Ray Kurzweil on learning:
Knowledge is doubling every 13 months by some measures.And knowledge isn’t just a database. Knowledge is a symphony or a jazz band or a poem or a novel or a new scientific insight or an invention.
Joshua Katz, a Ph. D student in statistics at North Carolina State University, just published a group of awesome visualizations of Professor Bert Voux’s linguistic survey that looked at how Americans pronounce words.
His results were first published on Abstract, the N.C. State research blog.
Want to know how other Americans pronounce words like caramel or pecan? Check it out here.
As the school year comes to and end and summer break begins for most of you, the words of “Uncle” Walt Whitman seem especially appropriate:
“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
Have a wonderful summer. Experience dirt between your toes, sunlight on your faces, and wisdom in your minds.
