04 APR 2015 by ideonexus
Literature About Exploration
This is an infinitely marvelous and beautiful universe which we are privileged to
inhabit. Look inward to the molecules of life and the heart of the atom, or outward to
moon, sun, planets, stars, the Orion Nebula where new suns and worlds are coming into
being even as you watch, the Andromeda Nebula which is actually a whole sister galaxy:
it is all the same cosmos, and every part of it is part of us. The elements of our flesh,
blood, bones, and breath were forged out of hydrogen in stars lon... 1 
notes
notes21 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
World-Building Questions
1. BASIC INFRASTRUCTURE
There can be no human (or alien) civilization or settlement without plumbing, energy supply, or waste disposal. So you need to spend at least a little bit figuring out how all of this worksunderneath your story’s setting.
How do your characters eat? How do they transport and store food?
How is waste handled?
Where does the water come from?
Who provides the clothes and shoes (or gear)?
What money system is there? Is there a single currency? Several? Electronic mo...Folksonomies: writing science fiction
Folksonomies: writing science fiction
1 21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Faith-Based Empiricism
Before you judge the analogy with theology as being too harsh, conduct the followingexperiment.
Randomly select one of your own publications from a year or two ago
and think about what would be involved in reproducingthe results. How longwould
it take, assumingyou would be able to do it? If you can’t reproduce those results, why
do you believe them? Why should your readers?
Our inability to reproduce results leads to a debilitatingparadox, where we as
reviewers and readers accept highly em...Folksonomies: empiricism reproducibility
Folksonomies: empiricism reproducibility
1 notes
notesSo much important information is left out of journal articles that often the results are not reproducible.
11 FEB 2014 by ideonexus
Curse of the Gifted: Personal Account
I am miles away from Eric or Linus, but the "curse of the gifted" is very real.
Thankfully I wasn't smart or gifted enough that I could ride it for long, but when it comes to math and problem-solving I rode it well into my high school years. I never learned to do algebra "by the book," because I didn't need to. Or maybe because I wasn't smart enough to.
The math teacher would teach "3x 6 = 9." Basic algebraic problem-solving says you subtract the 6 from both sides, then divide by 3. So "3...
2 A reply to the article, personal anecdote.
17 SEP 2013 by ideonexus
Neurons are Domesticated Cells
You really don't have to worry about one part of your laptop going rogue and trying out something on its own that the rest of the system doesn't want to do. No, they're all slaves. If they're agents, they're slaves. They are prisoners. They have very clear job descriptions. They get fed every day. They don't have to worry about where the energy's coming from, and they're not ambitious. They just do what they're asked to do and do it brilliantly with only the slightest tint of comprehension. Y...But they are also slightly feral. Neurons compete with one another, the brain works by neural pruning, natural selection. Cells that don't get used are allowed to die. Thus, neurons are motivated to survive, to have some independence.
23 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
An Elegant Complex Description of Fire
The atoms like each other to different degrees. Oxygen, for instance in the air, would like to be next to carbon, and if they get near to each other, they snap together. If they’re not too close though, they repel and they go apart, so they don’t know that they could snap together. It’s just as if you had a ball, it was trying to climb a hill and there was a hole it could go into, like a volcano hole, a deep one. It’s rolling along, it doesn’t go down in the deep hole, because if it...From Richard Feynman, making the process of burning wood seem wondrous.
28 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
A City on Mercury Must Stay on the Dark Side
Terminator rolls around Mercury just like its sunwalkers, moving at the speed of the planet’s rotation, gliding over twenty gigantic elevated tracks, which together hold aloft and push west a town quite a bit bigger than Venice. The twenty tracks run around Mercury like a narrow wedding band, keeping near the forty-fifth latitude south, but with wide detours to south and north to avoid the worst of the planet’s long escarpments. The city moves at an average of five kilometers an hour. The... 1 notes
notesIt moves on tracks that push it along from the heat expansion of the rising sun.
05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Our Purpose is to Expand the Realm of the Known
The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions. And even a cursory glance at the history of the biological sciences during the last quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion, that the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowled... 1 notes
notesJust a little bit in each generation.
28 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Teaching a Child About Death
My dad used to take naps next to my daughter on the bed and I remember seeing them in there—my father with his oxygen machine and my daughter curled up next to him—and it was all so dreamy and loving and cute. And so, it was a big deal when he died. And my daughter had questions.
When she asked “What happens after we die?” I said, “To be honest, darling—we decompose.” And she wanted to know what that meant. A bird had died in our backyard and so we watched how it disappeared a ... 1 notes
notesJulia Sweeney describes how she taught her daughter about death after her grandfather died.
30 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Francis Bacon's Only Flaw Was that He Was Not Revolutionary
We do not know what we should admire the most, his rich intuitive views on all subjects or the dignified tone of his style. His writings can be compared only with those of Hippocrates on medicine; and they would be neither less admired nor less read if the cultivation of the mind were as dear to the human race as the conservation of health. But only the writings of leading sectarians can achieve a certain vogue; Bacon was not one of them, and his philosophic method was opposed to this: it was... 1 notes
notesHe was too dignified, his philosophy to straightforward to make waves in culture, but his simple idea to look at nature for what it is was a revolutionary idea.
