Consulting medieval manuscripts online:

http://www.utm.edu/staff/bobp/vlibrary/mdmss.shtml
Gyrodrive - kinetic energy recovery system - as the car brakes
Free internet access in Africa:
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/07/introducing-the-internet-org-app/
Explanation of Algebraic data types:
http://tech.esper.com/2014/07/30/algebraic-data-types/
It takes more than practice to excel:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140728094258.htm
It's not as important as many have thought. What does count for the skills is st
ill unknown.
The original theory was from K. Anders Ericsson, a Swedish psychologist.
Practice explains 12 percent in mastering skills in various areas, from music, s
port and games to education and professions.
26% for games
21% for music
18% for sports
4% for education
<1% for other professions
When the amount of practice was estimated by logged hours in a journal over time
- presumably a more accurate than when one tried to estimate lifetime practice
from memory - practice made up an even smaller percentage in acquiring the skill
than the study's average.
[Comment: This doesn't take into account the quality of practice, or what is in
the practice - how do you assess that? If we can only go on the basis of what is
measurable, then we can only measure the time spent, and there is likely a lot
of variance in quality even when time is constant.]
Other things the psychologist will consider: basic abilities, age when starting
to learn the skill, confidence, positive or negative feedback, self-motivation,
and the ability to take risks [ - all of which are thigns we would expect from a
narrative explanation. Psychology is a fiction, and we require fiction to make
sense. The real world does not act in a narrative fashion - it acts as it does,
and we have to take into account the way our perception changes what we perceive
and how we perceive it. How does one measure skill, anyway? It is more complica
ted than trying to grade someone on a sliding scale or on a kite diagram. It can
not yet be approached algorithmically.]
Study on childhood memory:
http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/where-do-childrens-earliest-memories-go/
[Again a problem with narrative. we can only express memories to others in words
, yet memories are not verbal in nature. Hoew can we understand how memory actua
lly works? Also the problem of trying to give mathematical underpinnings to soci
al science research. "This thing is three times as likely to be the case". That
is an expression of a relationship found in a sample of data, not a fundamental
relationship that reflects a dynamic in the physical world. But it makes it soun
d more scientific and official. If we stopped dressing up social science to be a
ctual science, perhaps we would pay less attention to it.]
Da da-dah da da-dah da da-dah
There is more than one string to my bow
Da da-dah da da-dah da da-dah
There is more than one thing that I know
Write the polymath manifesto
In this world of endless specialisation, we are driven to look where we already
are, because it is easier to see there. In our struggle to carve out a niche for
ourselves, we have become nothing more than a very small cog in a very big mach
ine.
We are more than our specialism(s). We are each of us a small, perfectly formed
island, with its own unique products and idiocyncracies, still maintained and no
urished by the ocean it finds itself in. But as our islands move closer together
, and we allow other people to come ashore, we may find that the beautiful gifts
they bring from their boats simply hide the landmoving machinery that follows,
reshaping our hills and valleys into a flat expanse for some other to build on i
n the shape of their own design. We cannot all remain isolated, but we also cann
ot all let ourselves be shaped into the homogeneity of the mass. We must seek th
at place somewhere in between.