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 [...]
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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 [...] Amazon’s second generation Kindle, the D00511. Recent months have seen an increase of posts and news items on the coming eBook revolution. This way of delivering books has been a bit slower to catch on than proponents had hoped. The Amazon Kindle reader was touted as the solution to the many reasons why readers weren’t taking [...] Every other week or so my spouse and I meet with some friends for dinner and conversation, usually at a favorite Chinese restaurant where we enjoy stimulating banter over excellent cuisine. An evening’s dinner conversation recently turned to the matter of competition and how it really works in business and other areas of human [...] A skill not commonly taught in school, and certainly not taught (or even encouraged) in our deadline-driven workplace is the art of incubating ideas. Not all ideas spring from our brains like the Athena fully grown from the head of Zeus. As often as not, they take time. The brain quietly, in [...] In Ray Bradbury’s insightful and sometimes prophetic novel Fahrenheit 451, Montag, the book-burning “fireman” comes to a crisis of conscience as he realizes that his career of burning books has created a society bereft of meaning, life and vibrancy. He seeks out and an old, retired English professor and asks him how things might [...] The previous post on the unsuspected nature of genius needs a follow-up, and this is it. It is now clear that what we call “genius” is a function of hard, relentless work leavened with good instruction and mentoring. But the process of approaching mastery baffles and sometimes discourages would-be learners because they don’t [...] I’ve heard several definitions of genius. The usual one concerns high IQs and the ability to multiply nine-digit numbers in your head, play piano concerti without practicing, speaking colloquial Fortran… that sort of thing. Another comes courtesy of a friend of mine who observed that geniuses are what we call those who are [...] I found myself amused–sort of–by this news article on how TV doesn’t seem to be reaching the Boomers, i.e., my generation (Study: TV’s Youth Obsession Backfiring). Here are some excerpts: A significant number of baby boomers – 37 percent – say they aren’t happy with what’s on television, according to the study. “The amount of people [...] There is a myth in America about the lone, rugged, resourceful and persistent innovator who overcomes impossible odds to triumph in the face of naysayers, poverty, bureaucracies, being disowned, disbarred, defrocked, excommunicated, crippled, and in spite of all opposition, goes on to become a billionaire, win the Nobel Prize, and marry a supermodel. All by [...] |
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