Based on a true story
The Telegraph has this amazing picture of coffee splashing out of its cup.
Jack Long uses high-speed photography to capture the moment a splash is made in a cup of coffee. The Milwaukee-based photographer has taken a year to perfect his secret technique, but claims the effect is not created by dropping liquid as seen in other splash photography…
via Laughing Squid
via Art of the Title
Facebook’s Memology takes a look at the top 10 global topics of 2011.
Memology takes the pulse of this global community by comparing this year’s status updates to last year’s, unearthing the most popular topics and cultural trends – or memes – emerging on Facebook. Whether it’s hmu, lms or tbh, each year brings a new set of three letter acronyms that go viral.
It’s kind of depressing list. Numbers 1, 5, 9, and 10 could warrant such broad attention. However, that the rest of them captured the attention of the hundreds of millions of Facebook users show there’s a powerful platform for spreading information being used as an alternative to E!.
Once a year, my dislike of pop music comes into conflict with my love for well done mashup/remixes thanks to the amazing work of DJ Earworm.
This year’s mix, as always, features the 25 biggest hits of 2011.
This year’s was okay, but doesn’t compare to his best work in 2009:
Check out all his United State of Pop mixes.
Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business. Every artistic or moral aspiration — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms. Call it Generation Sell.
Below are some highlights from my recent reading of Benjamin Franklin’s “The Way to Wealth”, a collection of some of the better known of Poor Richard’s sayings.
[D]ost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of[.]
…
Poor Richard says. How much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep! forgetting that the sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave, as Poor Richard says. If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be, as Poor Richard says, the greatest prodigality, since, as he elsewhere tells us, lost time is never found again, and what we call time-enough, always proves little enough: let us then be up and be doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more wth less perplexity. Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy, as Poor Richard says; and he that riseth late, must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night. While laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes him, as we read in Poor Richard, who adds, drive thy business, let not that drive thee; and early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
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“This doctrine, my friends, is reason and wisdom; but after all, do not depend too much upon your own industry, and frugality, and prudence, though excellent things, for they may all be blasted without the blessing of heaven; and therefore ask that blessing humbly, and be not uncharitable to those that at present seem to want it, but comfort and help them. Remember Job suffered, and was afterwards prosperous.
We degrade God when we attribute our own ideas to Him, out of annoyance that we cannot fathom His ways.
Old people dancing is awesome. And the Internet is awesome for setting their classic steps to contemporary music.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-0J4SHJdvY&w=500&h=369%5Dvia Kottke
Bret Victor questions the effectiveness of educators that do not actively participate in the subjects they teach in his essay Some Thoughts on Teaching.
Can you trust a teacher who doesn’t use what he teaches? Who has never used what he teaches?
Can you trust a teacher whose only connection to a subject is teaching it?
How can such a teacher know if what he’s teaching is valuable, or how well he’s teaching it? (“Curricula” and “exams”, respectively, are horrendous answers to those questions.)
Real teaching is not about transferring “the material”, as if knowledge were some sort of mass-produced commodity that ships from Amazon. Real teaching is about conveying a way of thinking. How can a teacher convey a way of thinking when he doesn’t genuinely think that way?
I’m sure many teachers spend their evenings thinking about teaching the subject. I have no doubt that these teachers love teaching, and love their students. But to me, that seems like a chef who loves cooking, but doesn’t love food. Who has never tasted his own food. This chef might have the best of intentions, but someone in need of a satisfying meal is probably better off elsewhere.
This idea is great for specialized subjects and higher education in general, but how can it apply to the teaching of children? There are not many practicing mathematicians who would be satisfied teaching basic arithmetic or artists teaching finger painting.