The Importance of Incubation

The Importance of Incubation

Are you ever tangled up in a tough problem, sleep on it, and then wake up with a solution?   Do ideas come to you in the shower, on a walk, or doing the dishes?  These ideas come to you through incubation—a time of mental rest (or distraction) with no conscious...
Fresh Air of Common Sense

Fresh Air of Common Sense

“What I expect now is something as dramatic is going to happen, not so much in medicine but in economy and culture.”      — Gianna Pomata, Institute of the History of Medicine, at Johns Hopkins University.   Pandemics force people to change how...
Prisoners of Experience

Prisoners of Experience

“This is about lack of imagination.” Ali S. Khan, of the National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases, New Yorker, May 4, 2020 The Coronavirus pandemic caught the world by surprise and found us unprepared.  Dr. Khan is not alone in his assessment:...
Turning Education Upside Down

Turning Education Upside Down

Like the U.S., Canada has been thrust into a national educational experiment in distance learning.  However, long before the arrival of Covid-19, the Ontario Ministry of Education was pushing to increase online learning in the name of “digital literacy.” In January...
The Great Distance Learning Experiment

The Great Distance Learning Experiment

The coronavirus has turned American education into a vast uncharted experiment, in which we are all both the experimenters and the guinea pigs. As one teacher commented in Education Week about the move to remote, on-line learning, we are “operating in the wild,...
Students Need New Skillset – Creativity

Students Need New Skillset – Creativity

By Stanley Rosenberg and Dan Hunter Originally published in Commonwealth: Nonprofit Journal of Politics, Ideas, and Civic Life on June 1, 2019   TODAY WE MUST educate children for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented. The...
Rock-Paper-Scissors

Rock-Paper-Scissors

Now!  After centuries of mystery! Get the low-down on the throw-down showdown! Artificial intelligence to the rescue! The ancient Japanese game of janken, known as rock-paper-scissors in English, has been mastered by a robot powered by artificial intelligence.  Don’t...
Froggie Went a Courtin’ Algorithms

Froggie Went a Courtin’ Algorithms

You’ve just enjoyed a standup comedy routine or watched a comedy in the theater.  Maybe, you even laughed until you cried.  You feel good. (wriggly) Why do humans laugh?  What causes the laughter?  What is the state of laughing science? (puffball) E.B. and Katherine...