02 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
Cultural Change in Technology
As our modern dinosaurs crash down around us, I sometimes wonder what kind of humans will eventually walk out of this epic transformation. Trump and the populism that’s rampaging around the world today, marked by xenophobia, racism, sexism, and rising inequality, is greatly amplified by the forces the GDE has unleashed. For someone like me who saw the power of connection build a vibrant, technologically meshed ecosystem distinguished by peace, love, and understanding, the polarization and h... 1 
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notes10 FEB 2018 by ideonexus
Adult Participation in Children's Worldplay
In The Brightening Glance: Imagination and Childhood (2006), the art theorist Ellen Handler Spitz argues that "[t]he topic of adult participation in children's play is delicate, complex, and controversial," largely due to the overwhelming influence a parent or a teacher or even adult-generated entertainment media can have. Adults must work hard not to impose their owti interests, methods, or judgments upon play activity.
The act of modeling and encouraging can, indeed, be fi-aught with miss... 1 notes
notes10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Parental Resistance to Educational Change
The greatest challenges facing parents stem from their own school experiences. Every adult has been educated in some way, and the methods their teachers used usually shape the values they carry with them and color their perceptions of how education “should be.” These learned values are very powerful and can be seen in the ongoing controversies that manifest in social media regarding the Common Core State Standards and math instruction, for example. The notion that there is a critical-thin... 1 notes
notesThis explains resistance to the Common Core as well.
05 FEB 2016 by ideonexus
Ways to Tackle a Problem
If a problem seems familiar, try reasoning by Analogy. If you solved a similar one in the past, and can adapt to thedifferences, you may be able to re-use that solution.
If the problem still seems too hard, divide it into several parts. Every difference you recognize may suggest a separate subproblem to solve.
If it seems unfamiliar, change how you’re describing it. Find a different description that highlights more relevant information.
If you get too many ideas, then focus on ...Folksonomies: problem solving
Folksonomies: problem solving
1 notes
notes29 MAY 2014 by ideonexus
When Science Became a Profession
The possibilities of modem technology were first in practice realised in England by the energy of a prosperous middle class. Accordingly, the industrial revolution started there. But the Germans explicitly realised the methods by which the deeper veins in the mine of science could be reached. In their technological schools and universities progress did not have to wait for the occasional genius or the occasional lucky thought. Their feats of scholarship during the nineteenth century were the ... 1 notes
notesRising from the prosperous classes and the reliance on occasional genius to a methodology for producing consistent results.
21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Science was Inconvenient for Religion
Science’s contributions to the spread of disbelief is the least controversial segment of the virtuous cycle for which I am arguing in seventeenth-century Europe. For science’s methods are clearly troublesome for religion. The devout, to begin with, are not wont to view their precepts merely as propositions to be controverted or confirmed. The orthodox, as a rule, are used to arguments being settled by authority, not experiment. The hope belief offers does not always stand up well to obser... 1 notes
notesAs scientific knowledge grew it revealed knowledge that conflicted with scripture.
22 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Science is Culture, Not Just Methods
The fruitful pursuit of scientific truth and its application, once discovered, is not just a matter of talented individuals well trained in foreign universities and supplied with the equipment they desire. These are very important, but the cultivation of science is a collective undertaking [written as 'understanding'! and success in it depends on an appropriate social structurc. This social structure is the scientific community and its specialised institutions. 1 notes
notesThe research and application are important, but the communal nature of discovery and understanding are crucial.
13 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Talent of Mechanics
Generally speaking, people have a very erroneous idea of the type of talent proper to the ideal mechanician. He is not a geometrician who, delving into the theory of movement and the categories of phenomena, formulates new mechanical principles or discovers unsuspected laws of nature.… In most other branches of science are to be found constant principles; a multitude of methods offer to the genius inexhaustible possibilities. If a scholar poses himself a new problem, he can attack it fortif... 1 notes
notesIt is highly intuitive and cannot be taught from a textbook. It sounds much like an art.
17 SEP 2013 by ideonexus
Healthy Lifestyle Changes Increase Telomerase Length by 10%
Methods
This follow-up study compared ten men and 25 external controls who had biopsy-proven low-risk prostate cancer and had chosen to undergo active surveillance. Eligible participants were enrolled between 2003 and 2007 from previous studies and selected according to the same criteria. Men in the intervention group followed a programme of comprehensive lifestyle changes (diet, activity, stress management, and social support), and the men in the control group underwent active surveillance ...
2 Small sample size, but first evidence that healthy living can actually reverse the aging process somewhat.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Projected Growth of the Sciences
It has never yet been supposed, that all the facts of nature, and all the means of acquiring precision in the computation and analysis of those facts, and all the connections of objects with each other, and all the possible combinations of ideas, can be exhausted by the human mind. The mere relations of magnitude, the combinations, quantity and extent of this idea alone, form already a system too immense for the mind of man ever to grasp the whole of it; a portion, more vast than that which h... 1 notes
notesCondorcet sees our knowledge growing exponentially into the deepest minutia.
