According to the United Nations, as of 2002, 70 percent of the world’s nations were holding multi-party elections. Fifty-eight percent of the world’s population lived under a fully democratic system of governance. Both of these figures are at their highest points in human history. The Freedom House (search) think tank gave 89 countries containing 46…
IN THE span of 18 months, Isaac Newton invented calculus, constructed a theory of optics, explained how gravity works and discovered his laws of motion. As a result, 1665 and the early months of 1666 are termed his annus mirabilis. It was a sustained sprint of intellectual achievement that no one thought could ever be…
The MASSIVE database (last updated on 12-7-04) contains information on over 1700 science and math songs. Some of these songs are suitable for 2nd graders; others might only appeal to tenured professors. Some songs have been professionally recorded; others haven’t. Some are quite silly; others are downright serious. —MASSIVE (Math And Science Song Information, Viewable…
You awaken to news of a morning traffic jam. Leaving home early for a doctor’s appointment, you nonetheless arrive too late to find parking. After waiting two hours for a 15-minute consultation, you wait again to have your prescription filled. All the while, you worry about the work you’ve missed because so many other people…
Bloggers at the scene are more deeply affected by events than the journalists who roam from one disaster to another, said Xeni Jardin, one of the four co-editors of the site BoingBoing.net, which pointed visitors to many of the disaster blogs. “They are helping us understand the impact of this event in a way that…
The recent popularity of “eBaying” — the sale of seemingly fictive “property” within MMORPG — has raised numerous questions about the nature of MMORPG play. In particular, many have asked why players choose this practice, and how it might affect the game. This paper addresses these issues by examining some of the motives that drive…
Mr. Komarnitsky gave radio interviews to stations as far away as Australia. Web sites from NYTimes.com to geek hangout Slashdot.org linked to his site. An Associated Press item about his site was picked up by newspapers from Los Angeles to Columbia, S.C. As of midday Monday, according to Mr. Komarnitsky, the “Web cam” was asked…
If you could assign a reading list to the world, what books would you want people to read, and most importantly, why? —Moira Richardson —Calling All Readers! Contest! (Literary Tease) I’m still recovering from whatever it is that has struck me down this week… but Moira’s blog entry got me thinking. Even though Moira’s original post…
GM famously learned this lesson in the early 1980s with the introduction in Mexico and Spain of its Chevy Nova coupe. “No va” in Spanish means “won’t go.” —What’s in a name? For cars, everything (Detroit News Auto Insider) And the editors at The Detroit News Auto Insider area about to learn a lesson about urban…
I’ve Been Sick… (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I finished posting all this semester’s grades just before the annual Christmas Mass and faculty/staff lunch on the 21st. That’s the most organized I’ve ever been, when it comes to grades. I was feeling very proud of myself, and very happy to be here at Seton Hill, doing a job…
Vasconcellos argued that raising self-esteem in young people would reduce crime, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, school underachievement and pollution. At one point, he even expressed the hope that these efforts would one day help balance the state budget, a prospect predicated on the observation that people with high self-regard earn more than others and thus…
For way too long, it has been the mainstream media (MSM) that’s played God with the American public, telling everyone what’s news and what’s not, what to play up and what to downplay. But 2004 was the year the power started shifting, that the Little People, if you will, started to tell the gods of…
Researchers singled out the deaths of more than 300,000 cancer patients, because deaths from cancer are usually more predictable and less sudden than those from heart attacks, strokes or other ailments. There was no increase in overall mortality after Christmas. —Liz Szabo —Terminal Patients Don’t Hang on Until After Holidays (TechNewsWorld.com) That probably won’t put that…
—Buttered Mashed Potaotoes Classic Filled Candle (bathandbodyworks.com) I’m sorry, this seems… wrong. Thanks for this link, Rosemary. It has disturbed in me in ways that I would prefer to forget.
In the bowels of the British Library, the first object the conservator showed Seales was a manuscript that was so mangled, he says, “We almost ran screaming from the room, because there was nothing we could do. We had no tools that could help.” Seales tells me such manuscript fragments exist in the nooks and…
Washington Post Co. on Tuesday said it would buy Microsoft Corp.’s online magazine Slate, whose mix of politics, news and culture has built a loyal following but failed to yield significant profits. —Martha Graybow —Washington Post to Buy Web Magazine Slate (Reuters)
In a chilling reversal of Henry Ford’s strategy, which was to pay his workers amply so they could buy Ford cars, Wal-Mart’s stingy compensation policies–workers make, on average, just over $8 an hour, and if they want health insurance, they must pay more than a third of the premium–contribute to an economy in which, increasingly,…
“Sometimes you do everything right and you still die,” Mr. Wade said. “So you pick yourself up and start again.” I can live with that message, even though I can’t shake the feeling that it was designed to sell books to conflicted parents like me. —Learning Early That Success Is a Game (NY Times) An interesting…
As Web logs proliferate — Technorati, which tracks 5 million blogs, estimates that 15,000 are added each day — the boundaries between public and private are being transformed. Unconstrained by journalistic conventions, bloggers are blurring the lines between public events and ordinary social interactions and changing the way we date, work, teach and live. And…
Because government schooling is so bad, and dissatisfies such a gigantic amount of people, as represented in ?survey upon survey,? it therefore follows that they cannot be held liable for their faults! Imagine this being said of a private company?an auto maker, or a toy manufacturer, produces products that are so extremely bad that they…