Fire and Knowledge

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

—Albert Einstein, as quoted in Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek (2007), p. 82.

It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.

—Robert H. Jackson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice as quoted in Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (Ballantine Books: 1995), p. 422.

Google acquired Feedburner over a year ago. Since then, innovation there has appeared to stop. It would seem like being acquired by a company with virtually unlimited capital (monetary and intellectual) would give more resources to increase innovation, but instead it seems to have been the death knell of innovation. The service became completely free, but often buggy and without support.

If this continues, someone will soon come out with a Feedburner killer. Or does it already exist and I don’t know about it?

I am quite sure that if you slow-baked, say, an oven glove and covered it sufficiently with ketchup, [my father] would have declared, after a ruminative moment’s chewing, “Hey, this is very tasty.” Good food, in short, was something that was wasted upon him, and my mother labored diligently for years to see that he was never disappointed.

—Bill Bryson, I’m a Stranger Here Myself (Broadway Books: 1999), p. 143.

A task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It is the magic of the imminent deadline…. The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus…. Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

—Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek (2007), p. 75.

Experiment and the scientific method can be taught in many matters other than science…. Want the students to understand the Constitution of the United States? You could have them read it, Article by Article, and then discuss it in class—but, sadly, this will put most of them to sleep.

Or you could try the [Daniel] Kunitz method: You forbid the students to read the Constitution. Instead, you assign them, two for each state, to attend a Constitutional Convention. You brief each of the thirteen teams in detail on the particular interests of their state and region. The South Carolina delegation, say, would be told the primacy of cotton, the necessity and morality of the slave trade; the danger posed by the industrial North, and so on. The thirteen delegations assemble, and with a little faculty guidance, but mainly on their own, over some weeks write a constitution. Then they read the Constitution. The students have reserved war-making powers to the President. The delegates of 1787 assigned them to Congress. Why? The students have freed the slaves. The original Constitutional Convention did not. Why?

This takes more preparation by the teachers and more work by the students, but the experience is unforgettable. It’s hard not to think that the nations of the Earth would be in better shape if every citizen went through a comparable experience.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (Ballantine Books: 1995), pp. 326-327.