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11 Articles

On Gerolamo Cardano

He was certainly an extraordinary man. There’s something, I think, to telling students stories about the people who have helped invent today’s: mathematics. It may be the most abstract of subjects. But the range of characters involved in it are far from dull. This wrestling with the abstract, perhaps, might provide an In for those...

An Epidemic of Listicles

I like this excerpt from Krista Tippett’s interview with Maria Popova, curator of the wonderful Brain Pickings [Thanks to the Centre for Teaching] Culture needs stewardship, not disruption. … We seem somehow bored with thinking. We want to instantly know. And there’s this epidemic of listicles. Why think about what...

The Dynamo and the Social

Thought this was an interesting piece at Slate based on Paul David’s paper. There are some obvious parallels with personal or mobile computing and education and the difficulties we have with using it well. “Electric light bulbs were available by 1879, and there were generating stations in New York and London by 1881. Yet a...

Packaged Opinion

There is simply too much to think about. It is hopeless — too many kinds of special preparation are required. In electronics, in economics, in social analysis, in history, in psychology, in international politics, most of us are, given the oceanic proliferating complexity of things, paralyzed by the very suggestion that we assume...