Learning
Here and Now: A History of Trips That Yield the Most Various Experiences in the Smallest Locales
Joan L. Cannon writes: We went on trips to places that would yield the most various experiences in the smallest locales. For instance, an abandoned talc quarry where, with a jackknife as your only tool, you could return to camp with magnetite crystals, garnets, pyrites, and black tourmaline. I know that few people are of greater importance than the primary school teachers and young parents who initiate children into the practice of paying attention – not in a classroom or to lectures alone, but everything that proves to them that they are sentient and alive – in the present. more »
Designing More Effective Opioids: A Search for a Potential Pain Reliever with Fewer Side Effects
Researchers used computer simulations to screen millions of molecules for opioid-like pain-relieving properties. The analyses allowed scientists to create a molecule that effectively alleviates pain in mice, but with fewer side effects than the opioid morphine. more »
Life After the Dinosaurs: ENIAC Couldn't Telephone, Skype, or Text, Search for Pokemon, Make Travel Reservations or Warn of Tornadoes
Rose Madeline Mula writes: Today's kids don't have to struggle with typewriter ribbons, correction tape, Wite-Out, carbon paper, mimeograph stencils, Ditto machines, and a myriad other medieval instruments of torture that plagued secretaries of old. What's a secretary? It was a woman (never a man) who munched a brown-bag sandwich at her desk as she typed, while her boss, who made more than ten times her salary, was out enjoying expense-paid 'business' lunches and martinis with other bosses. If I sound bitter, it's because I am. I was born way too soon I envy all who weren't. more »
Jo Freeman's Convention Diary: Cleveland Had More Police Than Protesters and Philly Was Cop-Lite
We were told that 500 Cleveland police and 2,800 police from elsewhere were keeping the protests peaceful. They slept in the dorms of the local colleges and were moved around in local school buses. These were the friendliest police I have ever seen at a protest. They spoke with the various march leaders as though they were working for the tourist bureau. Only the members of the Pennsylvania State Police were added to the Philadelphia police. While their numbers waxed and waned, police presence in the street was no greater than in a normal protest. more »