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01-25-2005 Resources America in the 1930s (in Modernism) Exploratorium: Cassini Mission to Saturn and Titan Life at the End of the Road (in Gabriel Garcia Marquez) Many Books (in Electronic Texts) Medieval Mystery (in Middle Ages) Tristan und Isolde Resources (in Middle Ages) Articles "When the arts are an interdisciplinary partner with other subjects, they generate conditions that cognitive scientists say are ideal for learning. The curriculum becomes more hands-on and project-based, offering what University of Chicago researchers have called authentic and challenging intellectual work. Learning in all subjects becomes visible through the arts. Teachers' opinions of their students rise." Go to story "Jared Diamond's compelling study, Collapse, asks why throughout history, whole societies suddenly disappear - and what it means for us today ." Go to story "If pressed, most early modern historians would probably identify the Pacific Ocean in the centuries between Magellan and Cook’s famous voyages as an area of marginal importance: the site of an interesting but relatively insignificant commerce between Acapulco and Manila from 1565 to 1815; of picturesque but largely inconsequential episodes such as Drake’s epic circumnavigation of the 1570s; and of idyllic but isolated archipelagoes, the existence of which long remained unknown to those who did not enjoy the good fortune of having been born there. From this perspective, the Pacific was a region tenuously connected to other parts of the globe, doing little to shape developments beyond its shores, offering little to historians seeking explanations for events in other areas. The first burden, then, for scholars interested in the early modern Pacific is to demonstrate the historical significance of the subject." Go to story "Today, after its seven-year journey through the Solar System on board the Cassini spacecraft, ESA’s Huygens probe has successfully descended through the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and safely landed on its surface." Go to story "'If it’s in my ability' is a phrase 30-year-old Thebe Medupe uses often—a modest expression that he employs when others might say 'I hope.' Looking at the facts of Medupe’s life, one realizes just how modest this habit is: Born and raised under apartheid in a small South African town, with no running water or electricity, he pursued his fascination with astronomy to the achievement of a PhD in astrophysics. Currently, he works at the South African Astronomical Observatory in Sutherland and oversees the budding theoretical astrophysics research program that he started at North-West University. Beyond all this, he’s the central figure in Cosmic Africa, a groundbreaking documentary that explores the ethnoastronomy of Africa: the ancient cosmological beliefs held by Africans across the continent." Go to story "Something wiped out most of the life on Earth 250 million years ago. Evidence has been building that it was an asteroid or comet strike that made Earth unlivable nearly instantly. But other scientists think that it wasn't instantaneous; instead, they found fossil evidence that the extinction occurred over the course of 10 million years. A group of volcanoes in Siberia spewed out gas continuously that set off a runaway greenhouse effect. Lowered oxygen levels in the atmosphere combined with intense heat would have hit life a deadly double blow." Go to story "'The unprecedented integration and interdependence of the world economy—the phenomenon known as globalization—is incompatible with the nation-state system upon which capitalism is based. The violent eruption of American imperialism—which finds its essential expression in the Bush administration’s doctrine of preemptive war—represents a desperate attempt to resolve the contradiction between world economy and the nation state by establishing the hegemony of one country—namely, the United States—over all other countries.'" Go to story "The Ottoman empire was one of the mightiest the world has ever known. Can the Royal Academy's new exhibition do it justice? Jonathan Jones reports." Go to story "Scientists hope to soon be able to spin spider silk without the aid of spiders—achieving an age-old human quest to harness one of nature's most remarkable materials." Go to story "A supermassive black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), resides at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Findings presented yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego, Calif., indicate that it, in turn, could be surrounded by a swarm of smaller black holes that have accumulated over billions of years. The results suggest that the smaller black holes will eventually fall into the supermassive black hole, increasing its size and helping astronomers better understand how such black holes grow." Go to story "The US military investigated building a 'gay bomb', which would make enemy soldiers 'sexually irresistible' to each other, government papers say." Go to story "So here's the big question: if children who don't even go to school learn so easily, why do children who go to school seem to have such a hard time? Why can children solve problems that challenge computers but stumble on a third-grade reading test?" Go to story "If you're light, it's fairly easy to travel at your own speed -- that is to say 186,282 miles per second or 299,800 kilometers per second. "But if you are matter, then it's another matter altogether." Go to story "I believe, but I cannot prove, that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all 'design' anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection." Go to story "Astronomers recently announced the discovery of Sedna, a nearly Pluto-sized object on a 12,500 year-long orbit around the Sun. New computer simulations from the Southwest Research Institute demonstrate that Sedna could formed out past the orbit of Pluto, instead of being created closer to the Sun, and then ejected by the gravity of the gas giants. If this happened, it would mean that the zone of planetary formation in our Solar System could extend much further than previously believed, and there could be other objects like Sedna lurking in outer reaches." Go to story "The wandering exile is a common Romantic figure. But why was it so inspiring to 19th-century German artists? Robert Hughes on how a nation rediscovered itself." Go to story "Do You Want to Live Forever?" Go to story "Corin Redgrave grew up with [King] Lear. But he never fully understood the character until he developed cancer." Go to story "A computer program is changing the face of the music business by allowing record labels to predict a hit at the click of a mouse. Is this the death of pop as we know it, asks Jo Tatchell, or a new hope for unsigned bands everywhere?" Go to story "While scientists and others were mesmerised at the weekend by pictures taken of Saturn's moon after the Huygens spaceprobe's two billion mile journey, an Oxford conference was discussing something more down to earth: what to do about treasures lying beneath the earth at Herculaneum, the city buried in volcanic matter after an eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Some members of the Herculaneum Society, hosts for the conference, believe that Herculaneum's buried 'Villa of Papyri', which may contain missing works by Pliny, Euripides and Aristotle, ought to be excavated before Vesuvius erupts again." Go to story "Winston Churchill’s reputation rests above all on his leadership in the Second World War, often described as Britain’s ‘finest hour’. Yet Churchill himself coined that phrase. It serves to remind us that he not only made history but also wrote it: indeed he regarded the making and the writing as inseparable." Go to story "Virtual worlds were once regarded as an escape from 'real life', but the distinction between the two is breaking down. Anxiety has arisen about what is seen as a clash between these existences or - more worrying to some - the insidious incursions of cyberspace into 'meatspace'." Go to story "For a country that introduced Henry Purcell, Edward Elgar and Benjamin Britten to the world, the criticism will come as a wounding blow. "According to one of the most respected leaders of the classical music establishment, Britain is threatened by cultural ignorance born of a pop-obsessed society that takes no time to appreciate the finer things of life." Go to story Also, try "Don't Knock Baroque": "Nobody (that is nobody of good spirit) wishes to inflict his taste on others, although it sometimes happens that conflict is unavoidable. When I lived in the Philippines I used for a while to think that a little mainstream classical music would not be unacceptable in the car: a Mozart piano concerto, for instance, might make a pleasant change from Filipino pop radio. Then I overheard a conversation not meant for my ears: 'Pangit ang musika ni James, di ba? Punebre!' (James's music is ugly, isn't it? Funereal!)." Articles page "Blasting a comet with a lump of copper heralds a new dawn in astronomy - and may save us from extinction." Go to story "David Anderson looks at the contentious issues raised as Kenya comes to terms with the colonial past." Go to story "The portion of our planet affected by serious drought has doubled in the last three decades, a new study suggests. Findings to be presented today at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in San Diego, Calif., indicate that the fraction of global land characterized as 'very dry' has increased from 10 to 15 percent in the 1970s to nearly 30 percent in 2002." Go to story "In the early years of the 20th century, a new theory, quantum mechanics, revolutionized physicists' understanding of nature. But delving into the subatomic realm meant rethinking some fundamental assumptions: Here, information passes instantly between particles; protons can be in two places at once; and hydrogen can defy classical conservation of energy. "Today, researchers use quantum mechanics to refine their understanding of the physical laws governing life. A phenomenon called quantum tunneling (QT), for example, lets hydrogen pass from reactant to product when there isn't enough energy in the mix to let the reaction occur by classical routes. QT is more than an esoteric biochemical byway; it allows some reactions to occur quickly enough to sustain life. But whether enzymes evolved to make the most of QT is hotly contested, with recent studies yielding contradictory results." Go to story "Computer analysis of a 17th-century painting shows that the artist did not, as has been claimed, use optical devices to project a perfect image of the scene onto his canvas. The researcher behind the analysis believes his findings undermine many aspects of a theory recently put forward by the painter David Hockney." Go to story "For decades, astronomers have sought to pin down a source for ultra high-energy cosmic rays. The distant sources must be among the more powerful events in the universe, perhaps the creation of black holes or the mergers of galaxies. "It appears the first source has been located, a finding that would be considered a major breakthrough in the field." Go to story "Why Do Historians Ignore Noam Chomsky?" Go to story "New teaching models look to technology. For intro physics, M.I.T. students work at laptops as faculty circulate. But nothing casual here: nine to a table, three to a computer. Ideal table diameter: seven feet." Go to story "Are We Sparta or Are We Athens?" Go to story "In a remote corner of south west Greenland, a group of abandoned buildings stands at the head of a long, mountain-rimmed fjord. Many are made of deftly hewn stone; there are remains of barns, stores and a boathouse, and at its heart, the township's church still stands with intact doorways, niches and gables. Only its turf roof is missing. "This is Hvalsey, a Viking stronghold where, according to anthropologist Jared Diamond, medieval Scandinavian settlers 'wrote in Latin and Old Norse, wielded iron tools, herded farm animals, followed the latest European fashions in clothing - and finally vanished'." Go to story "We are all seeing rather less of the Sun, according to scientists who have been looking at five decades of sunlight measurements. " They have reached the disturbing conclusion that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface has been gradually falling." Go to story "The Centers for Disease Control has announced that it will mate the Avian Influenza A (H5N1) virus (also known as 'bird flu') and human flu viruses to monitor the resulting viruses' severity, and ability to infect and be transmitted. The process is called 'reassortment.' Flu experts say the lab experiments are crucial to find out what may already be happening naturally in Asia; they fear the lethal bird flu circulating there will swap genes with a human strain to create a killer strain that could easily spread from person to person." Go to story "Although Plato compared the human soul to a chariot pulled by the two horses of reason and emotion, modern economics has mostly been a one-horse show. It has been obsessed with reason. In decisions from how much to produce to whether to save and invest, humans have been assumed to be coolly rational calculators of their own self-interest. Over the past few years, however, evidence from psychology has persuaded many economists that reason does not always have its way. Now, judging from a series of presentations at the American Economic Association meetings in Philadelphia last weekend, a burgeoning new field dubbed 'neuroeconomics' seems poised to provide fresh insights on how the two horses together produce economic behaviour." Go to story "Harvard President Lawrence Summers is in trouble. At a recent conference on economics, Summers apparently made comments that deeply offended some women in the audience. 'When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill,' said Dr. Nancy Hopkins, MIT biology professor. In an earlier and less enlightened age, such a reaction by a lady to a provocative suggestion from a man might have been dismissed as 'hysterical.' Fortunately, we have moved beyond such stereotyping today." Go to story "What species eats up the earth's resources '22 times more'' than others and would probably need 'six more planets'' to satiate its appetite?" Go to story "One of the most annoying things about going to see a French film is overhearing people in the foyer afterwards: 'Oh, it was just so French', they mutter to each other, 'French' becoming a kind of by-word for sophisticated, cool, frigid, slow-paced, or any other adjective that carries faintly sinister undertones. For many cinema-goers, French cinema invariably conjures the same connotations of over-artiness, style over substance or boredom as if going to the cinema and seeing a film unafraid to take its time was somehow damned as being too obsessed with itself. Clearly they have never seen Taxi." Go to story "It's time English teachers got back to basics - less grammar, more play." Go to story "In Norse mythology, Ragnarok—the fate of the gods—begins when the earth is caught in the vice-like grip of a bone-chilling freeze. The heavens themselves freeze over, as the gods perish in great battles with evil serpents and murderous wolves. Eternal darkness settles over the bleak, frozen land as the sun and moon are both devoured. Odin, the father of all gods, finally falls to his death, and time itself comes to a halt. "Does this ancient tale foretell our future?" Go to story "Not many people remember the 1954 film Salt of the Earth, a low-budget account of a mining strike in New Mexico. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the movie is that it was made at all." Go to story "The long lost star catalog of Hipparchus has been under our noses – or, more accurately, slightly above them – for more than 1,800 years. "Sitting atop the broad shoulders of a seven-foot statue known as the Farnese Atlas is a sky globe depicting the nighttime sky. Scientists have been able to match the constellations shown on the globe with descriptions from Hipparchus’s only surviving work, Commentaries, and have concluded that this is a marble copy of his star catalog." Go to story "Sometimes it seems hard to believe that today's young writers are following the same vocation as that depicted by a long night of wakefulness in Cyril Connolly's Enemies of Promise (1938), when the tortured would-be writer lies awake all night hearing the bells sound off the hours - or is it the decades? - and all too soon eight o'clock approaches, and the magnum opus is still not written." Go to story "Consider this: which country achieved the best Year 10 results in science and mathematics last year? Not by the ever-malleable standards of British examination boards but by the impartial Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), assessing quarter of a million pupils in 40 countries. Finland is the answer. Yes, Finland, with a population the size of Scotland’s and an impenetrable language. What are the Finns doing right? Every child in Finland is given an instrument to play from the first day at school. They learn to read notes on stave before letters on page. They spend hours at drawing and drama. The result is a society of with few tensions and profound culture. Finnish Radio broadcasts in Latin once a week. Finnish railways do not need to play Sibelius, except for pleasure." Go to story
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