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ichard Feynman – brilliant scientist, fantastic teacher, bongo drummer extraordinaire, practical joker, and a perpetually curious mind – was also well known for articulating his love and passion for science (Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out). His enthusiasm for the subject and for teaching was legendary, and infectious.

In this speech given at the at 15th annual meeting of the National Science Teacher’s Association in 1966, Feynman expounds on ‘What is science?’, beautifully articulating his love and passion for the subject, as well as what drives his curiosity and his philosophy on teaching.

I think it is very important – at least it was to me – that if you are going to teach people to make observations, you should show that something wonderful can come from them. I learned then what science was about: it was patience. If you looked, and you watched, and you paid attention, you got a great reward from it – although possibly not every time.

As a result, when I became a more mature man, I would painstakingly, hour after hour, for years, work on problems – sometimes many years, sometimes shorter times; many of them failing, lots of stuff going into the wastebasket – but every once in a while there was the gold of a new understanding that I had learned to expect when I was a kid, the result of observation. For I did not learn that observation was not worthwhile.

[...]
When someone says, “Science teaches such and such,” he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, “Science has shown such and such,” you might ask, “How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?”

[...]
It should not be “science has shown” but “this experiment, this effect, has shown.” And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments–but be patient and listen to all the evidence–to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at.

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. Scott Fitzgerald, known for his beautiful prose in his stories, is just as adroit in this letter of advice with his then 11 year old daughter, Scottie, who grew up to be a writer herself. Written in 1933, it is a timeless piece of advice that shines a light on what matters most in life and what we would all to well to remember nearly 80 years after it was written.

Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship

Things not to worry about:

Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions

Things to think about:

What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:

(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?

With dearest love,

Daddy

(via Lists of Note)

We’ve previously seen Ira Glass’s immensely valuable advice on how to be creative – where he decisively points out the main hurdles hampering individual creativity, as well as how to get past them. Now, with this delightful kinetic typography animation, this piece of excellent advice is brought to life reiterating Ira Glass’s timeless insights into creativity, artistic taste, productivity, and producing creative output that matters.

Ira Glass’s advice is indispensible for anyone engaged in any creative field of work. A solace to those locked in creative struggles of their own, it is a refreshing reminder of what being creative means and how you can put it in practice.

The most imporant possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that you know each week or each month you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you’re actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. In my case, like I took longer to figure out how to do this than anybody I’ve ever met. It takes a while. It’s going to take you a while. It’s normal to take you a while and you just have to Fight Your Way Through That. Okay?

L

eonardo da Vinci – artist, sculptor, scientist, inventor, cartographer – was a wearer of many hats. As the archetype renaissance man, da Vinci excelled in a number of different fields, and exercised his talents to their fullest to create works which have now immortalised his place in history. This unmistakably comes through in his resume – where he charts out his many abilities in full detail.

The resume was originally addressed to Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan. The 30 year old da Vinci is supremely self-confident and full of vigour and infectious enthusiasm, as he rapidly lists the things that can do: being able to make big guns and mortars, knowing how to destroy rock or fortress, and being able to ‘fling small stones almost resembling a storm.’

Most Illustrious Lord,

Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim themselves skilled contrivers of instruments of war, and that the invention and operation of the said instruments are nothing different from those in common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice to any one else, to explain myself to your Excellency, showing your Lordship my secret, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation to work with effect at opportune moments on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below.

1. I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy; and others, secure and indestructible by fire and battle, easy and convenient to lift and place. Also methods of burning and destroying those of the enemy.

2. I know how, when a place is besieged, to take the water out of the trenches, and make endless variety of bridges, and covered ways and ladders, and other machines pertaining to such expeditions.

3. If, by reason of the height of the banks, or the strength of the place and its position, it is impossible, when besieging a place, to avail oneself of the plan of bombardment, I have methods for destroying every rock or other fortress, even if it were founded on a rock, etc.

4. Again, I have kinds of mortars; most convenient and easy to carry; and with these I can fling small stones almost resembling a storm; and with the smoke of these cause great terror to the enemy, to his great detriment and confusion.

5. And if the fight should be at sea I have kinds of many machines most efficient for offense and defense; and vessels which will resist the attack of the largest guns and powder and fumes.

6. I have means by secret and tortuous mines and ways, made without noise, to reach a designated spot, even if it were needed to pass under a trench or a river.

7. I will make covered chariots, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the enemy with their artillery, there is no body of men so great but they would break them. And behind these, infantry could follow quite unhurt and without any hindrance.

8. In case of need I will make big guns, mortars, and light ordnance of fine and useful forms, out of the common type.

9. Where the operation of bombardment might fail, I would contrive catapults, mangonels, trabocchi, and other machines of marvellous efficacy and not in common use. And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of offense and defense.

10. In times of peace I believe I can give perfect satisfaction and to the equal of any other in architecture and the composition of buildings public and private; and in guiding water from one place to another.

11. I can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also I can do in painting whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may.

Again, the bronze horse may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honor of the prince your father of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of Sforza.

And if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your park, or in whatever place may please your Excellency – to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility, etc.

True to the scientific spirit, Leonardo da Vinci charmingly asserts his proficiency at all the skills listed above, and then invites the Duke to verify his claims with the young da Vinci offering to ‘make the experiment’ in his presence.

(via Cendella; Manuscript courtesy: Leonardo3 from Hoepli edition 1894-1094; Leonardo top image: Kings Gallery)

I

saac Asimov, one of science fiction’s most beloved authors, was a terrifically prolific writer whose work spanned such diverse fields such as science, history, the study of the Bible, philosophy, and literature, among others. Asimov’s autobiography is amongst the longest works he ever wrote, comprising two volumes as well as additional companion volumes such as I, Asimov, and a companion book edited by Janet Jeppson Asimov, It’s Been A Good Life.

Asimov, who recounts his experience of living as someone on the ‘higher’ end of the intelligence scale early in his childhood and teens in his autobiography, delights us in this amusing tale, where he recounts an incident that shines a light on our perception of intelligence.

What is intelligence, anyway?

When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me.

(It didn’t mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP – kitchen police – as my highest duty.)

All my life I’ve been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I’m highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too.

Actually, though, don’t such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests – people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was.

Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles – and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test.

Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too.

In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly.

My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again.

He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me.

One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand.

“The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers.

Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.”

Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.”

“Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.”

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.

→ Isaac Asimov, It’s Been A Good Life

(via Talent Develop; image: Isaac Asimov)

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hew on this: On an average, Americans eat 3 burgers per week. That’s 156 burgers per person, per year. Which translates to a staggering 48 billion burgers every year.

A typical quarter pounder costs about 3 or 4 bucks: pretty cheap, right? But, as this animated short film from Center for Investigative Reporting illustrates in detail, what we don’t pay for at the counter, we end up paying in other ways.

Turns out, a burger isn’t really that cheap after all: the system continues to be a cause for major environmental and health concerns. Mass production of beef entails more and more land reserved for pastures, which in turn means land encroachment as well as other environmental pitfalls. As The Hidden Cost of Hamburgers points out, cows take a lot of space – and a lot of food before they are sent to be slaughtered. All this boils down to heavy resource consumption in terms of land and water resources, and a major environmental threat: mass beef production is responsible for an overwhelming 150,000,000 tonnes of green house gases per year – that’s equal to the annual pollution output of 35 coal powered industrial plants!

Imagine cameras have been around since the creation of Earth to record every major event.

Take a photographic journey thorough time from the violent birth of our planet four and a half billion years ago, through ice-ages, massive volcanic eruptions and the dinosaurs’ reign to the first humans. For the first time, see the incredible story of our planet unfold in one single, seamless camera move.

☛ Watch Earth: The Making of a Planet on Youtube

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ational Geographic presents the first accurate non-stop voyage from Earth to the edge of the Universe using a single, unbroken shot through the use of spectacular CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) technology. Building on images taken from the Hubble telescope, Journey to the Edge of the Universe explores the science and history behind the distant celestial bodies in the solar system.

This spectacular, epic voyage across the cosmos, takes us from the Earth, past the Moon and our neighboring planets, out of our Solar System, to the nearest stars, nebulae and galaxies and beyond – right to the edge of the Universe itself.
When you finish this video, you will walk away from it with an awareness that you never had before, of the unseen astronomically massive universe that we float around on like a spec of dust in the ocean.

This video takes you on a journey through the universe as if you are watching a Sci Fi adventure. Yet you constantly have to remind yourself that what you’re seeing is really out there.

☛ Watch Journey to the Edge of the Universe on Youtube

ikipedia has been an indispensable part of our lives for quite some time now. Although it’s not without its flaws, the fact remains that no other equivalent, either in the pre-internet or the post-internet world, comes close to matching the sheer range and depth of Wikipedia. It is the largest collection of knowledge today, a sort of Library of Alexandria of the contemporary world. But unlike its historical equivalent, Wikipedia is global and local at the same time, it is a giant collective effort spanning multiple cultures, places, and people. It is multilingual, international, and, above all, it is free.

New, a creative agency based out of Lithuania, seeks to rebrand the world’s biggest encyclopedia in their Rebranding Wikipedia project. The good folks at New have clearly done their homework and have introduced a number of changes across different fields, spanning information architecture, design, logo and branding, and user experience. Many of the changes strike us as imminently valuable, adding to the ease in the overall UX experience, and in how we deal with information on the site.

Rebranding Wikipedia is an interesting exercise in rebranding one of our most familar and indispensible brands, and it manages to add value to the overall experience the site could offer us.