Saturday 23 February 2008

Another 10 miscellaneous items of interest (to me)

Education Jargon Generator
via TipLine - Gates' Computer Tips by Jim Gates on 23 January
This is too much fun. How 'bout some of these:
- extend strategic niches
- empower subjective manipulatives
- exploit developmentally appropriate higher-order thinking
- deploy inquiry-centered synergies
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Great fun --choose a verb, an adjective and a noun and the number of ridiculous phrases you can generate is vast.
Very useful -- include lots of meaningless jargon into your reports and proposals.

Learn to be insulting -- thanks to William Shakespeare
Another set of lists but this one provides you with "get hence thou baboon-faced scurvy nave" and similar insults.
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It's official: happiness resumes at 50
via guardian.co.uk Society by Stephen Moss 30 January
A vast study has concluded that happiness is U-shaped: it peaks when we are 20 and 70, but slumps in the middle.
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Painting the World: how a hunger for tea and tobacco created global trade
Michael Dirda's review of Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World by Timothy Brook
This is not only, or even principally, about paintings but about how the fur hats, old maps, dishes of fruit, silver coins used as props in Dutch paintings arrived in Europe from across the world.
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Kids learn to flatter around 4
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow on 28 January
A joint Canadian-Chinese study indicates that children learn to tell social lies around age four.
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Why some co-workers will never admit to mistakes
via TechRepublic Blogs by Toni Bowers on 29 January
I encountered two words the other day that I'd never heard before: unaccountability and sorrylessness. They appeared in an article in the Wall Street Journal, which was about people in the workplace who won't admit to making a mistake. They are my new favorite words.
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Communication advances for the dogs
via TechRepublic Blogs by Sonja Thompson on 25 January
Recent tech news headlines show that scientists are using computer software to analyze dog barks and determine canine emotions.
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Learning to lie
From the NewYork magazine via Arts & Letters Daily
Children lie early, and often, for many reasons: to avoid punishment, bond with friends, gain a sense of control. And there's another reason... .
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Why do children lie? Because their parents do!

Socrates in the 21st century
"The more I read about Socrates, the less I wonder that they poisoned him." Lord Macauley
Arts & Letters Daily 18 February
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Socrates only got a passing mention in my education so I went to read this -- and couldn't agree more. Nasty piece of work.

The Musical Mystery
a review by Colin McGinn of Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks
Why is the love song the most popular form of music in the world? Because love songs are about the very thing the music instinct for ...
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