Only the Autodidact is Free
The snail may leave a trail of slime behind him, but a little slime will do a man no harm… whilst if you dance with dragons, you must expect to burn. – George R. R. Martin, The Mystery Knight As any Game of Thrones fan knows, being a knight has its downsides. It isn’t all […]
Why Knights Fought Snails in Illuminated…
Even if you don’t care about high fashion or high society — to the extent that those two things have a place in the current culture — you probably glimpsed some of the coverage of what attendees wore to the Met Gala earlier this month. Or perhaps coverage isn’t strong enough a word: what most of […]
What is Camp? When the “Good…
Theory. The word alone can intimidate, and it can especially intimidate those of us outside the academic humanities. The rigor and complexity of scientific theory is forbidding enough, but cultural theory, with its thickets of multivalent meaning and thinkers with their cultishly devoted and territorial followings, has surely made many a hopeful learner turn back […]
What the Theory?: Watch Short Introductions…
Here’s the latest from Great Big Story: “Once upon a time, not long ago, the math world fell in love … with a chalk. But not just any chalk! This was Hagoromo: a Japanese brand so smooth, so perfect that some wondered if it was made from the tears of angels. Pencils down, please, as […]
Why the World’s Best Mathematicians Are…
Today, on Teacher Appreciation Day, I want to firmly drive home one very important point: AI will never replace our amazing teachers – and I’m saying that as the CEO of the online learning platform edX and in the business of developing education technology. It’s common to think of technologies like AI as things that can easily be used to replace…
What program did you take on edX, and what were your goals in taking it? I started taking TU Delft’s first Solar Energy MOOC, back in 2013. Following that, in 2017 I enrolled in the Solar Energy Engineering MicroMasters® program from the same university. My university didn’t have a particular focus on solar, and I was eager to learn about it…
Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I mentally revisit the various homes of my childhood, wandering from room to room, turning on lights and peering in closets until I conk out. Turns out these imaginary tours are also handy mnemonic tools, as Vox’s Dean Peterson explains above. Hey, that’s good news… isn’t the subconscious rumored to […]
How to Memorize an Entire Chapter…
All of us came of age in the era of mass-market books, bundles of text on paper printed quickly, cheaply, and in large quantities. Nothing about that would have been conceivable to the many varieties of artisan involved in the creation of just one manuscript in the Middle Ages. Even here in the 21st century […]
How to Make a Medieval Manuscript:…
FYI. 2,500+ MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are getting underway in May, giving you the chance to take free courses from top flight universities. With the help of Class Central, we’ve pulled together a complete list of May MOOCS. And below we’ve highlighted several courses that piqued our interest. The trailer above comes from Music Psychology: Why Does “Bohemian […]
2,500+ MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)…
Another man insults your honor, leaving you no choice but to challenge him to a highly formalized fight to the death: in the 21st century, the very idea strikes us as almost incomprehensibly of the past. And dueling is indeed dead, at least in all the lands that historically had the most enthusiasm for it, […]
The Last Duel Took Place in…