January 2010
The Pursuit of Happiness →
“If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we’d have a pretty good time”
Edith Wharton Is the pursuit of happiness one of the reasons we are unhappy? Do we try too hard and expect too much? Do we have a…
Happiness Projects →
“If you want to be happy, be” – Leo Tolstoy
“The best way to make yourself happy is to try to cheer somebody else up” – Mark Twain
There have been a good number of books on happiness the past few…
The Puppy Cam →
The original Shiba Inu puppy cam ganered 3 million views back in 2008, so now they have a new puppy cam up. Who can resist puppies? Read and post comments | Send to a friend
Link →
What’s In A Name? →
Most people have checked out what their name means. I’m not talking about surnames and family histories, but your “given” first name. The study of names is called onomastics. It can lead you into…
Cold Weekend But A Warming World →
It’s a cold Jersey weekend, but the last decade could be the warmest ever recorded. 2009 was the fifth warmest year, and 2010 (boosted by El Nino) could be the warmest of them all….
Phobias →
Phobias aren’t just fears. They are irrational (unrealistic) and persistent fears of a specific situation, object or activity. Most people have some fear of things like snakes or insects or heights….
On the Banks of the Old Raritan →
Albany Street Bridge over the Raritan in New Brunswick
Having spent four years at Rutgers College, I heard and sang the alma mater plenty of times at events. “On the Banks of Old…
Gates Foundation and Online Learning →
You probably don’t read Bill Gates’ annual letter about
the priorities of his $34-billion endowment. I wouldn’t have clicked the link someone provided on Twitter either except
that it…
Paranormal Activity in Hollywood →
Remember The Blair Witch Projectmovie back in 1999? It was made for $110,000 and it earned $141 million.
I read about the film Parnormal Activity last fall, but it…
J.D. Salinger Dies at 91: The Hermit Crab of... →
Salinger’s only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published in 1951 and gradually achieved a status that made him cringe. For decades that book was a universal rite of passage for adolescents, the manifesto of disenchanted youth.
Endangered Species Teaching Units →
There are 5 lessons on Endangered Species available from Ithaca College. All materials are classroom-ready, including: teacher guides, student handouts, overviews, and assessments Lesson 1:…
Data Liberation →
When do people worry about backing up their data? When it’s lost, of course. The same thing is true - perhaps to a greater degree - when it comes trying to just moving their data that is stored within a…
Psychedelic Healing →
I have a good friend whose cousin is dying of untreatable cancer. At this point, he would consider any treatments and one thing he is exploring is psychedelic healing.
I know that sounds like 1960s…
Teaching Endangered Species - Including Plants →
Last week, I received an email from a New Jersey teacher asking for information about endangered plant species. I get a few emails each month from teachers. Usually, I can direct them to…
Apple 1984 to 2010 →
With all the talk about Apple and Steve Jobs introducing a tablet today (the worst kept secret in tech so far this
year), I thought it would be fun to look back. It was 26 years ago this month that…
Horizons - Real and Artificial →
The annual Horizon Report is a
collaborative effort between the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and the New Media Consortium (NMC). Each year, the
report identifies and describes…
After Three Months, Only 35 Subscriptions for... →
In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect?
So, three months...
Things You Didn't Know A Year Ago →
We all know that we have learned some things in the past year. They might be hard to enumerate in a list.
Blogger Jeff Houck collected 50 things from the world of science that “we” know now that…
National Geographic Rare: Portraits of America's... →
When a few of these photographs first appeared in the National Geographic magazine January 2009 issue, they were hailed as an arresting reminder of the hundreds of species teetering…
Google Reader Now Lets You Subscribe to ANY Page... →
RSS technology makes it possible for anyone to keep up with fresh content without having to visit the site in question. Now the same holds for webpages without RSS thanks to a new Google Reader feature. Today Google has rolled out a subtle change to Google Reader (Google Reader) that lets you create custom feeds to track pages that don’t already have them. So you can subscribe to updates for any...
Endangered and Nongame Species Advisory Committee →
The Endangered and Nongame Species Advisory Committee was established in 1974 under the New Jersey Endangered and Nongame Species Conservation Act (N.J.S.A. 23:2A-7e). It is a committee is appointed…
PDF a Web Page →
PDFmyURL http://pdfmyurl.com
is a site that will convert a web page into a PDF
document. This can be a useful utility when you want to retain a page as a handout (You address the copyright…
Wolf Moon 2010 →
January 30 is the Wolf Moon for 2010. Native Americans named January’s full moon for the howling of hungry wolves outside villages and encampments during this time when game was often scarce because…
OpenLearn Celebrates 10 million Visits →
OpenLearn started out with 900 hours of learning material, rising to 5,400 by the end of the pilot and still growing.
There are over 500 study units now available, covering 40% of the Open…
Hacked →
Serendipity35 got hacked last week by some folks from China. That happened back in 2008 too and Tim wrote about it here. This time it produced a
reaction from Google. We averaged about 92,000…
Staying Put and Paying Attention →
In the past few years, the term “staycation” started to be used for people staying home as their “vacation.” (The term was added to the 2009 version of the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.)…
A brief history of snow - The Guardian →
Britain’s recent cold snap is nothing on the 16th century’s Little Ice Age, or even New York’s notorious 1888 blizzard, but we could learn a lot from past snow events…
Listening To Elephants and Whales →
“The ocean is really huge. When you get out on a little boat, you know it. You’re clinging to a cork
And out there, rolling around and swimming through and perfectly at home in the waves are these…
Update on Lily the Bear →
Lily, the 3-year-old black bear denning in Minnesota, had her cub yesterday. The live webcam in her den has drawn a lot of attention to bears as Net viewers have followed her denning…
Counting Bats →
Since 2003, the Summer Bat Count project has enlisted volunteers across NJ to monitor bat populations at known summer roost sites, including attics, barns, bat houses, churches, and other structures. This volunteer project was created by the Conserve Wildlife Foundation and the state’s Endangered and Nongame Species Program (ENSP) to gain a better understanding of how NJ’s bats are...
The Most Important People in Educational... →
Tech&Learning is
celebrating a thirtieth anniversary and is compiling a list of the most important people in the creation and an
advancement of the use of technology in education. They are…
Bye Bye B. Dalton Bookseller →
More sad news for the book world.
B. Dalton Bookseller is turn to the end of its story. After nearly 44 years, it was down to just 50 stores at the end of the year. Its parent company,…
Threatened Northern Pine Snakes →
Let’s start out by saying that the pine snake is a nonvenomous constrictor. It kills its prey by coiling itself around it in order to suffocate the animal. Pine snakes are known to eat mammals as large as rabbits, as well as small rodents and birds. They are usually most active in early morning or late afternoon when they leave their burrows to hunt. The Northern pine snake (Pituophis...
Remarkable Creatures →
If books are a dead form, why do I find myself buying and reading more of them lately? Antidote to the Net?
Another new one on my To Read list is by Tracy Chevalier who does a good…
Books To Read →
click arrow to see visual montage of books
Slacktivism, Facebook and the Color of Your Bra →
A post on an NPR blog got me thinking about a recent meme on Facebook and connecting it with the
term “slacktivism.” The blogger asks
(as I did) about “Bra Color Status Update on FB:What does…
NOAA Considering Listing Atlantic Sturgeon as... →
Today Is National Penguin Awareness Day →
At the Essex County Turtle Back Zoo in West Orange, they have 4 new penguins.Since summer 2008, the zoo’s penguins have been in their new home in a renovated exhibit which replicates the South African coastline where…
Why now is the time to cash in on your passion →
Another Jersey person-
Gary Vaynerchuk, is the co-owner and Director of Operations of Wine Library, a wine retail shop in Springfield, New Jersey. He gained fame as the host of Wine Library TV,…
Alicia Ostriker →
Congratulations to one of my poetry professors at Rutgers from back in my undergrad days. Alicia Suskin Ostriker has won the 2009 National Jewish Book Award…
Rescued sea turtles returned to the Atlantic Ocean →
Big chill: Warmed-up sea turtles freed off Florida By BRIAN SKOLOFF, The Associated Press Friday, January 15, 2010; 10:55 AM via http://www.washingtonpost.com
JUNO BEACH, Fla. — They came in…
Who Is Driving Your Classroom? →
I was reading about the pre-frontal
cortex. Really. Last part of the brain to evolve, the last part of the brain to develop. And it’s pretty fragile. An
area that often gets hit, and the…
The Artist’s Way →
I was in a Barnes and Noble bookstore Friday night and picked up Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance to look at while I drank my coffee. (It seems that more people use B&N as a library than people…