12 DEC 2017 by ideonexus
Credit is Trust in the Future
We’ve already seen that money is an astounding thing because it can represent myriad di 1 
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notes04 APR 2015 by ideonexus
Teaching as Gardening
If a teacher is a gardener, than a student is the seed. The classroom serves as the greenhouse creating a warm, safe environment for growth. An administrator is the soil, serving as a strong nutrient base for the seed to root. The parents are the water, providing live and maintaining it. When the water/parent is not plentiful, the seed will suffer. The curriculum is the sun. It shines knowledge to ensure growth. The aspects of the curriculum that some students do not make sense of can be cons... 1 notes
notes19 DEC 2014 by ideonexus
How the Finance Industry Hurts the Economy
In perhaps the starkest illustration, economists from Harvard University and the University of Chicago wrote in a recent paper that every dollar a worker earns in a research field spills over to make the economy $5 better off. Every dollar a similar worker earns in finance comes with a drain, making the economy 60 cents worse off.
[...]
...the growth of complex financial products has served primarily to boost income for the firms themselves, Philippon said. A new paper from researchers in t... 1 notes
notes09 AUG 2014 by ideonexus
Human Respiration is Not a Source of Carbon Emissions
That's not a problem. The CO2 that's released by humans (and animals) is produced by metabolising carbon from food, and the food comes from plants that have been grown recently. During their growth, the plants have absorbed an equivalent amount of CO2 from the atmosphere. Even when eating meat, the animals are typically only a few years old and were fed on recently grown plants. In contrast, the cars run on fossil fuels that are hundreds of million years old. 1 notes
notes22 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
With the Seed We May Deduce the Animal
If we possessed a thorough knowledge of all the parts of the seed of any animal (e.g. man), we could from that alone, by reasons entirely mathematical and certain, deduce the whole conformation and figure of each of its members, and, conversely if we knew several peculiarities of this conformation, we would from those deduce the nature of its seed. 1 notes
notesInteresting idea, if wrong for not understanding how environment affects growth, but the idea that we could one day take a seed and predict the full-grown organism that will result from it is intriguing.
08 AUG 2013 by ideonexus
New Money is Created with Promises
Ordinary people can help create new money by making promises. You constrain the future by making a plan, and a promise to keep to it. Money is created in response, because in making that promise you have created value. New money is created to represent that value. This is why it is possible for banks to fall apart when people don’t pay their mortgages back. Banks sell assets that are partially made of the future intents of borrowers. When borrowers do something other than promised, those as... 1 notes
notesPromises of the future grow the economy and create new wealth, making the economy an expanding universe.
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Ideas Grow
Great inventions are never, and great discoveries are seldom, the work of any one mind. Every great invention is really an aggregation of minor inventions, or the final step of a progression. It is not usually a creation, but a growth, as truly so as is the growth of the trees in the forest. 
1 On other ideas, like the growth of trees in a forest.
05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
On the Emerging Science of Biology
It is an old saying, abundantly justified, that where sciences meet there growth occurs. It is true moreover to say that in scientific borderlands not only are facts gathered that [are] often new in kind, but it is in these regions that wholly new concepts arise. It is my own faith that just as the older biology from its faithful studies of external forms provided a new concept in the doctrine of evolution, so the new biology is yet fated to furnish entirely new fundamental concepts of scienc...Folksonomies: biology
Folksonomies: biology
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notesDestined to make new discoveries because it explores new territory.
29 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Knowledge of Nature is Like an Account at the Bank
Knowledge of Nature is an account at bank, where each dividend is added to the principal and the interest is ever compounded; and hence it is that human progress, founded on natural knowledge, advances with ever increasing speed. Where the interest compounds and the growth is logarithmic(?).
23 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
The Earth Buries Older Forms with More Beautiful Ones
As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications. 1 notes
notesLike vines growing over a decaying tree.
