"Education is a self-organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon.”--Sugata Mitr
Aphorism
(n.): interesting word meaning a short, pithy statement containing a
truth of general importance. From 1520s; from Late Latin aphorismus, from Greek aphorismos "definition, pithy sentence," from aphorizein "to mark off, divide," from apo- "from" (see apo-) + horizein "to bound" ( "horizon" has the same base, "boundary.").
James
Naismith graduated from the theological college at Montreal's McGill
University and joined the group of thinkers with "muscular
Christianity," accepting athletics as a legitimate means of exercise. He
hoped to use it as a way of delivering Christian message as well. He
was particularly interested in a game that could be played indoors in
the winter and had none of the contact of football or soccer. As a child
in Onterio he had played a game where stones were thrown to land and
stay on a large rock. Using that as an image, he invented basketball.
The
poet Robert Burns was not carried away by his renown. "When proud
misfortune's ebbing tide recedes," he wrote in one letter, "you will
bear me witness, that when my bubble of fame was at the highest, I
stood, unintoxicated, with the inebriating cup in my hand, looking
forward with rueful resolve to the hastening time when the blow of
Calumny should dash it to the ground, with all the eagerness of vengeful
triumph." His mother stressed the emptiness of the "bubble of fame." In
response to one of the first statues erected to her son (he is reputed
to have, with Columbus and Lenin (for a while), the most statues in the
world) she is reported to have quoted scripture: "Aye, Robbie...ye asked
for bread and they've given ye a stone." Moms are tough.
Centaur-class
minor planets are small Solar System bodies that orbit the sun between
the orbits of the outer planets. The distant asteroid 10199
Chariklo has a diameter of about 250 kilometers and is the largest of
the centaurs. It recently was found to have at least two orbiting
rings. It orbits the Sun
between Saturn and Uranus.
The
Revolution liberated the Americans from many things, one was protection
by the British navy. North African pirates were constantly taking
American ships and the Americans had no real military to oppose them.
The Americans chose ransom as their solution. Under the Treaty of
Marrakesh in 1786, the sultan of Morocco freed the American merchant
ship Betsey and its crew from Tangier for $30,000 (about $712,000 in
2010 dollars) and promised to protect American shipping and encourage
commerce between the two countries. Barclay insisted that there would be
no annual tribute. Ratified by Congress on July 18, 1787, this was the
first treaty between the United States and an African, Arab, or Muslim
nation
Professor Robert Hare
is a criminal psychologist who has developed a scoring system for
psychopathology. He says that about 1% of the population has
psychopathic tendencies.
What is....Bletchley Park?
Tax
Freedom Day is the day when the nation as a whole has earned enough
money to pay its total tax bill for year. Tax Freedom Day divides all
federal, state, and local taxes by the nation’s income. In 2014,
Americans will pay $3.0 trillion in federal taxes and $1.5 trillion in
state taxes, for a total tax bill of $4.5 trillion, or 30.2 percent of
income. This year, Tax Freedom Day falls on April 21, or 111 days into
the year.
An argument is
developing in the House over Director of the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau Richard Cordray's suit against Ally Bank and other car
lenders. The CFPB alleges lending has a "disparate impact" on
minorities. But the industry doesn't identify borrowers by race so,
presumably, investigators would have to guess their minority status.
The implication is that basic good lending practice eliminates people;
well , of course it does. But here, perhaps, there are a
disproportionate number of minorities who do not qualify for financial
reasons, not racial. Is that the bank's fault? Is that de facto bigotry? Or is this just another way to rub resentment raw?
An
argument started by Clinton has been that the terrorist acts plaguing
the world are criminal and should be dealt with by courts. The Muslim
convert, Adebolajo, who hacked the British soldier, Fusilier Rigby, to
death with a meat cleaver, has filled an appeal of his life sentence
conviction of murder claiming his act was a military operation and that
he was a "soldier of
Allah".
Golden Oldie:
Vessels
classified as participating in illegal, unregulated and under reported
fishing are designated as such because they regularly ignore domestic
and international fishing laws, fish in areas closed or restricted to
commercial fishing, target endangered and at-risk species, and use
illegal gear. A recent UBC study places the size of such fishing at
between $1 billion and $2 billion annually, or between 15% and 26% of
the total value of wild-caught imports.
Charles Darwin’s last book, published in 1881, was a study of the earthworm. His book before that was The Power of Movement in Plants (1880).
In his definitive book, Models of Madness,
John Read, a clinical psychologist at Liverpool University, showed that
in the 10 studies testing the matter, the more extreme the childhood
adversity in the home--by the parents either with abuse or the lack of
love, the greater the risk of adult psychosis. But....one can always
wonder if parents prone to that behavior bring bad genes to the table as
well.
AAAAAAaaaaannnnndddddd.....the family tree of House Targaryen:
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