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Design | History | Science | Technology

Plans for the Little Known Confederate Helicopter

The possibilities of combining Civil War re-enactment and steampunk fantasy role-playing are mind-boggling. Just imagine Rhett Butler steam-flying Scarlet out of Atlanta.

The American Civil War brought about great advances in the use of technology in warfare. Balloons, railroads, ironclad ships, and even a submarine were demonstrated throughout the conflict, and new ideas were [...]

Academia | Culture | Health | Psychology | Science | Social_Software | Technology

Brain, Interrupted

In most situations, the person juggling e-mail, text messaging, Facebook and a meeting is [not multitasking, but] really doing something called “rapid toggling between tasks,” and is engaged in constant context switching.

As economics students know, switching involves costs. But how much? When a consumer switches banks, or a company switches suppliers, it’s relatively easy [...]

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Seton Hill Chemistry Club Hosts 30 Homeschool Students for Chemistry Day

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Culture | History | Media | Science | Technology

We Had No Idea What Alexander Graham Bell Sounded Like. Until Now | History & Archaeology

“Hear my voice. Alexander Graham Bell.” That was really quite thrilling.

In that ringing declaration, I heard the clear diction of a man whose father, Alexander Melville Bell, had been a renowned elocution teacher (and perhaps the model for the imperious Prof. Henry Higgins, in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion; Shaw acknowledged Bell in his preface [...]

Academia | Books | Culture | Humanities | Literature | Science

Huge Collection of Free CC-Licensed Textbooks (2012)

2012 Book Archive.

Business, humanities, writing, science.

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Academia | Aesthetics | Education | Media | Rhetoric | Science

Higgs Boson Video

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Great video about subatomic particles, from Piled Higher and Deeper.

Books | Culture | Cyberculture | Design | Literacy | Media | Science | Technology | Uncategorized

The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens: Scientific American

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As digital texts and technologies become more prevalent, we gain new and more mobile ways of reading—but are we still reading as attentively and thoroughly? How do our brains respond differently to onscreen text than to words on paper? Should we be worried about dividing our attention between pixels and ink or is the validity [...]

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Why scientists should care about art

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My artsy daughter loves stories about science far more than she loves science; she has won “Best Display” for her age group in a science fair. When my son was 5, when given the choice he would invariably ask me to read him a nonfiction book rather an a fiction book; he has won “Most [...]

Academia | Education | Ethics | Science

Students boycott final to challenge professor’s grading policy (and get As)

Since he started teaching at Johns Hopkins University in 2005, Professor Peter Fröhlich has maintained a grading curve in which each class’s highest grade on the final counts as an A, with all other scores adjusted accordingly. So if a midterm is worth 40 points, and the highest actual score is 36 points, “that person [...]

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Seeing and Believing (“Knowledge for Children”)

Patience and hard work are also attributes of hunters, peasants, and Benedictine monks. What sets scientists apart is their rigorous observation of natural phenomena, allowing patterns to emerge that can be expressed in abstract formulae, which, in turn, can be applied to produce identical results any time they are reapplied in identical conditions. To “do [...]