AmosLightnin

If there were hundreds of people trying to get there, and another got there before Watson and Crick, would they deserve fame and Watson and Crick the equivalent obscurity? Its not that Watson and Crick weren't brilliant and driven - it's that they were part of a larger collective movement that is undervalued. And I would argue that their contributions were dramatically overvalued partly because they were immersed in a culture which overvalues, and motivated them to overvalue, a very heroic "great man" narrative. If they hadn't "discovered" the structure of DNA, how long do you think it would've been before someone else did?

In the discussions about who figured out what when, a larger point is often overlooked: Does it really make sense to give credit to individuals for "discoveries" like the structure of DNA, when in fact they are always the product of collective inquiry? Yes, Watson and Crick made the final intuitive leap over the finish line. But that was only possible because of the many miles their colleagues (including Franklin) had already walked to put them in that position. So their breakthrough insight had more to do with them being in the right place at the right time in history than to any inherent brilliance.

There is. Click the small pixely looking X at the end of the photo's caption.

Designing Tinkering activities is about starting a conversation between a learner and a phenomena or idea.

I think your argument in quotes is a good one. :) Following a set of pre-defined instructions is not a creative act. It's not bad to build a puzzle, but I would argue that it's not nearly as meaningful of an experience as painting - or any other creative activity for that matter.

I worked on Scratch for 6 years, in charge of the online community. We often encountered adult programmers who were surprised by what was possible in terms of complex projects with Scratch. There was usually a great deal of concern about how the transition to "real" (text based) programming languages would go. It always seemed strange to me, this attachment to text based programming as the only "true" "real" etc. programming. At any rate, I saw quite a few kids make that transition without any problems. I've still never seen any systematic evidence that moving from tiles to text presents significant difficulty, and yet so much energy is devoted to "solving" this problem.

Third enthusiastic Bangle JS supporter. The hardware is fine, but the ecosystem that comes with it is the best part. The excellent documentation makes it easy to make your own watchface or application.

True. But if the rate of heat loss is low enough, then it doesn't much matter.

When cooking, the rate of heat needed to maintain the same temperature is exactly the rate at which the food is cooling. So heating up a pot and insulating it is roughly equivalent to heating up a pot and continually heating it to maintain the same temperature. If we changed the culture of cooking to recognize this, we could save a lot of energy.