Category: Uncategorized
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The Geologic Time Spiral
As an accompaniment to the rather dense Age of the Earth article on the USGS website, there is a great graphical representation of geologic time available: The Geologic Time Spiral. If I were a teacher, I would definitely get the poster-sized version up on my wall.
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Dali on ‘What’s My Line?’
This short video of Salvador Dali’s appearance on What’s My Line? is rather entertaining. Naturally, he’s as surreal as his art. At one point a contestant mused: “You are a human being?”
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100 Skills Every Man Should Know
Popular Mechanics has come up with a list of 100 Skills Every Man Should Know. Even though it has more diversity than The Independent‘s list, I don’t think it’s as good. Topics covered include: Automotive Handling Emergencies Home Medical Myths Military Know-How Outdoors Primitive Skills Surviving Extremes Teach Your Kids Technology Master Key Workshop Tools…
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The Growth of Scientific Knowledge and Scientific Ignorance
Noting that knowledge is growing at an exponential rate, Kevin Kelly argues that thanks to science, our ignorance is growing exponentially faster. If knowledge is growing exponentially we should be quickly running out of puzzles. Because of our accelerating rate of learning, a few writers declared we must be in the age of “the end…
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Instinctual vs. Rational Decision–Making
Squeezing the article into a tenuous comparison between Obama and McCain, The Boston Globe has a nonetheless interesting article on recent research into the benefits of, and the differences between, instinctual (gut) decisions and methodical (rational) ones. The crucial skill, scientists are now saying, is the ability to think about your own thinking, or metacognition,…
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James Nachtwey’s Powerful XDR-TB Photography
I try not to link to TED Talks as I believe doing so will just add to the millions around the Internet already doing so (plus, I hope everyone visiting here already subscribes to the TED Talks RSS feed). Today, however, l feel compelled to do so after viewing James Nachtwey’s heartbreaking photographs of people…
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Top 10 Nobel Snubs
As the 2008 Nobel Laureates are announced, SciAm looks at the top 10 Nobel snubs – those who undoubtedly deserved the award, but never did: Lise Meitner: left out of the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission Oswald Avery: never won a Nobel for showing that genes are made of…
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Public Servant Blogs
Listening to Law in Action this week, I noticed that it’s now being broadcast not on BBC Radio 4, but on BBC null. Really though, I was listening to Clive Coleman’s show this week as he profiled (if swiftly) three of the four public servant bloggers that I subscribe to: PC David Copperfield Bystander of…
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Oxford and Cambridge Lectures on iTunes
The universities of Oxford and Cambridge have announced that they are to make lectures by well-known academics available for free through iTunes U. Oxford will publish 150 hours of free video and audio podcasts of lectures and ideas from what it described as “world-leading thinkers”. Meanwhile the University of Cambridge […] is making more than…
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UK Digital Rights Landscape
Suw Charman-Anderson, founder and first Executive Director of the wonderful UK-based digital rights organisation, Open Rights Group, has produced an informative ‘mind map’ of the UK digital rights ‘landscape’. As this was created over three years ago, an up-to-date and completed version would be of great interest.