Les Leftovers: The great Medieval water myth “The idea that Medieval people drank beer or wine to avoid drinking bad water is so established that even some very serious scholars see no reason to document or defend it; they simply repeat it as a settled truth. In fact, if no one ever documents the idea, it is for a very simple reason: it’s not true. “ tags: weekly truth lies reality history water A Cynic’s Glossary – Futility Closet “EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. HABIT, n. A shackle for the free. HERS, pron. His. IMMIGRANT, n. An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another. IMPUNITY, n. Wealth. OCEAN, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills.” tags: weekly definitions dictionary words language The Dangers of Certainty: A Lesson From Auschwitz – NYTimes.com “Dr. Bronowski thought that the uncertainty principle should therefore be called the principle of tolerance. Pursuing knowledge means accepting uncertainty. Heisenberg’s principle has the consequence that no physical events can ultimately be described with absolute certainty or with “zero tolerance,” as it were. The more we know, the less certain we are. In the everyday world, we do not just accept a lack […]

Physicist puts Nobel prize medal up for auction | Science | The Guardian “For Leon Lederman, at 92, the details of the work that went into discovering a subatomic particle have become hazy over the decades. “I don’t have any real stories to tell about it,” he said. “I sit on my deck and look at the mountains.” “ tags: weekly nobel prize perspective Open Music Theory – Open Music Theory “Open Music Theory is an open-source, interactive, online “text”book for college-level music theory courses. OMT was built on resources authored by Kris Shaffer, Bryn Hughes, and Brian Moseley. It is edited by Kris Shaffer and Robin Wharton, and is published by Hybrid Pedagogy Publishing. Major funding and technological support (including the building of the technology behind the interactive music notation modules found in this text) came from the team at Trinket.” tags: weekly slack text open github jekyl textbook fork music theory reticent – Phocabulary word – Photo Word of the Day to improve and enhance word memory. Beginner, intermediate, advanced words including definition, synonyms, and antonyms. Found this via a trackback. An interesting idea and easy to make in WordPress. tags: vocabulary images words language weekly Nothing To Do With Arbroath: Phone-absorbed man bitten after accidentally stepping on snake “Tim Malone has been the DJ at Skateland in […]

But Is That Ethical? Ask This App. – Wired Campus – Blogs – The Chronicle of Higher Education “The Ethical Decision Making app is an attempt to bring applied ethics into 21st century. It is not so much a Magic 8-Ball as a pocket Socrates,” #thoughtvector technology, ethics, patterns of thought, and a magic 8 ball reference http://t.co/6dUafwnbzJ — Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) May 16, 2014 tags: IFTTT Twitter weekly ethics irony app 8ball thoughtvectors $2 Undecillion Lawsuit “Maybe people just aren’t that valuable. The EPA currently values a human life at $8.7 million, although they go to great lengths to point out that technically this is not actually the value any specific person places on another person’s individual life.[1] In any case, by their measure, the total value we place on all the world’s humans is about $60 trillion—less than the total value we place on all the world’s oil.[2]” Another beautiful What if? by @xkcdComic http://t.co/bx6wrCaJw3 #thoughtvectors — Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) May 16, 2014 tags: IFTTT Twitter weekly money worth humans thoughtvectors xkcd whatif scale Barnstorming – Futility Closet “Perhaps, like a poem, it provides its own reason.” tags: flying rooster weekly plane patent The Latest Hitman Game Was Inspired By The Rich Kids Of Instagram tags: hitman instagram videogame socialmedia weekly Posted from Diigo. The rest of my […]