Change, especially the kind that moves a civilization forward, requires easy access to knowledge and information. The Founding Fathers understood this. As exponents of the Enlightenment, they saw the availability of knowledge and information as a critical element of a thriving and prospering nation. [...]
|
||||||
|
It’s commonly known that in the pre-print age people relied on their memories to store information, but it is not commonly realized just what this entails. When we think of memorizing something, we think in terms of learning something by rote, so that we could recite it if called upon to do so. The medieval memory went far beyond that. The art of memory was not merely about holding information, but about processing [...] For a long time I have been watching the movement known as Creationism as they have attempted to push aside the teaching of evolution in the schools. In its place, they would teach something called “creationism” which started out once upon a time as the creation story found in the book of [...] So, I’m driving home on Friday (the 16th) after mowing a friend’s lawn. My cell phone rings and I tap my earpiece to take the call. It was Denise, sounding worried. She was at her current favorite pond near Penitencia Creek doing nature photography and had noticed a young pied-billed grebe (Podilymbus podiceps) that had [...] I was intrigued to see an interesting article on the website of American Scientist magazine about the problem of the volatility of the data that narrates our civilization. The article, “Avoiding a Digital Dark Age” by Kurt Bollacker describes in detail several examples of how our high-tech world fails to imbue our information stream with [...] I’ve recently begun taking a class at nearby Foothill Community College in an effort to gain some mastery over mathematics. It’s an old, old project of mine. Ostensibly I’m at school for the same reason most of the other students believe they are here, namely to get an education that will translate into a job [...] Yesterday’s Editorial Observer column of the New York Times carried an interesting and through-provoking piece by Verlyn Klinkenborg on “Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud.” In it Klinkenborg compares the growing popularity of audio books with the practice of reading aloud as was common in the 19th century (and obviously long before [...] Note: I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the role of mentors in one’s educational development and remembered the following essay I wrote for the Virtual Conference in Informal Science Education, sponsored by the Society for Amateur Scientists in May, 2004. I’m reprinting it here as a way of dusting off my thinking on [...] A view from the balcony of the Exploratorium on Pi Day. Photo by the author. Last Saturday we accompanied some friends of ours on a trip to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Many, many years ago the science show Nova featured this marvelous place in one of their programs, and if I recall “The Palace of [...] Now that the triumph of Barak Obama at the polls is a little more than a week behind us, I have sufficiently come down from the adrenaline high of the election to think clearly about what this could mean for the United States and the world. Consider that my state of mind is not just [...] |
LinksNews: AnalysisNews: Cutting Through the PropagandaNews: News Sources I LikeResourcesScience and Nature |
||||
|
This site is operated and maintained by Greaves Research Diversified. |
||||||