Links

Stuff I find around the web that interests or amuses me.

Teach backwards!

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CalPundit made a proposal over the weekend that I absolutely love: teach history backwards.

[History] is a subject that I talk about frequently with my mother (an actual teacher, mind you), trying to figure out why it’s such a disliked subject. After all, we like history, but surveys routinely show that it’s the least liked subject, ranking even below obvious suspects like math and spelling.

Why is it so disliked? Who knows, really, but it’s probably because it seems so remote from normal life. It’s pretty hard, after all, for most teenagers to get very enthused about a long-ago debate over the Missouri Compromise that has only the most tenuous connection to the present day.

So in the true spirit of blogging (especially weekend blogging!), here’s my dumb amateur idea about how to teach history: do it backward.

It’s hard for kids to get interested in century old debates without knowing all the context around them, but they might very well be interested in current day events. So why not start now and explain the events that got us here? War on terrorism? Sure, let’s teach it, and that leads us backward to a discussion of how the current state of affairs is the successor to the bipolar world that came apart in 1989. And that leads back to the Cold War, and that leads back to World War II, etc.

In other words, invert cause and effect. Try to get them wondering about the causes of things they already know about, and then use this curiosity to lead them inexorably backward through history.

I have to say, I think this would be such a good approach. History never really caught my attention in high school — in the words of a tongue-in-cheek quote I found somewhere, “You meet all these interesting people, but they’re all dead.” I’m not sure I could have pinned down exactly why at the time, but the perceived lack of relevancy to anything I dealt with on a day to day basis, or expected to deal with in the future, certainly makes sense. Math, much as I hated it, I knew I’d have to deal with throughout my life, and the same with much of the sciences — they were obviously useful subjects. History, at least the way it was presented to me then, wasn’t.

Of course, that mindset has changed drastically over the intervening years, and now I find historical subjects fascinating — enough so that one of the many ideas I sometimes turn over in my head for when I can finagle the time and money to get into school again is exploring becoming a history teacher.

If I ever travel down that particular road, you can bet I’ll see what I can do with this approach. Start with the recent history that ties into current events, then explore the underlying causes of those. From there, work backwards — create that obvious, active link between today’s events and those of the past. While many history teachers have the quote, “Those who do not study the past are doomed to repeat it,” somewhere in their classrooms, I think that an approach like this would actually do more to prove that quote than the current approach does.

(via Atrios)

Honda Accord ad

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This new ad for the Honda Accord (QuickTime required) is a definite must-see. It’s just grabbed a spot as my third-favorite commercial of all time.

[Update:]{.underline}

Even more jaw-droppingly amazing: this commercial isn’t faked! What you see in the commercial is one successful two-minute long shot — no trick photography, no CGI. Wow. (via MeFi)

For the curious, my second-favorite ad is the “Rainier Beer Motorcycle” ad of the late 80’s. Very simple — just someone riding a motorcyle across the landscape — but even today, if you go up to just about anyone who watched TV during the time it was on, they’ll remember it. The kicker? The whine of the engine was a long, drawn-out, “Raaaaaaaiiiiiiii…[gear change]nniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeerrrrrrrr…[gear change]beeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrr….”

All-time favorite ad, though, for quite a few reasons, is the Apple Computer ‘1984‘ ad. Apple Computer, Ridley Scott, 1984 — a perfect ad.

Propaganda at its finest

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Remember the heroic rescue of Private Jessica Lynch? I’m sure you do, it was practically the only story coming out of Iraq for close to a week.

How heroic is it, really, when US forces storm into an unguarded hospital, terrorize the staff and patients, and handcuff four doctors and two patients — one of whom was paralyzed and on an IV drip — before leaving with Private Lynch?

Another shining example of the US propaganda machine in full swing.

(via Alan Moult)

Long day

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Quick bits, because I’m too worn out to bother with anything more in-depth:

  • Rumsfeld is now admitting that we probably won’t find any WMDs. So much for that justification. (via Nurse Ratched)
  • UN Inspector Hans Blix continues to assert that there likely are no WMDs in Iraq, and that the justification for invasion was a sham. (via Tom)
  • Two of Bush’s cultural advisors have resigned in protest over the lack of protection for Iraq’s museums and libraries. (via Katherine Long)
  • The American Prospect asks, quite rightly, why so much of the American public seems to placidly accept Bush’s baldfaced lies. (via Elaine)
  • Kirsten picks up on the Syria/WMD story that I linked yesterday and gives it a nice chess metaphor that puts my “here’s a link, go read it” style to shame. I knew I was going to enjoy giving that girl a website!

A sci-fi museum? Cool!

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Paul Allen, the Microsoft Corp. co-founder and eclectic billionaire philanthropist, is expected to announce today his plans to build a Seattle facility to celebrate science-fiction literature in the same way his Experience Music Project honors popular music.

Tentatively dubbed the Science Fiction Experience, or SFX, the project will be adjacent to the EMP at the Seattle Center and open in the summer of 2004.

Rock on. I’ll let you know how it is once it opens. ;)

(via /.)

Tim Robbins probably says good stuff

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Grumble. According to the Daily Kos, Tim Robbins gave a good speech to the National Press Club. The excerpt they have is good.

Unfortunately, Salon has the full text of the speech, and their daypass system seems to be broken — I haven’t been able to successfully get through with any browser on either my Mac or my PC, I either get a blank page or the browser crashes.

So…it’s probably good, and I could probably recommend reading it. I’m just not sure.

Penis!

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This made me laugh — The Penis Blog Project.

Needless to say, this is NSFW (Not Safe For Work), and an open mind and good sense of humor is encouraged.

[Disclaimer: I’m not part of this project. Just so’s ya know.]

(via Dyanna)

Philodemus

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While many mourn the loss of innumerable historic artifacts (excellent link via Shelley Powers) as one of the many tragedies of the current conflict in Iraq, work progresses in Italy at using infrared imaging to recover writings from charred rolls of papyrus recovered from the ruins around Vesuvius.

The ceremony begins with the presentation of a small plaque to the contingent from BYU. Booras and his colleague Roger MacFarlane, a younger man in a seersucker jacket and a natty bow tie, step up to receive it almost bashfully. On a lectern to one side of the room sits a larger plaque the visitors presented to the library earlier. It displays two different pictures of the same scrap of papyrus. One shows neat lines of Greek lettering. The other is utterly illegible, a ground zero of text. The difference between them is Steve Booras’ camera.

Booras and his team have recorded images of every piece of Herculaneum papyrus in the library: 25,000 images on 345 CDs. The images were made with a high-quality digital camera. More important, most of them were also made with infrared filters. On a legible papyrus seen under normal light, the ink appears black because it absorbs the light; the papyrus reflects it. The carbonized fibers of the Herculaneum scrolls, however, absorb light just as well as the ink does, making the background a distinctly low-contrast black. But the papyrus does not absorb infrared wavelengths quite as readily; in the infrared, there is still contrast.

Most of the scrolls uncovered so far have been written by first-century philosopher and poet Philodemus, leading to conjecture that the owner of the villa where the scrolls were found may have been trying to save Philodemus’ work specifically — but there may be far more in the as-yet unearthed sections of the ruins.

Details of Philodemus’ biography are scarce. It’s not known when he was born or died, how long he spent in Alexandria (possibly) or Athens (definitely). It’s not known which, if any, of the various women featured in his often bawdy poetry might have been his wife, though the ones who required pay can probably be ruled out. But it is known that when he settled in Italy, he did so under the patronage of a high-powered plutocrat — Lucius Calpurnius Piso, one of the richest Romans of his day, scourge of Cicero and father-in-law to Caesar.

Why, then, were the uncovered works more or less all by Philodemus? One answer is that these papyruses were in the process of being saved from the disaster when the mud rolled over the villa, the boiling sea lapping at its lower terraces. The papyruses were discovered scattered along the colonnades, some loose, some in packing cases, as though they were in transit. The writings of Philodemus, goes the argument, had a special emotional value to Piso’s heirs, because Philodemus had once lived in the villa. So when the volcano erupted, slaves were sent to gather the scrolls and carry them down to the shore, where boats would take them to safety with the rest of the household. The bulk of the library — works by more famous hands, but not as precious to the family and more easily replaced — was abandoned. According to this theory, some buried part of the palace may contain a collection of ancient texts too commonplace to have been worth saving then and too valuable to ignore now.

Who knows what treasures may yet wait to be discovered, both around Vesuvius, in other areas of the world — and hopefully, eventually, once again in Iraq.