Ten Videos to Change How You View the World

These are 20-minute videos that destroy a lot of our common misconceptions, especially those "we're all going to hell in a handbasket" ones. A good way to start the new year--with hope.
Ten Videos

And this YouTube video is perhaps the most humorous personal epitaph ever 'written.' It is not maudlin. It is not meant to be emo. It's fascinating and maybe even inspirational.

Dying Professor's Last Lecture
Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch expects to die from cancer in a couple of weeks, so he delivered a hopeful last lecture on his life's lessons.

Have a great holiday. js

Forget Presents--Transuming is the New Trend

Don't have a gift for your adult children. Not to worry. They don't want things; they want "experiences" --or of course the cash to buy the experiences.

"After all, in our Experience Economy, the temporary, the transient, is increasingly being valued if not worshipped on a daily basis."

Read this Trendwatchers article: Transumers
http://trendwatching.com/trends/transumers.htm

Christmas Without Snow

One of the listservs I read regularly is from the Poynter Institute's Peter Roy Clark, author of Writing Tools. He just sent this link from his blog--a YouTube video of his performance of a Christmas song from the heart of Florida. Might be something you want to forward to your Northern friends and relatives.
Christmas Without Snow.

Neuroeconomics--My brain made me buy that!

I always thought it was guilt that made me spend too much for Christmas. Maybe not according to this article:
http://www.docuticker.com/?p=18318

M-W #1 Word of the Year

Word of the Year and 9 others.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/07words.htm

I am shocked! How can the word of the year be one I have never heard or seen! Shocked!
The rest of the top ten are depressing as ever with a couple of good ones thrown in: quixotic, conundrum, blamestorming(love this one). js

A Few Games to Destress With Over the Weekend

Have a Snowball Fight

Chat Noir

Picto

Spendthrift or Tightwad: It's Genetic! and PNC

I thought this article to be most appropriate at this time of year if only to rationalize your holiday shopping habits.

Design of Desire
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/design/a1.html

and

Christmas Price Index--How much have the 12 gifts of Christmas increased since last year.
http://www.pncchristmaspriceindex.com/

"Is Pizza still Safe to eat if it sits out over night?"

Paula Webb, The Government Documents Librarian has posted a new HotDocs on Food Safety with the answer to this crucial question.
http://www.southalabama.edu/univlib/govdocs/hotdocs.htm

and

Science Animations
Checkout these science animations if want a visual way to understand science for a final: biology, chemistry, physics, ecology, anatomy, geology, astronomy and all the those inbetween.
http://science.nhmccd.edu/biol/animatio.htm

Build Your Vocabulary and Feed the Hungry

International Aid ― A Solution

"Almost all of the deaths from hunger and disease that you see on this site can be stopped. The cost to do this is about $195 billion a year, according to the United Nations. Twenty-two developed countries below have pledged to work towards each giving 0.7% (a little less than 1%) of their national income in international aid, which would raise the $195 billion. Some countries are slow to meet their pledge."

FreeRice
"The website FreeRice (http://www.freerice.com) has two purposes. First, they want to help people improve their English vocabulary. The site gives you a word and four possible synonyms. Get it right, and you advance to a higher level with tougher words. At the same time, advertisers who appear at the bottom of the screen donate 10 grains of rice per correct word to the World Food Programme, which in turn sends it to countries in need around the world. As of now, FreeRice has paid for just under 4 billion grains of rice, hovering at around 200 million grains per day. Not bad considering it launched on October 7 with 830 grains!" LIS News 28 Nov.

Books Make the Best Holiday Presents

To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence
National Endowment for the Arts, Research Report #47, November 2007

Nearly half of all Americans ages 18 to 24 read no books for pleasure.
The percentage of 18- to 44-year-olds who read a book fell 7 points from 1992 to 2002.

By the time they become college seniors, one in three students read nothing at all for pleasure in a given week.

Teens and young adults spend less time reading than people of other age groups.

15- to 24-year-olds spend only 7–10 minutes per day on voluntary reading—about 60% less time than the average American.

By contrast, 15- to 24-year-olds spend 2 to 2½ hours per day watching TV.

58% of middle and high school students use other media while reading. Students report using media during 35% of their weekly reading time. 20% of their reading time is shared by TV-watching, video/computer gameplaying, instant messaging, e-mailing orWeb surfing.

The number of books in a home is a significant predictor of academic success.

Need Something to Be Thankful For

"DailyGood is a free, daily email service that delivers a little bit of inspiring goodness to 65,374 people without any costs, advertising or agendas. Simply to spread the good."

Start Your Holiday Early.

150 Monty Pythons sketches on YouTube

from Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff I Found This Week
http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html

Winners of the National Book Awards

Finding Articles-Writing Outreach Today at 3:30

Writing Outreach today at 3:30 (till about 4:20) in the Library Auditorium will demonstrate some of the best databases and some research strategies you may need to write a good research paper. Bring your topic so we can explore specific databases relevant to your topic.

If you missed your EH 102 library session, this is really important for you.
See you there. Jan Sauer

Watch Wikipedia Being Edited

This slightly strange website shows Wikipedia edits from around the world. These are anonymous editors with IP addresses so the location can be noted. I got it from a list called ResearchBuzz. This is what RB says: "I like tools like this because they put a nice element of randomness in my brain -- pages and topics presented with no context or introduction. It's like a mint for my skull."

Try it for a couple of minutes and offer your brain a mint.
Wikipedia Vison http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/index.html

Class assignment: Write an original Wikipedia article

Students might learn an awful lot about writing for a real audience, good researching, objectivity, and the value and limitations of Wikipedia if their instructors would make the assignment this one did.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/11/01/wikipedia.assignment.ap/index.html

Wikipedia actually has an exhaustive list of "stubs"--those topics that need more info.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types

Oblique Strategies

You know how sometimes when you are trying to write you hit a wall--the famous "writer's block." I don't know how I actually got to this website, but I found these cards which are supposed to get you to think differently, change direction, break through the block by offering truly oblique, and often enigmatic, directions or allusions. Even if they don't seem relevant, the writer is supposed to try them. It is kind of like opening the Bible, or one's own sacred text, and reading a random passage when having to make a decision. It breaks the old, stale train of thought and offers new insight [and verifies that one can read almost anything into a particular text.] However it works, it may be useful to all those trying to write termpapers or articles or books and get stuck in the clichéd.

Download the new editionfrom this webpage. Print them. Cut them into cards. Choose one. Viola, brilliance will emerge from your pen or brush!



"The deck itself had its origins in the discovery by Brian Eno that both he and his friend Peter Schmidt (a British painter whose works grace the cover of "Evening Star" and whose watercolours decorated the back LP cover of Eno's "Before and After Science" and also appeared as full-size prints in a small number of the original reeases) tended to keep a set of basic working principles which guided them through the kinds of moments of pressure - either working through a heavy painting session or watching the clock tick while you're running up a big buck studio bill. Both Schmidt and Eno realized that the pressures of time tended to steer them away from the ways of thinking they found most productive when the pressure was off. The Strategies were, then, a way to remind themselves of those habits of thinking - to jog the mind." from this webpage

Librarian Stereotypes--I Don't Think So!

Halloween in the Library.

HotDocs on Fire Prevention and Safety

Paula Webb has put together a collection of Government Documents on Fire Prevention and Safety. http://www.southalabama.edu/univlib/govdocs/hotdocs.htm

Come to the Second Floor, South side, to see a display of print documents on the same topic including the original Smokey Bear memorabilia.

“I give my pledge as an American to save and faithfully to defend from waste the natural resources of my country – its soil and minerals, its forests, waters and wildlife”

ZipSkinny--Who are Your Neighbors? & Tech Fair

Try this app and get demographic info from the Census on your neighborhood. Compare your area with other zips.
http://zipskinny.com/

Come see us between 10 & 4 in the Ballroom. Ellen Wilson is doing LibX, a cool browser add-on; Kathy Wheeler is talking about tagging with del.icio.us and LibraryThing, your own personal library catalog; I'm postering on the various cool tools available through Google.