27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Competitive and Addictive Gaming VS Gaming for Play
The compulsive games-player, of course, is another universal phenomenon, particularly where gambling is a part of the game. The compulsive gambler is not made in a day: he descends an increasingly slippery path, eventually falling into a psychological trap from which escape is rare. The Chinese god of gambhng, Tu Chieng Kui, represents a man who spent his hfe gambling until he died, deeply in debt. Traditionally, statuettes made of him - known as 'a devil gambhng for cash' - show a figure in ... 1 
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notes27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Tadpole and Fish Fable of Comprehension
Michael Dickmann: Here's what the story is. There was this little tadpole and a fish that grew up in a pond, and they were always intensely curious about life outside the pond. And then, eventually, the tadpole grows into a frog and discovers that, because he's an amphibian, he can go out and see what life is like. So he comes back and tells the fish what he's seen.
He says, "Well, look, one of the things is that there's neat creatures called birds that can actually fly in the air, and they ... 1 notes
notes10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Gamification Pattern Building Mechanic
Ms. Forsythe divides her class into four teams (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome). Each team, over the course of the unit, learns about all four artistic cultures but becomes an expert in one. For a 20- to 30-minute exercise in discerning and judging the difference among these artistic cultures, Ms. Forsythe displays a piece of sculpture from each of the four cultures onto a large piece of heavy paper or cardboard and then cuts that image into smaller tiles and tosses all of the pieces to...Folksonomies: education gamification
Folksonomies: education gamification
1 notes
notes24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Tangled Bank of the Primeval Cell
In our present state of ignorance, we have a choice between two contrasting images to represent our view of the possible structure of a creature newly emerged at the first threshold of life. One image is the replicator model of Eigen, a molecular structure tightly linked and centrally controlled, replicating itself with considerable precision, achieving ho-meostasis by strict adherence to a rigid pattern. The other image is the "tangled bank" of Darwin, an image which Darwin put at the end of...Folksonomies: tangled bank
Folksonomies: tangled bank
1 notes
notes16 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Language Requires a Common Frame of Experience
The greatest is obsolescence, the
meaning of something evocative changing because
the players’ reality has changed since the inspiration
entered it. William Gibson’s ground-breaking cyberpunk
novel Neuromancer begins, “The sky above the
port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
Supporting details make it clear that this is an
industrial port at night, the sky gray from pollution
and flecked with ash and other debris. But that was
an image published in 1984. A decade...Folksonomies: communication language
Folksonomies: communication language
1 notes
notesWilliam Gibson compares a sky to the static on a dead television channel, but Neil Gaiman notes that children today get a blue nothing on a dead channel.
31 OCT 2012 by ideonexus
Levels of Simulation
Such is simulation, insofar as it is opposed to representation. Representation stems from
the principle of the equivalence of the sign and of the real (even if this equivalence is
Utopian, it is a fundamental axiom). Simulation, on the contrary, stems from the Utopia of
the principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign
as the reversion and death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation attempts
to absorb simulation by interpreting it as a f... 1 notes
notesThe differences between appearance and simulation.
12 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Lecturing is Easy, Teaching is Hard
Lecturing after a fashion is easy enough ; teaching is a very different affair. ... The transmission of ideas from one mind to another, in a simple unequivocal form, is not always easy ; but in teaching, the object is not merely to convey the idea, but to give a lively and lasting impression; something that should not merely cause the retention of the image, but in such connection as to excite another process, ' thought.' 1 notes
notesPlanting ideas in students' heads of different backgrounds and experiences is a difficult task.
13 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Animals are "Other Nations"
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world old... 1 notes
notesThey are not below us or above or even our bretheren, they see and feel completely alien to us.
06 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) photograph
Here we go again, one of the epic documents of our time, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) photograph, the deepest look into space ever. A random part of the sky, so small it could be covered by a pinhead held at arm's length. A part of the sky -- as NASA says -- that you'd see looking through an eight-foot-long soda straw. A photo exposed over 400 orbits of the Hubble, a total exposure of 11.3 days. The telescope pointing precisely to the same point in space even as it whizzes around the Ear...
1 It would take 12.7 million such photos to cover our night sky, and there are 10,000 galaxies in this image.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Deep Space Implied Deep Time
Already in a paper of 1802 Herschel considered the idea that ‘deep space’ must also imply ‘deep time’. He wrote in his Preface: A telescope with a power of penetrating into space, like my 40 foot one, has also, as it may be called, a power of penetrating into time past … [from a remote nebula] the rays of light which convey its image to the eye, must have been more than 19 hundred and 10 thousand — that is — almost two million years on their way.’ The universe was therefore al... 1 notes
notesHerschel realized the very large universe required a very old universe.
