Best Things I've Read @bestthingiread - Tumblr Blog

sandandglass

Bryan Stevenson on The Daily Show.

bowerycorp

Spread this everywhere, because the man is 100% right.

bestthingiread

Everyone needs to hear/see this

robdelaney

Also hate that people are discovering Hannibal Burress because he called out Cosby. Wish they’d discovered him the way I had, by having their fucking socks knocked off seeing him live. I don’t always watch other comedians when I’m on a show at a club in NY or LA but you better believe I watch...

npr

How does a sunset work? We love to look at them, but Jolanda Blackwell wanted her 8th graders to really think about them, to wonder and question.

So Blackwell, who teaches science at Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior High in Davis, Calif., had her students watch a video of a sunset on YouTube as part of a physics lesson on motion.

"I asked them: ‘So what’s moving? And why?’" Blackwell says. The students had a lot of ideas. Some thought the sun was moving, others, of course, knew that a sunset is the result of the earth spinning around on its axis.

Once she got the discussion going, the questions came rapid-fire. “My biggest challenge usually is trying to keep them patient,” she says. “They just have so many burning questions.”

Students asking questions and then exploring the answers. That’s something any good teacher lives for. And at the heart of it all is curiosity.

Blackwell, like many others teachers, understands that when kids are curious, they’re much more likely to stay engaged.

Curiosity: It Helps Us Learn, But Why?

Illustration credit: LA Johnson/NPR

npr

Answers to all of your Ebola-related questions, courtesy of NPR News:

What’s My Risk Of Catching Ebola?

No, Seriously, How Contagious Is Ebola?

Why Won’t The Fear Of Airborne Ebola Go Away?

Here’s How An Ebola Quarantine Works In The U.S.

Why Do Ebola Mortality Rates Vary So Widely?

Answering Your Questions About Ebola Treatments And Vaccines

Why Raising Money For Ebola Is Hard

Should You Stock Up On Chocolate Bars Because Of Ebola?

A Simple Question Can Stop Ebola: How Do You Feel?

Why A Thermometer Is A Good Tool For Airport Ebola Screenings

Why Ebola Is Not A Threat To The U.S.

For more coverage, visit our global health blog, Goats and Soda.

And for those of you who don’t want to read anything else about Ebola, we suggest you give this sad but sweet story a try: 3-Year-Old Ebola Survivor Proposes To Nurse.

Graphic credit: Adam Cole for NPR

npr

If you have any doubt that the hashtag is a frighteningly powerful tool in our modern vocabulary, imagine a person you care about texting you that song’s title line out of the blue: “You’re beautiful.” Now think of the same person texting, “You’re #beautiful.” The second one is jokey, ironic, distant—and hey, maybe that’s what that person was going for. But it also hammers home that point that the internet too often asserts: You’re not as original as you once thought. “Beautiful” is analog, unquantifiable, one-in-a-million. #Beautiful, on the other hand, is crowded terrain. Ten more people have just tweeted about something or someone #beautiful since you started reading this sentence. … As more and more of our daily interactions become text-based — people preferring texting to phone calls, workplaces that rely heavily email and instant messaging—we’re developing ways to stretch our written language so it can communicate more nuance, so we can tell people what we mean without accidentally leading them on or pissing them off. Periods have becomemore forceful, commas less essential, and over the last few years, the hashtag has morphed into something resembling the fabled sarcasm font—the official keystroke of irony. Putting a hashtag in front of something you text, email, or IM to someone is a sly way of saying “I’m joking,” or maybe more accurately, “I mean this and I don’t at the same time.”

The #Art of the Hashtag

Thanks to Twitter, the hashtag has become an important linguistic shortcut. But while everyone from Robin Thicke to Beyoncé has used the symbol as part of their art, only a few have truly taken advantage of its culture-jamming possibilities.

Via @pitchforkmedia

(via npr)

npr

"So what if nobody came? I’ll have all the ice cream and tea, And I’ll laugh with myself, And I’ll dance with myself, And I’ll sing ‘Happy Birthday to me!’”

Remembering poet Shel Silverstein today on his birthday.

(Here’s some more poems from Morning Edition.) And even more from the Poetry Foundation and the New York Public Library and Marketplace.

(via npr)

npr

Hating On Fat People Just Makes Them Fatter

Don’t try to pretend your gibes and judgments of the overweight people in your life are for their own good. Florida researchers have evidence that discriminating against fat people only makes them fatter.

"People often rationalize that it’s OK to discriminate based on weight because it will motivate the victim to lose pounds," Angelina Sutin, a psychologist at the Florida State College of Medicine in Tallahassee, tells Shots. “But our findings suggest the opposite."

Sutin and a colleague checked survey data from more than 6,000 American men and women age 50 and older who were asked how often in their daily lives they experienced different types of discrimination. Examples ranged from discourtesy or refusal of restaurant service to not getting a job or promotion.

Read the rest on NPR’s Shots health blog.

(Illustration: iStockPhoto)

npr

(via It took less than two months for Dunkin Donuts to mass-produce the cronut)

As is the case with New York cronuts, locals in Seoul are enduring long lines to get their hands on South Korea’s version. (A Dunkin Donuts representative for South Korea was not available for comment.) According to one comment on the Facebook page for Dunkin Donuts South Korea, customers were limited to two of the pastries per person:

bestthingiread

Hahahah this first line in Korean says, "the hottest donut in New York!!"

The Sharing of Grief

Heard on NPR this afternoon:

Scott Simon On Sharing His Mother's Final Moments on Twitter

An older interview between Scott Simon & his mother:

A Son, His Mom And A Story About A Dog

A collection of his tweets:

On Twitter, Scott Simon's Long Goodbye to His Mother

#mourning #grief #loss #scott simon #NPR #family #family death

Dear George Zimmerman, Although we’ve never met, I would like to share a few words with you. Even though I strongly disagree with the choices that you made on the evening of February 26, 2012, I do n

Takes a big person to write this. I would never have been able to. The mere sight of him makes me angry and sad.

#trayvon martin #justice for trayvon

Regardless of your stance on the Zimmerman trial, we can all agree that it took great strength and courage for the friends, family and loved ones of Trayvon Martin - the 17-year-old who was

Just a thought

#trayvon martin #Justice For Trayvon

Questlove speaks

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/questlove-trayvon-martin-and-i-aint-shit.html

He is absolutely correct. Just because the verdict may have been expected, doesn't mean that we should not be angry or upset by this.

#trayvon martin #justice for trayvon

#Dustin Hoffman #Tootsie #female experience

npr

The ‘sink-urinal’ saves water, encourages men to wash hands

A Latvian designer named Kaspars Jursons is trying to help solve European water shortages by redesigning the men’s restroom. His new urinal design includes a tap and sink right over it.

"It’s not just a fancy piece of art," he says. “The idea is about function and consumption. You are washing your hands in the sink on top of the urinal, and the same water that’s running is also used to flush. You don’t have to use water twice, like when you use the urinal and wash your hands in separate sink."

Read more at NPR’s All Tech Considered blog.

(Photo courtesy of Kaspar Jursons)

bestthingiread

Women can be gross too... Wonder how they'd design something similar for women....

#design #urinals

fuckyeahdoubleemulsions

Altering the shape of water drops. Water drops are spherical due to surface tension , that is, because of cohesive forces. Water molecules want to be adjacent to one other and far away from molecules that are different from them, like air or oil molecules. This has the effect of minimizing water’s surface area; hence, water drops are spherical. This is shown in the upper image of spherical water drops flowing inside a jet of oil. To reduce cohesive forces or surface tension, actually the interfacial tension between water and oil, surfactants, such as soap, are added to water. Since surfactant molecules have two ends, one that is attracted to water and one that isn’t, surfactant molecules disrupt the cohesive forces at the interface. Consequently, if the surfactant molecules are strong enough and the disruption of the cohesive forces is widespread, the spherical shape of water drops no longer prevails. This is shown in the bottom image. (Photo credit: L. L. A. Adams)

#science