Posts Tagged ‘education’

Matters of Gravity

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

What you’re looking at there is the sad and beautiful story of the death of two stars, and the casting of two other survivors into the darkness.
I’ve been sitting here playing with the My Solar System gravity simulator since reading about it in Discovery–it’s a cool educational toy for modelling interaction of bodies under gravity. [...]

Vaguely book-related

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

You know the drill: links with pithy comments.

Let’s start off this list with Jo Walton costing me a pile of money. I’ve mentioned before enjoying her Tor.com reviews, and finding significant alignment between her tastes and mine… so when she reviews a series of spy novels that I somehow have never even heard of, and [...]

Teach The Controversy

Monday, January 25th, 2010

I believe I would happily wear any of the Teach The Controversy shirts at WearScience, but for obvious reasons, I would especially like this one:

No Surprise Here

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Speaking as someone who’s lifelong love of1 reading was to some significant degree ignited by regular trips to pick up comics from the used bins at Allison The Bookman, it’s no surprise to me that research shows that kids reading comics “increased their vocabulary and instilled a love of reading”. I’d say there’s a serious [...]

Friday Night Links

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Collected from here and there about the networks, for your amusement or edification,

I would really like to believe the story of Denny & Peach is a vignette that accurately captures a bit of the wonder of the world. But even if it’s a fiction, it’s a lovely little one. Also, SWORD CANE!
Same thing with this [...]

Another major life moment

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

In addition to all that “moving to Ontario soon” drama outlined below, there’s a whole other life milestone that got passed today: my daughter went to school for the first time.
We got up a little early this morning and had a pancake breakfast, and then we all went down to where Sarah would meet her [...]

I shall call her Dr. Wife

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

Yes, I think the title captures the news from Friday: Trish is now a Doctor of Philosophy.
(She was assured that as a newly minted PhD she gets up to six months of people having to forgive her for being asinine about the doctor title–booking plane tickets with it, etc. I don’t know if she’ll [...]

Language and the Shaping Of Thought

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

While I was doing my undergraduate studies, in addition to my Engineering degree, and my minor in Philosophy, I also pursed a number of “options”, notably including an option in Cognitive Studies. Both the mechanics of thinking and the philosophy of cognition and identity were (and remain) of great interest to me.1
One of the topics [...]

February 25, 2009 11:08 pm

Still so busy that it hurts. However, not too busy to have a laugh reading some entries in the “Simple English” Wikipedia.

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Worth 2000 Words

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

A recent cleaning and reorganization process resulted in our more-or-less reclaiming the upstairs family room from our daughter. Not that we’ve kicked her out of there, but we’ve removed a bunch of her stuff from the room, making it seem less exclusively hers.
A consequence of this is that we had room to add a new [...]

Happy Accidents

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

That’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” by Édouard Manet. I spent a bit of time thinking about it recently because of a cut-and-paste error.
It started when the guys over at SFFAudio pointed out that the podcasts of UCSD lectures are available for a limited time. Their intention was to direct us to quickly grab the [...]

Good idea, let’s lower the bar.

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

And now, from the “dumbest thing I’ve read today” file:
Bournemouth Council, which has the Latin motto Pulchritudo et Salubritas – beauty and health – has listed 19 terms it no longer considers acceptable for use.
They include ad hoc, bona fide, status quo, vice versa and even via.
Its list of alternatives includes ‘for this special [...]

Lapham’s Quarterly, Again

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

I have previously mentioned how thrilled I am with Lewis Lapham’s current project: Lapham’s Quarterly. The current issue, which focuses on education, is a fine and marvellous read.
Actually, the cost of the issue is more than justified just by the introductory essay. Lapham is on fire. Here’s a little bit:
Why would any politician in [...]