This presentation has got to be the funniest TED talk (if not, please provide a link in the comments).
But this of course is just a bonus point, because as most (or all) TED talks, this one's very insightful.
This is a talk by Sir Ken Robinson (wkp), about creativity, particularly how our typical school systems undermine most of the innate creativity children have.
"(...) the whole purpose of public education, throughout the world, is to produce university professors"
He goes on to say (after a few good jokes about university professors) why this is so. It appears that that our public education in a whole is centered about the idea of academicability. I still have to sleep on that for a while, but maybe this is one of those cases where something is too obvious to be noticed.
It was around the 19th century that public education was "invented (...) to meet the needs of industrialism". He goes on with other interesting insights, but there's enough spoilers from me for now.
On a related video, another good tip for those of you who like to think about creativity. Here's Amy Tan (wkp).
Of course, I still want to know what Creativity *really* is, which always brings me to what the hell Intelligence realy is. A friend of mine is now completely obsessed with AGI, and thanks to a tip I gave him from a Scientific American podcast, Singularity (wkp), so probably in a while I'll have some insights from him about these interesting topics.
2009-04-28
2009-04-26
Nostalgic rant of the interweb
I miss those good old days when HTML was white background, black foreground and blue links, not these devilish flash websites and heavy webapps we have today.
I miss the good old days of ASCII emails, not these HTML embedded with attached images, off-site images. Oh yeah, those spam-free text-only simple and efficient e-mail, that was email. Who the hell needs scripts being auto-executed when reading emails?
Heck, I miss the good old mainframe days, when men were real men, and coded their own interfaces, patched and recompiled the programs they used, until they worked to satisfaction. Of course, this was done in macho-language C, not these bogus unreliable unpredictable script languages, that don't enforce variable definitions. These modern languages that let ignorants remain ignorants.
Maybe I'm 20 years older than my real age.
Disclaimer: I'm not old enough to actually have used - or even seen, FTM - a mainframe, but that's beside the point. I can't code in C, although I have some basic familiarity with the syntax. I have seen someone use Python, but I don't grok it either. </hypocrisy> I wish I had enough skills to fix my own issues, but there's only so much time.
I miss the good old days of ASCII emails, not these HTML embedded with attached images, off-site images. Oh yeah, those spam-free text-only simple and efficient e-mail, that was email. Who the hell needs scripts being auto-executed when reading emails?
Heck, I miss the good old mainframe days, when men were real men, and coded their own interfaces, patched and recompiled the programs they used, until they worked to satisfaction. Of course, this was done in macho-language C, not these bogus unreliable unpredictable script languages, that don't enforce variable definitions. These modern languages that let ignorants remain ignorants.
Maybe I'm 20 years older than my real age.
Disclaimer: I'm not old enough to actually have used - or even seen, FTM - a mainframe, but that's beside the point. I can't code in C, although I have some basic familiarity with the syntax. I have seen someone use Python, but I don't grok it either. </hypocrisy> I wish I had enough skills to fix my own issues, but there's only so much time.
Vampire eco dynamics
What do you get when you mix fiction with science? You may have said sci-fi, but that's not all of it. You might also get fun science (as in, not necessarilly useful, purposeful or publishable science, just the kind of fun stuff you do in your free time).
Linked from pharyngula, I got the tip for a nice fun article someone posted in his (her?) family site. It looks like it may be a follow up to one of those meaningless conversations everyone likes to have among loved one and friends, but this guy actually did his homework to make his point - he did the math for the model, and simulations to get the equilibrium points. But that's not what I liked the most about it (although I like this kind of stuff a lot). I liked it that it's a funny
Just take a look at what I'm talking about:
In principle, ecologists might employ two basic strategies to get at a problem like this. The empiricists would go out and find a field site where they could actually observe predators and their prey, and just tally the results over time. The theoreticians would chuckle at the empiricists, and construct mathematical models that probably approximate the behavior of populations in the field, keeping their hands more or less clean in the process.
In real life, most ecologists use both strategies off and on. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any real life vampire populations in the field, so we’re going to have to pretend that we are strict theoreticians. That means that we’ll be using math: some algebra, some calculus, and some matrix theory. This is O.K.! It hurts a lot less than, say, getting bitten by a vampire as you’re trying to fit the bugger with a radio collar.
PDF of the article.
He could display little of the math and simulations, although I can see why he didn't. I would at least give the option to the curious reader to learn more, say, put the dirt in a supplemental PDF, or an appendix. Even though, it's
Linked from pharyngula, I got the tip for a nice fun article someone posted in his (her?) family site. It looks like it may be a follow up to one of those meaningless conversations everyone likes to have among loved one and friends, but this guy actually did his homework to make his point - he did the math for the model, and simulations to get the equilibrium points. But that's not what I liked the most about it (although I like this kind of stuff a lot). I liked it that it's a funny
Just take a look at what I'm talking about:
In principle, ecologists might employ two basic strategies to get at a problem like this. The empiricists would go out and find a field site where they could actually observe predators and their prey, and just tally the results over time. The theoreticians would chuckle at the empiricists, and construct mathematical models that probably approximate the behavior of populations in the field, keeping their hands more or less clean in the process.
In real life, most ecologists use both strategies off and on. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any real life vampire populations in the field, so we’re going to have to pretend that we are strict theoreticians. That means that we’ll be using math: some algebra, some calculus, and some matrix theory. This is O.K.! It hurts a lot less than, say, getting bitten by a vampire as you’re trying to fit the bugger with a radio collar.
PDF of the article.
He could display little of the math and simulations, although I can see why he didn't. I would at least give the option to the curious reader to learn more, say, put the dirt in a supplemental PDF, or an appendix. Even though, it's
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