21 hours ago: Lizanne, No, I have not submitted my idea to anyone, because it came up to me.the very first time. And don't worry about it. I am old enough that any of my ideas would be permitted for anyone to use as they like. I wouldn't even quarrel about the authorship anymore. By the way, I posted some new ideas in a current TED DISCUSSION about "utopia" which might be constituted as novel practical ideas. But again anybody can use it as s/he pleases.
1 day ago: I am an applied mathematician. Let me explain the number 3 somewhat differently from your argument. First of all , the reason that all the "even" numbers are non primes except the 2, of course because all of them are divisible by 2. But how does the word "even" come from? My interpretation is that if you put 2 identical weights on both sides of a balance scale, the "arm" of the scale will be flat over the supporting surface, which we usually called as being "even" with the surface. Now, if we look at the arm of the balance as a straight line, then the the concept of the evenness would be similar to the meaning of "parallel".
Now this could be followed with my extension of your observation. Suppose that we build a "balance" with 3 semi-arms, with 120 degrees apart from each other emitting out from the center support with a needle tip. Then when you put THREE equal weights onto the 3 pans hanging from the 3 arms, then they will also be balanced. They are balanced over a flat surface rather than over a superficial line. What I am saying is that we could have named the group of all numbers which are divisible by 3 as "steven"? (from the words "even steven") numbers as contrasted to the term 'even" for the numbers divisible by 2. But jokes aside, I would call these numbers "treven" (from the term trois or tres for the number 3 in Fr or Sp) If we all accept this new terminology then we would have a group of non-prime "trevens", except the value 3. Similarly, we could call a group on numbers divisible by 5 as "cinevens", etc.
My argument is that the phenomenon of the "even" numbers is not mythical, but rather it was due to the ancient numerologists' not looking beyond the "one-dimensional reasoning".
1 day ago: From reading in many posters here, I realized that many emphasized earth/environment friendly measure or practices. Please excuse my verbosity, let me suggest some approach toward a halfway goal to the utopian concept by improving the earth-friendly practice (termed: "terrami") which are quite practical, because they are already existed or are projected within the near future.
1. "Terrami" housing units
The government or community planning group should organize a contractor to mass-produce a standardized house unit, all with only reasonable sized rooms and with solar panels and electrically wired thru the whole house to save energy use. There also will be water recycling and waste processing equipments attached to the house. The former is capable of treating the waste water and produce potable water and sanitized water for reuse or for gardening irrigation. The food recycle unit accepts the food or other waste and converts them into dried fertilizer to be used for growing plants in the garden or asking the municipal agency to collect them to be used by other citizens.
2. Terrami transportation:
There are only 2 means of transportation by most citizens. The first is the mass transportation. They should be extensively set up so that there wont be long distance travel by the individual riders from their home to the public stations. The more important new improvement is the private transportation tools. It's already in rapid development that a vehicle can travel all (driverless) by itself from a designated spot A to spot B. So for a commuter for working or shopping. the "car" can be used to send the day worker in the morning to the ride on mass transit, but immediately returns to his home after he left by the train. Furthermore, this personal vehicle can be fueled by all 3 modes; solar, electric and manual peddling, if it is made to be very light weight. Imagine how much energy saving and CO2 reduction be made by such setup.
It can surely be done before 2150.
2 days ago: Let me get a belated suggestion in before the thread expires. One of the teaching methods when I was in a 7th grade class
is to give a drill test immediately at the beginning (or at the end ) of the next day class, on the very topic you taught in the previous class time. The essential idea is to encourage the students to learn the materials while it was still fresh in their minds. It would be a set of a few questions that takes between six to eight minutes for majority of the students to finish, but not necessarily for everybody to finish. The materials , of course, will be relevant to the standardized test subject. But to relieve the psychological pressure on the students, there won't be any records , at least to link the scores to the names of the students taking the drill tests. To save your time and effort in reading the answer sheets, it could be done by posting the answers to the class after the time limit and let the student sitting next to the test-taker to read and score the answers. This should serve every student the process of learning the topic, preparing and taking the drill test, and finding the correct answers right away, They could even ask questions about the logic behind the answers right there in class. However, you would have some idea in how much success the students will achieve when the formal standardized test is given.
Personally I believe that one can usually retain the materials taught much better if the materials were immediately reviewed and reenforced. Also, the students are usually reluctant to ask questions, especially on the materials taught in previous classes. So, instead of a couple of trial tests mimicking the complete standardized test, this approach will more effectively train the students to understand the concept thoroughly under no pressure, and to retain them for a long time.
3 days ago: You couldn't define the superiority without referring to what aspects of life are compared. As many of the previous comments already explained that women are superior in nurturing of children. They live longer. They are more capable of maintaining a household. They are also superior in singing and dancing.
Let me also speculate what could be cause of the evolution or natural selection of the females and the males of the world. The nature selected women as the child-bearers as an incontrovertible fact. Then who would be the logical choice for the nursing and nurturing of the children? Of course it's the women! For that purpose, women were made more tender and delicate, their skin and stature are smaller and finer, even their voices are closer to that of the children, which make them more intimate and approachable by the young children. So men simply are hardly competitive with women in the "job" of child nurturing and caring of the children. Because of the "job responsibility", women have to sacrifice their brutal strength as well as the size in stature. As far as intelligence is concerned, I doubt that any incontrovertible result could be made.
That's really the adaptation by either gender for their strengths rather than the comparison or the competition. As a half joke of a speculation, the reason (not necessarily wrong) that women live longer is because if the wife dies prematurely, even the old grandmother is still the better carer of the children than their father!
So the comparison of the "superiority" of men and women is simply nonsense. For instance, which is superior between a dog and a cat? Or between a cow and a sheep?
3 days ago: Let me try to what I conceive to be your idea of making up a universal language based on logical thinking as well as combining the phonetics of most spoken languages of the world. I agree with your goal and wish your success. Even though I also learned about Esperanto many years ago, but it seems having gradually faded away.
Here are a few of my speculation of what you are trying to do.
One example of the sentence " 请坐“ in Chinese seems to be simplest and logical. So this approach should be chosen over others like "Asseyez-vous, s'il vous plait" (in French) seems redundant as well as not too logical to place the word "please" in the back of sit-down. Also the English "sit down" is also a little redundant, because if you are talking with a guest who is standing face to face with you, he ,of course, is to sit down, instead of up.
Also, in lot of Romance languages, the adjective is frequently located after the noun it is to refer to. Example, "mercado libre" (free market) when it is spoken by Spanish speakers, they don't even give it a thought whether the noun preceded the adjective while the latter is the modifier on the former.
And the conjugation of the verbs according to the pronouns, in Latin/Romance languages, are not absolutely necessary in the logical sense.
The basic change of a language, by phonics, into a simplified one, actually have already happened in Korea in their own alphabets, and in Vietnam, by the French alphabets. And also in Japanese in tortuously slow metamorphosis.
Please tell me how I am doing.
3 days ago: I have to side with Della about the responsibility of school teaching moral values; such as peace and empathy of teaching to the young children. I am sure that you must have the proper attitude and means to teach your children about the values of empathy and morality, but I believe that the percentage of parents with young children in the U. S., over 50% of them probably either don't know what is the value of peace or empathy, or they don't know how, or have no ability, to educate their children about this topic. Also, when you look at many bullies in schools, most of them are likely having highly educated parents who simply don't have time or the urge to educate their own children about moral values.
In my own experience, I always believe that the schools should at least share part of the responsibility in teaching the spirit of "peace" and empathy. I don't see that this is in conflict with concurrent teaching by their parents, at all.
Also there are many protective parents, who became overly protective on their children so that they would injure or even kill the "enemy" of their children to "resolve the conflict". So, would it be safer for a third party, such as a trained teacher, to show a better way in the approach by a peaceful resolution?
3 days ago: Pat,
You are exactly right, For example, there are many more N. Koreans trying to sneak into China than the other way around, even though both countries are led by communist government. This would be the same if the N. and S. Koreans are allowed to travel freely thru the DMZ. The distinction between the economic policies of N. Korea and China is the so-called equalization of income levels that it is allowed to have free enterprises in China, while there have no free enterprises, at least any mid-cap businesses or industries, are allowed to exist in N. Korea. The net effect is the the "EQUALIZATION" PULLS DOWN THE INCOME OF EVERYBODY THERE EXCEPT THE RULERS FROM THE KIM FAMILY.
4 days ago: Let me also comment on the immortality question. If the new world with all the people being conscious of our environment and our obligations to our fellow men/women, and were happy and content with no fear of being oppressed or harmed intentionally, we would naturally LIVE LONGER AND IN BETTER HEALTH CONDITIONS AS WELL.
However, if everybody wishes to live forever, then how would the earth support more and more humanity, unless we stop to reproduce our own offspring? That's selfishness which is definitely detrimental to the utopia concept.
If I am allowed to make my own decision, I would gladly leave the world contentedly and peacefully to give room to our offspring without any regret.
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A reply on Conversation: What is it about 'three'?
A comment on Conversation: What is it about 'three'?
Now this could be followed with my extension of your observation. Suppose that we build a "balance" with 3 semi-arms, with 120 degrees apart from each other emitting out from the center support with a needle tip. Then when you put THREE equal weights onto the 3 pans hanging from the 3 arms, then they will also be balanced. They are balanced over a flat surface rather than over a superficial line. What I am saying is that we could have named the group of all numbers which are divisible by 3 as "steven"? (from the words "even steven") numbers as contrasted to the term 'even" for the numbers divisible by 2. But jokes aside, I would call these numbers "treven" (from the term trois or tres for the number 3 in Fr or Sp) If we all accept this new terminology then we would have a group of non-prime "trevens", except the value 3. Similarly, we could call a group on numbers divisible by 5 as "cinevens", etc.
My argument is that the phenomenon of the "even" numbers is not mythical, but rather it was due to the ancient numerologists' not looking beyond the "one-dimensional reasoning".
A comment on Conversation: What does your utopian future look like?
1. "Terrami" housing units
The government or community planning group should organize a contractor to mass-produce a standardized house unit, all with only reasonable sized rooms and with solar panels and electrically wired thru the whole house to save energy use. There also will be water recycling and waste processing equipments attached to the house. The former is capable of treating the waste water and produce potable water and sanitized water for reuse or for gardening irrigation. The food recycle unit accepts the food or other waste and converts them into dried fertilizer to be used for growing plants in the garden or asking the municipal agency to collect them to be used by other citizens.
2. Terrami transportation:
There are only 2 means of transportation by most citizens. The first is the mass transportation. They should be extensively set up so that there wont be long distance travel by the individual riders from their home to the public stations. The more important new improvement is the private transportation tools. It's already in rapid development that a vehicle can travel all (driverless) by itself from a designated spot A to spot B. So for a commuter for working or shopping. the "car" can be used to send the day worker in the morning to the ride on mass transit, but immediately returns to his home after he left by the train. Furthermore, this personal vehicle can be fueled by all 3 modes; solar, electric and manual peddling, if it is made to be very light weight. Imagine how much energy saving and CO2 reduction be made by such setup.
It can surely be done before 2150.
A comment on Conversation: I propose we abandon traditional forms of assessment in schools to focus on a more creative learning environment.
is to give a drill test immediately at the beginning (or at the end ) of the next day class, on the very topic you taught in the previous class time. The essential idea is to encourage the students to learn the materials while it was still fresh in their minds. It would be a set of a few questions that takes between six to eight minutes for majority of the students to finish, but not necessarily for everybody to finish. The materials , of course, will be relevant to the standardized test subject. But to relieve the psychological pressure on the students, there won't be any records , at least to link the scores to the names of the students taking the drill tests. To save your time and effort in reading the answer sheets, it could be done by posting the answers to the class after the time limit and let the student sitting next to the test-taker to read and score the answers. This should serve every student the process of learning the topic, preparing and taking the drill test, and finding the correct answers right away, They could even ask questions about the logic behind the answers right there in class. However, you would have some idea in how much success the students will achieve when the formal standardized test is given.
Personally I believe that one can usually retain the materials taught much better if the materials were immediately reviewed and reenforced. Also, the students are usually reluctant to ask questions, especially on the materials taught in previous classes. So, instead of a couple of trial tests mimicking the complete standardized test, this approach will more effectively train the students to understand the concept thoroughly under no pressure, and to retain them for a long time.
A comment on Conversation: Should males be treated as superior to female counterparts, in any sphere of life? Why or why not?
Let me also speculate what could be cause of the evolution or natural selection of the females and the males of the world. The nature selected women as the child-bearers as an incontrovertible fact. Then who would be the logical choice for the nursing and nurturing of the children? Of course it's the women! For that purpose, women were made more tender and delicate, their skin and stature are smaller and finer, even their voices are closer to that of the children, which make them more intimate and approachable by the young children. So men simply are hardly competitive with women in the "job" of child nurturing and caring of the children. Because of the "job responsibility", women have to sacrifice their brutal strength as well as the size in stature. As far as intelligence is concerned, I doubt that any incontrovertible result could be made.
That's really the adaptation by either gender for their strengths rather than the comparison or the competition. As a half joke of a speculation, the reason (not necessarily wrong) that women live longer is because if the wife dies prematurely, even the old grandmother is still the better carer of the children than their father!
So the comparison of the "superiority" of men and women is simply nonsense. For instance, which is superior between a dog and a cat? Or between a cow and a sheep?
A reply on Conversation: Should males be treated as superior to female counterparts, in any sphere of life? Why or why not?
A comment on Conversation: The viability of implementing a logically constructed Language. Namely Lojban.
Here are a few of my speculation of what you are trying to do.
One example of the sentence " 请坐“ in Chinese seems to be simplest and logical. So this approach should be chosen over others like "Asseyez-vous, s'il vous plait" (in French) seems redundant as well as not too logical to place the word "please" in the back of sit-down. Also the English "sit down" is also a little redundant, because if you are talking with a guest who is standing face to face with you, he ,of course, is to sit down, instead of up.
Also, in lot of Romance languages, the adjective is frequently located after the noun it is to refer to. Example, "mercado libre" (free market) when it is spoken by Spanish speakers, they don't even give it a thought whether the noun preceded the adjective while the latter is the modifier on the former.
And the conjugation of the verbs according to the pronouns, in Latin/Romance languages, are not absolutely necessary in the logical sense.
The basic change of a language, by phonics, into a simplified one, actually have already happened in Korea in their own alphabets, and in Vietnam, by the French alphabets. And also in Japanese in tortuously slow metamorphosis.
Please tell me how I am doing.
A reply on Conversation: Instead of, "No bullying," let's shift the focus in schools to Peace. Let us teach peace explicitly in every school.
In my own experience, I always believe that the schools should at least share part of the responsibility in teaching the spirit of "peace" and empathy. I don't see that this is in conflict with concurrent teaching by their parents, at all.
Also there are many protective parents, who became overly protective on their children so that they would injure or even kill the "enemy" of their children to "resolve the conflict". So, would it be safer for a third party, such as a trained teacher, to show a better way in the approach by a peaceful resolution?
A reply on Conversation: How can we close the gap between the rich and the poor? Why is economic democratization happening?
You are exactly right, For example, there are many more N. Koreans trying to sneak into China than the other way around, even though both countries are led by communist government. This would be the same if the N. and S. Koreans are allowed to travel freely thru the DMZ. The distinction between the economic policies of N. Korea and China is the so-called equalization of income levels that it is allowed to have free enterprises in China, while there have no free enterprises, at least any mid-cap businesses or industries, are allowed to exist in N. Korea. The net effect is the the "EQUALIZATION" PULLS DOWN THE INCOME OF EVERYBODY THERE EXCEPT THE RULERS FROM THE KIM FAMILY.
A comment on Conversation: What does your utopian future look like?
However, if everybody wishes to live forever, then how would the earth support more and more humanity, unless we stop to reproduce our own offspring? That's selfishness which is definitely detrimental to the utopia concept.
If I am allowed to make my own decision, I would gladly leave the world contentedly and peacefully to give room to our offspring without any regret.