08 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Science Can Keep You Alive is Magic Fails
Harry thought, considered, chose his weapon. "Draco, you want to explain the whole blood purity thing to me? I'm sort of new."
A wide smile crossed Draco's face. "You really should meet Father and ask him, you know, he's our leader."
"Give me the thirty-second version."
"Okay," Draco said. He drew in a deep breath, and his voice grew slightly lower, and took on a cadence. "Our powers have grown weaker, generation by generation, as the mudblood taint increases. Where Salazar and Godric and Ro... 1 
notes
notesRational Harry Potter explains to Draco the error in his thinking that muggles are thinning out the magic in the world and making it weaker.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Cartesian Duality Broke Philosophy
As modern physics started with the Newtonian revolution, so modern philosophy starts with what one might call the Cartesian Catastrophe. The catastrophe consisted in the splitting up of the world into the realms of matter and mind, and the identification of 'mind' with conscious thinking. The result of this identification was the shallow rationalism of l' esprit Cartesien, and an impoverishment of psychology which it took three centuries to remedy even in part. 
1 And set back cognitive science.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
A Clock Stopped at the Moment Feynman's Wife Died
Sometimes we can actually pin down the explanation of a weird coincidence. A great American scientist called Richard Feynman tragically lost his wife to cancer, and the clock in her room stopped at precisely the moment she died. Goose-pimples! But Dr Feynman was not a great scientist for nothing. He worked out the true explanation. The clock was faulty. If you picked it up and tilted it, it tended to stop. When Mrs Feynman died, the nurse needed to record tl the time for the official death ce... 1 notes
notesBut he traced the phenomenon to a faulty mechanism in the clock that triggered when the nurse picked it up to record the time of death.
04 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Difference Between the Internet and the World Wide Web
It seems that most people, even intelligent and well-informed people, are confused about the difference between the Internet and the Web. No one has expressed this misunderstanding more clearly than Tom Wolfe in Hooking Up:
I hate to be the one who brings this news to the tribe, to the magic Digikingdom, but the simple truth is that the Web, the Internet, does one thing. It speeds up the retrieval and dissemination of information, partially eliminating such chores as going outdoors to the mai... 1 notes
notesHillis notes that people equate the www with the internet, failing to realize they are actually very different things, with www being just one thing out of many running on the internet. He compares it to people equating electricity with electric lights, and failing to realize all the other applications the invention makes possible.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Number of Bits for a Set of Encyclopedias are Minuscule C...
I have estimaged how many letters there are in a the Enclyclopaedia, and I have assumed that each of my 24 million books is as big as an Encyclopaedia volume, and have calculated, then, how many bits of information there are (10^15). For each bit I allow 100 atoms. And it turns out that all of the information that man has carefully accumulated in all the books in the world can be written in this form in a cube of material one two-hundredths of an inch wide--which is the barest piece of dust t... 1 notes
notesFeynman estimates the number of atoms neccessary for storing a set of encyclopedias, and then compares that to the amount of data included in a DNA string.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Reading the Music of Science
Is nobody inspired by our present picture of the universe? The value of science remains unsung by singers, so you are reduced to hearing--not a song or a poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age.
Perhaps one of the reasons is that you have to know how to read the music. For instance, the scientific, article says, perhaps, something like this: "The radioactive phosphorus content of the cerebrum of a rat decreases to one-half in the period of two weeks." Now, what...Folksonomies: science ionian echantment
Folksonomies: science ionian echantment
2 People aren't amazed by scientific discovery because, maybe, they don't understand it.
30 NOV -0001 by ideonexus
13 Percent of the English Language is Not Spelled Phoneti...
I received a letter today from the "Reading Reform Foundation," which tells me that "23 million (American) adults are functionally illiterate, unable to read an advertisement, a job application, directions on a medicine bottle." They say "30 percent of all schoolchildren have serious reading difficulties."
I rather believe this, judging from my own limited experience with people. But why is this?
Can it be that part of the reason is the matter of English spelling? The letter tells me that "87...Folksonomies: phonetics
Folksonomies: phonetics
If 87 percent of English words are spelled phonetically, then that means more than one in 10 is not, further explaining high levels of illiteracy in our culture.
