Megabus, Atlanta, bingo, kith/kin: First day of Megabus service to Atlanta … a little slow … but arrived safely and had a great visit with the Mom.
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via http://stageus.megabus.com/routemap.aspx
holidays, photos, tips: Get Creative! … I am certainly glad imperfection is perfectly OK!!
Imperfection Is Perfectly Okay
Capturing a technically good image takes a lot of learning and practice. That said, I like to grab seasonal shots even in their imperfection — like this scene through a bus window during a New York City downpour on Central Park West. Shoot as many pictures as you want, because with digital — unlike when I started shooting two decades ago — there’s no film to process, and you’re not burning through a lot of film (or through your wallet) every time you take a dozen photos. Mind you, the downside is that you might not think through your shots as clearly as you do when you have to manually focus and change film cartridges every 36 pictures.
via Holiday Photo Tips: Get Creative! – Photo Gallery – LIFE.
college students, human memory, learning: Great article…
I expect that most of us can identify personally with the connection between cues and memories. The power of cues helps explain why a particular song may remind you of a memorable afternoon in Paris, or why, for me, the smell of stale beer always draws up vivid memories of my first-year dorm room.
Further reflection is likely to yield more-intellectual examples. One long afternoon over winter break in my sophomore year in college, I sat in a chair in my parents’ living room and had my life changed by Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. Whenever I sat in that chair, for many years afterward, detailed memories of O’Neill’s play and its impact on my life would return to me. And I can walk into certain classrooms on my campus and immediately recall formative experiences I had in my development as a teacher.
But while we may be able to draw up endless examples of how our minds have created such connections between learned information and the contextual cues that accompanied our first encounter with that information, those examples don’t translate very easily—as Miller points out—into concrete pedagogical practice.
If it turns out that the greatest memory challenge our students face is retrieving information from their long-term memories when they need it to perform on exams and assignments, and if that retrieval ability depends on the use of contextual cues during the information-encoding process, what does that mean for our job description as teachers? Do we have any control over the cues that accompany the encoding of information in our students’ brains? Can we help them develop effective cues?
via Teaching and Human Memory, Part I – Do Your Job Better – The Chronicle of Higher Education.
NBA lockout, college hoops, Pat Forde: Enjoyed this article!
A long-lost friend is knocking on your front door, sports fan.
Open up and let him in.
Look who’s there – it’s college basketball. You remember him – used to be a lot of fun to be around, especially in March. Amid the more serious entities on the sporting cocktail circuit – college and pro football, the NBA, Major League Baseball – he was the life of the party. A weeknight at the gym (or just watching on TV) was always a good time.
The return of UNC’s Harrison Barnes and others is among the many reasons college basketball is flying high so far this season.
Then the old friend got wayward. He became irresponsible, with scandals cropping up constantly. He hung around sketchy characters – greasy third parties who attached themselves to star players. And then even the stars themselves became transient properties, just passing through on their way to the NBA, never sticking around long enough to develop a bond with the fans.
After a while, the product just wasn’t very good – not the players, not the teams. As problems kept surfacing, the credibility went the way of boxing. And all those other sports looked like better alternatives.
College basketball hit the skids.
But like the prodigal son and Britney Spears, college hoops is back after some rough years. And not looking too bad.
This is the chance to reacquaint with your old friend, sports fan. What else are you going to do, watch the NBA?
That league appears intent on alienating its fan base with a prolonged lockout that could eradicate the entire season. Already, 26 percent of the games have been canceled. The players union and ownership are at the breaking point. So is the faith of the customers.
You won’t see LeBron and Kobe and Dirk on Friday nights anytime soon – maybe not until next fall. So if you love hoops, what’s the alternative?
Let in your old friend.
The college game still has tremendous problems – cheating, hypocrisy and a corrosive cult-of-the-coach mentality among them. But this 2011-12 season is college hoops’ big chance to regain its seat at American sports’ main table.
The opportunity is there, and the product should be good enough to take advantage of that opportunity.
The talent on the floor – individually and from a team perspective – is as good as it’s been since 2008 at least.
When Harrison Barnes and Tyler Zeller of North Carolina, Jared Sullinger of Ohio State and Terrence Jones of Kentucky all said no to the NBA draft and came back to school, the game got a jolt of star power. Casual fans who like watching pro-level talent perform have something to tune into.
The return of those players helped guarantee that the Tar Heels, Buckeyes and Wildcats all would be better than they were last year. In fact, all three programs are probably better than any team was last year.
Let’s face it: if the talent level weren’t massively down in 2010-11, we wouldn’t have had both Virginia Commonwealth and Butler in the Final Four. They were great stories, not great teams. We wouldn’t have had the ninth-place team in the Big East (Connecticut) winning the national title while scoring 109 points in two games – the lowest Final Four total for the national champion since 1946.
When that fetid Final Four ended with Jim Calhoun – facing personal NCAA sanctions for violations within his program – holding up the national championship trophy after a weekend of horrible hoops, college basketball might have reached its nadir.
Now the game is climbing back up.
via NBA lockout opens door for college hoops – College Basketball – Rivals.com.
The Insanely Great History of Apple is a cool new poster from PopChartLabs.com, where you can purchase the $25, 18”x24” poster for yourself (and many other great ones).
The world’s most comprehensive mapping of Apple products, this print shows every computer released by Apple in the last thirty years, from the original Mac through the MacBook Air. Products are sorted according to type, including the connections between various form factors which have arisen as Apple has invented—and reinvented—insanely great products.
via Cool Infographics – Blog – The Insanely Great History of Apple.
As of today, Occupations are occurring in nearly 500 cities worldwide, according to Occupy Wall Street’s website. The protests have already been successful in one sense. The country is talking about ‘income inequality’ like never before. Since the protests began, the media has used the term 400% more this week than the week before the Occupation began according to a Politico metric.
So then, what next? In the words of Tom Hayden: “What happens next will be a collective judgment based on what they’ve been through. History awaits their decision.”
The country is waiting on these young people to act. They wanted to start a conversation, and they did. The question remains how they will be able to fix anything.
Will they form a political movement or continue changing the system from the outside? Will leadership emerge or will the difficult process of leaderless general assemblies succeed without it?
The answer might be found in Iowa. On January 4th, 2012, Occupiers from around the country will travel to Iowa to demonstrate at the First-In-The-Nation caucus. That is, if they can get organized. Much like Chicago, the cameras will be rolling in Iowa starting in early December. The demonstrators have a chance to affect the grassroots political process in historic fashion, if they are willing to engage it at all.
via Passing the mantle: The new Occupation Generation | USA TODAY College.
Benetton, advertising, controversial advertising: Benetton has the Pope kissing an imam, and Obama kissing Hugo Chavez in ad campaign. Doesn’t make me want to buy their clothes …
“Twenty-five years ago, Italian fashion label Benetton rode its controversial “United Colors of Benetton” ad campaign to global fame,” write the Journal’s Christina Passariello and Jennifer Clark.
Now, after having lost speed to competitors such as Inditex’s Zara and Hennes & Mauritz’s H&M, Benetton is trying for a second publicity coup.
On Wednesday, the house unveiled its first major brand advertising campaign in more than a decade, titled “Unhate.”
The images are of global leaders kissing: U.S. President Barack Obama locks lips with China’s Hu Jintao and with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.
A picture of the Pope embracing one of Islam’s leading figures, Ahmed Mohamed el-Tayeb, the imam of the al-Azhar mosque in Egypt, was hung from a bridge near the Vatican early Wednesday.
Alessandro Benetton anticipated that this ad would be the most controversial. “We could be excommunicated,” he said, only half-joking.
Maria Popova, theoatmeal.com: Another find from Maria Popova … Old but gold – top tweets illustrated …
Coco-Cola, Arctic Home Coke Commercial, WWF, csr: Protect the polar bears … nice ad … but is this csr or just an advertising ploy.
This is the Arctic. This vast area of tundra, jagged peaks and frozen seas is the only place where the polar bear can live, hunt and breed. And it needs our help. Check this out, then join us at ArcticHome.com to learn about these amazing animals through video, pictures and bear facts from World Wildlife Fund. Together, we can help make sure the polar bear has a place to call home. http://CokeURL.com/ArcticHome
via Arctic Home Coke Commercial | Protect the Polar Bears – YouTube.
Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs, “journey for enlightenment”:
I don’t think it was just a question of liking him. I admired him, respected him, and found him unbelievably compelling even though he’s not your usual role model. I mean, he wasn’t the sweetest person I’ve ever met. But he was certainly the most interesting and, in some ways, mesmerizing person I’ve met.
SQ: If Jobs hadn’t been successful, would people still admire him?
WI: I tried to make it all come together in the book, which is the passionate perfectionism that causes him to be hard-driving and not put up with things that he considered mediocre. It’s what led him to create great products, but also to gather around him a loyal and talented team. So, to say that you can separate that passion for perfection and that demanding nature from the fact that he kept driving them like crazy to make the iPod perfect, is wrong. His personality is integrated into his success just like Apple products have the software and the hardware integrated with one another.
via Steve Jobs’s ‘journey for enlightenment’ – Under God – The Washington Post.
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