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Powerful stroke of insight

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My wife sent me this amazing link: "Jill Bolte Taylor's Powerful Stroke of Insight", about a brain scientist who has a stroke in her left hemisphere, and describes, with radiant expressiveness, exactly what that was like. This is one of the most astonishing speeches I've ever witnessed.

The source for this is www.ted.com, which reveals just how potent the web can be: an educational tool on demand, free lectures on a host of fascinating topics.

I also saw in the paper this morning an article about how some college students, stuck on a math problem, turn to Youtube math tutorials, and thereby save their academic careers.

The Internet is like a library. We have books that capture profound insights; we have a lot of commercial pap and frivolous diversions. There's a place for both -- just as Jill Bolte Taylor describes not just two different hemispheres of the brain, but two different modes of being that are united in a single body.
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