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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 God, and that it’s their spiritual duty — a mitzvah — to spread that happiness to others.”
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A Letter from the Editors—The Appendix
“It’s been said that only a tenth of historians’ research makes it into their written work. A tenth of newspapers read, books carried, archives explored, receipts tallied, journals skimmed, letters digested. A tenth of people’s lives sifted to make history manageable and ready for publication. It’s a potent and necessary tenth, but still: a small share of the past, only a fraction of which will ever reach the wider public.
Consider The Appendix your new home for the other nine-tenths. It is a quarterly journal of history for the rest of us, a workshop for essays and art about the people and events just outside what gets taught in school. More often than not, The Appendix’s subjects won’t have Wikipedia entries, let alone doorstop-sized biographies of their lives. Instead, The Appendix’s historians, writers and artists deliver choice discoveries from the archives – tragic, absurd, and inspiring stories that challenge what we think we know about the past and present. Its pages swell with forbidden love letters, the marginalia of bored policemen and monks, the lost journals of the failed and forgotten, and photographs of someone else’s grandmother. Things often tossed in the dustbin of history — but better off in The Appendix.”
h/t @DavidRCroteau
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“An English professor at Harvard University turned heads last month when she instructed students in her poetry class to refrain from asking questions during lectures so as not to disrupt recordings being made for the MOOC version of the course.”
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“But on reflection he decided it was fairly innocuous. “There are lots of lecture courses in which students do not ask questions anyway,” Mr. Lewis wrote on his blog. “This professor was making a point of having a much livelier conversation with the undergraduates for half an hour after the recorded portion of the lecture, which is a lot more than I or many of my colleagues do.”
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An Excerpt From ‘The Lampshade’ by Mark Jacobson — New York Magazine
“I’d spent many months attempting to track down the true nature of the lampshade, its origin and meaning, a search that had taken me halfway around the world. “
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What Would Happen if We Let Them Go? – The Futures of School Reform – Education Week
“I wonder, finally, what would happen if we simply opened the doors and let the students go; if we let them walk out of the dim light of the overhead projector into the sunlight; if we let them decide how, or whether, to engage this monolith? Would it be so terrible? Could it be worse than what they are currently experiencing? Would adults look at young people differently if they had to confront their children on the street, rather than locking them away in institutions? Would it force us to say more explicitly what a humane and healthy learning environment might look like? Should discussions of the future of school reform be less about the pet ideas of professional reformers and more about what we’re doing to young people in the institution called school?”
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The Great American Bubble Machine
“The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. ”
h/t Kick Ass Ledes
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“We do not endorse the systematic harvesting of mortal flesh for mass consumption.”
“We do not endorse the systematic harvesting of mortal flesh for mass consumption.” “We do not endorse the s… http://t.co/lqcoTXXtFp
— Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) March 9, 2014
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“cos·mo·lyr·i·cal \käz-?mä-lir-i-k?l\
a deeply personal and highly engaging performance poetry composition pertaining to the branches of astronomy and philosophy dealing with the apparent origin, history, structure, dynamics, elements, laws, and characteristics, of the observable universe including space, time, causality, and mind;”
defining cosmolyrical “cos·mo·lyr·i·cal \käz-?mä-lir-i-k?l\ a deeply personal and highly engaging performance… http://t.co/DXnyTXrYTV
— Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) March 9, 2014
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Flying the world’s fastest plane: Behind the stick of the SR-71 – SBNation.com
“Yeah. It’s just amazing, and points out a hallmark of the Skunk Works. Don’t waste energy on something you have a solution for. You’ve got a lot of things to worry about already: how to keep the glass from melting at speed, how to keep the engines running at high speeds for long periods, how do you keep the fuel from exploding. If someone had a simple solution to something, then that’s what they did. A very unique, very pragmatic approach. ”
“you can’t react to things that would…happen the way you would..It was a vector, not a line.” http://t.co/SOtc5Zh3BX #thoughtvectors
— Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) March 9, 2014
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My Russian wife was trying to say “tape measure” – Imgur
“I have referred to Muffins as bread mushrooms. Honestly though its still a good description”
“When I was learning English I could not remember the English for Reindeer, so I called it a Christmas Llama.”
This would be an amazing game for an #English or foreign language classroom http://t.co/sl5v0sEIX2 cc @lukeneff
— Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) March 9, 2014
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Why we need pain in the games we play – Michael Thompson – Aeon
“And of course, if you’re suffering, the chances are that your opponent is, too. Indifference to pain confers a tactical advantage.
‘I remember the best race I ever had where the pain was almost enjoyable because you see other people hurt more than you,’”
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The 30 second habit with a lifelong impact — Sonra Oku — Medium
“Immediately after every lecture, meeting, or any significant experience, take 30 seconds?—?no more, no less?—?to write down the most important points. If you always do just this, said his grandfather, and even if you only do this, with no other revision, you will be okay.”
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The humanities of science communication | Ben Lillie
“This is shocking. Not the conclusion, which is clearly correct. The problem is that the conclusion has been known to comedians for at least the last several thousand years. When I trained in improv comedy the third class was on callbacks, the jargon term for that technique. The entire structure of an improv comedy set is based around variations on the idea that things are funnier if they’re repeated. And yet to the authors it was “common knowledge” that this will spoil a joke. There is a long tradition of people who know, from experience, how this works, and yet the idea of asking them is not evident anywhere in the paper. This is the problem — the sense that the only valid answers come from inside science and the research world.”
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Is formaldehyde dangerous? No, but Johnson & Johnson removed it from baby shampoo anyway.
“But once fear is established, it’s hard to overcome. Mike Mackert, a University of Texas professor who studies health literacy, points out: “Once people latch onto a particular belief, sometimes hearing contradictory, though correct, information only strengthens an incorrect belief.””