The Need for Explorative Education Tracking

Governments, employers, and other interested third parties still look to traditional institutions of education to verify that learning has taken place. Schools and colleges thus play the same centralized, closed system role that banks do in the financial system. Like banks that ensure the validity and authenticity of financial transactions, educational institutions award degrees of completion that “validate” (albeit poorly) that a particular learner has learned a certain skill, competency...

 What is a Person?

What is a person? This seems like an easy question, but appearances can be deceiving. Throughout the long sweep of human history, the answer to the question of what a person is has continually changed. Was a woman a person, or was she a piece of property? Or was she even a liability, something that had to be compensated for with a dowry before a man’s family would agree to take her on? Was a man alien to their immediate culture a person? Not if you were of African descent in the United Sta...

 Why Plants Evolved to be Green

why is green the dominant color of terrerestrial plants? That's easy. Chlorophyll molecules absorb light at the red and blue ends of the spectrum. It is the middle of the spectrum (the green part) that is reflected and gives plants their characteristic color. A more efficient photosynthetic pigment would be black, absorbing all colors, soaking up all the energy of sunlight, reflecting nothing. The reflected green light of plants is wasted energy. So perhaps the real question is. Why isn't gra...