… and hubris. Long, and worth it – like the Histories as a whole. The king [Xerxes] took his seat… and looking down over the… Read More »Herodotus’ Xerxes on futility, suffering, risk-taking and action
“The best benefit of good planning is this: if one is thwarted by some setback, nevertheless one has the sense that the plans were well… Read More »Thinking in Bets, 425BC Edition (Herodotus on planning and risk)
Miss Bowlware taught them History of the English-Speaking Peoples, starting with the Romans at Londinium and careening through the Norman Conquest, Magna Carta, Wars of… Read More »Neal Stephenson on Victorian literature
Neutrinos… nicknamed ghost particles because of their uncanny properties… are the most abundant particles in the Universe — around 100 trillion pass harmlessly through your… Read More »Neutrino Bombshell
So, there aren’t really any incentives to teach well [as an economics professor]. No one really cares how you teach. But what I quickly learned… Read More »Steve Levitt on teaching, learning and having fun
… the totemic system serves very effectively in inhibiting radical cultural changes. The closed system of totemic ideas explaining and categorizing a well–known universe as… Read More »Technology (27): Cosmology, totems and resistance to technological change among the Yir-Yoront aboriginal people
I’ve just read the latest FreakTakes (from the excellent Eric Gilliam) on Managing Lockheed’s Skunk Works. Highly recommended – here’s a snippet:
… the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous. Edward Gibbon – The History… Read More »Edward Gibbon and Zhuang Zi on teaching, learning and tacit knowledge
This is from an amazing explanation of the airfoil by Bartosz Ciechanowski – one of many physics / engineering demonstrations on his (highly recommended) website.… Read More »God’s own latency