This physicist says consciousness could be a new state of matter – ScienceAlert

http://www.sciencealert.com/this-physicist-is-arguing-that-consciousness-is-a-new-state-of-matter

Follow the link, which, rather like a network of neurons, leads to more links.   My frontal lobes haven’t been this excited since I read Douglas Hofstadter’s EGB, a book so heavy that even in paperback it has its own gravitational field. And that was when it first came out in paperback, mid 80s I’m guessing.

Nobody seems to know what to make of it at this very early stage, so far be it for me to try.
 Go read. But take it slow, pause every minute or so, to let the mind deboggle…

Only in America? The rise of the super-entitled gimme-gimme generation​?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/Mickey-goodman/are-we-raising-a-generati_b_1249706.html

“When a college freshman received a C- on her first test, she literally had a meltdown in class. Sobbing, she texted her mother who called back, demanding to talk to the professor immediately (he, of course, declined). Another mother accompanied her child on a job interview, then wondered why he didn’t get the job.

“A major employer reported that during a job interview, a potential employee told him that she would have his job within 18 months. It didn’t even cross her mind that he had worked 20 years to achieve his goal.

Sound crazy?”

Risk assessment or judgmental moralising do-goodery?

This is a real breakthrough for the Rebel Alliance in the fight against the Risk Empire.
 
“Yet leaving your kid alone, even for a short time in safe circumstances, can lead to a child-abuse investigation.
 
What’s going on?
 
The researchers suspected that the overestimating of risk reflects moral convictions about proper parenting.”
They were right.

https://www.thestar.com/life/2016/09/13/if-you-leave-your-kids-alone-its-not-predatory-strangers-who-are-a-risk.html

Promoting Play. Promoting Good Things when other folk don’t want to pay for them.

The photo is murky, the image indistinct and semantically unfocused, the typeface is a let’s make it look like handwriting but not comic sans (2 marks for that) and most of all, the quote is bogus. 

Why was this chosen to promote “Play”?

What does it mean? It’s fuzzy, didactic and unmemorable. Something about a spark. The words are dead cliché words. 

Who is the It? Is it the spark or the child? Yes, I know, it’s supposed to be the spark, but the subject of the sentence is the child. 

Lighting the path? Only one path? Really? Not many, why not? Branching paths? No, just THE PATH. The Great One* has spoken. 

For the Adult to be?!? Teleological piffle! The Serious and Ironic Crime Squad have been informed. 

Play is not preparation for adulthood, play is “that’s it, that’s what happened” to quote Miles Davis. It’s easy to understand backwards isn’t it, Søren?
_______

*Soreen malt loaf was named after the philosopher, btw.

*The Great One would appear to be the awesome Charles Hawtrey (1914 –1988), born as George Frederick Joffre Hartree, was an English comedy actor and musician. Starred in the Carry On films and was known …

Why urban myths about education are so persistent – and how to tackle them

https://theconversation.com/why-urban-myths-about-education-are-so-persistent-and-how-to-tackle-them-60680

To be written.
 Relevant to anybody helping people work together to do things better.

In place of thought: why don’t we (the UK body politic) system-think?

​http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/sports-direct-zero-hour-contracts-public-shaming-we-need-to-do-it-more-often-a7228291.html
(History fact: ‘In Place Of Strife’ was a famous paper on the topic of labour relations in olden times. Google it)