an article by Gregory Nash, Gail Crimmins & Florin Oprescu (University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, Australia) published in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education Volume 41 Issue 4 (2016)
Abstract
Public speaking and oral assessments are common in higher education, and they can be a major cause of anxiety and stress for students. This study was designed to measure the student experience of public speaking assessment tasks in a mandatory first-year course at a regional Australian university.
The research conducted was an instrumental case study, with a student-centred focus. Surveys were designed to elicit student perceptions of their emotions and experience before and after engaging in public speaking skill development exercises and a public assessment task. After undertaking public speaking desensitisation and assessment, students experienced increased satisfaction and decreased fear, indecision and confusion.
However, students’ perceptions of their confidence to control nerves, maintain eye contact, use gestures and comfortably speak in front of 25 people reduced – an unexpected outcome of the research. The reasons for this remain unclear, which provides a window for further research. Public speaking assessment tasks should be aligned with learning activities, and opportunities to minimise the impact of barriers to students engaging in the learning activities or tasks should be incorporated into curriculum.
Friday, 15 July 2016
Thursday, 14 July 2016
Decision-making skills – a key to driving change when agility is everything
an article by Linda Shave (researcher, consultant and auditor) published in Bulletin (of the Information and Records Management Society) Number 189 (January 2016)
Ms Shave takes readers through the six steps of decision-making skills.
There is no online copy of this article for me to crib so if you want further information, or to get Ms Shave's help in sorting out your, or your organisation's, decision-making skills she can be contacted at linda.shave@bigpond.com
Step 1: Understanding what decision-making skills are
Step 2: Knowing how decision-making skills are useful
Step 3: Grasping the foundation of a good decision
Step 4: Knowing how to use decision-making tools
Step 6: Gathering information
Ms Shave takes readers through the six steps of decision-making skills.
There is no online copy of this article for me to crib so if you want further information, or to get Ms Shave's help in sorting out your, or your organisation's, decision-making skills she can be contacted at linda.shave@bigpond.com
Step 1: Understanding what decision-making skills are
Step 2: Knowing how decision-making skills are useful
Step 3: Grasping the foundation of a good decision
Step 4: Knowing how to use decision-making tools
- informal discussion
- brainstorming
- elimination
- prioritising
Step 6: Gathering information
Tuesday, 12 July 2016
Learning with serious games: Is fun playing the game a predictor of learning success?
an article by Nina Iten and Dominik Petko (Schwyz University of Teacher Education, Switzerland) published in British Journal of Educational Technology Volume 47 Issue 1 (January 2016)
Abstract
Serious games are generally considered to induce positive effects in the areas of learning motivation and learning gains. Yet few studies have examined how these factors are related. Therefore, an empirical study was conducted to test the relationship between anticipated enjoyment and willingness to play, as well as between game enjoyment, self-reported cognitive and motivational learning gains and test results.
In an explorative study, 74 children from five primary schools played the learning game AWWWARE. The results of pre- and post-tests were analysed using multiple linear regressions. The analysis showed that anticipated enjoyment played only a minor part in students’ willingness to learn with serious games. Of greater importance was the students’ expectation that the learning game would be easy and instructive. The level of actual enjoyment of the game also had a smaller influence than expected.
While there was a correlation between enjoyment and the motivation to continue being engaged with the subject matter of the game, no effect was found with respect to self-assessed or tested learning gains. The results lead to the conclusion that other factors, such as explicit learning tasks, instruction and support inherent in the game or supplemented by teachers, may be more decisive than the experience of fun during the game.
Full text available (HTML)
Abstract
Serious games are generally considered to induce positive effects in the areas of learning motivation and learning gains. Yet few studies have examined how these factors are related. Therefore, an empirical study was conducted to test the relationship between anticipated enjoyment and willingness to play, as well as between game enjoyment, self-reported cognitive and motivational learning gains and test results.
In an explorative study, 74 children from five primary schools played the learning game AWWWARE. The results of pre- and post-tests were analysed using multiple linear regressions. The analysis showed that anticipated enjoyment played only a minor part in students’ willingness to learn with serious games. Of greater importance was the students’ expectation that the learning game would be easy and instructive. The level of actual enjoyment of the game also had a smaller influence than expected.
While there was a correlation between enjoyment and the motivation to continue being engaged with the subject matter of the game, no effect was found with respect to self-assessed or tested learning gains. The results lead to the conclusion that other factors, such as explicit learning tasks, instruction and support inherent in the game or supplemented by teachers, may be more decisive than the experience of fun during the game.
Full text available (HTML)
Sunday, 10 July 2016
Ten more trivial items you may enjoy
Why bother reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula?
via OUP Blog by Roger Luckhurst
The date-line is 2014. An outbreak of a deadly disease is happening in a remote region, beyond the borders of a complacent Europe. Local deaths multiply. The risk does not end with death, either, because corpses hold the highest risk of contamination and you must work to contain their threat. All this is barely even reported at first, until the health of a Western visitor, a professional man, breaks down. Too late: the disease has found a vector out of the margins and into fortress Europe. A carrier has travelled along the transport networks. Soon enough, the disease spreads from the entry port to the very heart of London. Only a few dedicated experts stand in the way of catastrophe.
Continue reading
==============================================
World’s fastest trains – in 45 seconds
via BBC
A Japanese magnetic levitation train has broken the world speed record. In a test run near Mount Fuji, the train reached a top speed of 603km/h (374mph). However, Japan is not the only country to boast rail travel of such super speeds.
The BBC takes a look at some of the fastest passenger trains around the world.
Watch the video here
==============================================
Did Affluence Spur the Rise of Modern Religions?
via 3 Quarks Daily: Bret Stetka in Scientific American
About 2,500 years ago something changed the way humans think. Within the span of two centuries, in three separate regions of Eurasia, spiritual movements emerged that would give rise to the world's major moral religions, those preaching some combination of compassion, humility and asceticism. Scholars often attribute the rise of these moral religions – Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Christianity included – to population growth, seeing morality as a necessary social stabilizer in increasingly large and volatile human communities. Yet findings from a recent study published in Current Biology point to a different factor: rising affluence.
Continue reading
==============================================
Iridescent insect sculptures from ewaste
UK artist Julie Alice Chapell’s Computer Component Bugs sculptures are iridescent, intricate assemblage sculptures made from ewaste.
Continue reading
==============================================
The long history of World War II
via OUP Blog by Richard Overy
World War Two was the most devastating conflict in recorded human history. It was both global in extent and total in character. It has understandably left a long and dark shadow across the decades. Yet it is three generations since hostilities formally ended in 1945 and the conflict is now a lived memory for only a few. And this growing distance in time has allowed historians to think differently about how to describe it, how to explain its course, and what subjects to focus on when considering the wartime experience.
Continue reading
==============================================
The Source of 15 Major World Rivers
via Red Ferret by Nigel
It’s a fact that our civilization relies on the constant flow of water down the main rivers in each country. We build cities near them, use their water for our industrial systems, and enjoy their beauty in our leisure time. But how many of us think about the source of these majestic water flows? Well here’s a great set of images highlighting the source of 15 of the world’s biggest rivers for you to enjoy.
The mind-blowing thing about these photos is how humbly all rivers start out, just a trickle or a puddle of water, which gradually grows over the miles until you get the Amazon, Nile, Rhine, Mississippi, Yangtze, Ganga and more. Incredible.
Check the pictures for yourself (BEWARE: this is a massive time suck)
==============================================
Blocked Italian toilet leads to thousands of years of buried history
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
A restaurateur in Lecce, Italy dug up the plumbing for his perennially blocked toilets and discovered thousands of years' worth of tunnels beneath the building, including a Messapian tomb.
Continue reading
==============================================
Detroit Iron: 1903
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
“Detroit Iron and Steel Co. mill”
One of the wonders of the Rust Belt
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
View original post
==============================================
Biophilia Celebrates Colorful Creatures, Icky and Otherwise
via 3 Quarks Daily: Dana Jennings in The New York Times
Christopher Marley’s Biophilia is much more than a sumptuous coffee-table pleasure. It is also an elegant manifesto meant to nudge us off our couches and easy chairs and out the door. “It is clear to me that we are designed to experience as much of the natural world as possible with all five of our senses,” Mr. Marley writes. And later: “Without meaningful interactions with nature, we begin to deteriorate emotionally and spiritually”.
Biophilia offers hundreds of spectacular color images of insects, sea creatures, reptiles, birds and fossils and minerals (the last perhaps to remind us that we, too, eventually return to dust).
Continue reading
==============================================
The most valuable semen in all the land
via Boing Boing by Gastropod
WARNING: Animal cruelty
In the 1920s, the USDA encouraged rural communities around the U.S. to put bulls on the witness stand – to hold a legal trial, complete with lawyers and witnesses and a watching public – to determine whether the bull was fit to breed. … Prepare to be horrified and amazed in equal measure.
Continue reading
via OUP Blog by Roger Luckhurst
The date-line is 2014. An outbreak of a deadly disease is happening in a remote region, beyond the borders of a complacent Europe. Local deaths multiply. The risk does not end with death, either, because corpses hold the highest risk of contamination and you must work to contain their threat. All this is barely even reported at first, until the health of a Western visitor, a professional man, breaks down. Too late: the disease has found a vector out of the margins and into fortress Europe. A carrier has travelled along the transport networks. Soon enough, the disease spreads from the entry port to the very heart of London. Only a few dedicated experts stand in the way of catastrophe.
Continue reading
==============================================
World’s fastest trains – in 45 seconds
via BBC
A Japanese magnetic levitation train has broken the world speed record. In a test run near Mount Fuji, the train reached a top speed of 603km/h (374mph). However, Japan is not the only country to boast rail travel of such super speeds.
The BBC takes a look at some of the fastest passenger trains around the world.
Watch the video here
==============================================
Did Affluence Spur the Rise of Modern Religions?
via 3 Quarks Daily: Bret Stetka in Scientific American
About 2,500 years ago something changed the way humans think. Within the span of two centuries, in three separate regions of Eurasia, spiritual movements emerged that would give rise to the world's major moral religions, those preaching some combination of compassion, humility and asceticism. Scholars often attribute the rise of these moral religions – Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Christianity included – to population growth, seeing morality as a necessary social stabilizer in increasingly large and volatile human communities. Yet findings from a recent study published in Current Biology point to a different factor: rising affluence.
Continue reading
==============================================
Iridescent insect sculptures from ewaste
UK artist Julie Alice Chapell’s Computer Component Bugs sculptures are iridescent, intricate assemblage sculptures made from ewaste.
Continue reading
==============================================
The long history of World War II
via OUP Blog by Richard Overy
World War Two was the most devastating conflict in recorded human history. It was both global in extent and total in character. It has understandably left a long and dark shadow across the decades. Yet it is three generations since hostilities formally ended in 1945 and the conflict is now a lived memory for only a few. And this growing distance in time has allowed historians to think differently about how to describe it, how to explain its course, and what subjects to focus on when considering the wartime experience.
Continue reading
==============================================
The Source of 15 Major World Rivers
via Red Ferret by Nigel
It’s a fact that our civilization relies on the constant flow of water down the main rivers in each country. We build cities near them, use their water for our industrial systems, and enjoy their beauty in our leisure time. But how many of us think about the source of these majestic water flows? Well here’s a great set of images highlighting the source of 15 of the world’s biggest rivers for you to enjoy.
The mind-blowing thing about these photos is how humbly all rivers start out, just a trickle or a puddle of water, which gradually grows over the miles until you get the Amazon, Nile, Rhine, Mississippi, Yangtze, Ganga and more. Incredible.
Check the pictures for yourself (BEWARE: this is a massive time suck)
==============================================
Blocked Italian toilet leads to thousands of years of buried history
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
A restaurateur in Lecce, Italy dug up the plumbing for his perennially blocked toilets and discovered thousands of years' worth of tunnels beneath the building, including a Messapian tomb.
Continue reading
==============================================
Detroit Iron: 1903
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
“Detroit Iron and Steel Co. mill”
One of the wonders of the Rust Belt
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
View original post
==============================================
Biophilia Celebrates Colorful Creatures, Icky and Otherwise
via 3 Quarks Daily: Dana Jennings in The New York Times
Christopher Marley’s Biophilia is much more than a sumptuous coffee-table pleasure. It is also an elegant manifesto meant to nudge us off our couches and easy chairs and out the door. “It is clear to me that we are designed to experience as much of the natural world as possible with all five of our senses,” Mr. Marley writes. And later: “Without meaningful interactions with nature, we begin to deteriorate emotionally and spiritually”.
Biophilia offers hundreds of spectacular color images of insects, sea creatures, reptiles, birds and fossils and minerals (the last perhaps to remind us that we, too, eventually return to dust).
Continue reading
==============================================
The most valuable semen in all the land
via Boing Boing by Gastropod
WARNING: Animal cruelty
In the 1920s, the USDA encouraged rural communities around the U.S. to put bulls on the witness stand – to hold a legal trial, complete with lawyers and witnesses and a watching public – to determine whether the bull was fit to breed. … Prepare to be horrified and amazed in equal measure.
Continue reading
Tuesday, 5 July 2016
Let's have another ten "interesting" items
20 Classics You Should Read At Least Once In Your Life
via Lifehack by Ginnye Cubel
Nothing could be more fulfilling, exhilarating, or reassuring than a good book. Whether it’s to make you feel more at peace with yourself, inspire you to be brave when it’s hardest, or let you know that you aren’t alone, there’s nothing a good book can’t overcome. And nothing sticks with you like the classics. Books that have withstood the test of time for their universal truths and unique voices. While this list is by no means exhaustive, it is a good start for twenty classics you should read at least once, if not more!
1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
3. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
4. Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. 1984 by George Orwell
7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
8. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
9. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
10. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
11. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
12. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
15. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
16. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
17. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
18. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
19. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
20. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Yeah, OK. Perhaps I am not quite as well-read as I thought I was.
==============================================
Five unusual ingredients in sweets
via OUP Blog by Connie Ngo
The number and variety of sweet treats in the world is staggering. Though many of us are familiar with the use of fresh fruits in desserts, flavorings in candy, and other ubiquitous ingredients, a great deal are unusual. They’re unusual in the sense that they’re “not commonly occurring,” or that we believe them to be so. With that, here are five ingredients you might find, but not expect, in your next dessert.
Continue reading
==============================================
Amazing photos of jazz legends
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Photo and print dealer Limited Runs is touring a fantastic collection of jazz photos from the archives of Metronome, an influential music magazine that published from 1881 to 1961.
Continue reading
==============================================
Feminism and the City
via Arts & Letters Daily: Rachel Shteir in The Chronicle Review
Like many people I know, I devoured my copy of Vivian Gornick’s The Odd Woman and the City. Devoured because I am hungry as a reader, a woman, a feminist.
No, scratch that. Starving.
Consider this a complaint from a feminist dismayed. By women’s-studies programs on campus, which often seem intent on teaching students that they are victims or on broadening feminism until it loses its specificity and meaning. By these programs’ focus on the quantifiable, the politically correct, the facile.
Feminism on campus today seems to lack interest in life’s sweet and sour complexity and in the great 19th- and 20th-century literature energizing Gornick. It seems ablated from life. It makes the impersonal political.
The Odd Woman and the City stands against my dismay. Its particularity about what feminism has done for us ‐ and to us ‐ is spelled out as joyful, terrible, real.
Continue reading
==============================================
We’ve evolved to disbelieve evolution
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
Experimental psychologists find that humans prefer explanations for events that have certainty and a sense of purpose over undirected randomness.
Override the controversy: Analytic thinking predicts endorsement of evolution (abstract only), a paper by University of Kentucky psych researcher Will M. Gervais was published in September 2015’s Cognition, argues that a belief in Creationism is the result of both upbringing and this cognitive bias.
==============================================
Look away now: The prophecies of Nostradamus
via OUP Blog by Bill McGuire
If you like your prophecies pin sharp and “on the ball” then look away now. The 16th century celebrity seer Nostradamus excelled at the exact opposite, couching his predictions in terms so vague as to be largely meaningless or so open as to invite almost any interpretation.
Actually this extremely interesting article is less about Nostradamus and much more about possible future cataclysmic events on earth. And a recap of the 1815 Tambora explosion.
Continue reading
==============================================
Color Changing Mushroom Night Lights – bring the magic forest inside your home
via Red Ferret by Donyae Coles
Night time can be dark and full of terror. These cute Color Changing Mushroom Night Lights can dispel the darkness and add a little magic to your evening.
Not as expensive as I thought they might be. I wonder if I should indulge my inner child.
==============================================
Cinderella, Puss in Boots: what's in a shoe?
via Arts & Letters Daily: Nicolette Jones in The Telegraph
Made to dance: ballet shoes worn by Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) in Powell and Pressburger’s 'The Red Shoes’ (1948)Photo: John Roan Photography
What is it about shoes that makes them such a recurrent motif in myths and fairy tales? “Fairy tales have their roots in social reality,” says Philip Pullman, who retold 50 stories in his Grimm Tales. “And in Northern Europe you needed boots. That’s why they appear more often than, say, hats or gloves.” In stories, shoes have often become magical objects, expressing freedom and punishment, loss and status, and, in psychoanalytic readings, sexuality. Their connotations are powerful, as is demonstrated by a new anthology, In Their Shoes: Fairy Tales and Folktales, which presents nine stories with footwear in their plots, ranging from a Greek myth to a French fairy tale from the Sixties, and embraces Perrault, Grimm, Andersen and Brer Rabbit.
Continue reading
==============================================
Bilbo Baggins’ Hobbit hole would cost $14m if it were in the Shires of England
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza
A U.K. realtor valued the subterranean residence at £8.5m (~$14m), on the assumption that it is situated in Worcestershire, the county J.R.R. Tolkien supposedly had in mind when creating the homeland for his doughty, half-height, very well-to-do hero.
Continue reading
==============================================
Why do we eat?
via OUP Blog by Nicole Avena
At first pass, the answer is obvious – to obtain energy to support our everyday activities and ultimately, to promote our survival. However, many of our modern day food choices suggest another answer, one that actually stands to threaten our health and functioning. Increasingly, the reason we eat has less to do with sustenance and more to do with how certain foods and drinks taste. Moreover, our food choices are influenced by a multitude of other factors including the social situations we find ourselves in, our budgets, our sleep schedules, our stress levels, and the amount of time we have to prepare and eat a meal.
Continue reading
via Lifehack by Ginnye Cubel
Nothing could be more fulfilling, exhilarating, or reassuring than a good book. Whether it’s to make you feel more at peace with yourself, inspire you to be brave when it’s hardest, or let you know that you aren’t alone, there’s nothing a good book can’t overcome. And nothing sticks with you like the classics. Books that have withstood the test of time for their universal truths and unique voices. While this list is by no means exhaustive, it is a good start for twenty classics you should read at least once, if not more!
1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
3. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
4. Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. 1984 by George Orwell
7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
8. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
9. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
10. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
11. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
12. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
15. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
16. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
17. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
18. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
19. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
20. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Yeah, OK. Perhaps I am not quite as well-read as I thought I was.
==============================================
Five unusual ingredients in sweets
via OUP Blog by Connie Ngo
The number and variety of sweet treats in the world is staggering. Though many of us are familiar with the use of fresh fruits in desserts, flavorings in candy, and other ubiquitous ingredients, a great deal are unusual. They’re unusual in the sense that they’re “not commonly occurring,” or that we believe them to be so. With that, here are five ingredients you might find, but not expect, in your next dessert.
Continue reading
==============================================
Amazing photos of jazz legends
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Photo and print dealer Limited Runs is touring a fantastic collection of jazz photos from the archives of Metronome, an influential music magazine that published from 1881 to 1961.
Continue reading
==============================================
Feminism and the City
via Arts & Letters Daily: Rachel Shteir in The Chronicle Review
Like many people I know, I devoured my copy of Vivian Gornick’s The Odd Woman and the City. Devoured because I am hungry as a reader, a woman, a feminist.
No, scratch that. Starving.
Consider this a complaint from a feminist dismayed. By women’s-studies programs on campus, which often seem intent on teaching students that they are victims or on broadening feminism until it loses its specificity and meaning. By these programs’ focus on the quantifiable, the politically correct, the facile.
Feminism on campus today seems to lack interest in life’s sweet and sour complexity and in the great 19th- and 20th-century literature energizing Gornick. It seems ablated from life. It makes the impersonal political.
The Odd Woman and the City stands against my dismay. Its particularity about what feminism has done for us ‐ and to us ‐ is spelled out as joyful, terrible, real.
Continue reading
==============================================
We’ve evolved to disbelieve evolution
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
Experimental psychologists find that humans prefer explanations for events that have certainty and a sense of purpose over undirected randomness.
Override the controversy: Analytic thinking predicts endorsement of evolution (abstract only), a paper by University of Kentucky psych researcher Will M. Gervais was published in September 2015’s Cognition, argues that a belief in Creationism is the result of both upbringing and this cognitive bias.
==============================================
Look away now: The prophecies of Nostradamus
via OUP Blog by Bill McGuire
If you like your prophecies pin sharp and “on the ball” then look away now. The 16th century celebrity seer Nostradamus excelled at the exact opposite, couching his predictions in terms so vague as to be largely meaningless or so open as to invite almost any interpretation.
Actually this extremely interesting article is less about Nostradamus and much more about possible future cataclysmic events on earth. And a recap of the 1815 Tambora explosion.
Continue reading
==============================================
Color Changing Mushroom Night Lights – bring the magic forest inside your home
via Red Ferret by Donyae Coles
Night time can be dark and full of terror. These cute Color Changing Mushroom Night Lights can dispel the darkness and add a little magic to your evening.
Not as expensive as I thought they might be. I wonder if I should indulge my inner child.
==============================================
Cinderella, Puss in Boots: what's in a shoe?
via Arts & Letters Daily: Nicolette Jones in The Telegraph
Made to dance: ballet shoes worn by Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) in Powell and Pressburger’s 'The Red Shoes’ (1948)Photo: John Roan Photography
What is it about shoes that makes them such a recurrent motif in myths and fairy tales? “Fairy tales have their roots in social reality,” says Philip Pullman, who retold 50 stories in his Grimm Tales. “And in Northern Europe you needed boots. That’s why they appear more often than, say, hats or gloves.” In stories, shoes have often become magical objects, expressing freedom and punishment, loss and status, and, in psychoanalytic readings, sexuality. Their connotations are powerful, as is demonstrated by a new anthology, In Their Shoes: Fairy Tales and Folktales, which presents nine stories with footwear in their plots, ranging from a Greek myth to a French fairy tale from the Sixties, and embraces Perrault, Grimm, Andersen and Brer Rabbit.
Continue reading
==============================================
Bilbo Baggins’ Hobbit hole would cost $14m if it were in the Shires of England
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza
A U.K. realtor valued the subterranean residence at £8.5m (~$14m), on the assumption that it is situated in Worcestershire, the county J.R.R. Tolkien supposedly had in mind when creating the homeland for his doughty, half-height, very well-to-do hero.
Continue reading
==============================================
Why do we eat?
via OUP Blog by Nicole Avena
At first pass, the answer is obvious – to obtain energy to support our everyday activities and ultimately, to promote our survival. However, many of our modern day food choices suggest another answer, one that actually stands to threaten our health and functioning. Increasingly, the reason we eat has less to do with sustenance and more to do with how certain foods and drinks taste. Moreover, our food choices are influenced by a multitude of other factors including the social situations we find ourselves in, our budgets, our sleep schedules, our stress levels, and the amount of time we have to prepare and eat a meal.
Continue reading
Saturday, 25 June 2016
Ten more interesting things I've found for you
Herge’s Adventures of Tintin
via An Awfully Big Blog Adventure by Sue Purkiss
Do you remember a deep voice emerging from a small box television, intoning in the most thrilling way - 'HERGE’S - ADVENTURES - OF - TINTIN!!!' I do, but to be honest, that’s all I remember of the popular cartoon series: if I used to watch it, I've quite forgotten it now.
Continue reading
=========================================
Metaphor map charts the images that structure our thinking
Huge project by Glasgow University researchers plots thirteen centuries of startling cognitive connections
via Research Buzz: Libby Brooks in The Guardian
Metaphor is not the sole preserve of Shakespearean scholarship or high literary endeavour but has governed how we think about and describe our daily lives for centuries, according to researchers at Glasgow University.
Continue reading
=========================================
Slingshots are perfect for shooting zombie targets and tin cans on a nice summer day
via Boing Boing by Sarina Frauenfelder
The Trumark slingshot is perfect for shooting targets, tin cans, or across the backyard. What makes it special is its very comfortable wrist brace, which gives me a lot of control while aiming. Holding the slingshot becomes effortless, and the wrist brace takes all the strain off my arm, making it easier to focus on aim, rather than struggling to hold the slingshot in place while pulling the pocket back at the same time. Whenever I use this slingshot I’m always surprised at how fast an hour flies by. I recommend buying some cool targets to practice on, such as the Zombie Spinning Targets, which is what I have (and have to share with my sister, who has banged it up with her BB gun). As for ammo, I've been using Trumark's 5/8" steel balls, but pebbles work fine and are more environmentally friendly (once I run out of these I'm going on a pebble hunt). Of course an adult should always be present while kids are using the slingshot.
Continue reading
=========================================
12 Interesting Facts You Never Knew About Superman
via MakeUseOf by Dave LeClair
I’m going to guess that you are familiar with a character known as Superman. The Man of Steel has appeared in almost every kind of media imaginable at one point or another. Whether you like comic books, TV shows, or movies, chances are great that Superman and his cast of friends and villains has appeared on your radar at some point.
Continue reading
=========================================
The Roots of Charity
via 3 Quarks Daily: Peter Brown at Lapham’s Quarterly
When Christians of late antiquity thought of religious giving, they went back to what for them was the beginning – to the words of Jesus. The words of Jesus to the Rich Young Man described a transfer of “treasure” from earth to heaven: “Jesus said to him, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.’”
Continue reading
=========================================
Thompson’s Tug Office: 1908
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Port Huron, Michigan, circa 1908
“Steamers at pier”
At right, the sidewheeler City of Alpena
8x10 glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co.
View original post
=========================================
George Washington and an army of liberty
via OUP Blog by David Hackett Fischer
To celebrate David Hackett Fischer’s Pritzker Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing, we’ve selected an excerpt from his Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington’s Crossing. Here, as in all of his writing, Fischer brings to life the early days of the American Revolution and the struggle Washington experienced in building a cohesive army with the thoughtful eye for detail and gripping analysis for which he’s known.
Continue reading
==============================================
How to make a working quadcopter out of the Apple Watch packaging box
via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin
“I Watch You”, a most nifty hack by Eirik Solheim.
I wasn’t sure about the copyright so please go and look for yourself at the two videos.
==============================================
The Social-Network Illusion That Tricks Your Mind
via MIT Technology Review
One of the curious things about social networks is the way that some messages, pictures, or ideas can spread like wildfire while others that seem just as catchy or interesting barely register at all. The content itself cannot be the source of this difference. Instead, there must be some property of the network that changes to allow some ideas to spread but not others.
Continue reading
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Christopher Lee on the power of the fantasy genre
via Boing Boing by Caroline Siede
Christopher Lee died earlier this week [June 2015], but the renowned actor leaves behind an impressive body of work, including a ton of great genre films.
Continue reading
via An Awfully Big Blog Adventure by Sue Purkiss
Do you remember a deep voice emerging from a small box television, intoning in the most thrilling way - 'HERGE’S - ADVENTURES - OF - TINTIN!!!' I do, but to be honest, that’s all I remember of the popular cartoon series: if I used to watch it, I've quite forgotten it now.
Continue reading
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Metaphor map charts the images that structure our thinking
Huge project by Glasgow University researchers plots thirteen centuries of startling cognitive connections
via Research Buzz: Libby Brooks in The Guardian
Metaphor is not the sole preserve of Shakespearean scholarship or high literary endeavour but has governed how we think about and describe our daily lives for centuries, according to researchers at Glasgow University.
Continue reading
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Slingshots are perfect for shooting zombie targets and tin cans on a nice summer day
via Boing Boing by Sarina Frauenfelder
The Trumark slingshot is perfect for shooting targets, tin cans, or across the backyard. What makes it special is its very comfortable wrist brace, which gives me a lot of control while aiming. Holding the slingshot becomes effortless, and the wrist brace takes all the strain off my arm, making it easier to focus on aim, rather than struggling to hold the slingshot in place while pulling the pocket back at the same time. Whenever I use this slingshot I’m always surprised at how fast an hour flies by. I recommend buying some cool targets to practice on, such as the Zombie Spinning Targets, which is what I have (and have to share with my sister, who has banged it up with her BB gun). As for ammo, I've been using Trumark's 5/8" steel balls, but pebbles work fine and are more environmentally friendly (once I run out of these I'm going on a pebble hunt). Of course an adult should always be present while kids are using the slingshot.
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12 Interesting Facts You Never Knew About Superman
via MakeUseOf by Dave LeClair
I’m going to guess that you are familiar with a character known as Superman. The Man of Steel has appeared in almost every kind of media imaginable at one point or another. Whether you like comic books, TV shows, or movies, chances are great that Superman and his cast of friends and villains has appeared on your radar at some point.
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The Roots of Charity
via 3 Quarks Daily: Peter Brown at Lapham’s Quarterly
When Christians of late antiquity thought of religious giving, they went back to what for them was the beginning – to the words of Jesus. The words of Jesus to the Rich Young Man described a transfer of “treasure” from earth to heaven: “Jesus said to him, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.’”
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Thompson’s Tug Office: 1908
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Port Huron, Michigan, circa 1908
“Steamers at pier”
At right, the sidewheeler City of Alpena
8x10 glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co.
View original post
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George Washington and an army of liberty
via OUP Blog by David Hackett Fischer
To celebrate David Hackett Fischer’s Pritzker Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing, we’ve selected an excerpt from his Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington’s Crossing. Here, as in all of his writing, Fischer brings to life the early days of the American Revolution and the struggle Washington experienced in building a cohesive army with the thoughtful eye for detail and gripping analysis for which he’s known.
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How to make a working quadcopter out of the Apple Watch packaging box
via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin
“I Watch You”, a most nifty hack by Eirik Solheim.
I wasn’t sure about the copyright so please go and look for yourself at the two videos.
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The Social-Network Illusion That Tricks Your Mind
via MIT Technology Review
One of the curious things about social networks is the way that some messages, pictures, or ideas can spread like wildfire while others that seem just as catchy or interesting barely register at all. The content itself cannot be the source of this difference. Instead, there must be some property of the network that changes to allow some ideas to spread but not others.
Continue reading
==============================================
Christopher Lee on the power of the fantasy genre
via Boing Boing by Caroline Siede
Christopher Lee died earlier this week [June 2015], but the renowned actor leaves behind an impressive body of work, including a ton of great genre films.
Continue reading
Friday, 3 June 2016
And another ten seemingly trivial items to keep you interested over the weekend
Of Polymaths and Multidisciplinarians
via 3 Quarks Daily: Jalees Rehman at the website of Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings
The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is also a front-runner in the pantheon of polymaths because of his interests in geology, paleontology and optics. During his lifetime, Goethe assembled one of the largest collections of rocks, minerals and fossils ever owned by an individual person, consisting of 18,000 specimens! Even though he is revered as the greatest poet of the German language, Goethe’s longest published work is his treatise on a theory of color, the Farbenlehre. He devoted two decades of his life to studying light and he thought that this 1000-page tome would be his most meaningful contribution to humankind. In the Farbenlehre, Goethe vehemently disagreed with Newton about the nature of light. According to Newton, white light was a heterogeneous composite of colors and darkness was the absence of light. Goethe, on the other hand, felt that white light was a homogenous entity and that darkness was the polar opposite of light and not just its absence. Goethe also ascribed aesthetic qualities to specific colors such as “beautiful” to red and “useful” to green.
Continue reading
=========================================
Sonic Pi: Getting Creative With Computer Programming
an article by Jenny Judge (Cambridge University, UK) published in WIPO Magazine (June 2015)
On a damp Thursday afternoon in Cambridge, UK, Sam Aaron is telling a barista that he has a gig coming up. She looks up from the espresso machine, interested. “What do you play?’” she asks. “Well, it’s a bit weird,” says Sam, laughing. “I play the computer.”
Continue reading a serious article but great fun too.
=========================================
In Maquisard, you solve trouble in a charming, ornate old hotel
via Boing Boing by Leigh Alexander
Maquisard is a lovely little game inspired by the grand details and tiny scenes of the film The Grand Budapest Hotel. Like that film's star you are a hotel lobby boy, but that's where the similarities end—from there, you're asked to put your skills to the unusual use of sniffing out an undercover government agent in your midst.
Continue reading
=========================================
The Big Biplane: 1918
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
National Photo Company Collection glass negative
View original post
=========================================
This single-celled bug has the world’s most extraordinary eye
via 3 Quarks Daily: Michael Le Page in New Scientist
It is perhaps the most extraordinary eye in the living world – so extraordinary that no one believed the biologist who first described it more than a century ago.
Now it appears that the tiny owner of this eye uses it to catch invisible prey by detecting polarised light. This suggestion is also likely to be greeted with disbelief, for the eye belongs to a single-celled organism calledErythropsidinium. It has no nerves, let alone a brain. So how could it “see” its prey?
Continue reading
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What is the resonant frequency of googly eyes?
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Watch the short video here Fascinating
=========================================
A small grey pigeon
via An Awfully Big Blog Adventure by John Dougherty
…my 14-year old son came home from school and told me that his English teacher had asked him to amend a description in a piece of writing because the vocabulary used wasn’t ‘advanced’ enough. The description was:
“A small, grey pigeon”.
Continue reading and discover that what an advanced vocabulary makes of a small, grey pigeon!
=========================================
How to Build a Sunrise Alarm Clock on the Cheap
via How To Geek
Sunrise-simulating alarm clocks are a great way to wake yourself up but commercial sunrise simulators are ridiculously expensive. Read on as we show you how to turn a smart bulb starter kit into a sunrise simulator (and enjoy the benefits of smart bulbs all day long at the same time).
Continue reading
=========================================
Was Dickens a Thief?
A new novel portrays the young writer of The Pickwick Papers as a conniving founder of modern mass culture.
via Arts & Letters Daily: Nicholas Dames in The Atlantic
On an April evening in 1836, two collaborators working on what would become one of the most popular novels of the 19th century met in London. The guest was the project’s illustrator, the comic artist Robert Seymour, whose speed and visual wit had made him arguably the most successful caricaturist of the decade. Seymour was famous enough to have persuaded a fledgling publishing firm, Chapman and Hall, to launch The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, a serial of four comic plates per month surrounded by enough suitably relevant text to fill 24 pages. The host was the writer hired to supply that text: an ambitious 24-year-old who had recently transitioned from parliamentary journalism to fictional-sketch writing. His name was Charles Dickens. Accounts of the meeting are murky at best. We know Dickens wanted to discuss his dissatisfaction with a plate for the second installment, a deathbed scene of an alcoholic pantomime actor. The only other certainty is that Seymour returned home that night, completed the plate over the next couple of days, and then killed himself with a shotgun.
Continue reading
=========================================
Free record with underwear purchase
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
via Weird Universe where you can find this and a lot of other very weird stuff
via 3 Quarks Daily: Jalees Rehman at the website of Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings
The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is also a front-runner in the pantheon of polymaths because of his interests in geology, paleontology and optics. During his lifetime, Goethe assembled one of the largest collections of rocks, minerals and fossils ever owned by an individual person, consisting of 18,000 specimens! Even though he is revered as the greatest poet of the German language, Goethe’s longest published work is his treatise on a theory of color, the Farbenlehre. He devoted two decades of his life to studying light and he thought that this 1000-page tome would be his most meaningful contribution to humankind. In the Farbenlehre, Goethe vehemently disagreed with Newton about the nature of light. According to Newton, white light was a heterogeneous composite of colors and darkness was the absence of light. Goethe, on the other hand, felt that white light was a homogenous entity and that darkness was the polar opposite of light and not just its absence. Goethe also ascribed aesthetic qualities to specific colors such as “beautiful” to red and “useful” to green.
Continue reading
=========================================
Sonic Pi: Getting Creative With Computer Programming
an article by Jenny Judge (Cambridge University, UK) published in WIPO Magazine (June 2015)
On a damp Thursday afternoon in Cambridge, UK, Sam Aaron is telling a barista that he has a gig coming up. She looks up from the espresso machine, interested. “What do you play?’” she asks. “Well, it’s a bit weird,” says Sam, laughing. “I play the computer.”
Continue reading a serious article but great fun too.
=========================================
In Maquisard, you solve trouble in a charming, ornate old hotel
via Boing Boing by Leigh Alexander
Maquisard is a lovely little game inspired by the grand details and tiny scenes of the film The Grand Budapest Hotel. Like that film's star you are a hotel lobby boy, but that's where the similarities end—from there, you're asked to put your skills to the unusual use of sniffing out an undercover government agent in your midst.
Continue reading
=========================================
The Big Biplane: 1918
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
“Bolling Field – Handley Page on polo grounds”Wilson at Trial of Giant PlaneThe trial of the first American-built Handley-Page aeroplane, driven by Capt. E.B. Waller, of the British royal air force, yesterday was witnessed by President Wilson and Secretary Baker. A crowd of more than 5,000 greeted the President when he arrived at the polo field in Potomac Park early in the afternoon.
National Photo Company Collection glass negative
View original post
=========================================
This single-celled bug has the world’s most extraordinary eye
via 3 Quarks Daily: Michael Le Page in New Scientist
It is perhaps the most extraordinary eye in the living world – so extraordinary that no one believed the biologist who first described it more than a century ago.
Now it appears that the tiny owner of this eye uses it to catch invisible prey by detecting polarised light. This suggestion is also likely to be greeted with disbelief, for the eye belongs to a single-celled organism calledErythropsidinium. It has no nerves, let alone a brain. So how could it “see” its prey?
Continue reading
=========================================
What is the resonant frequency of googly eyes?
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Watch the short video here Fascinating
=========================================
A small grey pigeon
via An Awfully Big Blog Adventure by John Dougherty
…my 14-year old son came home from school and told me that his English teacher had asked him to amend a description in a piece of writing because the vocabulary used wasn’t ‘advanced’ enough. The description was:
“A small, grey pigeon”.
Continue reading and discover that what an advanced vocabulary makes of a small, grey pigeon!
=========================================
How to Build a Sunrise Alarm Clock on the Cheap
via How To Geek
Sunrise-simulating alarm clocks are a great way to wake yourself up but commercial sunrise simulators are ridiculously expensive. Read on as we show you how to turn a smart bulb starter kit into a sunrise simulator (and enjoy the benefits of smart bulbs all day long at the same time).
Continue reading
=========================================
Was Dickens a Thief?
A new novel portrays the young writer of The Pickwick Papers as a conniving founder of modern mass culture.
via Arts & Letters Daily: Nicholas Dames in The Atlantic
On an April evening in 1836, two collaborators working on what would become one of the most popular novels of the 19th century met in London. The guest was the project’s illustrator, the comic artist Robert Seymour, whose speed and visual wit had made him arguably the most successful caricaturist of the decade. Seymour was famous enough to have persuaded a fledgling publishing firm, Chapman and Hall, to launch The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, a serial of four comic plates per month surrounded by enough suitably relevant text to fill 24 pages. The host was the writer hired to supply that text: an ambitious 24-year-old who had recently transitioned from parliamentary journalism to fictional-sketch writing. His name was Charles Dickens. Accounts of the meeting are murky at best. We know Dickens wanted to discuss his dissatisfaction with a plate for the second installment, a deathbed scene of an alcoholic pantomime actor. The only other certainty is that Seymour returned home that night, completed the plate over the next couple of days, and then killed himself with a shotgun.
Continue reading
=========================================
Free record with underwear purchase
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
via Weird Universe where you can find this and a lot of other very weird stuff
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