Monthly Archives: June 2011

The size of the internet

June 30, 2011

Just how fast is the internet growing, how big is it, and what does this really mean? Assessing the size of the Internet is a somewhat difficult proposition, since it is a distributed body, and no complete index of it exists. What we mean by asking how large the Internet is also plays into how [...]


you can never win…

June 30, 2011

I ran across a couple articles online which presented one of the most important and least used ideas regarding how we act online… trying to correct idiots, trying to win some debate (OK a flame war…), or to triumph in any interaction where you are merely a commenter, a member of a listserv community is [...]


create a blog using only the iPad!

June 30, 2011

If you want to be a real pioneer on the iPad, here are some great posts to direct you towards but for now, it is in the realm of explorers and discoverers. In the following three articles, you can see (especially if you read them in their entirety) that using the iPad (ONLY the iPad) [...]


Some more iPad security tricks…

June 30, 2011

I have been looking for ways to secure and to encrypt much of the information I keep on my iPad…I’ve been looking since I got it. In the last month I see the beginnings of some baby steps in this effort to make the iPad a real, serious platform for real work, for business, and [...]


1879 fifth graders!

June 29, 2011

Less than a month ago I presented a PDF of an 1870’s Harvard University entrance exam (i.e. for prospective incoming freshmen…). If you were to look this exam over, you could see that the level of rigor in our education system has changed (pretty dramatically!). Of course, there are some counter arguments to present, such [...]


Shakespeare is that important…

June 29, 2011

I suppose one could make a reasonable argument that spending 80% of all of one’s reading time on Shakespeare’s works may be time well spent (absolutely well spent!). Of course, only a few English professors (and few enough of them) spend that much time with the bard. After being inculcated to the wonders of his [...]


not knowing…

June 29, 2011

I have often wondered whether the current movement in education circles towards diminishing the teaching of data in lieu of ‘critical thinking’…in elementary school. We have been seen the ongoing dissolution of teaching such war horses as the multiplication tables (and the consequent loss of gaining the deep structures requisite in being able to perform [...]


iPad input apps…

June 29, 2011

For most of us who are amongst the early adopters of tablet computing, the iPad quickly became seen as merely a content consumption device. And to be honest, it is a great device for consuming almost any form of media content, whether it is books to read, videos or movies to watch, photos to look [...]


The limits to intelligence…

June 28, 2011

These are tow interesting articles from Scientific American which posit the idea that human intelligence is ultimately limited by physics and chemistry. This is certainly true, that these are the fundamental limits… I wonder how close we are to them. These are questions which CPU and semiconductor makers consider all the time… There are obvious [...]


Colleges still have a few problems…

June 28, 2011

I presented a few positive arguments regarding the continuing validity of the traditional liberal arts baccalaureate degree. Here is another side to the issue. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the criticisms of the traditional liberal arts degree (or aspects of the ‘education bubble’). But every article I have cited here has [...]


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