Ruminations from the Test-Prep Industry: How Dare You? Or: Supply, Demand, and Diatribe. “What I think but don’t say is that we “dare” charge what we do because a critical mass of people are willing to pay that much. As someone who thinks capitalism is on the whole pretty icky, it makes a definite amount […]
Category: Lost
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Israel’s Orthodox Ravers Are On A Holy Mission To Dance : NPR “Na Nach took off about 30 years ago as a countercultural offshoot of the Breslovers, a Hasidic sect that follows the mystical writings of 19th-century Ukrainian rabbi Nachman of Breslov. Their central belief is that happiness is key to a rich relationship with […]
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It’s Okay To Be Smart • Physicist is both to my mouth and ears so awkward… ““Physicist is both to my mouth and ears so awkward that I think I shall never use it. The equivalent of three separate sounds of “i” in one word is too much.” Michael Faraday (1791-1867) was not fond of […]
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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, […]
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ISSUE 83: That Chop on the Upbeat :: Oxford American – The Southern Magazine of Good Writing “You can’t have the objects—it’s perfect for the collectors; you still get the special feeling of exclusivity and possession; you get to sit there and make the whole world listen to your records—but the benefit for the scholar […]
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The Construction of a Twitter Aesthetic : The New Yorker ““You can build paragraphs with the sentences I’ve learned to write.” Having deconstructed his passions down to the size of a tweet, Jarosinski is building them back up again.” tags: twitter language writing weekly The New RoboCop Is What RoboCop Meant to Kill “But the […]
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A long march to the end of the world – Boing Boing “In 2011, a man calling himself Kurt Mac began walking his Minecraft avatar to the end of the world — the place where the game’s ability to create new land ahead of you starts to break down. It’s called The Far Lands and […]
Suffering Massive MOOC Creep
Image by David Kernohan animation by Michael Branson Smith. I’m attending ELI 2014. MOOC seems to be synonymous with any online or blended “educational” offering regardless of size or openness. That’s a pretty open definition. Massive Massive (or massively) is a strange word to ignore. It is the first letter after all. It seems important […]
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The botmaker who sees through the Internet – Ideas – The Boston Globe “Kazemi is part of a small but vibrant group of programmers who, in addition to making clever Web toys, have dedicated themselves to shining a spotlight on the algorithms and data streams that are nowadays humming all around us, and using them […]
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The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness | Science | The Observer “”The answer,” says Brown when I meet him in a north London cafe, “is because that’s how it always happens. Look at whistleblower culture. If you want to be a whistleblower you have to be prepared to lose your job. I’m […]