Tuesday

Must Be Theme Week

"The intellectual lassitude we breed in students, their unearned and inflated self-confidence, undercuts both the self-discipline and the intellectual modesty that is needed for the apprentice years in the sciences. Modesty? Yes, for while talented scientists are often proud of their talent and accomplishments, they universally subscribe to the humbling need to prove themselves against the most-unyielding standards of inquiry. That willingness to play by nature's rules runs in contrast to the make-it-up-as-you-go-along insouciance that characterizes so many variants of postmodernism and that flatters itself as being a higher form of pragmatism."

"How Our Culture Keeps Students Out of Science"
Chronicle of Higher Education, August 8, 2008 - Point of View [clicky]

OR

"The only way you’ll ever learn a thing
Is to admit that you know absolutely nothing"

"Old Enough"
Consolers of the Lonely, The Raconteurs