Fast forwarding from ca 1000 AD until 2003 showing Europe’s shifting borders, alliances, unions, territories, occupied land etc.
Most Likely to Succeed How do we hire when we can’t tell who’s right for the job?
…the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year’s worth of learning in a single year.
An interesting piece from Malcolm Gladwell on how hard it is to predict success in football and teaching, and of course it’s applicable in other fields as well.
“ There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
Richard Feynman on scientific method:
- Guess
- Compute the consequences of the guess
- Compare those computation results to nature
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. Period.
(via jtotheizzoe)
“ Nothing that is undertaken is to be undertaken without a purpose, nor otherwise than according to a principle which makes the art of living perfect.”
“ Make up your mind that you deserve every word and work that is according to Nature, and do not allow the ensuing blame or speech of any men to talk you over; but, if it is right to be done or said, do not count yourself undeserving of it. Those others have their own selves to govern them, and use their several inclinations. Don’t look round at that, but walk the straight way, following your own and the common Nature, for the path of them both is one.”
“ Remember how long you have been putting off these things, and how many times the gods have given you days of grace, and yet you do not use them. Now is it high time to perceive the kind of Universe whereof you are a part and the nature of the governor of the Universe from whom you subsist as an effluence, and that the term of your time is circumscribed, and that unless you use it to attain calm of mind, time will be gone and you will be gone and the opportunity to use it will not be yours again.”
'Prince of Persia' creator Jordan Mechner on telling stories in 48 kilobytes or less
You can see in today’s triple-A console games how we can make it look and sound as awesome as we want, but removing those constraints doesn’t necessarily make things better. It’s often in pushing against a constraint that the best ideas arise.
I may be nostalgic, but I think 8-bit games and the lack of high-end graphics nourished your imagination and unleashed your creative mind making the story and the characters alive. Not unlike a book. In contemporary games nothing is left to the imagination, theres no need to think anymore, which is quite sad.
