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2007-10-11

Socratic Electronics

"The most important thing any educator can impart to a student, in any context, is the ability to teach themselves. When teachers dispense knowledge to students in the traditional lecture format -- where students passively watch and listen -- they deny students deep interaction with the subject matter. Furthermore, instructor-centered pedagogy assumes and reinforces the debilitating notion that education can only happen in the presence of a superior: You (the student) need me (the teacher) in order to learn."

http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/socratic/

Harvard scientists predict the future of the past tense

"Lieberman and Michel's group computed the "half-lives" of the surviving irregular verbs to predict how long they will take to regularize. The most common ones, such as "be" and "think," have such long half-lives (38,800 years and 14,400 years, respectively) that they will effectively never become regular. Irregular verbs with lower frequencies of use -- such as "shrive" and "smite," with half-lives of 300 and 700 years, respectively -- are much more likely to succumb to regularization."

http://www.sciencecodex.com/harvard_scientists_predict_the_future_of_the_past_tense

Postful

Send letters using e-mail

Most of us know people who can't receive e-mail. For me, it's my grandparents. For others it's a friend in the hospital or in the military. We'd like to write, but between stamps, envelopes, printing, and mailing, it doesn't get done. With Postful, it's as easy as sending an e-mail.

http://postful.com/