16 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Neem: Cognitive Drug
Neem is a mnemonic drug that works by
“tagging” experiences and mental input with a set of
unique sensations that contribute to the formation
of state-based memories. Neem gummy chews come
in a variety of fruit avors shaped like extinct old
Earth animals. Neem gives characters a 20 bonus
on COG Tests to recall information they learned
while on Neem (see Memorizing and Remembering,
p. 176). The drawback to Neem is that memories they
accumulate while under the drug’s in uence have no
em...A drug that "tags" experiences and ideas with a set of unique sensations to link to a memory. One could then take another dose of Neem to recall the memory.
27 AUG 2012 by ideonexus
An Early Passage on Taxonomy
NATURE, by descending gradually from great to small, from strong to weak, coun|terbalances every part of her works. Attentive solely to the preservation of each species, she creates a profusion of individuals, and supports by numbers the small and the feeble, whom she hath left unprovided with arms or with courage. She has not only put those inferior animals in a condition to perpetuate and to resist by their own numbers, but she seems, at the same time, to have afforded a supply to each by m...The ability to distinguish and categorize species based on more and more minute differences, and yet be able to group them into larger categories as well.
02 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Ontologies vs. Folksonomies
It is argued - though currently the arguments are filtering only slowly into the academic literature - that folksonomies are preferable to the use of controlled, centralised ontologies [e.g. 259]. Annotating Web pages using controlled vocabularies will improve the chances of one's page turning up on the 'right' Web searches, but on the other hand the large heterogeneous user base of the Web is unlikely to contain many people (or organisations) willing to adopt or maintain a complex ontology. ...Ontologies provide structure and a standard for tagging and searching, while folksonomies provide for an emergent system for tagging things.