?
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you...
1 When failing to read Shakespeare is considered unacceptable?
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Disease is the Rule of Existence
Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit. 1 notes
notesFind Thoreau a perfect leaf or fruit in midsummer.
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.
14 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Science Cannot be Celebrated With Poetry
The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are, therefore, speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.Because science deals with things and not persons.
30 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
Mathematicians Cannot Discuss their Work
In the company of friends, writers can discuss their books, economists the state of the economy, lawyers their latest cases, and businessmen their latest acquisitions, but mathematicians cannot discuss their mathematics at all. And the more profound their work, the less understandable it is. Folksonomies: mathematics
Folksonomies: mathematics
1 notes
notesThe more profound it is, the less comprehensible even to other Mathematicians.
29 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Human Drives That Open Us to Memes
Here are a few second-order instinctual drives some people seem to have that are all opportunities for memes to take advantage of:
- Belonging. Humans are gregarious-that is, they like company. There are any number of evolutionary reasons for the existence of this drive, including safety in numbers, economies of scale, and simply the presence of more potential mates. Memes that give people a feeling of belonging to a group have an advantage over memes that don't.
- Distinguishing yourself. ...Folksonomies: memetics
Folksonomies: memetics
1 notes
notesThere are instinctual needs humans have that memes exploit to take root in our minds.
23 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Can Social Networking Change the Human Brain
Consider, for example, the fact that the size of military units has not changed materially in thousands of years, even though our communication technology (from signal fires to telegraphy to radio to radar) has. The basic unit in the Roman army (the “maniple”) was composed of 120-130 men, and the size of the analogous unit in modern armies (the company) is still about the same.
The fact that effective human group size has not changed very substantially — even though communication techno... 1 notes
notesWhile we may have hundreds of friends on social network sites, the human brain is only capable of handling a smaller social network.
01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus
The End of the Wild Wild Web
The shift of the digital frontier from the Web, where the browser ruled supreme, to the smart phone, where the app and the pricing plan now hold sway, signals a radical shift from openness to a degree of closed-ness that would have been remarkable even before 1995. In the U.S., there are only three major cell-phone networks, a handful of smart-phone makers, and just one Apple, a company that has spent the entire Internet era fighting the idea of open (as anyone who has tried to move legally p...Folksonomies: new media wild wild web
Folksonomies: new media wild wild web
Stewart Brand said "Information wants to be free" but he also said that "Information wants to be expensive." As corporations restrict what we can do with computers, making them simpler, like the iPad and smart phones, where restrictions are marketed as features, the Internet becomes more homogenized, and we are more willing to pay for the content provided.
