Archive for September, 2010

  • Beauty, Dissected.

    Beauty, Dissected.
    by Matt Pitchford . . .

    (Taking a cue from Marcie, my post this week is also about beauty.  Go figure.  I guess it’s our impromptu theme.) Since the time of Aristotle, a consistent means of learning has been through the use of division and explanation. If you are given something – an organism, a political structure, a philosophy, or a [...]

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  • Beauty

    Beauty
    by Marcie Little . . .

    Beauty. What is the first thing to enter your mind when you hear that word? I was reading a book recently in which the author made several thought-provoking points about beauty. He posited that beauty is a necessary part of life and described it as transcendent – it stirs up within us a longing for [...]

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  • Conversational Parlor Tricks

    Conversational Parlor Tricks
    by Matt Pitchford . . .

    When I was little, I had a very basic “magician set” of gimmicky tricks. I performed them to accommodating adults at every opportunity. In retrospect, even the most cursory of examinations of that cheap plastic would have uncovered the simple mechanisms involved in the illusion. I grew out of such cheap parlor tricks. But in [...]

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  • Awareness and Education

    Awareness and Education
    by Matt Pitchford . . .

    So much of the classroom is, and I believe ought to be, focused on the concept of increasing understanding and awareness. This is in contrast to the rote memorization and regurgitation of other people’s ideas. It is learning the applicability of knowledge that is most vital to a class environment. But even if we take [...]

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  • Fighting for Relevance

    Fighting for Relevance
    by Matt Pitchford . . .

    “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”  Andy Warhol’s famous prediction seems to be accurate, if ultimately incomplete.  Sometimes people seem to be world-famous for an even less amount of time.  The list of people that I should know, actors from A-list to C-list, athletes, pundits, writers, and politicians, is so vast [...]

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