"The cause of synesthesia is still subject to research, but it’s generally believed to be the result of a genetic mutation on the X chromosome, explaining its dominance in woman and high heritability. Some researchers think its heritability could suggest an evolutionary benefit. Sickle cell anemia, for example, can be deadly, but also provides malaria immunity. Does synesthesia provide a similar benefit?

It might if you’re a mathmetician or an artist. One of the peculiarities of some forms of synesthesia is that equations are visualised in 3D space, which might help someone like physicist Richard Feynmann, another famous synesthete, with his work. David Hockney, also a synesthete, once told Robert Burton that when he was designing a piece of art intended to accompany a production of a Maurice Ravel piece, he listened to the relevant section of the score and “the tree painted itself.” It’s also been suggested that savants like Daniel Tammett get their incredible skills from…"

"a scientist who was unusually unselfish…hated all hierarchies…wanted no badge of superior academic status to come btwn him & his younger friends…considered science to be a collective enterprise in which educating the young was as important as making personal discoveries…put as much effort into teaching as…thinking.<br />
<br />
…never showed the slightest resentment when I published some of his ideas before he did…told me he avoided disputes about priority in science by following a simple rule: “Always give the bastards more credit than they deserve.” I have followed this rule myself. I find it remarkably effective for avoiding quarrels & making friends. A generous sharing of credit is the quickest way to build a healthy scientific community. In the end, Feynman’s greatest contribution to science was not any particular discovery. His contribution was the creation of a new way of thinking that enabled a great multitude of students & colleagues, including me, to make their own discoveries."

"Feynman on curiosity-driven learning (or how to recover from burnout)" http://twitter.com/zephoria/status/44450982616248320

"The Poetry of Reality is the fifth installment in the Symphony of Science music video series. It features 12 scientists and science enthusiasts, including Michael Shermer, Jacob Bronowski, Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Jill Tarter, Lawrence Krauss, Richard Feynman, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Carolyn Porco, and PZ Myers, promoting science through words of wisdom."

[via: http://blog.javierarce.com/post/798000142/feynman-on-elitist-in-groups-via-techra]

Richard Feynman on the place: "When I was at Princeton in the 1940s I could see what happened to those great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves, OK? So they don't get any ideas for a while: They have every opportunity to do something, and they're not getting any ideas. I believe that in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you, and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And nothing happens. Still no ideas come.<br />
<br />
Nothing happens because there's not enough real activity and challenge: You're not in contact with the experimental guys. You don't have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!"

"I think, however, that there isn't any solution to this problem of education other than to realize that the best teaching can be done only when there is a direct individual relationship between a student and a good teacher -- a situation in which the student discusses the ideas, thinks about the things, and talks about the things. It's impossible to learn very much by simply sitting in a lecture, or even by simply doing problems that are assigned."

"certainly easy to recognize another, much more familiar type of science teaching, in which teacher provides student with large set of science facts along with many special science words that are needed to describe them. In worst case, teacher of this type of science is assuming that education consists of filling a student’s head w/ huge set of word associations...This would seem to make preparation for life nearly indistin-"

[via: http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/one-fathers-lessons-about-structure-of.html ]

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. "

"When Richard Feynman refuses to explain how magnets work he fidgets and bounces and puffs in a way I recognise from a friend with long-term mental illness, who does this when he gets excited and gets really into explaining a topic. ... The repulsion of magnets is the same as the repulsion you get when you push your hand against the sofa and it pushes back.

"Darwin insisted on his intellectual ordinariness. He wanted it publicly understood that his native endowments were no more than average, that he had to overcome a youthful tendency to sloth and self-indulgence, that he had wasted his time at university, that becoming a serious naturalist owed much to good luck, that he had achieved what he had mainly through close observation, discipline, hard work and a genuine passion for science. ... Newton is ascetically ‘wholly other’, bent on destroying intellectual competitors; Galileo is a manipulator of patronage...Einstein is a man who loved humanity in general but treated his wives and his daughter as disposable appendages; Pasteur is a Machiavellian politician of science...Feynman is a philistine, a sexual predator, an over-aged adolescent show-off. This is what has now become of towering genius, of those who discover nature’s secrets. First we make them into icons and then we see how iconoclastic we can be. Darwin alone escapes whipping."

""Fun To Imagine"is a BBC series from 1983 featuring theoretical physicist Richard Feynman thinking aloud. What is fire? How do rubber bands work? Why do mirrors flip left-right but not up-down? All is explained in his lovely meanderingly lucid manner.

"All 6 Dysons describe eventful child­hoods w/ people like Feynman coming by...father...always preaching virtues of boredom: “Being bored is the only time you are creative”...Around the Institute for Advanced Study, that intellectual Arcadia where the blackboards have signs on them that say Do Not Erase, Dyson is quietly admired for candidly expressing his doubts about string theory’s aspiration to represent all forces and matter in one coherent system. “I think Freeman wishes the string theorists well,” Avishai Margalit, the philosopher, says. “I don’t think he wishes them luck. He’s interested in diversity, and that’s his worldview. To me he is a towering figure although he is tiny — almost a saintly model of how to get old. The main thing he retains is playfulness. Einstein had it. Playfulness & curiosity. He also stands for this unique trait, which is wisdom. Brightness here is common. He is wise. He integrated, not in a theory, but in his life, all his dreams of things.”"

"A cargo cult may appear in tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced, non-native cultures. The cult is focused on obtaining the material wealth of the advanced culture through magical thinking, religious rituals and practices, believing that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors."

[via: http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2009/02/the-mobile-design-cargo-cult.html ]

"In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California's Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California's public schools. In his acerbic memoir of that experience, titled "Judging Books by Their Covers," Feynman analyzed the Commission's idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products."

"Feynman diagrams are the embodiment of what Tufte teaches about analytical design: "Good displays of data help to reveal knowledge relevant to understanding mechanism, process and dynamics, cause and effect." We see the unthinkable and think the unseeabl

"This web site is dedicated to Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988), scientist, teacher, raconteur, and musician. He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb, expanded the understanding of quantum electrodynamics, translated Mayan hieroglyphics, and cut t

"The diagrams he introduced provide a convenient shorthand for the calculations. They are a code physicists use to talk to one another about their calculations."

"Bent dry spaghetti do not break in half but instead in three or more pieces. With the aim to explain this surprising phenomenon, we studied a related problem, namely the dynamics of an elastic rod that is bent quasi-statically and then suddenly set free.

"There are many interesting brain teasers associated with the great physicist Richard Feynman. I like them because they are easy to state and understand, but they can be hard to solve. Here are four of them. The first one is easy, the second one is a litt

"to share information about The Feynman Lectures on Physics: *stories of how The Feynman Lectures on Physics influenced your life (or others') *physics/math problems and their solutions *URL's (links) relevant to The Feynman Lectures on Physics "

"well known for his interesting & amusing lectures. However, not many know that he was also an artist, working under the pseudonym Ofey. Most of his work bears the Ofey signature and his primary area was drawing. He was also an avid bongo player."

"fundamentally preferred to figure out everything himself...made people feel like a child does, when a grown-up first treats him as an adult." more quotes: http://robertogreco.tumblr.com/post/36115523/richard-feynmann-understanding-and-explaining

"irony is almost always have pen & paper; I write all time...on this occasion when I had idea of my life, I didn't have pen. For 4 hours my head was buzzing...probably the best thing, because I ended up working whole thing out before I got off train."

A link-rich post on conversation and learning, among other things