Rotundus.com

Podcasts really don't work well for some classes, but in the case of other sorts of classes - e.g. History - podcasting is actually a pretty good alternative to showing up to class. Of course, as the intro that I've excerpted below notes, it's really about how you make use of stuff like that.

Students have been handed another excuse to skip class from an unusual quarter. New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person.

Podcasted lectures offer students the chance to replay difficult parts of a lecture and therefore take better notes, says Dani McKinney, a psychologist at the State University of New York in Fredonia, who led the study.

"It isn't so much that you have a podcast, it's what you do with it," she says.

From: New Scientist

I'm somewhat surprised that NPR would be crazy enough to post a story that Glenn Sacks sarcastically called a Heartwarming Tale of Domestic Violence (and why, oh why, does the grandfather here have to be a Presbyterian pastor?)

[O]ne day while his grandfather was translating, he and a cousin were playing and distracted Ahmaogak so much that he jumped up and threatened to spank the two children.

"Before he could come near us, grandma come running around the door from the kitchen holding those real big handle straw brooms," he says. "When grandpa saw that broom, he just turned away from us, put his head forward and waited for my grandma," Edwardson says, and "she hit him with that broom so hard it broke. He never said a word. He reached over, picked up the broken part and gave it to grandma, put on a jacket, walked out."

Twenty minutes later, Edwardson says, his grandfather returned with a new broom, which he gave to his wife, then turned his head for another blow.

"Grandma just laughed and told him to get lost," he said. "I mean, that's the kind of love my grandma and grandpa had for each other. Never raised a word against her, never said anything against her. But when she hollered, he was ready for her broom.

"That's how they were, with actions. That's how they taught us, and you can't get better teaching than that," he said.

Source: NPR

Flip the roles around and I'm sure that you'd be talking about jailtime rather than how you "can't get better teaching than that"

Brian Cowen's critics might say that they've heard all of his speeches before. Last night, they would have been right.

As the Irish Taoiseach delivered his St Patrick's Day speech at a White House dinner party, it emerged that he was accidentally reading off the teleprompter one made by President Obama only minutes earlier.

"We begin by welcoming today a strong friend of the United States," he began and continued in that vein for about 20 seconds before - realising he was experiencing more than the usual case of déjà vu - he looked back at the US President and said: "That's your speech!"

Gesturing at the teleprompter, he said: "Why don't these things work for me? Who said these things were idiot-proof?"

Source: Times Online

It's been reported previously in numerous places that Obama uses teleprompters much more frequently than any of the previous presidents. How much of an actual influencer of policy is he, and how much is he just a figurehead?

Here's an interesting compilation of news clips covering "Jesus" (amazing how often he appears to be Western European) appearing on objects from stones, spoons, toast, etc.

Love the quote a few minutes in: "Some people said they couldn't see it. I don't know if it's a spiritual level you have to be on to appreciate this picture". Gnosticism anyone? Or perhaps she was referring to being on something like this.