22 JUN 2016 by ideonexus
The Importance of Old, Well-Written Articles
...we overvalue new writing, almost absurdly so, and we undervalue older writing. I feel this market failure keenly each day when I recommend a fine piece of writing that deserves to be read for years to come and yet will have at most two days in the sun.
You never hear anybody say, “I’m not going to listen to that record because it was released last year,” or, “I’m not going to watch that film because it came out last month.” Why are we so much less interested in journalism that’s a month o...
1 If 99% of new content on the Web is worthless, how do we surface the old content for new eyes?
26 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Examples of How Language Affects Cognition
Most questions of whether and how language shapes thought start with the simple observation that languages differ from one another. And a lot! Let's take a (very) hypothetical example. Suppose you want to say, "Bush read Chomsky's latest book." Let's focus on just the verb, "read." To say this sentence in English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we have to pronounce it like "red" and not like "reed." In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) alter the verb to mark tens... 1 
notes
notesExamples of how languages differ between cultures in their constructs, how those constructs affect the way the speaker thinks about things, and how teaching a person a new language can alter the way they think.
06 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Importance of Habit in Youth
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious up- risings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through the winter ; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his log- cabin and...
1 Education must instill good habits in people while they are young so that the individual does not get hardened into an immoral state when they are older.
08 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
The Discover of Bisphenol A's Deleterious Effects on Embryos
In fact, an early clue to the potential risks posed by plastic was discovered entirely by accident. In August of 1998, Washington State University geneticist Patricia Hunt found herself baffled by an unexpected development in her lab. Hunt was using experiments on lab mice to explore why the eggs of older women are more likely to produce children with chromosomal abnormalities such as Down syndrome. The research was coming along well when suddenly the eggs of her control animals—the normal, h... 1 notes
notesThe story of how Patricia Hunt accidentally made this discovery.
