nHumanities

Sarah Kay on "Rethinking"

2011-10-27T10:37:00.001-06:00

02.12.10 : tickle me pink

2010-07-30T13:17:00.001-06:00

02.12.10 : tickle me pink
Originally uploaded by PJ Taylor Photo

A Book & the Imagination

2009-05-12T10:02:00.000-06:00

www.evelienlohbeck.com
Noteboek from Evelien Lohbeck on Vimeo.
Noteboek (English title: Notebook) consists of 4 short experimental films where art student Lohbeck confuses reality and illusion. To see more of her work, visit www.evelienlohbeck.com
Music: The White Stripes, "Seven Nation Army"

How to Study--New Insight, Old Method

2009-04-27T14:24:00.003-06:00

"Close the Book. Recall. Write It Down."

That's the advice from the latest research on how to learn--and it's research that confirms ideas first floated back in the 1940s. Today many professors tell their students to study by reading and rereading carefully. As The Chronicle of Higher Education reports,

That's not terrible advice. But some scientists would say that you've left out the most important step: Put the book aside and hide your notes. Then recall everything you can. Write it down, or, if you're uninhibited, say it out loud.

Two psychology journals have recently published papers showing that this strategy works, the latest findings from a decades-old body of research. When students study on their own, "active recall" — recitation, for instance, or flashcards and other self-quizzing — is the most effective way to inscribe something in long-term memory.

The entire article by David Glenn is online from The Chronicle.

Online Models for 2009 MLA Rules

2009-03-31T16:44:00.001-06:00

For those of you who wish to start using the new 2009 MLA documentation methods now, online resources are starting to reflect the changes. Here are four that you will find useful for explanation and models:

The OWL at Purdue: MLA Update 2009
A one-page guide from Bakersfield College (PDF)
A 12-page guide that includes examples of parenthetical citations from Fulton-Montgomery Community College (PDF)
A Hacker Handbooks Supplement (St. Martin's Press): Documenting Sources (the equivalent of section MLA-4--PDF)

Life Just Got Easier for Humanities Students

2009-03-13T15:47:00.007-06:00

This week, the Modern Language Association (MLA) just made life easier for anyone using its style sheet to document online research sources. In the newly released 7th edition of its MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers , the MLA has finally gotten comfortable with the idea of online materials and has accepted the fluidity of the web.

It's simplified the documentation method for web documents within the Works Cited page of a paper (the bibliography). The key improvement is its recommended handling of URLs (Uniform Resource Locators--the "address" of a web page). Of URLs, the Handbook says,

In the past, this handbook recommended including URLs of Web sources in works-cited-list entries. Inclusion of URLs has proved to have limited value, however, for they often change, can be specific to a subscriber or a session of use, and can be so long and complex that typing them into a browser is cumbersome and prone to transcription errors. Readers are now more likely to find resources on the Web by searching for titles and authors’ names than by typing URLs. You should include a URL as supplementary information only when the reader probably cannot locate the source without it or when your instructor requires it. (section 5.6.1, my emphasis)

To illustrate the change in documentation style, compare the previously used citation for an article accessed via an online database to what MLA now recommends--the bits in red highlight the difference:

Formerly:

Potter, Dawn. "In Defense of Dullness or Why Fanny Price Is My

Favorite Austen Heroine." Sewanee Review 116.4 (2008): 611-618. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Hinckley Lib., Northwest Coll., Powell, WY. 13 Mar. 2009 <http://webboard.northwestcollege.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&an=35430704&site=ehost-live&scope=site>.

Now:

Potter, Dawn. "In Defense of Dullness or Why Fanny Price Is My

Favorite Austen Heroine." Sewanee Review 116.4 (2008): 611-618. Academic Search Premier. Web. 13 Mar. 2009.

There now. Doesn't that look easier?

Is This the Face of Shakespeare?

2009-03-10T09:46:00.000-06:00

Representatives of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust are 90% sure that the portrait above--the Cobbe portrait--is "the only portrait of William Shakespeare painted during his lifetime" (NPR ).

The portrait appears to be the original of several well-known copies, such as the portrait hanging in the Folger Shakespeare Library. For the past three years, the provenance of the portrait has been studied: "The research conclusively demonstrates that the Cobbe picture is the prime version of the portrait and establishes beyond reasonable doubt its descent to the Cobbes through their cousin’s marriage to the great granddaughter of Shakespeare’s only literary patron, Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton" (Science Daily ).

To learn about the remarkable discovery of this portrait, read the story at NPR , watch the video below, or visit the webpages listed by Google News .

The Doctor Is In: Writing & Good Health

2009-03-02T15:03:00.003-07:00

You know those TV ads where people swear that working out with their machine for only five minutes a day will give you good health and ripped abs?

They're lying.

If, however, you spend only two minutes a day writing about your emotions and do it for only two consecutive days, you will enjoy better physical health for as long as 4-6 weeks later.

And we're telling you the truth.

These are the results reported by Chad M. Burton and Laura A. King in the British Journal of Health Psychology article "Effects of (Very) Brief Writing on Health: The Two-minute Miracle." Finally, an explanation for why middle-school girls who spend hours sobbing and writing in their diaries are so incredibly robust.

For a couple of decades, researchers have known that regular writing produces positive health benefits, as measured by the Pennebaker Inventory of Limbic Languidness (which measures 54 physical complaints). In the past, researchers used a writing sample of 15-20 minutes for several days.

What Burton and King set out to explore was the lower boundary of writing required to reap health benefits. Two. Minutes. Two. Days. That's all. Participants who showed positive effects wrote about either positive or traumatic events--both were effective. The key is that the writing contain emotional content, in effect “broaching the topic on 1 day and briefly exploring it the next” (Burton and King 1).

You can read the original paper online.
[Photo courtesy of Esther G via Flickr .]

More Software for Starving Students

2009-02-20T14:34:00.001-07:00

Sumo Paint is an online image editor that allows you to do many of tricky things you'd do with Photoshop . . . right there on your browser. For. Free.

Wordle -- Create a Word Cloud

2009-02-12T09:25:00.025-07:00

Wordle is easy to use. You type or paste in text and Wordle creates a word cloud for you--a visual representation of how frequently words appear within the text. The Wordle allows you to adjust shape, font, and color. Here, for instance, is a link to the cloud we just made for Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" (Bliss version). Click on the picture to view the full-sized version.

Then compare that word cloud to the one created by another Wordle user for President Obama's Inaugural Address.

Be sure you spend some time viewing the Wordle Gallery; some of the word clouds people create are beautifully inspirational. Call us sentimental, but we like this Valentine's Day cloud.

This wonderful web app was created by a software engineer at the IBM Research Visual Cognition Lab.

Save the Words

2009-01-30T14:56:00.030-07:00

Each year hundreds of words are dropped from the dictionary.

Old Words, wise words, hard-working words. Words that once led meaningful lives but now lie abandoned and forgotten.

You can do your part. Help save the words!

If not for yourself then for generations yet to come.

This touching plea appears on Oxford's Save the Words website , a clever little widget where the words vie for your attention, begging you to adopt and use them.

Visit the web site! Then you, too, can write sentences like this: The woundikins of the teterrimous snollygoster were worse than the affictitious graviloquence of the legatarian historiaster who studied ptochology.

Grim Online Toys

2009-01-26T17:27:00.001-07:00

Peace is a good thing.

In our 1950s youth, we lived 13.7 miles from Offutt Air Force Base, under the flight pattern of bombers coming in for a landing. Given the movies we were shown in school at the time (urging us to "duck and cover") and the Cold War atmosphere, it was hard for a kid not to worry about all the Soviet warheads pointing at Offutt. Childhood consisted of anxiously computing blast radii, fretting over the prevailing wind direction, and counting the containers of water down in our farmhouse basement (which was our family's bomb shelter plan).

All that was guess work . . . now the internet gives us Ground Zero , a little mapplet using Google Maps to compute the blast radii of various nuclear ordinance from any ground zero one wishes to set. Just enter a location, choose a bomb, and then click "Nuke it!"

If one were to drop a "Tsar Bomba" (1961, USSR) on Offutt . . . well, the outcome doesn't look so good for the family farm:

To help keep these things in perspective, however, the mapplet also allows one to compute the impact of an asteroid strike. It makes all the bombs look puny.

On the Nightstand

2009-01-21T13:45:00.003-07:00

If you--ahem!--find the reading on people's nightstands much more interesting than what they have on their office bookshelves, then take a look at Discover Magazine's regular web feature On the Nightstand .

Example: Here's what Yale primate psychologist Laurie Santos has on her nightstand (which is actually a filing cabinet)--

The Squad by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, a graduate student of Santos . . . who “doubles as a teen-girl-fiction writer.” The book is about cheerleader CIA agents, Santos says. “It’s awesome. I think all cognitive scientists should read it.”
The stuffed frog she sleeps with
The Freedom Manifesto by Tom Hodgkinson, which Santos describes as a “wonderfully British, philosophical attempt at promoting idleness”
A new iPhone to wake her up in the morning
Watchmen, an apocalyptic graphic novel (“a fancy way of saying it’s a big comic book”) that is due out as a movie in March

That's funny . . . we have Watchmen on our nightstand, too. Nice to learn that the sciences and humanities share so much.

N-Effect . . . Another Argument for Small Class Size

2009-01-15T10:43:00.002-07:00

Psychologists asked a question basic: "Modern life often seems like a rat-race. But does one's motivation to run the maze, to compete, depend on how many other 'rats' are in the race?"

Well . . . yes, apparently so.

The researchers found that people do better in smaller competitive situations than in large ones, which they call the N-Effect, "the discovery that increasing the number of competitors (N) can decrease competitive motivation." Their studies show "that average test scores (e.g., SAT scores) fall as the average number of test-takers at test-taking venues increases." That is, people do better on some tasks if they think they are competing against only 10 other other people instead of 100 people.

The psychologists suggest where further study is needed but note that their findings may shed light on debates about class size and student success:

. . . One such example concerns the debate on the role of class size in education (Mishel, & Rothstein, 2002), where some suggest class-size is rather insignificant (e.g., Hanushek, 2002) while others deem it important (e.g., Krueger, 2002). The N-Effect, however, sheds new light on this debate by revealing that as the mere N of students in the classroom increases, motivation to compete and exert academic effort are likely to decrease. In fact, perhaps the N-Effect could partly solve the mystery of the falling SAT scores in recent years (Finder, 2007), if one were to find that the average N test-takers reporting to testing venues is continually increasing.

Finally, we conclude by qualifying Zajonc’s (1965) recommendation in his seminal facilitation article, which stated: “If one were to draw one practical suggestion . . . he would advise his student . . . to arrange to take his examinations in the company of many other students, on stage, and in the presence of a large audience. The results of his examination would be beyond his wildest expectations…” (p. 274, Zajonc, 1965). Our social comparison account of the N-Effect would recommend having only a few others on stage; adding too many competitors may dampen, rather than enhance, the motivation to compete.

(Picture of large psych class courtesy of Karma Moths )

The paper by Stephen M. Garcia and Avishalom Tor--The N-Effect: More Competitors, Less Competition -- is forthcoming from Psychological Science.

Reading on the Rise

2009-01-12T10:38:00.004-07:00

According to a new survey from the National Endowment for the Arts, reading is on the rise in the United States, reversing a 26-year trend of decline.

The report concludes, "Whites, African Americans, and Hispanics have all shown significant growth in their reading rates, as have both adult men and women. . . . Best of all, the most significant growth has been among young adults, the group that had shown the largest declines in earlier surveys."

The report lists 12 statistical findings, including the observation that "The U.S. adult population now breaks into two almost equally sized groups--readers and nonreaders":

The report doesn't include any statistical reason for the rise in reading, although the increase among a broad demographic suggests that no single age-based reading program can claim responsibility. Instead, the rise seems the result of numerous efforts throughout schools and communities.

The New York Times reports that Dana Gioia, chair of the NEA, attributes "the increase in literary reading to community-based programs like the 'Big Read,' Oprah Winfrey’s book club, the huge popularity of book series like 'Harry Potter' and Stephenie Meyer’s 'Twilight,' as well as the individual efforts of teachers, librarians, parents and civic leaders to create 'a buzz around literature that’s getting people to read more in whatever medium.'"

You can download the entire, readable report from NEA's website: Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy .

Software for Starving Students, Part Deux

2009-01-06T10:46:00.001-07:00

We posted previously about Software for Starving Students , but--sadly--the main source of those valuable links at SoftwareFor.org has gone the way of the dodo.

So we're pleased to tell you about OpenDisc's education project, OpenEducationDisc , which provides high quality open source software for Windows. As OpenDisc explains,

The purpose of [the OpenEducationDisc] is to provide students with the software that they need to complete school work at home. Most students don’t have jobs and it is unfair to ask for them or a parent/guardian to buy expensive software to get the best out of their education.

We agree.

Holiday Misinformation Exposed!

2008-12-18T11:52:00.005-07:00

In the most recent edition of the British Medical Journal, Rachel C. Vreeman and Aaron E. Carroll examine six common beliefs we hold about holiday health and--through a review of the research--expose them as mistakes.

Here's the straight scoop on our holiday misconceptions, with all quotations coming from the article :

Sugar causes hyperactivity in children

Regardless of what parents might believe, however, sugar is not to blame for out of control little ones. At least 12 double blind randomised controlled trials have examined how children react to diets containing different levels of sugar. None of these studies, not even studies looking specifically at children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, could detect any differences in behaviour between the children who had sugar and those who did not. . . .

Scientists have even studied how parents react to the sugar myth. When parents think their children have been given a drink containing sugar (even if it is really sugar-free), they rate their children’s behaviour as more hyperactive. The differences in the children’s behaviour were all in the parents’ minds.

Suicides increase over the holidays

While the holidays might, indeed, be a difficult time for some, there is no good scientific evidence to suggest a holiday peak in suicides. . . . Further debunking myths about suicide, people are not more likely to commit suicide during the dark winter months. Around the world, suicides peak in warmer months and are actually lowest in the winter. . . . Studies from the US reflect this pattern, with lower rates in November and December than in typically warmer months.

Poinsettia toxicity

In an analysis of 849,575 plant exposures reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, none of the 22,793 cases involving poinsettia resulted in considerable poisoning. No one died from exposure to or ingestion of poinsettia, and most (96%) did not even require medical treatment. In 92 of the cases, children ingested substantial quantities of poinsettias, but none needed medical treatment, and toxicologists concluded that poinsettia exposures and ingestions can be treated without referral to a healthcare facility.

Excess heat loss in the hatless

A . . . recent study confirms that there is nothing special about the head and heat loss. Any uncovered part of the body loses heat and will reduce the core body temperature proportionally. So, if it is cold outside, you should protect your body. But whether you want to keep your head covered or not is up to you.

Nocturnal feasting makes you fat

. . . just because obesity and eating more meals at night are associated, it does not mean that one causes the other. People gain weight because they take in more calories overall than they burn up. . . . Other studies found no link at all between eating at night and weight gain.

You can cure a hangover

No scientific evidence, however, supports any cure or effective prevention for alcohol hangovers. . . . A hangover is caused by excess alcohol consumption. Thus, the most effective way to avoid a hangover is to consume alcohol only in moderation or not at all.

For more fresh air from BMJ's Vreeman and Carroll, see Medical Myths from 2007 (1288-1289).

As We Move into Finals Week . . .

2008-12-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

As we move into finals weeks here at Northwest College, we all could use a little pick-me-up. This video is just the ticket--thanks to Matthew Belinkie, who has cut together 40 speeches from classic movies into a two-minute inspirational montage:

It's a Wonderful Life . . . the Dark Side

2008-12-11T07:00:00.001-07:00

A. O. Scott, film critic and editor for The New York Times, has produced a little feature on the dark side of Frank Capra's classic in Critics' Picks: 'It's a Wonderful Life.'

By ennumerating everything that's wrong in the world of George Bailey, Scott demonstrates why it's such a comforting film for the holidays.

Happy Birthday, Milton!

2008-12-09T09:18:00.001-07:00

Today is the Puritan poet's 400th birthday. To honor him, we recommend a trip to the Milton Reading Room at Dartmouth College . There, you'll find a beautifully annotated version of his masterwork, Paradise Lost.

The last lines of the poem describe Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, which William Blake so beautifully illustrated: "They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow, / Through Eden took thir solitarie way."

Christmas in Williamsburg | Then & Now

2008-12-08T17:04:00.003-07:00

A little Christmas bonus we created for an early American literature class:

RSS Feeds in Plain English

2008-12-08T08:59:00.001-07:00

A good introduction to RSS feeds from Lee LeFever, April 23, 2007:

Viral Video | Bruce Lee

2008-12-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

Viral videos are little film clips which gain popularity exponentially by being shared through today's many multimedia means: YouTube, emails, instant messaging, blog posts, etc. Case in point: This Nokia phone ad which appeared last month in China. It features the late, great Bruce Lee playing table tennis . . . with nunchakus!

Gift Ideas for 2008 | Book Lists

2008-12-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

Set organized, saved and shared with Agglom

Dance Your [Science] Ph.D.

2008-12-02T11:38:00.000-07:00

The AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) has sponsored its second Dance Your Ph.D. contest and the winners are in! The contest asked scholars to express their Ph.D. in dance form; the contest was open to anyone who has (or is pursuing) a Ph.D. in any scientific field or in science-related fields.

As the web site says, "the human body is an excellent medium for communicating science--perhaps not as data-rich as a peer-reviewed article, but far more exciting." You can see the winning YouTube videos and the rest of the submissions on the 2009 AAAS/Science Dance Contest web site.

Below is the winning Graduate Student entry from Sue Lynn Lau for her Ph.D. dissertation "The role of vitamin D in beta cell function" from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research / University of Sydney, Australia. For an explanation of this dance, click "(more info)" to the right of the video on YouTube.

15 Second Film Festival

2008-12-01T11:24:00.001-07:00

Did you know that the very early films of both Thomas Edison and The Lumière Brothers were 15 seconds long? That fact is part of the inspiration for the 15 Second Film Festival, a micro-movie contest created by Irish filmmaker Peter “Magic” Johnston.

So why don't you take a minute from your busy day and watch four movies or so?

W8ing4Godot from 15 Second Film Festival on Vimeo.

Milton's 400th

2008-11-21T13:29:00.000-07:00

A group of St. Olaf faculty and students staged a marathon reading of John Milton's Paradise Lost last month to honor the poet's 400th birthday. Here's a nice feature on the event:

If you're wondering why you should care about Milton's birthday, you can read a lecture by St. Olaf Professor of English Edward DuRocher on "Why Milton Matters."

A-Bomb Babies

2008-11-18T07:00:00.002-07:00

Robert Krulwich's segments on NPR--Krulwich on Science--always help explain the science world around us in a delightful way.

This past Sunday, Krulwich explained "How A-Bomb Testing Changed Our Trees" and changed some of us, too. The atmospheric a-bomb tests of the 1950s and '60s blew lots of neutrons in the air, some of which combined with carbon-12 to create carbon-14 atoms. The boost in carbon-14 atoms was absorbed into every tree in the world that was alive during that time, creating a spike in carbon-14 that's an indelible marker within the tree.

And that which is true for the trees is true for us, too. People ate the fruit of trees--apples, pecans, pears, oranges, etc.--and gained an internal knowledge of carbon-14 which was passed along to the children of the era (giving post-lapsarian a whole new implication). As a result, people born during the atmospheric tests have a carbon-14 spike in their DNA. As Krulwich says, we can date people with carbon-14 testing.

You can listen to the story at NPR's webpage (4:24 min.).

Thanksgiving, 1895

2008-11-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

As The New York Times continues to digitize its archive, the newspaper occasionally calls our attention to a noteworthy or particularly apt article from the past. So it is with this 1895 New York Times article about Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving and Eating (PDF).

The lead article is about the history of the holiday. We find the second article even more interesting: it explains how sufficient turkeys were shipped across the country over 100 years ago . . . more or less successfully!

It IS a Small World, After All

2008-11-13T16:44:00.002-07:00

The 2008 Small World Winners are now posted on Nikon's website, where you can view a slide show of all the winners. Pictured above, Michael Stringer's Pleurosigma (marine diatoms) photographed at 200x.

Mob Behavior and Medicine

2008-11-12T10:18:00.002-07:00

Google Flu Trends , from Google.org , the philanthropic arm of Google, is a free online tool that may allow you to detect flu outbreaks in your area up to two weeks before official reports from the CDC .

Here's how it works: Millions of users enter health-related search terms in Google. During the flu season, many of these terms are flu-related. By tracking this aggregated search data, Google is able to estimate flu activity within a state earlier than the CDC's official reports appear. See the little video at Google.org for an illustration of this phenomenon.

The CDC's reports are based on information from health providers. Google searches usually occur before a person goes to a health professional, so in terms of reporting, Google's aggregated data cuts out the middle person, as it were. The graph below "shows five years of query-based flu estimates for the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, compared against influenza surveillance data provided by CDC's U.S. Influenza Sentinel Provider Surveillance Network. As you can see, estimates based on Google search queries about flu are very closely matched to a flu activity indicator used by CDC" (Google.org):

Google warns that past behavior does not necessarily predict future success in forecasting flu trends. Google Flu Trends is still experimental, but it has a great deal of promise as Google continues to tinker with it. It may, for instance, be a useful tool as epidemiologists attempt to identify and contain flu pandemics, such as the outbreak of 1918.

You can read more about Google Flu Trends at

The Music Video as History

2008-11-07T14:06:00.003-07:00

MTV has posted its oeuvre of music videos on the Internet where they are free and legal to watch. As Very Short List says,

You’ll see spare-no-expense epics (Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” just celebrated its 25th anniversary), bare-bones relics (e.g., Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”), and early work by some of today’s most interesting directors (we’re especially fond of Michel Gondry’s videos for Björk). You can also revisit Unplugged and watch classic Video Music Awards performances by Madonna, TLC, and Kanye West.

We suggest you start with the list of Top Rated Videos and then work through Most Viewed. Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" is the top-rated video, and only yesterday MTV Europe named Rick Astley the Best Act Ever at the European Music Awards.

Rick Astley |MTV Music

Yes, this is the Rick Astley who inspired the viral internet phenomenon of Rickrolling. The meme is a bait 'n' switch where a link purportedly will lead viewers to some relevant information but actually takes them to Astley's video for "Never Gonna Give You Up."

War of the Worlds

2008-10-31T06:50:00.004-06:00

It was the night before Halloween, seventy years ago, when Orson Wells launched his famous radio drama that did more than entertain a great many people. You can read the script plus listen to the original broadcast on Radio Heard Here.

For more information about this famous broadcast, check out our earlier post "War of the Worlds": Behind the 1938 Radio Show Panic.

Tony Hillerman

2008-10-28T11:52:00.002-06:00

May 27, 1925 - October 26, 2008

Obituary, from the New York Times
Obituary, from the Washington Post
In Appreciation of Tony Hillerman, from the Christian Science Monitor
Bibliography

August Strindberg & Helium

2008-10-27T07:00:00.000-06:00

Helium is a buoyant pink balloon and his best pal Strindberg is, well . . . Strindberg. As Very Short List puts it, "Strindberg struggles with the hell of daily existence. Helium delivers kisses and cupcakes."

You can watch four short, funny animations featuring the pair at August Strindberg & Helium.

Google Mail Goggles

2008-10-24T07:50:00.000-06:00

If your mother was doing her job, she warned you never to send off a scathing letter in the heat of passion. Sure, write it, but then tuck it away in the drawer overnight and then throw it away in the morning.

Reportedly, even Mark Twain didn't send off his angry letters, even though his are a lot funnier than ours, as witness his complaint to the Hartford Gas & Electric Co.:

Some day you will move me almost to the verge of irritation by your chuckle-headed Goddamned fashion of shutting your Goddamned gas off without giving any notice to your Goddamned parishioners. Several times you have come within an ace of smothering half of this household in their beds and blowing up the other half by this idiotic, not to say criminal, custom of yours. And it has happened again today. Haven't you a telephone?

The point is Twain didn't send that letter, and neither should you.

Sadly, email has made it even easier to send indiscreet missives. Having noticed that the email equivalent of drinking & dialing causes untold human misery, Google has come to our rescue with Mail Goggles.

Here's how it works. When enabled on Gmail (Google's email tool), Mail Goggles becomes active late at night on the weekends. When it detects late night email activity, it will test whether you really want to send that email to your, say, ex-boyfriend by asking you first to complete a few math problems. Once the program has verified that you are in your right mind, it will allow you to send the email. Otherwise, it holds it until the next morning and double-checks with you then.

You control the difficulty of the math problems. As the wits on Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! observed last week, it's too bad Google doesn't have a version for English majors, where--instead of math problems--we would be asked to name the four March sisters in 15 seconds.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that hurts you. It’s what you know that ain’t so.”

2008-10-23T07:45:00.002-06:00

Will Rogers said, "It ain’t what you don’t know that hurts you. It’s what you know that ain’t so." Or maybe it was Mark Twain who said it? Or Sachel Paige? Josh Billings? Yogi Berra?! Whatever. The point stands as a staple of folk wisdom: firmly held and unquestioned beliefs get people into trouble because we're often wrong.

Very Short List: Science calls our attention to an addition to this discussion, Robert Burton's book On Being Certain:

Robert Burton is a neurologist (and novelist) who marshals scientific and psychological arguments and concludes that our strongest convictions can arise just as readily from prelogical processes as from rational thought. Alarmingly, Burton also suggests that our sense of certainty attaches as readily and firmly to false ideas as to true ones — and feels precisely the same whether we’re dead right or totally wrong. (our emphasis)

According to Burton, confidence in our untested beliefs may have given us an evolutionary edge by allowing us to act decisively in moments of crisis . . . but sometimes we assume too much and get ourselves in trouble.

Sorted Books | Revealed Meaning

2008-10-22T08:00:00.002-06:00

The Sorted Book Project is a creation of Nina Katchadourian:

The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library's focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library's holdings. At present, the Sorted Books project comprises more than 130 book clusters.

Lying Emails

2008-10-21T07:30:00.000-06:00

As if email weren't already tricky enough, now a researcher at Lehigh University has demonstrated that "people using e-mail lied almost 50 percent more often than those using pen-and-paper":

“There is a growing concern in the workplace over e-mail communications, and it comes down to trust,” says Belkin, an assistant professor of management in the College of Business and Economics. “You’re not afforded the luxury of seeing non-verbal and behavioral cues over e-mail. And in an organizational context, that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation and, as we saw in our study, intentional deception.”

. . . “It’s not just that e-mailers were more deceptive,” Belkin says. “It’s that the magnitude by which they lied was significantly greater.”

You can read a press release on the study here.

Banned Book Week Display

2008-10-20T07:00:00.000-06:00

We're shame-faced to say we missed Banned Books Week this year (September 27 - October 4). Luckily Boing Boing caught wind of how the event was celebrated at Twin Hickory Area Library in Glen Allen, Virginia. The library created a window display (above) and enlisted volunteers to sit there and read banned and challenged books.

For more on Banned Books Week, see the American Library Association .

"Why can't a woman be more like a man?" . . . and Vice Versa?

2008-10-17T07:30:00.000-06:00

In My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins asks, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"

The BBC's Science & Nature web page says, "Some researchers say that men can have 'women's brains' and that women can think more like men." And the BBC invites you to learn more about brain sex differences by taking their online Sex ID test, designed to test whether your brain is more typically male or female.

We scored a zero on the quiz. No, that score doesn't mean we failed the Sex ID test; it just means our brain is exactly halfway between male and female.

Everything You Need to Know . . .

2008-10-16T07:30:00.001-06:00

The Money Meltdown
. . . is a web site put together by an online journalist to provide "useful, authoritative, and comprehensive information about our current financial crisis in an accessible way." Think of it as a crib sheet for understanding what happened, how it happened, how it compares to bailouts of the past, and how to visualize $700 billion.

On a single webpage , you'll find a link of the day and a collection of useful links pertaining to

Background
Key Facts
What's Next
Your Money
Catharsis (the Jon Stewart clip is especially good!)

Umbrella Today?

2008-10-15T08:00:00.000-06:00

Just enter your zip code at umbrellatoday.com and get the world's simplest weather report. The nifty part is that you can sign up for Umbrella Today? alerts to your cell phone, thus making sure that you're never caught unawares when you leave the house.

48 Years of Presidential Debates: "The visual medium of television shades reality"

2008-10-14T08:00:00.000-06:00

Debating our Destiny is "A look at the pivotal moments from the last 48 years of presidential debates through the eyes of those who were there. . . . On this website, visitors can take a closer look behind the past 48 years of presidential debates by reading background essays, viewing video clips of these meetings, and also by watching the documentary in its entirety."

Think you're up on your presidential debate history? Try the fun Debate Quotes quiz on the site's homepage.

Science Tattoo Emporium

2008-10-13T08:00:00.003-06:00

Who knew that science geeks had tatts? Well, they do. Representations of uranium atoms on ribcages, molecular structures on arms, dinosaurs creeping up legs, the web of life covering backs, and Darwin's influence everywhere. Below are a few samples, but you should look at all the inspired tattoos at the Science Tattoo Emporium.

Einstein v. Newton, on the arms of a physics major:

A carbon tattoo with Jetsons-inspired coloration celebrates graduate work in organic chemistry:

The owner of a double helix (received on the occasion of the submission of his PhD thesis) poses with James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA:

University of Wyoming's Digital Initiative

2008-10-10T08:41:00.001-06:00

From the UW Digital Iniitiative web site:

Since 2002 the Initiative has collaborated to build digital collections of scholarly and general interest with other partners from across campus, the state of Wyoming, and the region. The Initiative is a member of the Collaborative Digitization Program and is a member of several CDP working groups to establish best practices and projects, including Western Trails, the Rocky Mountain Online Archive (RMOA), and Sound Model. Other Initiative projects include establishing the Wyoming Memory Portal, a gateway to Wyoming’s primary resources; and a collaborative digitization project with the Rocky Mountain Herbarium.

Sticks and Stones . . . and Sweetie-Pie

2008-10-07T09:38:00.002-06:00

OAP - Old Angry Person
Originally uploaded by Jack.ed

Turns out that "elderspeak" irritates many older people so much that it can actually make them sick.

Elderspeak describes the belittling form of address to older people which includes sprinkling in pseudo-endearments ("Sweetie," "Dear"), speaking in a louder than normal voice, and assuming the person is not competent (about computers, to order food, etc.). Today's New York Times reports that "Those little insults can lead to more negative images of aging . . .. And those who have more negative images of aging have worse functional health over time, including lower rates of survival.”

Health care workers, apparently, are the worse offenders, putting people in nursing homes in a precarious situation. Tolerate the elderspeak, and they may fume. Speak out against it aggressively, and they may receive less care.

You can read the whole article at "In ‘Sweetie’ and ‘Dear,’ a Hurt for the Elderly."

Basic Computer Tips | Clip 'n' Save!

2008-10-05T10:50:00.000-06:00

On his blog Pogue'sPosts , David Pogue of The New York Times's has posted the most useful Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User. We reproduce the tips the most useful for word processing here:

You can double-click a word to highlight it in any document, e-mail or Web page.
When you get an e-mail message from eBay or your bank, claiming that you have an account problem or a question from a buyer, it’s probably a “phishing scam” intended to trick you into typing your password. Don’t click the link in the message. If in doubt, go into your browser and type “www.ebay.com” (or whatever) manually.
Nobody, but nobody, is going to give you half of $80 million to help them liberate the funds of a deceased millionaire…from Nigeria or anywhere else.
You can hide all windows, revealing only what’s on the computer desktop, with one keystroke: hit the Windows key and “D” simultaneously in Windows, or press F11 on Macs (on recent Mac laptops, Command+F3; Command is the key with the cloverleaf logo). That’s great when you want examine or delete something you’ve just downloaded to the desktop, for example. Press the keystroke again to return to what you were doing.
You can enlarge the text on any Web page. In Windows, press Ctrl and the plus or minus keys (for bigger or smaller fonts); on the Mac, it’s the Command key and plus or minus.
You can also enlarge the entire Web page or document by pressing the Control key as you turn the wheel on top of your mouse. On the Mac, this enlarges the entire screen image.

. . . .

When someone sends you some shocking e-mail and suggests that you pass it on, don’t. At least not until you’ve first confirmed its truth at snopes.com, the Internet’s authority on e-mailed myths. This includes get-rich schemes, Microsoft/AOL cash giveaways, and–especially lately–nutty scare-tactic messages about our Presidential candidates.
You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one screenful. Add the Shift key to scroll back up.
When you’re filling in the boxes on a Web page (like City, State, Zip), you can press the Tab key to jump from box to box, rather than clicking. Add the Shift key to jump through the boxes backwards.

. . . . .

When you’re searching for something on the Web using, say, Google, put quotes around phrases that must be searched together. For example, if you put quotes around “electric curtains,” Google won’t waste your time finding one set of Web pages containing the word “electric” and another set containing the word “curtains.”
You can use Google to do math for you. Just type the equation, like 23*7+15/3=, and hit Enter.
Oh, yeah: on the computer,* means “times” and / means “divided by.”
If you can’t find some obvious command, like Delete in a photo program, try clicking using the right-side mouse button. (On the Mac, you can Control-click instead.)
Google is also a units-of-measurement and currency converter. Type “teaspoons in 1.3 gallons,” for example, or “euros in 17 dollars.” Click Search to see the answer.
You can open the Start menu by tapping the key with the Windows logo on it.
You can switch from one open program to the next by pressing Alt+Tab (Windows) or Command-Tab (Mac).
You generally can’t send someone more than a couple of full-size digital photos as an e-mail attachment; those files are too big, and they’ll bounce back to you. (Instead, use iPhoto or Picasa–photo-organizing programs that can automatically scale down photos in the process of e-mailing them.)

. . . . .

Just putting something into the Trash or the Recycle Bin doesn’t actually delete it. You then have to *empty* the Trash or Recycle Bin. (Once a year, I hear about somebody whose hard drive is full, despite having practically no files. It’s because over the years, they’ve put 79 gigabytes’ worth of stuff in the Recycle Bin and never emptied it.)
You don’t have to type “http://www” into your Web browser. Just type the remainder: “nytimes.com” or “dilbert.com,” for example. (In the Safari browser, you can even leave off the “.com” part.)

. . . . .

Come up with an automated backup system for your computer. There’s no misery quite like the sick feeling of having lost chunks of your life because you didn’t have a safety copy.

Beauty Surrounds Us

2008-10-02T07:00:00.000-06:00

National Museum of the American Indian presents an online version of the exhibit Beauty Surrounds Us which presents a range of objects and activities divided into categories such as "Nurturing Identity," "Elegance of Presentation," and "Power of Transformation." The beautiful objects originate with Native peoples of both North and South America and include traditional materials and contemporary media.

Picture below, Kayapó man's headdress (Gorotire, Brazil, Cordage, feathers, wool yarn, cotton twine, 25/4894):

Colors of the Night

2008-10-01T07:00:00.001-06:00

"It often seems to me that the night is much more alive and richly coloured than the day." (Vincent van Gogh, Arles, 8 September 1888)

Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night is a beautiful online exhibit from MoMA featuring works depicting night and twilight. (Above, The Sower, 1888, a twilight picture.) The exhibit includes commentary, audio clips, sketches, pages from Van Gogh's journals, and gorgeous web representations of the paintings.

Getting Out the Vote: 1840-2008

2008-09-30T07:00:00.000-06:00

We love the graphical representation of data . . . such as the beautiful, interactive maps at Voting America: United States Politics, 1840-2008, created by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond.

Pictured below, state-level popular voting in the 1860 presidential race:

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

2008-09-29T07:00:00.000-06:00

One of our favorite authors--Neal Stephenson--has published a new book: Anathem.

How Does One Say "Oink" in Korean?

2008-09-26T08:00:00.000-06:00

"A cow says Moo. A sheep says Baa. Three singing pigs say La La La!" At least, that's what Sandra Boynton would give us to understand in Moo, Baa, La La La!

For an alternate explanation, we suggest bzzzspeek.com, which is an absolutely charming web site with a "collection of 'onomatopoeia' from around the world using sound recordings from native speakers imitating the sounds of mainly animals and vehicles."

One clicks, for instance, on the British flag-cow to hear what cows say in UK English, on the French flag-cow to hear it in French, and so on. The native speakers seem to be mostly children, making their charming animal sounds.

JAMA to FDA: "BPA Not Safe"

2008-09-25T07:00:00.002-06:00

Many students travel the campus with their own refillable water bottles in hand--as a matter of going green or of global justice. Now a JAMA editorial urges using the right kind of water bottle as a matter of better health.

The 17 September 2008 editorial--"Bisphenol A and Risk of Metabolic Disorders"--points to a study which suggests "a significant relationship between urine concentrations of BPA and cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and liver-enzyme abnormalities in a representative sample of the adult US population." BPA, or Bisphenol A, is a chemical commonly used as a base in polycarbonate plastic food and beverage containers.

The editorial urges the FDA and other regulatory agencies to follow the lead of Canada and declare "BPA a 'toxic chemical' requiring aggressive action to limit human and environmental exposures." It also urges follow-up studies to establish biological causality between BPA and major human metabolic diseases beyond the shadow of a doubt.

What does this mean to you?

Well, first of all, make sure you are using a BPA-free water bottle. National Geographic's Green Guide lists safe water bottles:

Kleen Kanteen stainless steel water bottle w/ cap, 27 fluid ounces ($17.95; www.kleankanteen.com)
MLS Stainless Steel Thermos Bottle, 1 liter ($22.16; www.mls-group.com)
Nissan Thermos FBB500 Briefcase Bottle, 1pt ($35; www.coffee-makers-espresso-machines.com)
Sigg resin coated aluminum sport bottle, 25 ounces ($19.99; www.mysigg.com)
Platypus #5 polypropylene 2+collapsible water bottle, 2.4 liters ($9.95; www.rei.com)
Nalgene HDPE Loop-Top Bottle, 16 ounces ($4.53; www.nalgene-outdoor.com)

Pencils, Not for Writing Alone

2008-09-24T08:00:00.002-06:00

As it happens, we aren't the only pencil-lovers in the world. The fellows at JAD Projectcreated beautiful hand-carved pencil sculptures years ago:

Artist Jennifer Maestre produces eerily beautiful creature forms using colored pencils which she's cut and strung like beads:

To help celebrate its centenary, Faber Castell commissioned all kinds of pencil sculptures from German artist Kerstin Schulz, using thousands of sharpened ‘Castell 9000’ pencils:

Finally, here's a slightly more comfortable looking bench, from 3D Creative Solutions:

Free Movies . . . Online

2008-09-23T08:00:00.000-06:00

How often have you sat around on a Saturday night, wishing you could go to a movie but--darn it!--you're a poor student, so it wouldn't be prudent?

No need to be culturally deprived! Free resources on the internet come to the rescue once again:

PublicDomainFlicks.com provides free downloads of full-length feature films that are in the public domain. When we visited the site, the newest additions to the collection ranged from from Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936, dir. John Cromwell) to Terror in the Midnight Sun (1959, dir. Virgil W. Vogel -- "Aliens release a furry critter in the wilds of Lapland where it takes a woman captive and threatens a group of scientists.")

The Moving Image Archive of the Internet Archive also features films that are within the public domain, conveniently categorized according to type, such as Animation & Cartoons, Arts & Music, Ephemeral Films, Movies, etc. One can view classic films here, such as D.O.A. (1950, dir. Rudolph Maté), The Little Shop Of Horrors (1960, dir. Rodger Corman), Topper Returns (1941, dir. Hal Roach), or the Charlie Chaplin films. It was in the web site's Prelinger Archives that we found Alaska: A Modern Frontier (rev. ed., 1948), a useful introduction to the Republican veep candidate's home state.

Of course, some current movies are available, too, on internet sites. We like the following site:

imdb.com--a selection of full-length movies and full-length TV episodes
hulu.com--free content shown with commercial interuptions
Fancast

And how to decide what's worth watching? Take a look at Film Resources on the Web: An Introduction from the Association of Colleges & Research Libraries.

See also our previous post on Historic Video Footage from NARA.

Souvenirs

2008-09-22T08:00:00.000-06:00

Michael Hughes, a photographer based in Berlin, has covered the globe since 1999 taking pictures of the world's most famous tourist destinations . . . and holding toy or miniature replicates in front of them. (Above, the Eiffel Tower covered by an "inflated polyeurothane, coloured, model kit from which the lowest storey fell off.")

The result, oddly enough, isn't particularly kitschy; instead, it leads to interesting ruminations upon the nature of monuments and memory. You can view the delightful photo set on Flickr.

Creepy Ads of Yesteryear

2008-09-18T08:00:00.000-06:00

Weirdomatic.com, which is "A resource for most interesting, funny and weird pictures gathered from around the web," has a strangely disturbing feature on creepy old ads. Seriously, doesn't that little girl pictured above worry you?

Other ads are equally troubling, such as the one which pictures the line-drawing of an enormous-eyed waif with the blurb: "There is a form of short-acting Nembutal to serve every need in barbituate therapy."

You can view the gallery at Weirdomatic.com.

The Greatest Trips in History

2008-09-17T08:00:00.001-06:00

Good Magazine has posted an interactive map feature called Wanderlust: GOOD traces the most famous trips in history. Just launch interactive graphic, choose a route from Magellan to Kerouac, and start exploring. [via Boing Boing]

Extreme Ironing

2008-09-16T08:00:00.000-06:00

According to the Extreme Ironing Bureau's FAQs,

The sport that is 'extreme ironing' is an outdoor activity that combines the danger and excitement of an 'extreme' sport with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt. It involves taking an iron and board (if possible) to remote locations and ironing a few items of laundry. This can involve ironing on a mountainside, preferably on a difficult climb, or taking an iron skiing, snowboarding or canoeing. . . . It all started in the city of Leicester in the UK, in the summer of 1997. When mild mannered Steam, returned home after a long day in the knitwear factory, the last thing he wanted to do was start on a pile of ironing. The sun was shining and Phil preferred the idea of an evening out pursuing his (somewhat unsuccessful) hobby of rock climbing. Then it occurred to him to combine these activities into an extreme sport - the result: extreme ironing.

PSA: Arts Education

2008-09-15T08:00:00.000-06:00

See Americans for the Arts for more information.

100-Year-Old Photos

2008-09-12T08:00:00.000-06:00

"Shorpy.com is a photoblog featuring high-definition images from the first half of the 20th century." Pictured above: "Coney Island circa 1903. 'Luna Park at night.' Time exposure on an 8x10 glass negative. Detroit Publishing Company, Library of Congress."

How Wired.com Produces a Story

2008-09-11T08:00:00.000-06:00

Storyboard is a limited, one-time only blog from Wired.com that shows the sausage-making process of producing a story for Wired Magazine, in this case, a profile of Charlie Kaufman.

The editors say the blog is

An almost-real-time, behind-the-scenes look at the assigning, writing, editing, and designing of a Wired feature. You can see more about the design process on Wired creative director Scott Dadich's SPD blog, The Process. This is a one-time experiment, tied solely to the Charlie Kaufman profile scheduled to run in our November 08 issue.

Strange & Wonderful Fences

2008-09-10T08:00:00.000-06:00

Dark Roasted Blend has a wonderful post with pictures of Some of the World's Strangest Fences. (via BoingBoing)

Memorable Blog Titles

2008-09-09T19:59:00.002-06:00

We recommend Barf Blog, a seriously (and seriously interesting) blog hosted by Kansas State University and published by the International Food Safety Network. Where else, we ask, can you run across a feature called Yuck factor or read of musing of guest barfbloggers.

Warning: You may wish to read it on an empty stomach.

Handy-Dandy Propaganda Detector

2008-09-09T08:00:00.000-06:00

Writing for Poynter.org, Roy Peter Clark preps for the election season by offering "seven of my favorite propaganda detection tools." In the hope that "reason and critical thinking can help balance emotion and passion," Clark lists the seven with reference to the current political races:

Name calling. Bad names are the most prolific forms of propaganda, especially when you are trying to diminish an opponent as "liberal" or "most liberal" or "ultra-conservative" or "extremist" or "hypocritical." McCain is "out of touch" because he owns seven homes. Obama is merely a "celebrity" with a "rock star complex," but no real experience.
Glittering Generalities. This device requires "virtue words" that describe ideals that no one could argue against, a strategy often referred to as "motherhood and apple pie." Here is Michelle Obama: "It was the greatest gift a child can receive: never doubting for a single minute that you're loved, and cherished, and have a place in this world. And thanks to their faith and hard work, we both were able to go to college. So I know firsthand from their lives – and mine – that the American dream endures."
The Transfer. Used both for and against causes, this strategy transfers the authority or status of one person or institution onto another. When Obama invokes the names of Abraham Lincoln, or FDR, or JFK, or MLK, he tries to transfer some of their charisma onto him. When Republicans made fun of the Corinthian columns that served as a backdrop for Obama's speech as "too Roman," they tied Obama to imperial ambition.
The Testimonial. In politics these are often called "endorsements." These come not just from politicians, but from celebrities – athletes and entertainers – who shed their blessings on a candidate or a cause. Oprah Winfrey has testified on behalf of Barack Obama; Joe Lieberman on behalf of John McCain.
Plain Folks. Crucial in political propaganda, the supporter of a candidate or a cause must persuade the audience that the chosen one, no matter how wealthy, is a man of the people, or a loving mother, or the kind of person you'd want to share a beer with. Look for homey words like "town," "village," "farm," "diner," "bar," "train," "folks," "coal mine," "kitchen table."
Card Stacking. Think of this as a full-court press of persuasion, the kind that the Bush administration undertook in support of the war in Iraq. List the accumulated justifications for war: weapons of mass destruction, destroying a dictator, regime change, establishing democracy, fighting terrorism, securing the flow of Middle Eastern oil. Those for the war would support such card stacking; those against would argue those justifications fell like a house of cards.
The Band Wagon. This is the "everyone is doing it" technique. Look for a candidate staging a speech in a stadium. Look for words like "journey" and "battle" and "movement" and "march" and "mandate for change." Tyrants are especially good at this: Hitler used cinema to capture and romanticize huge rallies in support of the Third Reich.

Pencil, Paper, & Glue

2008-09-08T18:41:00.001-06:00

Peter Callesen takes a flat piece of A4 paper and turns it into a witty, 3-D sculpture, using nothing more than pencil, scissors, and glue. Visit his gallery and marvel.

2008-09-08T08:00:00.001-06:00

Oh, when I die,
you just bury me
Away out west,
where the wind blows free.
Let cattle rab my tombstone down,
Let coyotes mourn their kin.
Let horses come and paw the mound,
But please, don't fence me in.

Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982 is an online exhibit from the Library of Congress. Here's what the Internet Scout Report says about the exhibit:

In the life and cultural landscape of northern Nevada in the 20th century, the Ninety-Six Ranch looms large. It seems quite appropriate that the ranch forms the core of this very fine online collection from the Library of Congress' American Memory project. The collection includes 41 motion pictures and 28 sound recordings that tell the story of life and work on the Ninety-Six Ranch from the 1940s to the 1960s. Additionally, visitors can also browse through 2,400 still photographs, which portray the sites, traditions, and people of other ranches in the area. Visitors will also want to read some of the thematic essays here, which include "Buckaroo: Views of a Western Way of Life" and "Haying, Irrigation and Branding: Tradition and Innovation". Overall, the collection is one that will intrigue and delight not only those who have a curiosity about ranching, but also those with an interest in the myths and realities of the American West.

Dirty [Flower] Pictures

2008-09-05T13:28:00.002-06:00

The artist's statement from Herbarium Amoris: A Tribute to Carl Linnaeus:

Since 1999, I have collected pictures of plants. It has become a kind of photograhic herbarium. The inspiration comes from Carl Linnaeus writings about the reproduction of plants and I have tried to approach the subject with the same curiosity and eagerness as he clearly had.

Linnaeus was free and poetic in both his speech and his text. He compared the sexuality of plants and humans as a pedagogic tool and he certainly was not shy! My aim has been to make pictures as Linnaeus himself would have done if he had access to our time's photographic techniques and to give Linnaeus insights into plant's sexuality a present-day shape.

Edvard Koinberg (Trans. Brian Ashley)

You can visit the exhibit online at Swedish Institute.

Chuck Palahniuk on How to Stop Shoplifting

2008-09-05T12:06:00.000-06:00

Political Fact Checkers

2008-09-04T20:17:00.002-06:00

With American politics surging out of the Democratic and Republican national conventions toward the General Election pull out, you may find yourself dizzy from the spin. That's where political fact checkers enter in. These non-partisan web sites attempt to track down the truth about the outrageous claims candidates make about each other and ferret out the uncomfortable reality candidates may attempt to hide about themselves.

We recommend three:

PolitiFact, home of the Truth-o-meter (pictured above) and the Flip-o-meter;
FactCheck.org; and
OnTheIssues.org, a web site which tracks the voting, speech, and interview record of "Every Political Leader on Every Issue."

Great Web Apps for Students

2008-09-01T19:58:00.000-06:00

You're a student on a tight budget who can't afford to buy the student version of Microsoft Office Suite (now available to students for about $60 for the Ultimate edition . . . which is hard to beat). What to do? Easy! Use a free web application.

Last year, ReadWriteWeb posted a long list of handy online tools titled Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students. It's a great list that they've updated this year with Back to School: 10 Great Web Apps for College Students.

Get Your Grammar Geek On

2008-08-28T20:29:00.002-06:00

We recommend Sentence Diagrams, by Eugene R. Moutoux, for delightful visualizations of how English works. One fun section diagrams sentences taken from famous documents, such as the opening of the Gettysburg Address (above). Another section features sentences from contemporary journalists.

Helium and Celluloid

2008-08-27T07:00:00.001-06:00

Helium and Celluloid is a six-minute clip reel created by Jerry Rees which seamlessly, perfectly, and brilliantly inserts a gently bobbling balloon into classic film scenes. The result inspires. We guffawed aloud during Rick's gin joint speech and are gratified to learn the inspiration behind La Femme Nikita's laundry chute dive.

Best of the Web

2008-08-26T08:00:00.001-06:00

PC Magazine has listed its Top Web Sites of 2008, including the The Top 100 Classic Web Sites and The Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites. The list is a great place to pick up useful tools and information.

Extend Firefox 3 Contest Winners

2008-08-25T08:00:00.000-06:00

One of the beauties of using Mozilla's Firefox 3 as one's internet browser is the ability to customize it as one wishes by adding extensions. Hundreds of extensions are available--some of which we would have trouble living without.

To encourage the development of new nifty extensions, Mozilla Labs periodically holds a contest and the winners of the Extend Firefox 3 winners are now available in categories such as Best Add-ons, Best Updated Add-on, and Best Music Add-on:

Best Add-ons: Pencil by Dương Thành An; Tagmarks by Felipe Tassario Gomes; and HandyTag by Rémi Szymkowiak
Best Updated Add-on: Read it Later by Nate Weiner
Best Music Add-on: Fire.fm from Jorge Villalobos and Jose Enrique Bolaños.

You mean you still aren't using Firefox??! Download it now!

Poetry Everywhere

2008-08-22T08:49:00.003-06:00

Poetry Everywhere is a series of short poetry films produced by WGBH Boston and David Grubin Productions in association with the Poetry Foundation. Pictured above is "I started Early -- Took my Dog . . ." by Emily Dickinson.

Be sure you also visit the sister-site Animated Poetry created by film students at the University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in association with the PoetryFoundation.

Are Semicolons Girlie?

2008-08-21T08:17:00.005-06:00

Writing in the Boston Globe, Jan Freeman examines "The punctuation mark that makes men tremble" . . . the semicolon. Male authors, it seems, have been particularly suspicious of the semicolon, as this sampling illustrates:

The credit [for debate on the semicolon] probably belongs to Trevor Butterworth, who in 2005 - citing [Lynn] Truss as partial inspiration - wrote a 2,700-word essay on the semicolon in the Financial Times. Butterworth, who had worked in the States, wondered why so many Americans shared Donald Barthelme's sense that the mark was "ugly as a tick on a dog's belly." His answer: As a culture, we Yanks distrust nuance and complexity.

Ben McIntyre, writing in the Times of London a couple of months later, added to the collection of semicolon snubbers: Kurt Vonnegut called the marks "transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing." Hemingway and Chandler and Stephen King, said McIntyre, "wouldn't be seen dead in a ditch with a semi-colon (though Truman Capote might). Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don't use semi-colons."

And Kilpatrick, in a 2006 column, restated those sentiments at a higher pitch, calling the semicolon "girly," "odious," and "the most pusillanimous, sissified, utterly useless mark of punctuation ever invented."

Roy Peter Clark, who blogs about grammar and usage at Poynter Online, was more restrained, but still suspicious. The semicolon, he wrote last month, looks "like an ink smudge on a new white carpet." And he's unnerved by its "arbitrariness, as if the semicolon were a mark of choice rather than rule." (our emphasis)

Such vituperative attitudes seem to mark the decline of the semicolon, and a recent study in Slate shows "a stunning drop in semicolon usage between the 18th and 19th centuries, from 68.1 semicolons per thousand words to just 17.7."

Our response to this news? ; (

How Good Is Your Ear?

2008-08-20T14:26:00.002-06:00

Can You Guess Where My Accent Is From? is a web-based quiz from the Language Trainers Group based on international accents. Each participant reads a couple of lines from Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" in English. Then you--the viewer/listener--are offered six options from which to choose. If you correctly identify the speaker's country of origin, then you get a chance for bonus points by narrowing your guess to the city of origin.

It's harder than you'd think, and we performed abysmally on it . . . but we had a good time doing so!

The Science of Bad Hair Days

2008-08-18T11:20:00.005-06:00

According to WebMD, chemistry scientists at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, are discovering the roots of a bad hair day:

They found that mechanical damage to hair raises scaly projections on individual hairs. These scales jut out sideways from the hairs, creating friction as they slide past other hairs. The result: hair that's rough to the touch and hard to comb. . . . The researchers also found that when hair fibers interact, they build up negative electrical charges. Same charges repel one another, making hair literally repulsive. Again friction results, making hair rough and hard to comb.

Sadly, the solution to bad hair days probably doesn't lie in a single bottle of conditioner, since "humidity, the water content of each hair, and hair stickiness" all contribute to the problem. But fear not: science is on the case!

[Photo from Caption-This.com]

Wired.com's City Photo Contest

2008-08-15T08:00:00.000-06:00

At the end of July, Wired.com ran a photo contest on the theme of cityscapes. Contestants uploaded pictures and readers voted. You can see the beautiful, evocative winners of the contest at Top 10 Wired.com Reader City Photos, Decided by You. (At right, Doomsday L.A., submitted by Tyler Andersen.)

Wired.com's editors were so impressed with the submissions that they also choose Top 10 Wired.com City Photos, Decided by Us.

Hugo Awards for 2008

2008-08-14T08:00:00.000-06:00

Last weekend, the Hugo Awards were presented for 2008. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon won the Best Novel category. You can see all the winner's at the Tor.com web site.

Timeline of Internet Memes

2008-08-13T08:00:00.000-06:00

We recommend a trip to Dipity's Internet Memes where you can view a list, flipbook, map, or timeline (pictured above) of the strange and amusing cultural memes which have developed on the internet.

Memes are those persistent cultural elements which are transmitted and often transformed within a population. Every time you've passed along a funny video on the internet to your friends or created a mash-up, you've become part of the process which causes memes to flourish.

Do you remember the Dancing Baby? Or JenniCAM, the first real, full-time web cam girl? The Hampsterdance? Bonsai Kitten? Or I Am Canadian? There's all on the timeline at Internet Memes, where a click on the link will take you down memory lane.

Writers' Rooms

2008-08-12T07:00:00.002-06:00

Where Seamus Haney writes. (from The Guardian.)

Since 5 Jan. 2007 The Guardian has been running a more or less weekly series entitled Writers' Rooms. It's a small feature article which focuses on where an author does (or did) his or her writing, along with a photo of the room and comments from the author, if possible. Currently 73 the rooms of 73 authors have been featured. The first was English playwright and novelist Michael Frayn, and the most recent is Jane Austen. Between these two falls a host of the known and not so well known. Their rooms range from the fastidious to the chaotic, but all are interesting and most inviting.

Here's the link.

100 Most Common Words

2008-08-11T07:00:00.000-06:00

So, what are the 100 most common words in the English language? Code Box software has a nifty little game that lets you see how many you can name in five minutes.

Here's the link. (No cheating, now. Don't being doing a search on Google to see a list of the most common words in English-- not that a reader of nHumanities would do something like that, but we feel obligated to help folks resist the temptation.) In case you are interested, here is the next 100 most commonly used words. Finally, here is one more level.

By the way, this list is considerably different from the 100 Most Common SAT words. Actually, it is completely different.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, none of the words on the most common list show up on Dictionary.com's 100 Most Often Misspelled Words list.

Boredom: "a legitimate human emotion that can be central to learning and creativity."

2008-08-08T08:00:00.002-06:00

A recent New York Times article based on several studies points to some interesting conclusions about boredom:

Some experts say that people tune things out for good reasons, and that over time boredom becomes a tool for sorting information — an increasingly sensitive spam filter. In various fields including neuroscience and education, research suggests that falling into a numbed trance allows the brain to recast the outside world in ways that can be productive and creative at least as often as they are disruptive.

This news leaves us feeling ambiguous. As professors, we want our students to be productive and creative, but we find it disconcerting to be on the receiving end of NOELs (nod-off episodes per lecture) caused by boredom. In one study, investigators analyzed medical presentations on the topic of dementia "and found that a monotonous tone was most strongly associated with 'nod-off episodes per lecture (NOELs),' followed by the sight of a tweed jacket on the lecturer."

Photo of Yale law school ornamentation from http://www.henrytrotter.com

Olympic Links

2008-08-07T10:23:00.002-06:00

Visit the Librarians' Internet Index for a useful set of links to the Beijing Olympics.

Typewriter Sculpture by Jeremy Mayer

2008-08-07T08:00:00.001-06:00

Jeremy Mayer creates evocative sculptures of humans and animals using the parts of disassembled typewriters--all without solder, welds, or glue. You can view his folio at Jeremy Mayer.

Data Visualization: Walmarts

2008-08-06T08:00:00.001-06:00

We're always fascinated by the visual representation of data. FlowingData is a web site that explores how statisticians, computer scientists, and designers work together to create meaning out of the sea of statistics in which we live.

Take, for example, the interactive map FlowingData created to illustrate the spread of Walmarts across the breadth of the nation, starting in 1964. The hypnotic result looks a bit like a disease map, as green blobs pop up to represent 3,176 stores in 2007.

"Who knew Sith Lords could be so darn cute?!"

2008-08-05T08:00:00.001-06:00

Reportedly, it's impossible to walk more than a few feet at the San Diego Comic-Con without running into a fan dressed in character: superheroes, supervillains, video game characters, horror film creatures, pirates, vampires, werewolves, comic book-manga-anime characters, and lots of SF icons . . . especially from Star Wars.

We like the little pretty-in-pink-princess-turned-to-the-dark-side at left. You can see a nice selection of Star Wars-themed costumes at Star Wars Blog.

Of course, these folks are dressed up at a special occasion. For a look at people all dressed up and situated eerily within their home environments, we suggest a look at The Land of the Free gallery from Steven Schofield.

In the British Journal of Photography, Schofield explains his project:

Land of The Free explores the fascination the British public has with American popular culture and the sub-cultural world of fandom. I have shown people in their own homes and environments in costumes they wear to attend events with other like-minded individuals. I made the work in response to Bush's involvement in Iraq as I wanted to make a political reference to globalisation and America's ongoing ability to infiltrate all cultures via various channels of popular media. By working in the individuals' homes and personal spaces, I have sought to present my sitters in a their very British 'found' environments and to allow the viewer to evaluate the juxtaposition of cultures and how neither appear to sit comfortably with each other.

Updated Art

2008-08-04T08:00:00.000-06:00

Last week's Gizmodo Photoshopping contest resulted in 85 Famous Works of Art "Improved" via Modern Technology. The challenge was to insert modern gadgets into famous works of art. You can see the wonderfully wacky results in the online exhibit.

The Antikythera Mechanism

2008-08-01T10:31:00.004-06:00

In 1901, Greek divers found a wreck off of the island of Antikythera which was stuffed with treasures of ancient Greece. Among them, was an inconspicuous lump of corroded metal which researchers have discovered to be one of the incredible marvels of the ancient world: the Antikythera Mechanism.

Thanks to the revelations of recent three-dimensional X-ray tomography, scientists say the instrument's complex gears predicted solar eclipses, lunar eclipses, and the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner to our modern Olympic Games.

In a recent article in Nature, the authors explain many of the new discoveries about the mechanism, including its probable cultural antecedents, perhaps in the area of Syracuse. The device outstrips anything that scholars imagined since it combines cosmic predictions with human cultural activities--the cycles of the Olympiad.

To view or read more:

Video feature on the mechanism from Nature
The article in Nature--"Calendars with Olympiad Display and Eclipse Prediction on the Antikythera Mechanism"
Homepage of the Antiklythera Mechanism Research Project
New York Times article, "Discovering How Greeks Computed in 100 B.C."

How find the write rhyme

2008-07-31T11:32:00.002-06:00

The couplet is a simple verse

For those to rhyming not averse.

The vexing part is to attach

Ending words which now do match.

Problem fixed, the answer's here

Write Rhymes makes the word so clear.

Department of Unread Books

2008-07-30T06:00:00.000-06:00

One of the great things about books is that as soon as you finish one there's another one waiting to be read. A person who reads enough "good books" is said to be well-read, or, according to the Free Dictionary, "well informed or deeply versed through reading" and "having much knowledge or education."

Alas, for most of us the joy of reading is accompanied by a certain level of guilt about what we haven't gotten around to reading--great works we will presumably get around to when we find the time.

At the Ways with Words festival in Devon, England, reporters for the London Telegraph cornered famous authors and asked them to confess their guilty secret: which classic of literature had they not read? Their confessions are recorded for posterity at Great Unread Books: Which classic are you ashamed to admit you have never read?

If you, too, suffer feelings of inadequacy over the material everyone assumes you have read, but haven't, you may find comfort in the following discussions:

What is Your Cultural Secret Shame from New York Magazine
Remembrance of Things Unread from the New York Times
Books You Should Have Read at School from Abebooks.com
How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard

Debate: Reading Print vs. Reading Online

2008-07-29T08:00:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, The New York Times started a new series of articles to focus upon what it means to be literate in a digital age: The Future of Reading -- Digital Versus Print. The series will explore "how the Internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read."

The first article--Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?--includes some interesting resources:

The New Readers (a graphic which illustrates the cognitive skills readers need to read online)
A Family of Readers (a video which explores the generation divide between readers in one family)

America's Favorite Architecture

2008-07-28T08:00:00.000-06:00

At a web site sponsored by the American Institute of Architecture, you can view favorite works of architecture--buildings, bridges, monuments, and memorials--that were chosen through a public poll. The resulting 150 choices represent the structures that people love and some of the best of America's architectural heritage.

Once on the site, you can view each building, read more about it, post comments, read what others have written, and--if you wish--vote for your favorite five buildings. Once you've voted, you can compare your choices to the top-rated buildings selected by other internet users. You can zoom in on each building's picture for close-up views. Thanks to a partnership with Google Earth, you also can locate each building on an interactive map.

The top-rated building? The Empire State Building (New York City, 1931, William Lamb).

NASA's Landsat Art

2008-07-25T08:00:00.001-06:00

Environmental Graffiti has posted the "30 Most Incredible Abstract Satellite Images of Earth." These images mimic abstract art but are actually photos taken by NASA from a Landsat 7 satellite 400 miles above the earth. Originally, these photos were on display at the Library of Congress in 2000, but you can view them now on Environmental Graffiti.

Pictured above, fluted underwater sand dunes from the Bahamas.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

2008-07-24T08:00:00.005-06:00

Joss Whedon presents a supervillain Internet musical: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Made for the internet, this new production from the creator of Buffy and Firefly is a relatively low-budget, goofy, family affair, starring faces as familiar as those of Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion.

The big news is that Whedon's effort is limited to the internet and it's been wildly successful, as the Los Angeles Times explains. Last week, Whedon made the three Acts of the first season available for free on the internet; now that window has closed, but one can still buy the episodes for a nominal fee on iTunes.

In an email interview with the LA Times, Whedon talks about how making a show for the internet differs from his previous efforts:

The first answer is obviously freedom: not just creative but structural, in terms of running time, number of episodes, presentation and (fingers crossed) monetization. Nothing is set in stone. I'm a very traditional storyteller, and I'm in no way Internet savvy, but I did appreciate the elasticity of the medium. The story was also geared toward the Internet audience -- and not just by putting "blog" in the title. The fact that Dr. Horrible does blog is part of his character, which is the guy alone in his room ranting about the world not being the way it should. We're long past the age of "everybody on the Internet watches 'Star Trek' and lives in their parents' basement," but there is a modern societal truth about the kind of guy who needs to tell the world his troubles and show off his talents. And I relate to that guy. Neil's blogs wouldn't work in the same way if they weren't coming from your computer screen. Correction: They will work brilliantly on DVD. Or at a midnight screening in your local city! Other difference in doing it without major backing: I become a whore.

Most importantly, there is the silly. The things that have hit on the Internet have almost all had that quality, from "Star Wars" kid, to "The Landlord," to 1,500 prisoners doing "Thriller." Not just the I-made-it-myself aesthetic, but the truly, transcendently goofy. The absurd (which is important to me, as an Absurdist) is part of the Internet's identity. Maybe it's just a stage, but it's an awesome one. On TV, Dr. Horrible would be greeted with a lot more skepticism than on the Internet. We knew as writers that we could bare our ridiculous souls to the point where people would suddenly, sincerely burst into song -- it took six years to achieve that kind of audience trust on "Buffy."

And finally, it does have to be said that every time a shot wasn't perfect and we had to move on, we'd just proclaim "It's an Internet musical!" and comfort ourselves with the idea that it would all be very tiny.

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

Mon Dieu! Prêt-à-Burger

2008-07-23T08:00:00.005-06:00

The New York Times reports that the American hamburger and cheeseburger have swept Paris this summer. That's right. It's not just in quick food places but even in restaurants run by three-star chefs. You can read the article at The Times--be sure to view the slide show, too.

Update: We've just learned that France and Europe's taste for McDonald's is on the rise, too. BusinessWeek.com reports that--thanks to an overhaul by the first non-American president of the European operations--"Europe is now McDonald's largest region by revenues, despite having roughly one-quarter the number of outlets as the U.S." Innovations in Europe have affected the menu, the facilities, and the service, all while staying true to McDonald's American roots. Reportedly, the transformations in Europe are so successful that the company is thinking about importing them to the U.S. (Thanks to Ev Koelling for this update.)

The Bottoms Up Edition

2008-07-21T10:04:00.008-06:00

Three beverage-related snippets caught our eye last week, all three of particular interest to those who spend a deal of time in the college environment.

First, Nature News reports on studies conducted in Germany and Switzerland which demonstrate that sleep loss contributes to the formation of false memories but that caffeine helps boost the memory. Researchers had subjects memorize a list of words and then either allowed the subjects a night's sleep or kept them up all night. The next day when presented with the original list of words plus a few new ones, the sleep-deprived group did a poorer job of identifying the original words. Taking the study a step further, scientists then took two sleep-deprived groups and gave them either caffeine or a placebo one hour before their memories were tested. The caffeinated group had 10% more accurate recall.

The upshot? If you are preparing for a test or memorizing a random list of words, get a good's night sleep and have a cup of coffee.

Second, WebMD reports on a French study which shows that loud music in a bar contributes to increased drinking in young males: "When the music was loud, bar patrons ordered an average of 3.4 drinks and took less than 11.5 minutes to finish a glass of beer compared with an average of 2.6 drinks and 14.5 minutes to finish a drink when the music was at normal levels."

Previous research had established that fast music promotes fast drinking, and that the presence of music encourages people to spend more time in a bar. Now our deepest suspicion has been confirmed that loud music in a bar will make a group of young males drink more. Obviously, it's preferable when studying for a test on a random list of words that one sit quietly at home drinking beer before getting a good's night sleep followed by a roborative cup of coffee.

Finally, two posts on Omnivoracious discuss the serious pairing of books and beer. As the authors note, why should wine and food have all the fun? Omnivoracious solicited beer and book pairings from a number of authors such as T. C. Boyle, Karen Joy Fowler, Arianna Huffington, Michael Chabon, and more. You can read and view their selections in Part I and Part II.

Our conclusion? Whenever you need study for that hypothetical test while quietly sipping a quiet beer in your quiet home, make sure you are sipping the right beer for the reading material at hand, get a good night's sleep, and enjoy your morning coffee.

(Omnivoracious photo: Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton paired with Brewery Ommegang's Three Philosophers, along with another Ommegang beer, and a stout.)

* Disclaimer: Please note that nHumanities cannot support irresponsible reading or drinking.