28 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
The Staggering Amount of Progress Made in Recent History
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'Millennium' is full of gratitude for the staggering advances of 1,000 years
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One of the most bracing aspects of 'Millennium' is the breadth of factors it covers, from food production to sanitation conditions to the Christian Church Militant to the development of firearms to radical changes in transportation of both people and products.
By Steve Donoghue NOVEMBER 24, 2016
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notes21 MAY 2016 by ideonexus
Essays Should Not Need to Argue a Point
The Age of the Essay
September 2004
Remember the essays you had to write in high school? Topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. The conclusion being, say, that Ahab in Moby Dick was a Christ-like figure.
Oy. So I'm going to try to give the other side of the story: what an essay really is, and how you write one. Or at least, how I write one.
Mods
The most obvious difference between real essays and the things one has to write in school is that real ess... 1 notes
notes30 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
The Question of Methodology
The methodological question. In a previous book I gave a
good deal of thought and analysis to the methodological importance
f°r work in the human sciences of finding and formulating a first
s t eP. a point of departure, a beginning principle.11 A major lesson I learned and tried to present was that there is no such thing as a
merely given, or simply available, starting point: beginnings have
to be made for each project in such a way as to enable what follows
from them. Nowhere in my experien...Folksonomies: methodology
Folksonomies: methodology
1 notes
notes19 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
Externalities
In every economic transaction there is a willing buyer and a willing seller. and they agree on a price that benefits both. But there are spillover effects in many economic transactions—costs and/or benefits that are transferred to third parties. Friedman called these spillovers "neighborhood effects." Today, most economists call them "externalities.
At their most basic, externalities don't have to involve buying and selling. If you smoke in a restaurant instead of stepping outside it's ea... 1 notes
notesExamples of externalities, public side-effects, good and bad, of our personal actions that impact the commons.
Chinese term for when two people are playing a video game and one kills the other before they even have the chance to act. Also can refer to people snapping up a good deal at the store, leaving others with not-so-good deals.
24 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Species Go Through the Same Stages as Individual Living B...
Just as in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, an individual comes into being, so to speak, grows, remains in being, declines and passes on, will it not be the same for entire species? If our faith did not teach us that animals left the Creator's hands just as they now appear and, if it were permitted to entertain the slightest doubt as to their beginning and their end, may not a philosopher, left to his own conjectures, suspect that, from time immemorial, animal life had its own constituent e...Folksonomies: religion philosophy
Folksonomies: religion philosophy
1 notes
notesThey grow, change, and die.
20 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Scientists are Good Citizens
Let me make it clear that I do not think the major function of any school is to produce scientists. The major function of our schools is to aid in the production of good citizens. It is true, I think, that scientists are usually very good citizens,— they mind their own business, they pay at least as much attention to civic duties as the average man does, they do not enrich themselves at others' expense, they and their families rarely become public charges, and the more violent crimes are pr... 1 notes
notesAs a whole, the majority behave morally and responsibly.
03 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Why Women Store Fat in their Hips and Breasts
Low was looking to explain why young women have fat on their breasts and buttocks more than on other parts of their bodies. The reason this requires explaining is that young women are different from other human beings in this respect. Older women, young girls, and men of all ages gain fat on their torsos and limbs much more evenly. If a woman of twenty or so gains weight, it largely takes the form of fat on the breasts and buttocks; her waist can remain remarkably narrow.
So much is undispu...
1 Young women deceive men about their sexual fitness with fat to make their hips look wider and their breasts larger.
21 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Donald Knuth on Getting to the Source Material
Seibel: Do you feel like programmers and computer scientists are aware enough of the history of our field? It is, after all, a pretty short history.
Knuth: There aren't too many that are scholars. Even when I started writing my books in 1963, I didn't think people knew what had happened In 1959. I was reading in American Scientist last week about people who had rediscovered an algorithm that Boyer and Moore had discovered in 1980. Ii happens all the time that people don't realize the glorio...Folksonomies: computer science computer science history
Folksonomies: computer science computer science history
1 notes
notesThe joy of going to the primary documents for understanding how people throughout history thought.
19 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Dissent as a Scientific Virtue
First, of course, comes independence, in observation and thence in thought. I once told an audience of school-children that the world would never change if they did not contradict their elders. J was chagrined to find next morning that this axiom outraged their parents. Yet it is the basis of the scientific method. A man must see, do and think things for himself, in the face of those who are sure that they have already been over all that ground. In science, there is no substitute for independ...Without dissent, there is no progress.
