Back from India…

Religious & Magical Thinking, the Darwinian way

Mar 24, 2008

Two interesting articles about religions and magical thinking. The first from the Economist is about how scientists are attempting to explain religion in evolutionary terms. As the article says, "religion cries out for a biological explanation," though previous...

Miami / Globe Video Update

Oct 7, 2018

I had posted earlier about the work our design initiatives team is involved with at Miami Junior-Senior High School. Essentially the entire faculty and leadership at the school have taken on the challenge of re-imagining the 7/8 curriculum through an integrated...

Limerick on Math & Beauty

Jan 27, 2010

Image credit: eoliene_pe_campii Mathematical Beauty: A limerick Punya Mishra, Jan 27, 2010 Doesn’t it just gladden your heart to see These games we can play with infinity? How can one stay aloof From the elegance of a proof And remain immune to mathematics’ subtle...

Multiple metaphors & science learning: New article, new illustrations

Mar 3, 2018

180-degree rotational ambigram for "metaphor." I have been (co)writing a series of articles for iWonder: Rediscovering School Science, a journal for middle school science teachers, published by the Azim Premji University. (Previous articles in...

Happy Valentine’s Day (new ambigram)

Feb 14, 2013

A quick and dirty ambigram for Valentine's day, scribbled on the back of an envelope (literally), and photographed using my phone! Have a great day everybody 🙂

Momentary Lapis Lazuli of Reason: Academia for better or verse

Feb 8, 2016

Graduate school can be a grind. Academia can be dull and dreary. But not if poetry and parody are brought into the mix. This is a volume of academic poetry titled Momentary Lapis Lazuli of Reason: Academia for better or verse. The poems in this volume are...

Endless rewriting: What great academic advising looks like

Apr 20, 2013

Helen Hazen, is the author of 1983 book, Endless Rapture: Rape, Romance, and the Female Imagination. In a recent article in The American Scholar titled "Endless Rewriting" she recounts the way the book came to be and in particular the role that her editor (Jacques...

Goodbye 2020 (whew), welcome 2021

Dec 31, 2020

2020 has been a heck of a year... and maybe in hindsight (hindsight, of course, being 2020) it will all make sense. But, I think we can all agree that it is time to let it go. A lot has changed this past year but one tradition we wanted to keep alive was the short...

Designing for anticipation, Teaching for anticipation

Oct 19, 2009

In a couple of previous posts I had talked about the idea of postdiction (see the posts here and here). The argument being that good teaching (among a long list of other good things) is postdictable, i.e. it walks the line between predictability and chaos, and most...