Charles II appointed the astronomer John Flamsted to the Royal Observatory in 1675 to work on the problem of accurate navigation whilst at sea. For his trouble he was rewarded with the sum of £100 per year. The issue was that the British empire at the time was loosing a high number of ships because they had no means to accurately identify their longitudinal location (how far north or south they were). The Royal Observatory was built for this purpose and used as for astronomical research until the city’s pollution was so great that they could no longer study the night sky.
Archive for October, 2007
I bet you know someone with Dunning-Kruger phenomenon?
2007
10.14
10.14
I really did stumble on to this article and found a instant eureka moment. The explainable and profound need for lesser skilled people (within a particular subject domain) to talk up there knowledge when in the presence of experts was first identified after observation of a range of experiments by Justin Kruger and David Dunning at Cornell Uni. It was latter publish in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1999.
The phenomenon is known as Dunning-Kruger effect. A number of studies were conducted covering humour, logical reasoning and grammar. The finds suggest that those with less than expert skill when surrounded by experts will exaggerate and overstate their knowledge.
A synical person would probably find it profoundly interesting to conduct this research on a certain president in a certain western country – just to confirm the findings!
um intersting flickr I see
2007
10.07
10.07
Have u ever thought flickr was wonderful for showing off your own pictures but somewhat cluttered for ‘browsing’ around ambling in no particular direction? Well there is a very interesting website at Air Tight Interactive which enables you to type any tag (search term) your interested in and then spiral out to related tags viewing and browsing collections of pictures.
A great resource for a quiet afternoon on the couch
3…2…1…
2007
10.07
10.07
Hi,
This is the launch point for another corner to the world. Here I aim to offer insightful pieces on a variety of general interest topics. The aim in fact is to broaden my knowledge about particular areas as I’ve always felt that general knowledge was something I’ve lacked. In fact not so much I felt as confirmed by the abysmal display of grade ‘D’ in General Studies 10 years ago. Hopefully however in the long gap in between I’ve picked up a few pieces of knowledge which I can share here.
First up will be a small guide on night time city star gazing. I say city star gazing as its a particular skill to see anything at all. Firstly … I’ll stop there and let you wait for the article to appear sometime next weekend.
In addition to general information I do enjoy browsing the web and although am irritated by my abundant lack of self control when it comes to facebook I do occasionally find some interesting material and would hope this is a release valve to highlight the work of others.
That’s all for now I hope I can share more soon
