21 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Lego Letter About Gender
To Parents
The urge to create is equally strong in all children. Boys and girls.
It’s the imagination that counts. Not skill. You build whatever comes into your head, the way you want it. A bed or a truck. A dolls house or a spaceship.
A lot of boys like dolls houses. They’re more human than spaceships. A lot of girls prefer spaceships. They’re more exciting than dolls houses.
The most important thing is to put the right material in their hands and let them create whatever appeals to them.1 
notes
notes24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
The Mistake of Not Taking Theories Seriously Enough
This is often the way it is in physics. Our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. Even worse, there often seems to be a general agreement that certain phenomena are just not fit subjects for respectable theoretical and experimental effort. . . . The most important thing accomplished by the discovery o...Folksonomies: hypotheses theories
Folksonomies: hypotheses theories
1 
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notes19 DEC 2014 by ideonexus
John Cleese on Writing and Performing as Science
DAVIES: You know, and you say many times in the book that you're more a writer than a performer.
CLEESE: It's always hard for people to believe that because of course, anytime they've seen me it's because I've been performing. You know, they don't go to their televisions and switch them on and see me sitting at home writing, you know? So naturally, people's image is of a performer, but the reality is the writing for me has always been the most important thing and the most rewarding thing. An... 1 notes
notes09 AUG 2014 by ideonexus
Knowing Your Work isn't Good Enough
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do inte... 1 notes
notes08 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Roger Ebert on What to Make of Life
What I expect to happen is that my body will fail, my mind will cease to function and that will be that. My genes will not live on, because I have had no children. I am comforted by Richard Dawkins’ theory of memes. Those are mental units: thoughts, ideas, gestures, notions, songs, beliefs, rhymes, ideals, teachings, sayings, phrases, clichés that move from mind to mind as genes move from body to body. After a lifetime of writing, teaching, broadcasting and telling too many jokes, I will leav...
1 He knows that his ideas will live on, if not forever, and that the most important thing to contribute to the world in life is to make others a little happier.
08 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
Trivia VS Knowledge
Have you ever met anyone with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure rock bands? I knew a group of people in Los Angeles who spent their time browsing the used bins at record shops back in the days when music was recorded on vinyl (which is making a comeback these days, even though most kids have never heard anything other than compressed 128-kilobite-per-second digital recordings). Some of these people were so obsessed with obscure bands that they deserved the moniker "vinyl vermin." They coll... 1 notes
notesGraffin relates the story of "Vinyl Vermin" who collected trivia about music rather than cultivating opinions on what was good or bad. He relates this to amassing taxonomy knowledge without a theory.
26 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Vulcan Meditation
In any system of meditation, one can categorize the techniques endlessly.
One could divide them into active, passive, and waking, or make
distinctions between mental, emotional, and physical meditations. Active
meditation techniques require you to focus on some object to the
exclusion of all else - like a meditating on a symbol, a set of words or
an image. A passive meditation involves stilling the mind so that the
train of thoughts which occupy our consciousness so pervasively stop. The
su...Folksonomies: meditation
Folksonomies: meditation
There are three types of meditation: intellectual, emotional, and physical.
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Love of Learning is the Most Important Lesson
The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should have the opportunity of teaching itself. What does it matter if the pupil know a little more or a little less? A boy who leaves school knowing much, but hating his lessons, will soon have forgotten all he ever learned; while another who had acquired a thirst for knowledge, even if he had learned little, would soon teach himself more than the first ever knew. Folksonomies: education
Folksonomies: education
1 notes
notesA pupil who does well, but hates learning, will lose all they have learned.
18 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
War Must Rely on Chemistry
It were indeed to be wish'd that our art had been less ingenious, in contriving means destructive to mankind; we mean those instruments of war, which were unknown to the ancients, and have made such havoc among the moderns. But as men have always been bent on seeking each other's destruction by continual wars; and as force, when brought against us, can only be repelled by force; the chief support of war, must, after money, be now sought in chemistry. 1 notes
notesA 1753 claim that it is the most important thing in support of war just behind money.
01 OCT 2011 by ideonexus
Psychology Thought Love Was Bad for Children
Ira Glass: Harry Harlow, was trying to prove-- and I know this is going to sound crazy. He was trying to prove that love is an important thing that happens between parents and children.
And the reason why he felt the need to prove this point was at the time-- and again, I know this is going to sound kind of out there. The psychological establishment, pediatricians, even the federal government were all saying exactly the opposite of that to parents.
Deborah Blum: It's actually one of those t... 1 notes
notesDeborah Blum, biographer of the researcher Harry Harlow who worked to prove the importance of love in raising children, on the history of psychology ignoring love as something to be given to children.
