lego is best.
no foolin'
-
2011-12-29
-
→
One teacher’s approach to preventing gender bullying in a classroom
Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art room, I said: “Allie, I’m not playing. It’s time for art. The rule is no hoods or hats in school.”
She looked up with tears in her eyes and I realized there was something wrong. Her classmates went into the art room and we moved to the art storage area so her classmates wouldn’t hear our conversation. I softened my tone and asked her if she’d like to tell me what was wrong.
“My ponytail,” she cried.
“Can I see?” I asked.
She nodded and pulled down her hood. Allie’s braids had come undone overnight and there hadn’t been time to redo them in the morning, so they had to be put back in a ponytail. It was high up on the back of her head like those of many girls in our class, but I could see that to Allie it just felt wrong. With Allie’s permission, I took the elastic out and re-braided her hair so it could hang down.
“How’s that?” I asked.
She smiled. “Good,” she said and skipped off to join her friends in art.
‘Why Do You Look Like a Boy?’
Source: rethinkingschools.org
-
2011-12-28
Blue Morpho butterfly tree
Source: mariposa.org.uk
-
2011-12-16
rip, little buddies.
-
2011-12-15
next, please.
Source: canwesayjoseff
-
2011-12-14
Proteigon Stop Motion by Buryan | koikoikoi
bom bom bom bom
-
2011-12-13
olli kekäläinen.
((gretchenjonesnyc))
Source: lushlight
-
2011-12-07
volcanic japan. belles mappes.
(via catysmith)
Source: Wired
-
2011-12-03
Do Plants Have Minds?
An interesting summary of current “plant neurobiology” over at NPR’s 13.7 blog, asks when a complex information processing system (which I think aptly describes a plant, because they really do respond quite well to a number of stimuli) becomes a “mind”:
The guiding idea of this literature seems to be, first, that plants do in fact act, and they act in ways which, when animals act that way, we are disposed to think of as signs of intelligence. Some examples: plants orient and react appropriately not only in response to light, but also wind, water, predators, quality of soil and the volume of available soil, among many other factors.
Plants reshape themselves — extending, growing, opening, closing, altering leaf size, etc — in direct response to what they need, what they have good reason to shun and to a broad range of local conditions. In developing underground networks of roots, they show sensitivity to obstacles in the ground, and there is evidence that they differentiate their response to the roots of other plants from their response to their own roots.
Granted, by human and animal measures, plants are very slow. But surely it is prejudice to think that only movements and responsiveness that occurs on time scales that seem natural to us count as legitimately expressive of intelligence and mind.
Are we being unfair to plants when we classify them as “mindless”? Or are we being unfair to minds when we try to reconcile where stimulus/response becomes thinking?
Here’s some primary research on the subject, too (subscription may be required).
Source: jtotheizzoe
-
2011-11-30
“I am tired of the cult of youth. The cultural rejection of old age, the stigmatization of wrinkles, grey hair, of bodies furrowed by the years. I am fascinated by Diana Vreeland, Georgia O’Keeffe and Louise Bourgeois, women who have let time embrace them without ever cheating. Society today condemns this, me, I celebrate it.” - Tom Ford
(via marrak)
Source: fauna-folds
