Category: learning
-
Are All Children Capable of Academic Success?
Charles Murray, author of the controversial book The Bell Curve, tackles the question of whether all children are capable of academic success. Murray argues that IQ is the strongest influence on academic success and that some children simply aren’t equipped to excel at the highest levels, no matter how excellent the schooling they receive. The…
-
On Child Prodigies and Late Bloomers
David Galenson is famous for his theory of artistic creativity: classing artists as either Conceptualists or Experimentalists depending on whether or not their greatest achievements come at a young or old age. Malcolm Gladwell’s upcoming book, Outliers, is on the topic of high-achievement and in a recent New Yorker article discusses Galenson’s work on the…
-
The Growth of Scientific Knowledge and Scientific Ignorance
Noting that knowledge is growing at an exponential rate, Kevin Kelly argues that thanks to science, our ignorance is growing exponentially faster. If knowledge is growing exponentially we should be quickly running out of puzzles. Because of our accelerating rate of learning, a few writers declared we must be in the age of “the end…
-
Oxford and Cambridge Lectures on iTunes
The universities of Oxford and Cambridge have announced that they are to make lectures by well-known academics available for free through iTunes U. Oxford will publish 150 hours of free video and audio podcasts of lectures and ideas from what it described as “world-leading thinkers”. Meanwhile the University of Cambridge […] is making more than…
-
Gresham College, London
Gresham College is an unusual institution of higher learning in Holborn, Central London. It enrols no students and grants no degrees. Instead, Gresham College provides lectures free and open to the public, and has done so since its foundation in 1597, long before there was any university in London. The success of the college led…
-
Science Cribsheets
Since late 2005, Seed Magazine has been producing a series of cribsheets (or cheatsheets, as they are more commonly known in the UK) for “living in the 21st century”. These one-page introductions to contemporary scientific issues are really useful as reference sheets on a number of disparate topics. So far, subjects covered include stem cells,…
-
Books to Understand the Current Economic Climate
The Washington Post recently asked a host of ‘smart people’ for recommendations on what book will help us make sense of the current economic climate. Those asked include Peter Orszag (Director, Congressional Budget Office); Greg Mankiw (professor of economics at Harvard University); and John Allen Paulos (author and mathematics professor at Temple University). However, my…
-
The Evolution of Language
Bartleby, the free (as in beer) ‘Internet publisher’, has available a fascinating graphic depicting the evolution of language (all those stemming from the single Proto-Indo-European language, anyway). Now I know the historic route of my native tongue (as opposed to my cradle tongue), Welsh: it’s closest ‘relatives’ are Cornish and Breton (in that order) as…
-
Top 25 Documentaries
The International Documentary Association celebrated its 25th anniversary last year by asking its members to select the top 25 documentaries in history. These were the results: Hoop Dreams (1994) The Thin Blue Line (1988) Bowling for Columbine (2002) Spellbound (2002) Harlan County U.S.A. (1976) An Inconvenient Truth (2006) Crumb (1994) Gimme Shelter (1970) The Fog…