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II. As a weapon in the hands of the restless poor—By Earl Shorris (Harper's Magazine)

Earl Shorris’s book about the Clemente Course in the Humanities, The Art of Freedom: Teaching the Humanities to the Poor, will be published in 2013 by W. W. Norton. He was awarded a National Humanities Medal in 2000. This story, part two of a package titled “On the Uses of a Liberal Education,” ran ...

Click to view the original at harpers.org

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Just Herself

Nergis Mavalvala, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, can check off a whole lot of boxes on the diversity form. She isn't just a woman in physics, which is rare enough. She is an immigrant from Pakistan and a self-described 'out, queer person of colo...

Click to view the original at web.mit.edu

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Why Nearly Every Sport Except Long-Distance Running Is Fundamentally Absurd

At first glance the annual Man vs. Horse Marathon, set for June 9 in Wales, seems like a joke sport brought to us by the same brilliant minds behind dwarf tossing and gravy wrestling. It was, after all, the product of a pints-fueled debate in a Welsh pub, and for...

Click to view the original at slate.com

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WHY THREE PRONGS? Electrical ground, stray voltage

QUESTION: WITH AC POWER, AREN'T BOTH THE WIRES OF THE PAIR INTERCHANGABLE? WHY IS ONE WIRE CALLED "NEUTRAL?" WHAT'S ALL THIS STUFF ABOUT "GROUNDING?" WHY ARE THREE PRONGS NEEDED?

Click to view the original at amasci.com

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Hunting down my son's killer

To find it, a team of scientists at Duke University used whole-exome sequencing (a protein-focused variant of whole-genome sequencing) on me, my wife and my son.

Click to view the original at matt.might.net

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Instagram + Facebook

When Mike and I started Instagram nearly two years ago, we set out to change and improve the way the world communicates and shares. We’ve had an amazing time watching Instagram grow into a vibrant...

Click to view the original at blog.instagram.com