Hello, have recently had my account confirmed, so here I am on Steemit!
I always find it hard to write such intros, as what I “do” is not necessarily the same as my job. The latter is easy; I currently teach physics and mathematics (plus anything interesting I can think up for our gifted kids) at a school in Bangkok.
Have been blogging on-and-off for many years with some blogs being more successful than others. I have also written for other sites such as HubPages, Xomba and Science 2.0. Again, some of the writing has been financially worthwhile, but there has always been one niggling problem: there was little correlation between the social impact of an article and its financial success. Articles that generated great interest and stimulated discussions appeared worthless in a mercantile world driven by advertising that strove to sell stuff to people.
Mathematics is a great example: it is everywhere, but it is “under the hood”, unseen by most, and the only apparent product is educational. One of the best advertising campaigns of all times, that overcomes this problem, is surely “Intel Inside”.
“Wisdom for Sale!” There is an amusing vignette at the start of one of the chronicles of Charlemagne (742-814) that describes two Scottish philosophers who had just set foot in the kingdom and opened up their stall in the marketplace selling… wisdom. The locals thought them crazy, and when asked what on Earth they were doing, replied that if they dispensed their insights for free then people would think them worthless. In the end, Charlemagne gives them a job to reform education and set up what eventually became some of Europe’s first universities. The story may be apocryphal but the reforms were very real.
Time to wrap this up, so all the subjects that interest me, from physics and philosophy to bio-electromagnetism and out-of-body experiences, all relate to one fundamental dichotomy: just as complexity is a region between order and chaos, so wisdom may be the middle way between freedom and control.
Look forward to seeing how Steemit develops!
Step Right Up... Step Right Up... by Tom Waits.