The Aesthetics and Beauty of Knowledge
Shih was the opposite of facts and raw information; shih was the elegance of knowledge, the insight and skill to organize knowledge into meaningful patterns. As an artist chooses colours or light to make her pictures, a master of shih chooses textures of knowledge – various ideas, myths, abstractions, and theories – to create a way of seeing the world. The aesthetics and beauty of knowledge – this was shih.
– David Zindell, The Broken God, 1993
Geek Attitude
The attitude thing is about flexibility, portability, creativity, sociability and jamming (ran out of suitable “ity” words!). It’s about improvising – in the practical and musical senses of the word; not getting tangled in boundaries and the “right” way to do things.
Definitely the only way to travel.
– Martin Delaney – “Laptop Music”.
Kuehleborn's Unfathomable Thoughts
The Olomouc Astronomical Clock
This summer I visited some Central European countries, like Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. I’ve had my portion of culture there, I visited a lot of churches and enjoyed the finest food. But the biggest surprise was in the city Olomouc, when having a cup of coffee on the main square, where I was […]
Why are online articles so expensive?
George Dvorsky wrote an article for io9.com: did life on other planets originate from earth? He describes the study by Edward Belbruno, Amaya Moro-Martin, Renu Malhotra, Dmitry Savransky: “Chaotic exchange of solid material between planetary systems: implications for lithopanspermia” I’m not sure about the soundness of the conclusion (the possibility of lithopanspermia, a kind of […]
Repetitive task-management
I found an old but nice post about Geeks and repetitive tasks by Jon Udell. It starts with quoting a Google+ post by Bruno Oliveira. The other day Tim Bray tweeted a Google+ item entitled Geeks and repetitive tasks along with the comment: “Geeks win, eventually.” Here’s the chart posted on Google+ by Bruno Oliveira: […]
The Jedi Code
From Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki The Jedi Code was a code of conduct that established rules and modes of behavior for all Jedi. Although changing in style through the generations, the main tenets, context and meaning of the code stayed the same. One of the key portions of the Code was a five-line mantra. […]
Massive Open Online Courses
Here is an interesting infographic about MOOCs: Massive Open Online Classes. I am a teacher myself, but I know that most of my students learn a lot from YouTube videos, where people explain how they play a certain song on their guitar or keyboard. So, I jumped on the bandwagon and put some instruction videos […]
Geek Travel
This could be a great website and it really was an eye-opener to me. “Wanderlust for Geeks” – what a great tagline!. Planning my vacation is not in my system, and I’m happy to have a significant other who is doing all the work and drags me away from my computer screen now and then […]
Steampunk from Alchemy to Zeppelins
My reading of Larry Niven’s “Fallen Angels” introduced me to the world of Fandom and Filk Music. eFanzines is a website that hosts many fanzines. I subscribed to the eFanzines stream with twitter and one of the first items I ran into was “One Swell Loop” One Swell Foop is the personalzine of Garth Spencer. […]
New Science Fiction magazines
Two science magazines – New Scientist and MIT Technology Review have recently announced to publish their own science fiction magazines. From the editors of Technology Review comes TRSF, an 80-page anthology of original near-future science fiction stories. The first issue promises “12 visions of the future of computing, biotechnology, energy, and more”, written by, among […]
Geek Love: 10 Reasons to Date a Geek.
Just recycling a post by Harry Mylonadis on “The Next Web“. With Post Valentine Depression now well behind us, I thought it was time to cheer up and write about something more positive. A few days ago my wife turned to me, while I was brainstorming uber-geeky topics and ideas, and told me “You should […]
Geek or Nerd? Again that boring discussion, but with nice infographics
I have discussed the subject before on this weblog, but it still is an interesting point of blogging: what is the difference between a geek and a nerd? A new infographic, provided by Masters in IT, has been recycled around the internet recently, so let me jump on the bandwagon too and copy-paste it here. […]