A new mini-opera called “The Know-It-All Club” will premiere as part of the 32nd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, on Thursday, September 15, 2022. The theme of the 2022 ceremony, evinced in the opera and other bits, is: Knowledge. The ceremony will be webcast. You can watch it here at http://www.improbable.com The opera plot: Every […]
“What Slime Knows” is an essay by Lacy M. Johnson, in Orion magazine: Here in this little patch of mulch in my yard is a creature that begins life as a microscopic amoeba and ends it as a vibrant splotch that produces spores, and for all the time in between, it is a single cell […]
This 1952 television broadcast at The Johns Hopkins University looked back, with dreary optimism, at Abraham Flexner‘s essay “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge”. Flexner’s essay appeared in the October 1939 issue of Harper’s magazine [you can download that essay here.] Recently, Brainpickings took an appreciative look at Flexner and his musings. Click on the image, […]
The long-named Harvard Mind/Brain/Body Interfaculty Initiative announces: MBB 2013 Distinguished Lecture Series Uta Frith and Chris Frith (University College London) Uta Frith – Autism: The First Fifty Years Wednesday, April 24th, 5:15 p.m., Science Center Hall D Chris Frith – How the Brain Creates Culture Thursday, April 25th, 5 p.m., Science Center Hall D BACKGROUND: Chris Frith, […]
There’s always more to know about knowledge. This study makes that, if nothing else, clear: “Measuring the Value of Different Categories of Knowledge within a Romanian University,” Dana Adriana Lupşa-Tătaru, paper presented at the International Conference on Applied Statistics, September 23–26, 2007, at Ribno (Bled), Slovenia. The author, at Transilvania University of Braşov, Braşov, Romania, […]
Maria Popover’s essay “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge” (in her blog Brain Pickings) uses the usefulness of Abraham Flexner’s 1939 essay “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge” (in Harper’s magazine) as a way to introduce or re-introduce you to all sorts of ideas about the uselessness and usefulness of ideas.
“Moms on the Net” is a propaganda video about moms on the net. It’s not new, but it’s got staying power. It begins with the words “What a day”: This video is a good introduction, in its own way, though possibly in no other way, to the field of computer science. (Thanks to investigator Carole […]
Many large organisations are notoriously inefficient. How can they be guided back to efficiency? One possible strategy is to encourage them to ‘unlearn’ – using a process which has been called ‘Knowledge Neutralization’. Dr. Emil Turc, (presently Maître de Conférences en Sciences de Gestion à l’Institut de Management Public et de Gouvernance Territoriale (IMPGT) d’Aix-en-Provence) […]