Whats Going On

What’s Going On Important note: the weather forecast has a 70%+ chance of rain Friday night through Saturday night. Bring an umbrella, raincoat, and/or waterproof footwear! (Thursday looks to be beautiful, though) Its after midnight here on the East Coast, so Campus Preview Weekend begins today for the MIT admitted class of 2012. Its going to be a fun weekend. In total, there are 600+ published events over the course of CPW (wow!). Here are a few that caught my eye Late night classes called Firehose, starting at midnight Thursday night (or early Friday morning, if you prefer to look at it that way), going until 6am Friday. Speaker building, hypercubes, the Black Death, and more, taught in a fun/crazy style by MIT students. Real members of the MIT Blackjack Team (of Bringing Down the House and 21 fame) will be speaking at Next House late Saturday night. Awesome music at ZBTs Battle of the Bands at 8pm Saturday, with special guest judges Ben Bryan. The famous Bouncy Ball Drop at Senior House, Friday night at 8. Must be seen to be believed. People always love Underground Capture the Flag, Saturday at midnight. The appropriately-named Cool Projects Open House Friday at 4pm. The solar car team will be there, the Formula SAE race team, the Mars Gravity Biosatellite, the Solar Electric Vehicle Team There are many department receptions throughout the weekend, including Fridays Department of Architecture Faculty Reception, Thursdays Biology Open House, and Fridays Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) Open House/Continental Breakfast Thursday afternoon, check out [emailprotected] Hall, especially if youre a big fan of Instructables Also Thursday afternoon, check out a talk by Astronaut/Professor Jeffrey Hoffman (Id like to be an Astronaut/Professor). Former Mystery Hunt winners Random Hall will host a Minihunt I love minihunts. The keynote lecturer at the Presidents Welcome on Friday morning will be the awesome Amy Smith! Forgot that MIT has as many Pulitzer Prize-winning Humanities professors as it does Nobel Prize-winning Physics professors? Check out the MIT Literary Society Dessert Reception. See MITs great a capella groups altogether at Saturday afternoons SGBIS concert. What event(s) are you most looking forward to?

Congenital Diseases Congenital Disease - 1210 Words

Congenital disease Congenital disease (birth defect) are defects of any kind that are present at birth. However, not all are caused by a mutation in the DNA. Another way to say congenital disorder are birth defects. Congenital disease is where it â€Å"occurs at birth or even before birth†¦the incidence is 2~5% in newborn and the percentage of congenital disease related to genetic or chromosome defects was 60~70%.; the other 30% of etiology was unknown†¦ congenital disease can be categorized into chromosome disorders, congenital anomalies, inherited metabolic disorders and rare diseases† (Hospita). Major congenital diseases are abnormalities that lead to developmental or physical disabilities or require medical or surgical treatment. There are more than 4,000 different known birth defects, ranging from minor to serious, and although many can be treated or cured, they re the leading cause of death in the first year of life. Birth defects can be caused by genetic, environmental, or unkno wn factors. For most birth defects, the cause is believed to be an interaction of several genetic and environmental factors. Congenital diseases are common; â€Å"about 3 to 4 percent of babies are born with some type of birth defect† (Hospital). Most congenital diseases are caused by genetic or environmental factors or a combination of the two. In most cases the cause could be unknown. Genetic and heretic causes include; chromosomal defects which is caused by too few or too many chromosomes, orShow MoreRelatedCongenital Heart Disease ( Chd )912 Words   |  4 Pages Congenital Heart disease (CHD) Congenital heart disease is also known as â€Å"Congenital heart defect† or congenital cardiovascular malformations. The word â€Å"congenital† means existing at birth. Congenital heart defects change the normal flow of blood to the heart. CHD is the most common type of birth defect, this disease affects 8 out of every 1,000 newborns. More than 35,000 babies each year in the United States are born with a congenital heart defect. If you have a congenital heart defect it meansRead MoreAids Is Not A Congenital Disease Essay2353 Words   |  10 Pages The word AIDS means nothing but â€Å"ACQUIRED IMMUNO DEFICIENCY SYNDROME.† AIDS is not a congenital disease which means it is not present at the time of birth.AIDS weakens the immune system of human’s body making it unable to fight against any type of infection. AIDS is caused by HUMAN IMMUNO DEFICIENCY VIRUS (HIV).HIV was isolated in the year 1983. HIV is a member of group of viruses known as retrovirus which have an envelope enclosing the RNA genome. HIV originated in late nineteen centuary. HIV isRead MoreCongenital Heart Diseases ( Chds ) Essay2176 Words   |  9 PagesIntroduction Congenital heart diseases (CHDs) are the most prevalent of all birth defects and the leading cause of death in the first year of life, (1) with an annual prevalence ranging from six to twelve affected infants per 1,000 live births. (2) Several chronic maternal medical conditions, including diabetes mellitus, hypertension, connective tissue disorders, and congenital heart disease confer an increased risk of CHD in the offspring. (3) Congenital cyanotic heart disease (CCHD) is a cardiacRead MoreCongenital Heart Disease ( Chd )3504 Words   |  15 PagesCongenital heart disease (CHD) is one of the most common birth defects found in children, with an incidence of approximately nine in every 1000 live births worldwide (van der Linde et al., 2011). Children with complex CHD are living longer due to dramatic advances in medical procedures and surgical techniques (Berger et al., 2017), as well as the increase in number of pediatric heart transplant recipients over the past two decades (U.S. Department of Health Human Services, 2017), and the decreaseRead MoreCongenital Heart Diseases ( Chd )3560 Words   |  15 PagesIntroduction Congenital heart diseases (CHD) are defects in the heart that are present from birth and affect 8 in every 1,000 newborns each year (National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, 2011). Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the most common congenital disease of the heart (O’Hanlon and Pennell, 2009) and the most common cause of sudden cardiac death (SCD) among apparently healthy athletes and younger generations (Maron, 1995; Maron and Maron, 2013). HCM is a condition in which there is abnormalRead MoreCommon Prenatal Congenital Heart Disease Essay1279 Words   |  6 PagesTetrology of Fallot(TOF) is the most common prenatal congenital cyanotic heart disease accounts for about 1/3600 live births and about 7% to 10% of of all congenital heart disease and is the most common cause of cyanosis in the neonatal period1 , 2. Typical Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) may be missed in Four chamber view. An abnormal Four chamber view is rarely seen in typical TOF cases . In the typical form of TOF the fetal echocardiography is often characterized by a normal four-chamber view, a subaorticRead MoreHirschsprung Disease : A Congenital Digestive Condition1118 Words   |  5 PagesHirschsprung Disease Research Paper Emma Jamieson Introduction Hirschsprung disease is a congenital digestive condition primarily found in newborns, although older children can be diagnosed with mild cases. Damage to the nerve cells found in between the muscle layers of the walls of the large intestine inhibits the ability to effectively pass stool. The loss of functioning nerve cells prevents peristalsis from moving the stool towards the rectum creating blockages of stool in the large intestineRead MoreSymptoms And Treatment Of Eisenmenger Syndrome1289 Words   |  6 Pages Eisenmenger Syndrome is a congenital heart defect that is associated with long-term elevated blood flow through the pulmonary vasculature, which tends to cause pulmonary hypertension and increasing pulmonary vascular resistance (D Alto, 2014). Moreover, this is a heart defect that causes a hole to develop between two chambers of the heart (D’Alto, 2014). The hole causes blood to circulate abnormally in the heart and lungs. Increased blood flow returns to your lungs i nstead of going to the restRead MoreCongenital Heart Diseases Incidence1944 Words   |  8 PagesCongenital heart disease’s incidence depends on how the population is studied. With better diagnosis through the introduction of echocardiography the incidence figures of congenital heart diseases has raised from the range of 5-8 per 1000 live births to 8-12 per 1000 live births (Hoffman JIE, 2013). All the countries have similar incidence of congenital heart disease. Some minor differences in types of congenital heart disease by country are there. China and Japan for example have a higherRead MoreThe Role of Echocardiography in Diagnosing Treating Ebsteins Anomaly781 Words   |  4 Pages â€Å"Ebstein’s anomaly is a rare cardiac anomaly that occurs in approximately one in 20,000 live births and accounts for less than 1% of all congenital heart disease (Ebstein’s anomaly in adults)†. The goal of this paper is to examine Ebstein’s Anomaly - to understand what it is, how it affects the heart, possible presenting symptoms, and other possible complications associated with this anomaly. Diagnosis of this anomaly is key in treating patients, thus echocardiographic as well as other test

Facts, Fiction and Gre Essay Topics 2012

Facts, Fiction and Gre Essay Topics 2012 Things You Won't Like About Gre Essay Topics 2012 and Things You Will If you are thinking about why, it's because it isn't in any way easy to grade your essay instantaneously. The grader should see what you are attempting to say, by reading once. The essay graders know that you simply get 30 minutes to compose each AWA essay and in addition, they know that you won't have the ability to cover every potential argument, reason and rebuttal. Craft highly unique on-line essay grader free of charge. So, within this lesson, you will secure a look at some published issue essay prompts. No very good writer under sunlight writes two exactly same sentences in one essay or article. One of the absolute most important features about a compelling essay is its capacity to convince the reader by way of sound logical reasoning. There's also some fine selection to the sentences. Choosing Good Gre Essay Topics 2012 Your essay should have effort and attention, however don't forget that it is merely part of the whole application procedure. You are able to then practice replicating successful connections between ideas in your practice essays. Critical judgment of work in any certain field has little value unless it comes from a person who is a specialist in that area. Be certain that your GRE practice focuses on the ideal question types and test format for the version that you'll be taking. What You Should Do to Find Out About Gre Essay Topics 2012 Before You're Left Behind Students shou ld always question what they're taught rather than accepting it passively. No longer will they have to take the test without the ability to return to prior questions, something that might not fit their own best test-taking strategies. College students should base their selection of an area of study on the access to work in that area. Therefore, many students and employees decide to obtain low-cost essay rather than writing it themselves. Gre Essay Topics 2012 for Dummies At this time you've got to be in a position to understand the differences between both topics you'll be presented with. The cost of an essay is dependent upon the total amount of effort the writer has to exert. Substance matters more than every other factor in regards to your essays. Each topic includes a claim or statement of a matter, followed by specific instructions about how to respond. Ask yourselves these 2 questions when you're writing the essays. Any of the aforementioned questions can be applied a s a GED essay topic, and you need to be prepared to react to such prompts. Essentially, issue essay is all about how you perceive the given topic. In the issue essay, you will be supplied a topic that's debatable. Not only do you have to read through GRE sample essays, but you must also look for topics on which you are able to write GRE sample essays yourself and have them evaluated. Descriptive essays may be the easiest essays to write, after you think of a superior topic. In various other tests, you will be shown the gre essay topics to write about. It's here that you're told to pick the gre essay topics to write on. Since you may see, the longer the essay, the greater the grades. Before writing the toefl essay, you should be able to recognize the essay kind and select the appropriate essay pattern this important english lesson. The grading happens instantaneously, and after you submit your essay, you will get a composite AWA score, together with numerous metrics on which your essay was graded. Nowadays you know what it requires to receive an ideal essay score. If a school is likely to take your greatest GRE score, then you are able to relax somewhat on test one, knowing that it is possible to take it again if you have to. If writing essays isn't your forte, then you must sit up and take stock of the quantity of preparation you're going to need for getting an excellent score in the Analytical Writing test section of the GRE. Most students believe that essay length the only important element in regards to AWA scoring. You will get your essay scores approximately 10-15 days following your t est date. Learn exactly how your GRE scores will be used so that you can craft the proper application strategy for your fantasy school. After all, the GRE Issue isn't a test of knowledge as much since it is a test of how it is possible to use knowledge however restricted to back your position. The significance of a GRE rating can vary from really being a mere admission formality to an important selection issue. So, it's rather safe to say that the AWA score is a significant enough issue in regards to admissions.

Jean Piagets Theory Free Essays

Throughout history, many people have made many contributions to the school of psychology. One individual is that of Jean Piaget and his theories on the cognitive development stages. Jean Piaget was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, where he studied at the university and received a doctorate in biology at the age of 22. We will write a custom essay sample on Jean Piagets Theory or any similar topic only for you Order Now Following college he became very interested in psychology and began to research and studies of the subject. With his research Piaget created a broad theoretical system for the development of cognitive abilities. His work, in this way, was much like that of Sigmund Freud, but Piaget emphasized the ways that children think and acquire knowledge. Piaget referred to his theory as genetic epistemology. This is defined as the study of the acquisition, modification, and growth of abstract ideas and the abilities as on the basis of an inherited or biological substrate, an intelligent functioning that makes the growth of abstract thought possible. (Ginsburg 5) Piaget derived his theories from directly observing children and by questioning them about their thinking. He was less interested in whether the children answered correctly than how they arrived at their answers. Piaget viewed intelligence as an extension of biological adaptation that has a logical structure. One of the central points of his theories was that of epigenesis. This is that growth and development occur in a series of stages, each of which is built on the successful mastery of the previous stage. (Furth 33) Piaget described four major stages leading to the capacity for adult thought. Each stage is a prerequisite for the following stage, but the rate at which different children move through different stages varies with their heredity and environment. Piaget’s four stages are the sensorimotor stage, the stage of preoperational thought, the stage of concrete operations and the stage of formal operations. The first stage that Piaget felt all children go through was the sensorimotor stage. This stage occurs between birth and two years of age. This is the stage when Infants begin to learn through sensory observation, and they gain control of their motor functions through activity, exploration and manipulation of the environment. (Furth 29) From birth, biology and experience work together to produce learned behavior. As infants become more mobile, one action is built upon another action, forming new and more complex actions. Infants’ spatial, visual, and tactile worlds expand during this period in which children actively interact with their environment and use previously learned behaviors. The critical achievement of this period is the development of object permanence. This is the indication that a child has the ability to understand that objects have an existence independent of the child’s involvement with them. Infants learn to differentiate themselves from the world and are able to maintain a mental image of an object, even when it is not present and visible. (Rotman 40) At about 18 months, infants begin to develop mental symbols and to use words. This process is called symbolization. Infants are able to create a visual or mental image of an object to stand for or signify the real object. The attainment of object permanence marks the transition from the sensorimotor stage to the preoperational stage. During the stage of peoperational thought, children use language and symbols more extensively than in the sensorimotor stage. Children learn without the use of reasoning, therefore are unable to think logically or deductively. Children are able to name the object but they are unable to categorize or class these objects. Preopreational thought is midway between socialized adult thought and the completely autistic freudian unconscious. (Furth 57) Events are also not linked by logic. In this stage, children begin to use language and drawings in more elaborate ways. From once using one word utterances they begin to use two word phrases, which make up a single noun and verb. Children in this developmental stage are ecogentric. They see themselves as the center of the universe, therefore they are unable to take the role of another person. In addition , children use animistic thinking which is the tendency to endow events and objects with lifelike attributes. The stage of concrete operations is so named because in this period children operate and act on the concrete, real, and perceivable world of objects and events. Egocentric thought is replaced by operational thought, which involves dealing with a wide array of information outside the child. Therefore, children can now see things from someone else’s perspective. Children in this stage begin to use limited logical thought and processes and are able to order and group things in classes on the basis of common characteristics. The child is able to reason and to follow rules and regulations. They are able to regulate themselves , and they begin to develop a moral sense and a code of values. Conservation is the ability to recognize that, although the shape of objects may change, the mass and amount stay the same. For example, if you put the same amount of liquid in two containers the child may think there is more in the taller cylinder. Children also begin to understand reversibility, which is the capacity to understand the relationship between things. They begin to realize that one thing can turn into another and back again. The most important sign that children are still in the preoperational stage is that they have not achieved conservation or reversibility. Dealing with the future and its possibilities occurs in the formal operational stage. The formal operation stage deals with the ages of eleven through the end of adolescence. This stage is characterized by the ability to think abstractly, to reason deductively, and to define concepts. It also is shown by adolescents’ interest in a variety of issues including philosophy, religion, ethics, and politics. Another main part of this stage is that of Hypothetic deductive thinking. This is the highest organization of cognition and enables people to make a hypothesis or proposition and to test it against reality. Deductive reasoning moves from the general to the particular and is a more complicated process than inductive reasoning, which moves from particular to general. (Rotman 44) This step also brings about self-conscious behavior because of the ability to reflect on their own and other people’s thoughts. As adolescents attempt to master new cognitive tasks, they may return to egocentric thought, but on a higher level than in the past. Not all adolescents enter the stage at the same time or to the same degree. Depending on individual capacity some may not reach the stage at all and may remain in concrete operational mode throughout life. Despite the psychiatric applications Piaget’s theories have been applied more widely in the area of education. Piaget’s concepts have been used to resolve educational problems, such as assessing intellectual development, scholastic aptitude, grade placement, and reading readiness. Innovative early school programs, such as Head Start can be traced to Piaget’s believe that experience plays a major role in human thought. Throughout his writings Piaget emphasized that the greater richness, complexity, and the diversity of the environment, the greater the likelihood that high levels of mental functioning are achieved. How to cite Jean Piagets Theory, Papers

Potato chips Essay Example

Potato chips Essay Global Variations in the Potato Crisps and Potato Chips Market Its fair to assume that consumer snacking habits are likely to differ from country to country, particularly across different regions and cultures. A clear example is the consumption of potato crisps / potato chips which can be seen in the bar chart below. 86% of consumers throughout the USA and France consume potato crisps / potato chips closely followed by 84% of GB consumers. On the other end of the scale is the Chinese market with only 28% consumption. Potato Crisps/Potato Chips* Consumption per Country 84% 72% 43% 28% USA France source: Global TG 2012 Egypt Brazil South Africa China Base: Total population But do Chinese consumers simply snack less? Data from Chinas TGI (CNRS) show that (66%), candy (64%) and chocolate (44%) in the last year. As the best known potato crisps and potato chip brands are Western-owned such Kettle, Pringles and Lays and Walkers, this may explain their lack of popularity in China and their huge appeal to Western markets. Attitudes towards diet and health can also vary between different markets with the hart below offering a direct comparison between consumer attitudes in America and China. Only 25% of American consumers agree that it is worth paying more for organic foods, whereas 60% of consumers in China agree with this statement. A further difference can be highlighted as 46% of Chinese consumers agree that they always think of the calories in what I eat compared with a much lower level of agreement throughout the USA of 27%. We will write a custom essay sample on Potato chips specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Potato chips specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Potato chips specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Any Agree with the following statements: 25% 27% 39% Its worth paying more for organic food l always think of the calories in what I eat l consider my diet to be very healthy diet to be Very healthy. So, peoples perception of what they consider to be a healthy diet is likely to vary across different markets. In this case Chinese consumers are much more consistent in their perceptions of healthy eating and what this constitutes. *USA; Potato Chips France and 6B; Potato Crisp, Tortilla Corn Snacks Egypt; Potato Chips/Crisps Brazil; Potato Crisps South Africa; Potato Sticks and other Crisps China; Crisps

Lincolns Inspiring Speech Essays - Presidency Of Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln's Inspiring Speech Essays - Presidency Of Abraham Lincoln Daniel Kang Ms. Menard Honors English 8 30 March 2014 Lincoln's Inspiring Speech "The Gettysburg Address" given to the soldiers by Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863 was an inspiring speech that announced the honor and held the veterans of the war in high esteem. "Conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" (Lincoln 1). Lincoln reiterates the fact that the Civil War is about the fact that "all men are created equal". "We have come to dedicating a portion of that field; as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live" (Lincoln 1). He brings up the numerous soldiers that died for their cause. We have made a place for them to let them know that they had fought for a great cause. "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what we did here" (Lincoln 1). Lincoln rightfully says people of the next generations will never forget what had happened in the Civil War. He says we wouldn't remember this speech, but it is still fresh in everyone's mi nd even 150 years later. "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause" (Lincoln 1). Lincoln doesn't want the soldiers' lives to be wasted on an empty cause. He wants everyone to help in fulfilling the cause the soldiers gave their lives for. This amazing and inspiring speech led the US to a slave free country.

R.L. Stevensons Classic Essay An Apology for Idlers

R.L. Stevensons Classic Essay An Apology for Idlers Best known for his popular adventure stories (Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Master of Ballantrae) and the study of evil in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson was also a noteworthy poet, short-story writer, and essayist. The Scots-born author spent much of his adult life traveling, searching for a healthful climate until he finally settled in Samoa in 1889. There he lived on his estate of Valima until his death at age 44. Stevenson was not yet a well-known writer in 1877 when he composed An Apology for Idlers (which, he said, was really a defense of R.L.S.), but his own days of idleness were about to come to an end. Just a year after he wrote in a letter to his mother, Hows that for busy? It does me good. It was well I wrote my Idlers when I did; for I am now the busiest gent in Christendom. After reading Stevensons essay, you may find it worthwhile to compare An Apology for Idlers with three other essays in our collection: In Praise of Idleness, by Bertrand Russell; Why Are Beggars Despised? by George Orwell; and On Laziness, by Christopher Morley. An Apology for Idlers By Robert Louis Stevenson BOSWELL: We grow weary when idle.JOHNSON: That is, sir, because others being busy, we want company; but if we were idle, there would be no growing weary; we should all entertain one another. 1 Just now, when every one is bound, under pain of a decree in absence convicting them of là ¨se-respectability, to enter on some lucrative profession, and labour therein with something not far short of enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party, who are content when they have enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the meanwhile, savours a little of bravado and gasconade. And yet this should not be. Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself. It is admitted that the presence of people who refuse to enter in the great handicap race for sixpenny pieces, is at once an insult and a disenchantment for those who do. A fine fellow (as we see so many) takes his determination, votes for sixpences, and in the emphatic Americanism, it goes for them. And while such an one is plowing distressfully up the road, it is not hard to understand his resentment, when he perceives cool persons in the meadows by the wayside, lying with a handkerchief over their ears and a glass at their elbow. Alexander is touched in a very delicate place by the disregard to Diogenes. Where was the glory of having taken Rome for these tumultuous barbarians, who poured into the Senate-house, and found the Fathers sitting silent and unmoved by their success? It is a sore thing to have labored along and scaled the arduous hilltops, and when all is done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement. Hence physicists condemn the unphysical; financiers have only a superficial toleration for those who know little of stocks; literary persons despise the unlettered, and people of all pursuits combine to disparage those who have none. 2 But though this is one difficulty of the subject, it is not the greatest. You could not be put in prison for speaking against industry, but you can be sent to Coventry for speaking like a fool. The greatest difficulty with most subjects is to do them well; therefore, please to remember this is an apology. It is certain that much may be judiciously argued in favor of diligence; only there is something to be said against it, and that is what, on the present occasion, I have to say. To state one argument is not necessarily to be deaf to all others, and that a man has written a book of travels in Montenegro, is no reason why he should never have been to Richmond. 3 It is surely beyond a doubt that people should be a good deal idle in youth. For though here and there a Lord Macaulay may escape from school honors with all his wits about him, most boys pay so dear for their medals that they never afterwards have a shot in their locker, and begin the world bankrupt. And the same holds true during all the time a lad is educating himself or suffering others to educate him. It must have been a very foolish old gentleman who addressed Johnson at Oxford in these words: Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task. The old gentleman seems to have been unaware that many other things besides reading grow irksome, and not a few become impossible, by the time a man has to use spectacles and cannot walk without a stick. Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. It seems a pity to sit, like the Lady of Shalott, peering into a mirror, with your back turned on all the bustle and glamor of reality. And if a man reads very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thought. 4 If you look back on your own education, I am sure it will not be the full, vivid, instructive hours of truancy that you regret; you would rather cancel some lacklustre periods between sleep and waking in the class. For my own part, I have attended a good many lectures in my time. I still remember that the spinning of a top is a case of Kinetic Stability. I still remember that Emphyteusis is not a disease, nor Stillicide a crime. But though I would not willingly part with such scraps of science, I do not set the same store by them as by certain other odds and ends that I came by in the open street while I was playing truant. 5 This is not the moment to dilate on that mighty place of education, which was the favorite school of Dickens and of Balzac, and turns out yearly many inglorious masters in the Science of the Aspects of Life. Suffice it to say this: if a lad does not learn in the streets, it is because he has no faculty of learning. Nor is the truant always in the streets, for if he prefers, he may go out by the gardened suburbs into the country. He may pitch on some tuft of lilacs over a burn, and smoke innumerable pipes to the tune of the water on the stones. A bird will sing in the thicket. And there he may fall into a vein of kindly thought, and see things in a new perspective. Why, if this be not education, what is? We may conceive Mr. Worldly Wiseman accosting such an one, and the conversation that should thereupon ensue:How now, young fellow, what dost thou here?Truly, sir, I take mine ease.Is not this the hour of the class? and shouldst thou not be plying thy Book with diligence, to the end thou mayest obtain knowledge?Nay, but thus also I follow after Learning, by your leave.Learning, quotha! After what fashion, I pray thee? Is it mathematics?No, to be sure.Is it metaphysics?Nor that.Is it some language?Nay, it is no language.Is it a trade?Nor a trade neither.Why, then, what ist?Indeed, sir, as a time may soon come for me to go upon Pilgrimage, I am desirous to note what is commonly done by persons in my case, and where are the ugliest Sloughs and Thickets on the Road; as also, what manner of Staff is of the best service. Moreover, I lie here, by this water, to learn by root-of-heart a lesson which my master teaches me to call Peace, or Contentment. 6 Hereupon Mr. Worldly Wiseman was much commoved with passion, and shaking his cane with a very threatful countenance, broke forth upon this wise: Learning, quotha! said he; I would have all such rogues scourged by the Hangman! 7 And so he would go his way, ruffling out his cravat with a crackle of starch, like a turkey when it spread its feathers. 8 Now this, of Mr. Wisemans, is the common opinion. A fact is not called a fact, but a piece of gossip, if it does not fall into one of your scholastic categories. An inquiry must be in some acknowledged direction, with a name to go by; or else you are not inquiring at all, only lounging; and the work-house is too good for you. It is supposed that all knowledge is at the bottom of a well, or the far end of a telescope. Sainte-Beuve, as he grew older, came to regard all experience as a single great book, in which to study for a few years ere we go hence; and it seemed all one to him whether you should read in Chapter xx., which is the differential calculus, or in Chapter xxxix., which is hearing the band play in the gardens. As a matter of fact, an intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true education than many another in a life of heroic vigils. There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits of formal and laborious science; but it is all round about you, and for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm and palpitating facts of life. While others are filling their memory with a lumber of words, one-half of which they will forget before the week be out, your truant may learn some really useful art: to play the fiddle, to know a good cigar, or to speak with ease and opportunity to all varieties of men. Many who have plied their book diligently, and know all about some one branch or another of accepted lore, come out of the study with an ancient and owl-like demeanour, and prove dry, stockish, and dyspeptic in all the better and brighter parts of life. Many make a large fortune, who remain underbred and pathetically stupid to the last. And meantime there goes the idler, who began life along with themby your leave, a different picture. He has had time to take care of his health and his spirits; he has been a great deal in the open air, which is the most salutary of all things for both body and mind; and if he has never read the great Book in very recondite places, he has dipped into it and skimmed it over to excelle nt purpose. Might not the student afford some Hebrew roots, and the business man some of his half-crowns, for a share of the idlers knowledge of life at large, and Art of Living? Nay, and the idler has another and more important quality than these. I mean his wisdom. He who has much looked on at the childish satisfaction of other people in their hobbies, will regard his own with only a very ironical indulgence. He will not be heard among the dogmatists. He will have a great and cool allowance for all sorts of people and opinions. If he finds no out-of-the-way truths, he will identify himself with no very burning falsehood. His way takes him along a by-road, not much frequented, but very even and pleasant, which is called Commonplace Lane, and leads to the Belvedere of Common-sense. Thence he shall command an agreeable, if not very noble prospect; and while others behold the East and West, the Devil and the Sunrise, he will be contentedly aware of a sort of morning hour upon all sublunary things , with an army of shadows running speedily and in many different directions into the great daylight of Eternity. The shadows and the generations, the shrill doctors and the plangent wars, go by into ultimate silence and emptiness; but underneath all this, a man may see, out of the Belvedere windows, much green and peaceful landscape; many firelit parlours; good people laughing, drinking, and making love as they did before the Flood or the French Revolution; and the old shepherd telling his tale under the hawthorn. 9 Extreme  busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation. Bring these fellows into the country, or set them aboard ship, and you will see how they pine for their desk or their study. They have no curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to random provocations; they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its own sake; and unless Necessity lays about them with a stick, they will even stand still. It is no good speaking to such folk: they  cannot  be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to furious moiling in the gold-mill. When they do not require to go to the office, when they are not hungry and hav e no mind to drink, the whole breathing world is a blank to them. If they have to wait an hour or so for a train, they fall into a stupid trance with their eyes open. To see them, you would suppose there was nothing to look at and no one to speak with; you would imagine they were paralysed or alienated: and yet very possibly they are hard workers in their own way, and have good eyesight for a flaw in a deed or a turn of the market. They have been to school and college, but all the time they had their eye on the medal; they have gone about in the world and mixed with clever people, but all the time they were thinking of their own affairs. As if a mans soul were not too small to begin with, they have dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play; until here they are at forty, with a listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and not one thought to rub against another, while they wait for the train. Before he was breeched, he might have clambered on the boxes; when he was twenty, he would have stared at the girls; but now the pipe is smoked out, the snuff-box empty, and my gentleman sits bolt upright upon a bench, with lamentable eyes. This does not appeal to me as being Success in Life. 10 But it is not only the person himself who suffers from his busy habits, but his wife and children, his friends and relations, and down to the very people he sits with in a railway carriage or an omnibus. Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things. And it is not by any means certain that a mans business is the most important thing he has to do. To an impartial estimate it will seem clear that many of the wisest, most virtuous, and most beneficent parts that are to be played upon the Theatre of Life are filled by gratuitous performers, and pass, among the world at large, as phases of idleness. For in that Theatre, not only the walking gentlemen, singing chambermaids, and diligent fiddlers in the orchestra, but those who look on and clap their hands from the benches, do really play a part and fulfill important offices towards the general result. 11 You are no doubt very dependent on the care of your lawyer and stockbroker, of the guards and signalmen who convey you rapidly from place to place, and the policemen who walk the streets for your protection; but is there not a thought of gratitude in your heart for certain other benefactors who set you smiling when they fall in your way, or season your dinner with good company? Colonel Newcome helped to lose his friends money; Fred Bayham had an ugly trick of borrowing shirts; and yet they were better people to fall among than Mr. Barnes. And though Falstaff was neither sober nor very honest, I think I could name one or two long-faced Barabbases whom the world could better have done without. Hazlitt mentions that he was more sensible of obligation to Northcote, who had never done him anything he could call a service, than to his whole circle of ostentatious friends; for he thought a good companion emphatically the greatest benefactor. I know there are people in the world who canno t feel grateful unless the favour has been done them at the cost of pain and difficulty. But this is a churlish disposition. A man may send you six sheets of letter-paper covered with the most entertaining gossip, or you may pass half an hour pleasantly, perhaps profitably, over an article of his; do you think the service would be greater, if he had made the manuscript in his hearts blood, like a compact with the devil? Do you really fancy you should be more beholden to your correspondent, if he had been damning you all the while for your importunity? Pleasures are more beneficial than duties because, like the quality of mercy, they are not strained, and they are twice blest. There must always be two to a kiss, and there may be a score in a jest; but wherever there is an element of sacrifice, the favour is conferred with pain, and, among generous people, received with confusion. 12 There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor. The other day, a ragged, barefoot boy ran  down the street after a marble, with so jolly an air that he set every one he passed into a good humour; one of these persons, who had been delivered from more than usually black thoughts, stopped the little fellow and gave him some money with this remark: You see what sometimes comes of looking pleased. If he had looked pleased before, he had now to look both pleased and mystified. For my part, I justify this encouragement of smiling rather than tearful children; I do not wish to pay for tears anywhere but upon the stage; but I am prepared to deal largely in the opposite commodity. A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted. We need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh proposition; they do a better thing than that, they practically demonstrate the great Theorem of the Liveableness of Life. Consequently, if a person cannot be happy without remaining idle, idle he should remain. It is a revolutionary precept; but thanks to hunger and the workhouse, one not easily to be abused; and within practical limits, it is one of the most incontestable truths in the whole Body of Morality. Look at one of your industrious fellows for a moment, I beseech you. He sows hurry and reaps indigestion; he puts a vast deal of activity out to interest, and receives a large measure of nervous derangement in return. Either he absents himself entirely from all fellowship, and lives a recluse in a garret, with carpet slippers and a leaden inkpot; or he comes among people swiftly and bitterly, in a contraction of his whole nervous system, to discharge some temper before he returns to work. I do not care how much or ho w well he works, this fellow is an evil feature in other peoples lives. They would be happier if he were dead. They could easier do without his services in the Circumlocution Office, than they can tolerate his fractious spirits. He poisons life at the well-head. It is better to be beggared out of hand by a scapegrace nephew, than daily hag-ridden by a peevish uncle. 13 And what, in Gods name, is all this pother about? For what cause do they embitter their own and other peoples lives? That a man should publish three or thirty articles a year, that he should finish or not finish his great allegorical picture, are questions of little interest to the world. The ranks of life are full; and although a thousand fall, there are always some to go into the breach. When they told Joan of Arc she should be at home minding womens work, she answered there were plenty to spin and wash. And so, even with your own rare gifts! When nature is so careless of the single life, why should we coddle ourselves into the fancy that our own is of exceptional importance? Suppose Shakespeare had been knocked on the head some dark night in Sir Thomas Lucys preserves, the world would have wagged on better or worse, the pitcher gone to the well, the scythe to the corn, and the student to his book; and no one been any the wiser of the loss. There are not many works extant, if yo u look the alternative all over, which are worth the price of a pound of tobacco to a man of limited means. This is a sobering reflection for the proudest of our earthly vanities. Even a tobacconist may, upon consideration, find no great cause for personal vainglory in the phrase; for although tobacco is an admirable sedative, the qualities necessary for retailing it are neither rare nor precious in themselves. Alas and alas! you may take it how you will, but the services of no single individual are indispensable. Atlas was just a gentleman with a protracted nightmare! And yet you see merchants who go and labour themselves into a great fortune and thence into the bankruptcy court; scribblers who keep scribbling at little articles until their temper is a cross to all who come about them, as though Pharaoh should set the Israelites to make a pin instead of a pyramid; and fine young men who work themselves into a decline, and are driven off in a hearse with white plumes upon it. Would you not suppose these persons had been whispered, by the Master of the Ceremonies, the promise of some momen tous destiny? and that this lukewarm bullet on which they play their farces was the bulls eye and centre-point of all the universe? And yet it is not so. The ends for which they give away their priceless youth, for all they know, may be chimerical or hurtful; the glory and riches they expect may never come, or may find them indifferent; and they and the world they inhabit are so inconsiderable that the mind freezes at the thought. * An Apology for Idlers, by Robert Louis Stevenson, first appeared in the July 1877 issue of the  Cornhill Magazine  and was later published in Stevensons essay collection  Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers   (1881).