31 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Hero of "Brave New World"
The hero of Brave New World is John, a young man
who grew up on an Indian reservation in New Mexico.
The reservation is inhabited by primitive peoples and
maintained by the benevolent world government as a
tourist attraction. It exists so that the civilized tourists
can observe from a distance the nasty and brutish lives
of people who have the misfortune to be unprotected
by the cushions and comforts of technology. On the
reservation, traditional religions and traditional customs
are tolerate... 1 
notes
notes30 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Violence and the Concept of Social Justice
The main reason that violence correlates with low socioeconomic status today is that the elites and the middle class pursue justice with the legal system while the lower classes resort to what scholars of violence call “self-help.” This has nothing to do with Women Who Love Too Much or Chicken Soup for the Soul; it is another name for vigilantism, frontier justice, taking the law into your own hands, and other forms of violent retaliation by which people secured justice in the absence of inte...Folksonomies: violence social status
Folksonomies: violence social status
1 notes
notes30 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 course. ... 1 notes
notesAn 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.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Science and Education Feed One Another
The progress of the sciences secures the progress of the art of instruction, which again
accelerates in its turn that of the sciences; and this reciprocal influence, the action of
which is incessantly increased, must be ranked in the number of the most prolific and
powerful causes of the improvement of the human race. At present, a young man,
upon finishing his studies and quitting our schools, may know more of the principles
of mathematics than Newton acquired by profound study, or discovere... 1 notes
notesProgress in one secures progress in the other.
06 AUG 2012 by ideonexus
Knowledge Increases
The progress of the sciences secures the progress of the art of instruction, which again accelerates in its turn that of the sciences; and this reciprocal influence, the action of which is incessantly increased, must be ranked in the number of the most prolific and powerful causes of the improvement of the human race. At present, a young man, upon finishing his studies and quitting our schools, may know more of the principles of mathematics than Newton acquired by profound study, or discovere...
1 By standing on the shoulders of giants, the college-graduate can know more than Newton learned in a lifetime through all his hard work and discovery.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Youth and Chemistry
It is only those who know a little of nature, who fancy they know much. I have heard a young man say, after hearing a few popular chemical lectures, and seeing a few bottle and squirt experiments: Oh, water—water is only oxygen and hydrogen!—as if he knew all about it. While the true chemist would smile sadly enough at the the youth's hasty conceit, and say in his heart: 'Well, he is a lucky fellow.' 1 notes
notesSample of how a little knowledge promotes unwarranted certainty.
28 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Gertrude B. Elion's Tragedy
I had fallen in love with a young man..., and we were planning to get married. And then he died of subacute bacterial endocarditis... Two years later with the advent of penicillin, he would have been saved. It reinforced in my mind the importance of scientific discovery... 1 notes
notesHer love died from an infection penicillin could have cured, but it was invented two years later.
12 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Theories are Always Overturned
The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern 'knowledge' is that it is wrong.
The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. 'If I am the wisest man,' said S... 1 notes
notesYes, our modern view of reality is probably mostly wrong, but it is significantly less wrong than the views people held in the past.
