10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Adapting to Obsolescence
Jobs are lost to automation, innovation, obsolescence, the moving finger of fate. The carriage industry was devastated by the automobile, and the men who made surreys and broughams and hansoms had to learn something new; the Pullman porter union was hit hard by the advent of air travel, and the porters sent their sons to college; the newspaper business was hit hard by Craigslist. Too bad for us.
I know gifted men who were successful graphic designers until computers came along and younger pe...Folksonomies: automation
Folksonomies: automation
1 
notes
notes23 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
A Library is Not a Cathedral
"Crazy?" He rounded on her, all angles and motion, and shook a finger under her nose. "I know your type and your pathetic delusions. Oh, yes, I do. You think of a library as being like the mind of a great and noble Scholar—catholic, universally educated, and precisely organized. Every opinion balanced against its opposite, every fact quickly retrievable. The only biases those that exist in the knowledge itself. If a gap exists in the collective omniscience, a horde of servants will scurry t... 1 notes
notes15 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
Bacillus Vampiris
Bacteria could be the answer to the vampire.
Everything seemed to flood over him then. It was as though he’d been the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, refusing to let the sea of reason in. There he’d been, crouching and content with his iron-bound theory. Now he’d straightened up and taken his finger out. The sea of answers was already beginning to wash in.
The plague had spread so quickly. Could it have done that if only vampires had spread it?
Could their nightly marau...Folksonomies: science fiction horror
Folksonomies: science fiction horror
1 notes
notesA bacteria that fuels the muscles even after the heart stops pumping blood, that instills a repulsion of the sun and garlic to survive.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Evolving Levels of Thought
Gradually, at various points in our childhoods, we discover different forms of conviction. There’s the rock-hard certainty of personal experience (“I put my finger in the fire and it hurt,”), which is probably the earliest kind we learn. Then there’s the logically convincing, which we probably come to first through maths, in the context of Pythagoras’s theorem or something similar, and which, if we first encounter it at exactly the right moment, bursts on our minds like sunrise with...Folksonomies: thought intellectual maturity
Folksonomies: thought intellectual maturity
1 notes
notesAs we grow older, based on experience.
04 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Metaphor for the Spread of Disease
To choose a rough example, think of a thorn which has stuck in a finger and produces an inflammation and suppuration. Should the thorn be discharged with the pus, then the finger of another individual may be pricked with it, and the disease may be produced a second time. In this case it would not be the disease, not even its product, that would be transmitted by the thorn, but rather the stimulus which engendered it. Now supposing that the thorn is capable of multiplying in the sick body, or ...Folksonomies: metaphor
Folksonomies: metaphor
1 Like spreading thorns.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Parallax Method
It is possible to measure how far away from us each galaxy is. How? How, for that matter, do we know how far away anything in the universe is? For nearby stars the best method uses something called 'parallax'. Hold your finger up in front of your face and look at it with your left eye closed. Now open your left eye and close your right. Keep switching eyes, and you'll notice that the apparent position of your finger hops from side to side. That is because of the difference between the viewpoi...Folksonomies: measurement parallax
Folksonomies: measurement parallax
1 notes
notesUsing the change in position of an object when viewed from two different points can be used to determine its distance from you.
04 OCT 2011 by ideonexus
Class Warfare: Moochers VS Producers
Marx did basically believe in two classes, and one was in fact a producer class. The other, however, wasn't the "moocher" class, but the capitalist class. Marx saw that a small segment of the population was able to become rich off of the labor of others without lifting a finger. They are the "overseers," "owners," "CEOs," and "Boards of Directors." They own capital, while the other 99% of society "owns" only their own ability to perform labor for someone else for money. If, Marx said, these 9... 1 notes
notesBut the way Marx described it, the Producers were the labor class and the Moochers where the managers getting rich off all their hard work without lifting a finger.
15 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Washoe the Chimpanzee Demonstrates Sympathy
People who should be there for her and aren't are often given the cold shoulder--her way of informing them that she's miffed at them. Washoe greeted Kat [the caretaker] in just this way when she finally returned to work with the chimps. Kat made her apologies to Washoe, then decided to tell her the truth, signing "MY BABY DIED". Washoe stared at her, then looked down. She finally peered into Kat's eyes again and carefully signed "CRY", touching her cheek and drawing her finger down the path a...Story of Washoe the Chimpanzee when one of her caretakers missed work for awhile after having a miscarriage.
01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus
A Poetic Description of Ourselves as the Sum of Our Parts
...when you die, you are grieved by all the atoms of which you were composed. They hung together for years, whether in sheets of skin or communities of spleen. With your death they do no die. Instead, they part ways, moving off in their separate directions, mourning the loss of a special time they shared together, haunted by the feeling that they were once playing parts in something larger than themselves, something that had its own life, something they can hardly put a finger on.Folksonomies: spiritual naturalism
Folksonomies: spiritual naturalism
1 notes
notesOur atoms mourning us when we die...
