Even though Tumblr has been around for several years, I’d never taken a serious look at it until recently. I’ve mostly used Tumblr as a perfect procrastination tool, especially at the end of the semester. There are lots of academia-themed humor tumblrs such as When in Academia, Acadecomic, Academic Tim Gunn, Academic Tyra and All My Friends Are Academics. Other sites provide anonymous spaces for sharing experiences in academia, such as the often depressing Academic Men Explain Things to Me. But Tumblr can also be used in the classroom, as Carol Holstead and Doug Ward pointed out in their recent guest post. Lynda Barry’s posts on her Unthinkable Mind class are a great example of that type of engagement–I’ve been following the class from afar all semester.
(via Researching in Public on Tumblr - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Academia in the dashboard! What are your favorite higher education Tumblrs?
May 20th 1927: Lindbergh begins first solo flight across Atlantic
On this day in 1927 at 7.52am, Charles Lindbergh set off from Long Island in New York on the world’s first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He landed in Paris at 10.22pm the next day. He covered nearly 3,600 miles in a purpose built single seat plane the Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh wanted the Orteig Prize, a $25,000 reward offered by Raymond Orteig for the first non-stop solo flight between New York and Paris; many died in the pursuit of the prize, but Lindbergh won it. Lindbergh was a US Air Mail pilot before his fame from this historic flight, for which he was awarded a Medal of Honor.
From ‘cyberspace’ to ‘web ring’ and ‘information superhighway’ to ‘netizen’, the Dictionaries team looks at some of the most high-profile Internet-related terms which, if used now, would probably be considered an epic fail.
The amazingly colourful Pahiyas festival in the Philippines is always a favourite of ours. Especially as you can eat the decorations!
Original tumblr post: bugenggeng:
HAPPY PAHIYAS FESTIVAL , LUCBAN QUEZON ! :)
Sayang hindi ako nakauwi :(
Another look at life in space. This time how a candle burns aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
A comparison between the combustion of a candle on Earth (left) and in a microgravity environment, such as that found on the ISS.
May 17th 1954: Brown v. Board of Education
On this day in 1954, the US Supreme Court handed down its unanimous decision in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The decision declared segregation on grounds of race in schools unconstitutional. The ruling overturned the 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson which allowed segregation under the doctrine ‘separate but equal’. The case had been bought by African-American parents, including Oliver L. Brown, against Topeka’s educational segregation. It was argued before the Court by the chief legal counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): Thurgood Marshall, who became the first African-American Supreme Court justice in 1967. The Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared that segregation violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The landmark decision is considered the start of the Civil Rights Movement which led to racial integration and full legal rights for African-Americans.“We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”
- Warren’s opinion for the Court
May 17, 1954: The Supreme Court Rules on Brown v. Board of Education
On this day in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which says that no state may deny equal protection of the laws to any person within its jurisdiction.
Although the decision did not succeed in fully desegregating public education in the United States, it put the Constitution on the side of racial equality and galvanized the nascent civil rights movement into a full revolution.
Can you name all the key players behind Brown v. Board of Education? Revisit the landmark case with PBS’ The Supreme Court site.You can also learn more about Brown v. Board of Education with “The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow” and explore more events of the Civil Rights Movement with PBS Black Culture Connection.
Photo: School integration, Barnard School, Washington, D.C., 1955 (Library of Congress).
Beautiful ‘flowers’ self-assemble in a beaker
With the hand of nature trained on a beaker of chemical fluid, the most delicate flower structures have been formed in a Harvard laboratory—and not at the scale of inches, but microns.
These minuscule sculptures, curved and delicate, don’t resemble the cubic or jagged forms normally associated with crystals, though that’s what they are. Rather, fields of carnations and marigolds seem to bloom from the surface of a submerged glass slide, assembling themselves a molecule at a time.
By simply manipulating chemical gradients in a beaker of fluid, Wim L. Noorduin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and lead author of a paper appearing on the cover of the May 17 issue of Science, has found that he can control the growth behavior of these crystals to create precisely tailored structures.
“For at least 200 years, people have been intrigued by how complex shapes could have evolved in nature. This work helps to demonstrate what’s possible just through environmental, chemical changes,” says Noorduin.
Images: [x]
House on the outskirts of Brussels with plant-covered wall by French botanical artist Patrick Blanc
via Dezeen
