24 MAR 2016 by ideonexus
Tips for Parents to Encourage Reading
Read to your child. Try to read to your child every day. Read from a wide variety of materials and books.
Encourage writing. Encourage your child to scribble and pretend write if they are young. Encourage older children to write stories and letters and share them with the family. Have writing materials readily available.
Have reading material at home. Have a wide variety of books, children's magazines, and newspapers available for children to read or look at.
Get your child a libr...
1 17 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Orthography Must be Balanced
The orthography of our language is extremely irregular; and many fruitless attempts have been made to reform it. The utility and expedience of such reform have been controverted, and both side of the question have been maintained with no inconsiderable zeal.
On this subject, as on most others which divide the opinions of men, parties seem to have erred by running into extremes. The friends of a reform maintain that our alphabet should be rendered perfectly regular, by rejecting superfluous c...10 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
The Scientific Worldview
The term “scientism” is anything but clear, more of a boo-word than a label for any coherent doctrine. Sometimes it is equated with lunatic positions, such as that “science is all that matters” or that “scientists should be entrusted to solve all problems.” Sometimes it is clarified with adjectives like “simplistic,” “naïve,” and “vulgar.” The definitional vacuum allows me to replicate gay activists’ flaunting of “queer” and appropriate the pejorative for a position I am prepared to defend.
... 1 
notes
notesSteven Pinker defends the "scientism" against critics in the humanities.
18 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Developing Puzzle Games Requires Experimentations
...you need fewer art assets to build a simple puzzle game. This is
very good news for small developers, and for those just starting out in gaming. One
or two people can build a world-class puzzle game. It would be next to impossible for
one or two people to build a world-class third-person action game from scratch (and
be finished by the end of the millennium). Puzzle games generally require puzzle
pieces, such as blocks, widgets, shapes, or gizmos of some kind. Once you have built these obj...Folksonomies: game development
Folksonomies: game development
1 notes
notesThe entry-bar for building a puzzle game is low because they don't require many complex graphics, but the rhythm and heartbeat of the game require playing with variables and tweaking ideas.
23 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
We Must Act Without All the Facts
It is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when we find they do not fit and draw new ones. 1 notes
notesJust as children operate without all the data, we cannot use a lack of data to excuse inaction.
12 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Jefferson Clearly Believes in God
This gives compleatly a gain de cause to the disciples of Ocellus, Timaeus, Spinosa, Diderot and D'Holbach. The argument which they rest on as triumphant and unanswerable is that, in every hypothesis of Cosmogony you must admit an eternal pre-existence of something; and according to the rule of sound philosophy, you are never to employ two principles to solve a difficulty when one will suffice. They say then that it is more simple to believe at once in the eternal pre-existence of the world, ...At least in this this passage, where he sees the Universe as needing a deity to keep things together. He even appeals to the idea that most people believe there is something, so there must be something. His logic is in error here, but he also lacked the scientific understanding we have today.
16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Evolution Remodels the Old into New
...evolutionary change, even of a major sort, nearly always
involves remodeling the old into the new. The legs of land animals are
variations on the stout limbs of ancestral fish. The tiny middle ear bones
of mammals are remodeled jawbones of their reptilian ancestors. The
wings of birds were fashioned from the legs of dinosaurs. And whales are
stretched-out land animals whose forelimbs have become paddles and
whose nostrils have moved atop their head.Evolution modifies existing structures rather than creating new ones from scratch.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Always make new mistakes!
Always make new mistakes!
This is my all-time favorite rule for living. I like it so much that I use it as my sig file--the little quote that gets inserted along with my address and other coordinates at the end of each of my e-mails. I still have new mistakes to make. The challenge is not to avoid mistakes, but to learn from them. And then to go forward and make new ones and learn again. There's no shame in making new mistakes if you acknowledge and benefit from them.A good principle for life.
