Earthseed 61-65

61. What others say Beware:All too often,We sayWhat we hear others say.We thinkWhat we’re told that we think.We seeWhat we’re permitted to see.Worse!We see what we’re told that we see.Repetition and pride are the keys to this.To hear and to seeEven an obvious lieAgainAnd again and againMay be to say it,Almost by reflexThen to defend itBecause we’ve said itAnd at last to embrace itBecause we’ve defended itAnd because we cannot admitThat we’ve embraced and defendedAn obvious lie. �...

 Science Recovers from the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Leaving the mountains, Ye felt spring was everywhere. The cold winter of the Cultural Revolution really was over, and everything was springing back to life. Even though the calamity had just ended, everything was in ruins, and countless men and women were licking their wounds. The dawn of a new life was already evident. Students with children of their own appeared on college campuses; bookstores sold out of famous literary works; technological innovation became the focus in factories; and sci...

 Wubizixing

At one time, Chinese had a serious "keyboard problem", but it's been largely solved by keyboards like Wubizixing ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubizixing [wikipedia.org] ) and Wubihua. At the simple end, Wubihua assigns 5 keys to the most fundamental strokes used to write Chinese: horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling/dot, and hooked/complex. You press the keys corresponding to at least the first 4 strokes, then press the key corresponding to the last, and it presents you with a ...

 The Watson/Holmes Modes of Thought

As Holmes reminds us, “Like all other arts, the Science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can only be acquired by long and patient study nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it.” But it’s also more than mere fancy. In essence, it comes down to one simple formula: to move from a System Watson– to a System Holmes–governed thinking takes mindfulness plus motivation. (That, and a lot of practice.) Mindfulness, in the sense of cons...

 George Washington Promotes Science and Literature

Nor am I less persuaded, that you will agree with me in opinion, that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the measures of Government receive their impression so immediately from the sense of the Community as in ours it is proportionably essential. To the security of a free Constitution it contributes in various ways: By convincing those who are...

 We Must Become Comfortable with Large Numbers

Borel makes the amusing supposition of a million monkeys allowed to play upon the keys of a million typewriters. What is the chance that this wanton activity should reproduce exactly all of the volumes which are contained in the library of the British Museum? It certainly is not a large chance, but it may be roughly calculated, and proves in fact to be considerably larger than the chance that a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen will separate into the two pure constituents. After we have learned ...

 The Immune System VS Viruses

The immune system consists of white blood cells that come in about 10 million different types. Each type has a protein lock on it called an "antibody," which corresponds to a key carried by a bacterium called an "antigen." If a key enters that lock, the white cell starts multiplying ferociously in order to produce an army of white cells to gobble up the key-carrying invader, be it a flu virus, a tuberculosis bacterium, or even the cells of a transplanted heart. But the body has a problem. It ...