30 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
The Advantage of Offline Source
Sharif smiled hesitantly. “In all honesty, I was as surprised as you about that. Professor Gu and I were talking freely when he arrived on campus. He got rather quiet as we came down the slope from your Warschawski Hall. And then for no apparent reason, he turned left and we went around the north side of the library. The next thing I knew he was walking into the freight entrance—and I lost contact. I don’t know what more I can say. My own wearable security is of the highest order, of co...An interesting critique on the bias of the Internet in how it brings you exactly what you are looking for, while the paper-books only brought you approximations, challenging you.
24 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
Enthusiasm Improves Productivity
When we are engaged in what we are
doing, all sorts of things happen. We
persist longer at difficult problems—and
become more likely to solve them. We
experience something that psychologist
Tory Higgins refers to as flow, a presence
of mind that not only allows us to extract
more from whatever it is we are doing but
also makes us feel better and happier: we
derive actual, measurable hedonic value
from the strength of our active
involvement in and attention to an activity,
even if the activi...And it creates a cycle of enthusiasm as our accomplishments increase our positive outlook on the task, increasing our focus.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Lack of Evidence-Based Child-Rearing in Society
s any new mother or father knows, nothing so invites advice as a new baby in the house. Other parents. Grandma, the lady next door, a stranger on the street, the family physician, and stacks and stacks of child-care books are happy to give directions about the "correct" way to care for an infant. What most parents do not know is that these various tidbits of advice, and even the consensus "rules" of parenting that have such an aura of credibility, are, for the most part, based on a mix of tra...There are many cultural norms, folk wisdom, and "common sense" ideas about how children should be raised, but there is very little research to prove what actually works.