September 19, 2013
All schoolwork and no play makes Jack more likely to be depressed
Evolutionary psychologist Peter Gray, writes about why play is an important part of learning, and also key to good mental health. He believes that American kids are over-structured at home and school, with too much focus on adult-directed activities. He also explores the value of play from an evolutionary perspective, in different cultures around the world.
My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me
Karl Taro Greenfeld wondered if his daughter had too much homework to do... so, for a week, he did all of it with her, for hours each night. "The school year hasn't been extended. Student-teacher ratios don’t seem to have changed much. No, our children are going to catch up with those East Asian kids on their own damn time."
"Her, she's a mystic -- THANK YOU NEXT SHOE"
Sally Shoe is a Sally Jessy Raphael audio collage.
USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab's macro insect photography
The USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Program designs and develops large and small-scale surveys and identification tools for native bees. A vital aspect of the program is to create accurate and detailed pictures of native bees as well as the plants and insects they interact with. To that end, Sam Droege has curated a collection of more than 1,200 macro photos of insects and posted them to the USGS NBIaMP Flickr collection. You can also browse via sets, if the unfiltered collection is too much to take in at once. This group has also provided a guide to taking macro photographs of insects in a lab setting (PDF).
The 50mm is exactly what the human eye sees, without any distortion
The Lens Is Standard, the Photos Anything But Jerome Delay has been on a quest for simplicity while covering some of the most important stories in Africa for The Associated Press. For the last year he has relied almost exclusively on one camera, and one lens, a 50-millimeter F1.4.
Tomato Can Blues
This is the story of Charlie Rowan, an undistinguished cage-fighter who faked his own death to start his life anew. What could go wrong?
The wow factor.
In the aftermath of one of the strangest political scandals ever to plague the mayor of a major North American city, Rob Ford oversees the unveiling of a high-profile portrait of himself by a sitting councilor, made at the request of Ford's mother. The artist describes the piece as complex, but a lot remains unsaid regarding the weight Ford's personality carries into the realm of portrait.
Why Don't I Give Money to Poor People?
"What am I, USAID? Who cares what he spent it on? If those two dollars (or 10, or 20) magically disappeared from my back pocket, I never would have noticed. Why am I Jay Gatsby when it goes to making me better off, but Ebeneezer Scrooge if it does that for someone else? All that shit about enabling, it's just an excuse for me to keep what I feel is mine."
This Place Is Not A Place Of Honor
TPS: Tuna Pickle Sandwich
sad desk lunch "Soon it will be the weekend, the salsa murmured into your ear"
A little butter and a whole lotta guns
How we prioritize federal spending in America... National Priorities Project is a national non-profit, non-partisan research organization dedicated to making complex federal budget information transparent and accessible so people can prioritize and influence how their tax dollars are spent.
"So when kids in my class throw it, the papers won't fly all over."
Mental Floss examines the history of the Trapper Keeper, the de rigueur school accessory of the 1980s, on its 35th birthday.
Unrelated to the Pelt album
The Encyclopedia Brown Encyclopedia. Every Encyclopedia Brown mystery, described and analyzed.
We have #coats
On June 6, 2013 @BurlCoatFactory started posting on Twitter, apparently on behalf of the Burlington Coat Factory retail chain. The tweets started out reasonably enough, if a bit whimsical. But after a month had gone by things started to get a bit zanier and eventually full on weird.
New York Magazine reports that until a few days ago the Burlington Coat Factory website linked directly to the account, but the link has now been removed and the corporation has allegedly disavowed any connection to the account (though said disavowal has apparently also been removed). Jezebel, Mashable, and even Esquire cover the weirdness.
It's a dance-off!
6!
After the rain....
Samuel R. Delany's "The Orchid"
Samuel R. Delany's 1971 film The Orchid is on YouTube. According to K. Leslie Steiner (aka Samuel R. Delany), when it "Primiered [sic] at the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago that September (Delany himself was not present), it caused a riot. Outraged fans tried to shout the film off and even pulled down the screen." Sci-fi writer Scott Edelman explains why: "Imagine that you're 16 and collapsed in the film room of an early '70s Phil Seuling Comic-Con, dazed from a day storming the dealers room and attending panels. You're with your friends enjoying Star Trek bloopers and installments of old Captain Marvel serials and maybe even Bambi Meets Godzilla ... when all of a sudden you're staring up at Bernie Wrightson's junk!" And he explains how you can get a much better copy of the film, along with a doc about Delany.
You are still beautiful
Bluedawn (푸른새벽) were a South Korean dreampop band characterized by soaring ethereal vocals, dreamy acoustic melancholy, quietly quixotic melody and softly cascading walls of sound in the vein of Mazzy Star and Hope Sandoval. [more inside]
the wages of a life spent in crisis
"As I thought about that spot, as I considered the mounting reports of suicides, homeless vets, collapsing families, I began to get the uneasy feeling that PTSD is a lot like autism: A thing identified, but poorly understood. I read about the supposed symptoms, the heightened alertness, the re-experiencing of specific trauma, the going numb. It was all true. Up to a point." -- Writer and veteran Myke Cole writes about post traumatic stress disorder and how it's portrayed in the media.
It only gets funnier with time.
"These discussions are thoughtful and measured, but the premise that frames them all is shaky; Lessig doesn't offer much proof that a Soviet-style loss of privacy and freedom is on its way. … Unlike actual law, Internet software has no capacity to punish. It doesn't affect people who aren't online (and only a tiny minority of the world population is). And if you don't like the Internet's system, you can always flip off the modem." — David Pogue is the creator of the ''Missing Manual'' series, which will include guides to Mac OS 9, Outlook Express and Windows 2000.
Employment Unlocked!
Zero Hours - For a workshop on future London, Arup, Social Life, Re.Work, Commonplace, Tim Maughan and Nesta created 10 Future Londoners for the year 2023. This one describes the working day of 19 year old Nicki, a zero hours retail contractor.
Beyond the green curtain
Salva Lopez is a Barcelona-based photographer whose work shows Barcelona and its surroundings with a cool melancholy. Flickr stream here.
"It's... dumb luck that we haven't had an accidental nuclear detonation"
Command and Control is a new book by Eric Schlosser about nuclear weapons mishaps, with a focus on the Damascus Accident. You can read an excerpt at Mother Jones,
an op-ed adapted from the text at Politico, or a different op-ed at The Guardian. The book has been positively reviewed by The New York Times and Publishers Weekly. Schlosser has been interviewed by Steve Roberts on The Diane Rehm Show, Amy Goodman, Michael Mechanic at Mother Jones, and Ryan Devereaux at Rolling Stone.
We got the beat
The Go Go's bill themselves as "The Most Successful all female rock band of all time."
Unfortunately, they've had some bumps in the road recently when bassist Kathy Valentine filed a lawsuit against the rest of the band.
There is analysis and a band rebuttal.
The Go Go's also had a controversial party video come to light within the past few years (NSFW)
And, what happened to Jane Weidlin?
Well, It Was Time For Skeuomorphism To Die
What should you know about the newly released iOS 7: How to find Spotlight search (aka swipe right to search), a few tricks you should know, 12 new and hidden settings, a ridiculously thorough review, an exhaustive list of the new features and reasons why should and shouldn't update right now.
Yes, we can see the garden now. Looks great.
Pope Francis Talks.... and talks... and talks
The setting is simple, austere. The workspace occupied by the desk is small. I am impressed not only by the simplicity of the furniture, but also by the objects in the room. There are only a few. [more inside]
But, Mr. Adams!
Need to argue with your crazy uncle about what the Founders really intended? Or maybe you're wondering what an 18th Century AskMe might have looked like. The National Archives has launched Founders Online, a searchable collection of over 100,000 annotated and transcribed documents including letters, speeches, diaries and more from the collected papers of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and family, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison.
I'm not your Tiger Mom
Thirteen years ago, about to enter fourth grade, Cheng Cheng was approached by her mother. “I’m not your real mother. I’m just providing for your education up until you finish university. After that, don’t count on my help anymore." [more inside]
So long, and thanks for all the nibbles
Back in the days when diskettes were literally floppy and storage was measured in Ks and Ms rather than Gs and Ts, any geek worth the name read Byte Magazine. Its founder, Wayne Green, passed away last week on Friday the 13th, at age 91.
Some of them cry a bit. Then they go home.
As the sun sinks slowly into Mayfair and the stars come out over Centre Point, the funster’s thoughts turn inexorably towards the bright lights and rundown neon of that square half-mile known as Soho, sin city nestling like a soiled Kleenex in the bosom of our great metropolis Soho 1983: A Girl's Guide To Peep Shows, Topless Bars & Nude Encounters
Paul Collingwood: catches win matches
As Durham clinch the 2013 County Championship at their home ground, captain Paul Collingwood can reflect on success at club and country level, especially this season. For England he's scored more than a few runs against Australia and other sides, and has notched up 10 centuries, 20 fifties and 96 catches in test matches (the long form of the game) alone, in addition to a spot of wicket keeping. He's also captained England to their only global cricket tournament victory. But Paul is most well-known for his catching... [more inside]
The Internet Hates Me
"A flasK has a necK." And Bill has moves.
Bill Nye on Dancing with the Stars. Perhaps the first time Dancing with the Stars has produced something truly delightful.
What can ballroom dance teach us about science? Is there any crossover there? Many people ask me this. My response is ‘Are you KIDDING?!’ First of all, just watching it, it’s all forces and torques, conservation of momentum. You’ve seen [if an] ice skater has her arms out, she pulls ‘em in, she spins faster. That’s not magic. That’s physics, or study of motion. And then, the other thing, for me, in biology,—we humans respond to music, respond to this timing and beats. Richard Feynman—I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him—famous Nobel Laureate, after whom the Feynman diagram is named…Anyway, he used to have contests with people about keeping time [like] a clock. And most of us are actually pretty good at it. And so there’s something really deep within us that way.
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