Einstein for Everyone Einstein for Everyone Nullarbor Press 2007revisions 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 Copyright 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 John D. All Rights Reserved John D. An advanced sequel is planned in this series:Einstein for Almost Everyone 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 ePrinted in the United States of America no trees were harmed web*bookTM This book is a continuing work in progress. January 1, 2015. Preface For over a decade I have taught an introductory, undergraduate class, "Einstein for Everyone," at the University of Pittsburgh to anyone interested enough to walk through door. With each new offering of the course, I had the chance to find out what content worked and which of my ever so clever pedagogical inventions were failures. At the same time, my lecture notes have evolved. Its content reflects the fact that my interest lies in history and philosophy of science and that I teach in a Department of History and Philosophy of Science. This text owes a lot to many. i i i
No Politics « Ooga Labs We see politics in startups as a disease – once it takes hold, it can spread through the company until it kills. So we have a No Politics rule. There are really just two things we do to prevent the disease of politics. First, don’t hire people who are political by nature. You can usually spot them in an interview by asking what they liked or disliked about people they worked with in their prior jobs. Second, “expose to daylight” any comment or idea that seems like it’s political. In my experience, there are typically three main reasons people don’t say something directly to one person that they will say to another. 1) I’m scared of his/her reaction. 2) It’s not going to do any good, anyway. 3) It doesn’t help me, and it may hurt me if I say something. To overcome the fears people naturally have to be honest with each other, you have to show people that it turns out OK when they expose these ideas to sunlight. Like this: Like Loading...
What Defines a Meme? What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, not warm breath, not a ‘spark of life.’ It is information, words, instructions,” Richard Dawkins declared in 1986. Already one of the world’s foremost evolutionary biologists, he had caught the spirit of a new age. The cells of an organism are nodes in a richly interwoven communications network, transmitting and receiving, coding and decoding. Evolution itself embodies an ongoing exchange of information between organism and environment. We have become surrounded by information technology; our furniture includes iPods and plasma displays, and our skills include texting and Googling. The rise of information theory aided and abetted a new view of life. “Ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms,” he wrote. Ideas have “spreading power,” he noted—“infectivity, as it were”—and some more than others. Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. Monod added, “I shall not hazard a theory of the selection of ideas.”
Parsing Grammar: Diagramming sentences as a way to teach school children about syntax began in the 1800s. What tools does a grammarian need? A brain helps, and so does a computer, but surely one of our most essential tools is some kind of diagramming system. How can we think about a sentence's structure, after all, without displaying it visually? Geographers have maps; mathematicians have equations; composers have musical notation; economists have graphs; and grammarians have trees. It wasn't always so. Just 30 years later, Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg, possessing typical American marketing skills, created a more appealing version using lines instead of bubbles, like this one generated by an online parser: For a long time, sentence diagramming flourished throughout the American school system, and, despite being condemned as a useless waste of time in the 1970s, it still persists in many schools. In Europe, some linguists saw an opportunity to make the diagrams even better. A version of this post originally appeared on Language Log.
lifehack Books have the power to help people realize their dreams and maximize their potential. A good reading experience can be life-changing. Here are 10 books recommended by global entrepreneurs. 1. The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan “It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world.” – Og Mandino This book topped number one on Wall Street, New York Times and USA Today, so it is bound to be a good read. The book is described as an “excellent read for not only your business but any goal you are trying to achieve in life”. With the amount of distractions in this day and age from emails, text messages, and phone calls, it is hard to not get side tracked from what does matter. As the book quotes “Extraordinary results require focused attention and time. Figure out what the one thing is in your life that you want and achieve it. 2. “Believe you can succeed and you will” If you want to do more and achieve more, then you need to learn how to think properly. 3. 4.
Racial Differences in Moral Reasoning Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Rise of the wikicrats « My, what a friendly ad | Main | Virtualization gets personal » August 23, 2007 It's over. "It’s like I’m in some netherworld from the movie Brazil, being asked for my Form 27B(stroke)6," writes the media scholar and long-time Wikipedian Andrew Lih. It is a very short article providing little or no context (CSD A1), contains no content whatsoever (CSD A3), consists only of links elsewhere (CSD A3) or a rephrasing of the title (CSD A3). Lih's reaction: "What the… what manner of… who the… how could any self-respecting Wikipedian imagine this could be deleted? It’s incredible to me that the community in Wikipedia has come to this, that articles so obviously “keep” just a year ago, are being challenged and locked out. But, given human nature, is it really so "incredible" that Wikipedia has evolved as it has? "Gone are the days of grassroots informality," writes a saddened Lih in another post. Maybe the time has come for Wikipedia to amend its famous slogan. That is a terrifying thought.
50 Creative, Cheap Ways to Have Fun “Never let lack of money interfere with having fun.” ~Unknown Back when we were young, we may have asked our parents for money to do things, but more often than not, we found creative ways to have fun without spending a dime. At least I know I did. My cousins and I turned their bulkhead cellar doors into a slide—and the main attraction of our DIY amusement park. We turned cardboard paper towel rolls and rice-filled soda bottles into instruments, and entertained ourselves for hours on end. We didn’t wait for overtime or vacation weeks to have fun. I highly doubt I’d spend one of my adult Saturdays banging on a homemade coffee can drum, but there’s something to said for getting a little creative with your downtime. If you’re looking for some cheap, creative ways to enjoy the weekend—or perhaps an upcoming weekday you’ve chosen to liberate—I recommend: Have Fun Outside 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Have Fun with Food 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. Have Fun with Entertainment 21. 22.
Hacking Knowledge: 77 Ways To Learn Faster, Deeper, & Better If someone granted you one wish, what do you imagine you would want out of life that you haven’t gotten yet? For many people, it would be self-improvement and knowledge. Newcounter knowledge is the backbone of society’s progress. Great thinkers such as Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and others’ quests for knowledge have led society to many of the marvels we enjoy today. Life-changing knowledge does typically require advanced learning techniques. Health Shake a leg. Balance Sleep on it. Perspective and Focus Change your focus, part 2. Recall Techniques Listen to music. Visual Aids Every picture tells a story. Verbal and Auditory Techniques Stimulate ideas. Kinesthetic Techniques Write, don’t type. Self-Motivation Techniques Give yourself credit. Supplemental Techniques Read as much as you can. For Teachers, Tutors, and Parents Be engaging. For Students and Self-Studiers Be engaged. Parting Advice Persist. Sources For This Article Did you enjoy this article?