Weekly Web Harvest (weekly)

  • “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

  • “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

  • “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 of ultimate exactitude with a melancholic shrug, but we constantly employ such inexactitude in our relations with other people. Our relations with others also require a principle of tolerance. We encounter other people across a gray area of negotiation and approximation. Such is the business of listening and the back and forth of conversation and social interaction.”

    tags: uncertainty truth lies reality science weekly

  • Everybody Dies | #dataviz of Shakespearian deaths http://t.co/1aIhk4Zwi8

    — Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) February 28, 2014

    tags: IFTTT Twitter shakespeare deaths dataviz English theater tweet weekly

  • “while this project is an intertextual, intermedia, and interdisciplinary endeavor, it is more importantly a rhizomatic one. a rhizomatic approach to _______. creates a spaaaaaace in which connection, empathy and relationality surface. the project becomes a marriage of critical theory and creative practice, an incarnation of the rhizome in other media.”

    tags: rhizomatic art tweet weekly

  • “The implications of the tumblr post are not altogether clear, said Martin Gibala, the chairman of the department of kinesiology at McMaster University”

    “The implications of the tumblr post are not altogether clear” “The implications of the tumblr post are not alto… http://t.co/KTss04gSVm

    — Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) February 27, 2014

    tags: IFTTT Twitter tweet tumblr culture world fitness weekly

  • “[I]n music, unlike painting, there is no such thing as a forgery of a known work. There are, indeed, compositions falsely purporting to be by Haydn as there are paintings falsely purporting to be by Rembrandt; but of the London Symphony, unlike the Lucretia, there can be no forgeries. Haydn’s manuscript is no more genuine an instance of the score than is a printed copy off the press this morning, and last night’s performance no less genuine than the premiere. Copies of the score may vary in accuracy, but all accurate copies, even if forgeries of Haydn’s manuscript, are equally genuine instances of the score. Performances may vary in correctness and quality and even in ‘authenticity’ of a more esoteric kind; but all correct performances are equally genuine instances of the work. In contrast, even the most exact copies of the Rembrandt paintings are simply imitations or forgeries, not new instances, of the work. Why this difference between the two arts?

    tags: futility closet copy real fake media IP weekly

  • “If your students worship grades, they won’t complete assignments without knowing how many points it’s worth. If they worship stickers and candy, they won’t work without the promise of those prizes.

    If you say a prayer to the “real world” every time you sit down to plan your math lessons, you and your students will never have enough real world, never feel you have enough connection to jobs and solar panels and trains leaving Chicago and things made of stuff.

    If you instead say a prayer to the atomic sensation of being puzzled and the catharsis that comes from being unpuzzled, you will never get enough of being puzzled and unpuzzled.”

    tags: weekly curiosity drive interest univ200 prep

  • Future assignment . . . maybe w movie monsters, robots, Disney characters etc.

    tags: ds106 fodder dinosaur infographic design dataviz weekly tweet

  • “Besides, the argument in favor of two spaces isn’t any less arbitrary. Samantha Jacobs, a reading and journalism teacher at Norwood High School in Norwood, Col., told me that she requires her students to use two spaces after a period instead of one, even though she acknowledges that style manuals no longer favor that approach. Why? Because that’s what she’s used to. “Primarily, I base the spacing on the way I learned,” she wrote me in an e-mail glutted with extra spaces.”

    tags: weekly habit rationale stupid history relic

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.