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This is a place where I link to interesting articles that I have read recently:
BOOKS * BUSINESS * COMMUNICATION * CULTURE * EVOLUTION * FOOD * FUNNY STUFF * HEALTH&EXERCISE LANGUAGE * LEARNING * MIND * PERSUASION * POLITICS * RELATIONSHIPS * SCIENCE * SEX * TECH * WRITING

[|What Do You Call the Person You Are Probably Never Going to Marry? Your fiancé.]

[|Sitting at Computers Is Killing Us, but This Video Could Help Save Your Life]

[|Your Zodiac Sign, Your Health]--Many doctors used to take astrology seriously—and season of birth has been linked to increased risk for a number of serious diseases. Can modern medicine actually learn from stars and seasonality?

[|Look Inside a Chicken Nugget--][|Doctors at the University of Mississippi dissected two chicken nuggets, looked at them under a microscope, and were "astounded."]

[|Is it sexist to offer a pregnant woman a seat?]

[|12 novelists tell their scariest bite-size stories]

[|tl;dr]

[|The Culture Gabfest “Abstract Nouns” Edition: Slate’s Culture Gabfest on how we talk: vocabulary, conversation, and voice.]

[|Feeding the Poop Log: A Catalan Christmas Tradition]

[|11 wonderful winter weather terms]

[|9 Reasons This Little Girl’s Sign Language Version of “'Twas the Night Before Christmas” is Great]

Lexicon Valley: [|The Peculiar Grammar of Christmas Songs]

[|8 of our favorite words coined by Mark Twain]

[|Listen! Beowulf opening line misinterpreted for 200 years]

Slate: [|What Does a Drowning Person Look Like? Not What You Think.] Health

Slate: [|No, Mermaids Do Not Exist--What Animal Planet’s fake documentaries don’t tell you about the ocean.] science, list of problems related to the ocean for students to investigate

Slate: [|How Does Internet Porn Affect Teens? New Study Says: We Have No Idea!] sex, culture. Students could follow this article up by researching to find out the answers to this question.

Slate: [|Give Spam a Chance]--The maligned meat deserves a better reputation Slate: [|Spam’s Shame Foodies—and everyone else—should shun Hormel’s famous canned meat.] Food, Culture, Health, Business Two articles here. The first praises spam, but the second severely criticizes spam. Can have students read the first article and then ask them to critically question the premises of the article. The second article shows that there are two sides to every story.

The Atlantic: [|Why Geeks Get Bullied (It's Not Necessarily for Being Geeks)]

The Atlantic: [|10 Films From Cannes 2013 You'll Probably Want to See]

Slate: [|Superhero or Supervillain? If science gives people superpowers, will they use them for good or evil?] Discussion article. Could use it to talk about powers that they would want, and the ramifications of the powers. Freng or Convo.

Slate: [|Are Apostrophes Necessary?] History of English

Slate: [|“Burn Her at the Stake” Amanda Knox was acquitted of murder. Why do so many people still hate her so much?] Mind, Culture, tech

MORAL DILEMMA LINKS: [|Top 10 Moral Dilemmas] [|Ethical Dilemmas, Cases, and Case Studies] From USC Levan Institute: Online Ethics Resource Center [|Personal Dilemmas]: From Institute for Global Ethics

[|Sadly, you are uglier than you think] Mind, Relationships

[|Yes, Fried-Chicken Jokes Are Racist--Golfer Sergio Garcia's jab at Tiger Woods is subtle racism at its finest].

[|The Coon Obsession with Chicken & Watermelon]

[|The best career advice you’ll never hear in a graduation speech]

[|What are the best questions to ask a potential employer in a job interview?]

[|Why babies in every country on Earth say 'mama']

**Cleveland Kidnappings Arc:**
The Cleveland Plain Dealer: [|Berry, DeJesus, Knight found alive, police source confirms] The Atlantic: [|Meet the Man Who Rescued Three Women Missing for a Decade in Cleveland] The Atlantic: [|Charles Ramsey Is an Internet Hero for All the Wrong Reasons] The Atlantic: [|Police Apparently Missed Multiple Calls About Women on Dog Leashes in the Castros' Yard] The Atlantic: [|This Is What Happens When Talk-Show Psychics Talk About Kidnap Cold Cases] Slate: [|Investigative Intuition] Do psychics ever solve crimes? Why do police consult them? Slate: [|Are Ariel Castro's Neighbors Inadvertently Creating False Memories?] Slate: [|The Memory Doctor] :William Saletan's series of articles on Elizabeth Loftus and her research on false memories.
 * Starts with story of the Amanda Berry escape, then moves on to issues concerning internet fame, psychics who speak with the dead, and false memories. (Can use this as an oral training discussion topic.)**

Salon: [|Isaac Newton’s universal language] The famed physicist and mathematician also had a passion for linguistics -- and even devised his own idiom

Salon: [|The modern history of swearing: Where all the dirtiest words come from] As society evolves, so do our curse words. Here's how some of the most famous ones developed -- and a few new ones

Slate: [|Creationist science test given to 4th graders]

[|Elizabeth Smart Says Pro-Abstinence Sex Ed Harms Victims of Rape]

[|The 15,000-year-old ancestral language that birthed English and Russian] [|Words that last]: Washington Post--sound files of some of the words studied PNAS Journal Article: Ultraconservative words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia [|European and Asian languages traced back to single mother tongue]

[|50 Best Websites 2013]

[|17 Unexpected Studying Hacks]

[|Will your smartphone break your heart?]

[|Sharks Are the New Whales--They’ve had similar enemies, life histories, and PR problems.]

[|Can Wind Turbines Make You Sick? A new syndrome appears to be highly contagious.] Mind, Health

[|I See Red--The color you need to wear on your dating profile.] Relationships, sex, mind, culture

[|There Is Actually One Golden Rule To Prevent Sexual Assault] Relationships, Culture, Politics

Slate: [|These Singaporean Fairy Tales Will Give You Fertility Nightmares] http://thesingaporeanfairytale.com/index.html Culture, Funny Stuff, Relationships, Persuasion

[|Don’t Hit the Snooze Button] Mind, Health

[|The Sexual Fetish of Gay Marriage Opponents]--Defenders of DOMA and Proposition 8 say marriage isn’t about love or parenting. It’s about coitus. Culture, Relationships, Sex, Politics

Slate: [|Please Do Not Chillax--Adjoinages and the death of the American pun.] Language, History of English, lots of interesting words that have been created recently

NYT: [|Shame Is Not a Four-Letter Word] Culture, Sex, Relationships, Writing: Can be used in discussing argumentation. What's the case for and against shaming kids about pregnancy.

[|Sex Cereal formulated for sexual health] Culture, food, could be used for a discussion on sex in advertising

NYT Frugal Traveler: [|Shanghai on a Dime? Pretty Close] Culture, Writing a narration

[|7 grammar rules you really should pay attention to] [|7 bogus grammar 'errors' you don't need to worry about] Language, Has a list of some words that are evolving in meaning which would be good for History of English, students can trace the evolution of a word using the OED, Google ngrams, etc.

Slate: [|How Mofo Got Its Mojo] Language, Culture

[|Behold--Dungeons & Dragons R&B] Culture

[|The Cleverest Online Resume You've Ever Seen] business, culture, communication, tech

[|What Employers Are Thinking When They Look At Your Facebook Page] Business, relationships, culture, communication

[|50 collective nouns to bolster your vocabulary] Language, culture, (Could use these in history of English as a project, look up origins of these collective nouns)

The Atlantic: [|Why It's So Rare for a Wife to Be Taller Than Her Husband] Culture, Relationships, Writing:

Slate: [|The Mystery of Curry--It turns out we’ve been eating the spiced dish for a lot longer than anyone ever imagined.] Food, culture, writing - look at how a common topic can be given an interesting twist; also how can the article be reconstructed? Where did all the facts stated in the article come from? Students can research to find this background information. Also find the sources and investigate how this article summarizes those sources.

Slate: [|Why Are We the Last Apes Standing? How childhood let modern humans conquer the planet.] Evolution, mind,

[|How Do You Cite a Tweet in an Academic Paper?] writing

[|How Forks Gave Us Overbites and Pots Saved the Toothless] evolution, culture, food

[|Rump Faker--Is imitation calamari made from pig rectum? A charming urban legend gets its start.] Culture

[|What’s in Your Vagina?][|A healthy microbiome, hopefully.] health

NYT: [|Aspirin--The 2,000-Year-Old Wonder Drug] Health

NYT: [|Understanding How Children Develop Empathy] Mind, Learning, Health, Writing (notice how definitions are used, also the lede, process writing, and some comparison contrast)

NYT: [|Brominated Vegetable Oil--Drink Ingredient Gets a Look] Health, Food, Business, Writing (Narration at the beginning, some definition, and process)

[| You’re being tricked into buying that awful sweater!] New research shows that simple scents like cookies and oranges can get consumers in the shopping spirit [|6 ways retailers trick you into buying more crap] Business, Persuasion, Mind

[|Taiwanese students are less confident than Chinese counterparts, survey finds] Culture

[|PolitiFact Names Romney Ad "Lie of the Year"] Politics

[|New evidence says Noah's great flood actually happened] [|Evidence Noah's Biblical Flood Happened, Says Robert Ballard] Culture

The Atlantic: [|You Can Give a Boy a Doll, but You Can't Make Him Play With It] Learning, Mind

Slate: [|The Santa Lie--Is the big Christmas con hurting our kids?] Learning, Mind

NYT: [|New Love--A Short Shelf Life] relationships, sex, mind

The Atlantic: [|What If NASA Could Figure Out the Math of a Workable Warp Drive?] Science, tech

[|Siri Is a Gimmick and a Tease--But Google Voice Search is getting close to fulfilling Apple’s broken promise.] Language Communication Tech (Would student pronunciation improve using Google voice search?)

[|When Did People Start Calling Each Other “Poopy Head”?] Language

[|Why //GIF// Is Not the Word of the Year] [| Oxford American Dictionary names “GIF” word of the year] Language

Slate: [|Should a Calendar App Look Like a Calendar? The design battle that’s tearing Apple and the tech world apart.] tech, mind

NYT: Deborah Tannen: [|Would you please let me finish...] language, communication, politics

Salon: [|What’s the secret to learning a second language?] Studies reveal it's more than just a matter of memory. A look at what the science of recall can teach us

The Atlantic: Study: [|Even 'Moderate' Drinking Impairs Brain Cell Formation] Health

NYT Well: Really? The Claim: [|Exercising on an Empty Stomach Burns More Fat] health

NYT: [|A Chemist Comes Very Close to a Midas Touch] science

[|35 Lifechanging Ways To Use Everyday Objects] Funny stuff

[|Diet soda is doing these 7 awful things to your body] Health

NYT: [|Multivitamin Use Linked to Lowered Cancer Risk] Health

[| Expedia’s perfect same-sex marriage ad]: A wedding spot shows just how far travel can take you Culture, relationships, business, politics

[|Bugs Benedict--Which backyard insects are best to eat?] Funny stuff, link to evaluating internet resource page.

[|Why Do We Say “The Dog Ate My Homework”?] funny stuff, language

[|Jessica Biel will not name her child 'Batmo Biel'] Funny stuff!, Culture

[|20 famous corporate logos that hide secret messages] Business, Funny stuff, culture

NYT: [|How Exercise Can Help You Master New Skills] Health, Learning

NYT: [|Is Alzheimer’s Type 3 Diabetes?] Health, Food, Writing (use for summary or paraphrase)

[|Alzheimer's--Diabetes of the Brain?] Health, Food, Writing (use for summary or paraphrase)

[|Zit-zapping virus may be living on your face] Writing (Use for a summary or paraphrase)

Slate: [|Why You Hate Cyclists--Partly because of jerks like me. But it’s mostly your own illogical mind.] Writing (see how term are explained and supported with examples, and all this is used to build an argument)

The Atlantic: [|The End of Free Speech at University of Colorado?] Writing/Reading (Break down the article, what arguments are made, how does the writer reach the logical conclusion?)

NYT: [|Eating for Health, Not Weight] health, writing (match this up with other health articles for synthesis or comparison essays)

NYT: [|Smartphone? Presto! 2-Way Radio] tech, communication

NYT: [|The Benefits of Middle-Age Fitness] Health

NYT: [|When the Mango Bites Back] Food, Health, Writing (see how health info is sprinkled in among the narrative of food borne illnesses)

Salon: [|Turning orgasm into art]--Photographer Clayton Cubitt's series "Hysterical Literature" takes a high-concept approach to female pleasure Sex, books

The Atlantic: [|Sunny-Side Up--In Defense of Eggs] Food, Health

The Atlantic: [|How Regulation Really Does Change Eating Behavior] Food, Health

NYT: [|App Smart--To Sketch, to Draw, to Create, With No Pencil in Sight] Tech

NYT: [|Simon Says Don’t Use Flashcards] Learning, Mind (some stuff to bring up in Activities class)

Slate: [|Vowel Movement--How Americans near the Great Lakes are radically changing the sound of English.] Language, Culture

NYT: [|A Battle Plan for Jetlag] Health, Writing (Process)

The Atlantic: [|The Blackberry--The Cigarette of this Century] Culture, Tech, Writing (comparison contrast)

The Atlantic: Study: [|A Childhood Need for Immediate Gratification Predicts Adult Obesity] food, health, mind

The Atlantic: [|Dogs Can Shake 70% of the Water from Their Fur in 4 Seconds, Here's How] funny stuff, science

[|Android Phone Aps] Tech

NYT [|Draft]: [|Where Do Sentences Come From?] Writing

[| What would Jerry Seinfeld do?]--A "Seinfeld" reunion is unlikely. But one of the show's writers explains where the characters would be in 2012 Funny stuff, culture, tech

Slate: [|Generation Apnea--The evolutionary mistake that chokes millions of people every night.] Health

The Atlantic: [|Exploiting the Neuroscience of Internet Addiction] Tech, Mind, Relationships, Business

The Atlantic: [|How Vacation Makes Us More Productive]--Americans don't do breaks. Productivity science suggests they should. Business, Health, Mind (also can bring this up in Activities Design connected to breaks during class)

NYT: [|Silicon Valley Says Step Away From the Device] The Atlantic: [|The Social Century--100 Years of Talking, Watching, Reading and Writing in America] Business, Health, Mind, Tech

The Atlantic: [|Americans Want a More Equal Country]...they just don't realize it. A Duke professor explains his mythbusting study. Politics, culture,

[|6 Dangerous Exercises You Should Never Do] Health

NYT: [|Dieting vs. Exercise for Weight Loss] Health, Food

NYT: [|How to Write]--The art of writing can be reduced to a few simple rules. I share them with you now. Writing

NYT Draft: [|Zombie Nouns] [|Writer’s Diet test] Writing (about making academic writing more readable)

Slate: [|How To Build a Better Teacher]--Is firing bad instructors the only way to improve schools? New evidence suggests that poor teachers can learn to be good ones. Learning, Communication (Interesting point on "wise" feedback that can be used in Activity class)

Slate: [|Armored and Dangerous]--The scariest innovation in the Aurora mass shooting isn’t guns or ammo. It’s SWAT gear. The Atlantic: [|How I Ended My Lifelong Love Affair With Guns] The Atlantic: [|The Geography of Gun Deaths] NYT: [|I Carried a Gun, and It Was Heavy] The Atlantic: [|The Philosophy of the Technology of the Gun]--Does the old rallying cry "Guns don't kill people. People kill people" hold up to philosophical scrutiny?

The Atlantic: [|The Dream Of Maximum Guns] [| Jason Alexander’s amazing gun rant]--The "Seinfeld" actor takes to Twitter to call for a ban on assault-style weapons Culture, Politics, Writing (persuasive arguments)

NYT: [|Let Chick-fil-A Fly Free] The Atlantic: [|In Defense of Eating at Chick-fil-A] Slate: [|Should you boycott Chick-fil-A?] Politics, Culture, Food, Writing (Persuasion)

[|6 tricks for NOT embarrassing yourself in a foreign language] NYT: [|10 Paths to a More Fluent Vacation] communication, language, tech

The Atlantic: [|The Evolution of the Batman Symbol Over Seven Decades] funny stuff, culture

NYT: [|A No-Frills Kitchen Still Cooks] Food

NYT: [|The Ecology of Disease] Health, evolution

The Atlantic: [|How the 2 Americas Spend Their Time] Culture, relationships

NYT: Grammar: [|A Matter of Fashion] [|Draft] is a series about the art and craft of writing. language, writing

__**ONLINE EDUCATION**__ The Atlantic: [|The Single Most Important Experiment in Higher Education] NYT: [|Universities Reshaping Education on the Web] Slate: [|The New Public Ivies--Will online education startups like Coursera end the era of expensive higher education?] NYT: [|Open Education for a Global Economy] [|Alison--Online English Language Skills Training Courses and Certification]

NYT: [|Footprints to Cognitive Decline and Alzheimer’s Are Seen in Gait] Health, Mind

The Atlantic: [|How Urban Parks Enhance Your Brain] Health, Mind

[|Sit Down or Stand Up? Another study says sitting is dangerous, but standing is a pain.] Health

NYT: [|Caring for Hips and Knees to Avoid Artificial Joints] health

NYT: [|Earliest Americans Arrived in Waves, DNA Study Finds] evolution, language, culture

====[|The 11 Ways That Consumers Are Hopeless at Math]--This is your brain on shopping, and it's not very smart==== persuasion, business

[|Why Americans and Europeans Give Directions Differently] culture, mind, communication

[|Italo Calvino's 14 Definitions of What Makes a Classic] culture, books,

NYT: [|What Really Makes Us Fat] NYT: [|Which Diet Works?] [|Why our food is making us fat]: Britons are, on average, 19kg heavier than they were in the 1960s — and not because they’re eating more or exercising less. They just unwittingly became sugar addicts heath, food

[|What Finger-Counting Says About You And Your Brain] mind, culture

[|Now Hear This--Your Senses of Touch and Hearing May Be Genetically Linked] Science, Learning (Can we improve language learning with more tactile activities?)

NYT: [|Semicolons--A Love Story][|Using Undictionaried Words] [|Draft] is a series about the art and craft of writing. Writing

NYT Draft: [|The Voice of the Storyteller] NYT Draft: [|The Sound of a Sentence] Writing

[|'I'm Not Your Wife!' A New Study Points to a Hidden Form of Sexism] Relationships, Culture, Sex, Politics, Communication

The Atlantic: [|White Bread book summary]--at the bottom of the article Culture, Writing (Summary)

Slate: [|Queers as Folk--Does it really make no difference if your parents are straight or gay?] Slate: [|Back in the Gay--Does a new study indict gay parenthood or make a case for gay marriage?] Slate: [|A Liberal War on Science? Don’t bury Mark Regnerus’ study of gay parents. Learn what it can teach the left and right.] Culture, Relationships. Sex

NYT: [|The Science of Illusion]--Your brain on a magic trick Mind

Slate: [|Welcome to the Hybrid Age--We are on the verge of living in a human-technology civilization.] Tech, Mind, Relationships

[|How a Zombie Outbreak Could Happen in Real Life] Funny Stuff,

[|Gorillas communicate with their infants using their own version of baby talk] Evolution, Communication, Learning

The Atlantic: Let's Get Real: [|The Portion War Between Big Soda and NYC Is All About Profit] Slate: [|Fuzzy and Fizzy--The contested science behind Bloomberg's ban on large-sized sodas.] NYT: [|Evolution’s Sweet Tooth] Food, Health, Politics, Writing (Persuasion)

The Atlantic: [|This Is Your Brain on Bargains--JC Penney and the Curse of Discounts] Business, Persuasion,

Slate: [|Study Offers Possible Explanation for the Huge Gender Gap in Science and Math] Mind, Learning, Science

The Atlantic: [|Words Conservatives Hate] Politics, Culture, Writing (Definition)

NYT: [|The Art of the Wedding Toast] Culture, Communication

[|The mystery of Stonehenge--Solved?]Forget the druids and aliens. Scientists in Britain say they've figured out the real story behind the puzzling megalith

Slate: [|Learning by Making--American kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests.] Learning

[|What’s a Clown Question, Bro? A Guide.] Culture, communication, funny stuff, writing (definition)

[|Cleveland Browns logo helps build relationships far from home] culture

[|Take the OCD test.] Which was from this: [|19 Thing That Will Drive Your OCD Self Insane] Funny Stuff

=
[|What Pogue Actually Bought]: If your job let you test and try every brand of camera, tablet, phone, laptop and GPS, what would you buy for you and your own family?===== Tech

The Atlantic: [|Welcome to America, Please Be On Time]: What Guide Books Tell Foreign Visitors to the U.S. Culture, Writing (Students write their own guide books)

The Atlantic: [|'I'm Not Your Wife!' A New Study Points to a Hidden Form of Sexism] Culture, Business, Relationships, Politics,

[|Doerschuk - Browns looking for more punch at wide receiver] Funny Stuff (Insane cow punning, wonder if students will get the jokes)

Slate: [|Why the Chinese Communist Party Is Afraid of a Flower]--Every June Fourth we are reminded that China is anything but a confident global power. Politics, Culture

NYT: [|Sentences Crisp, Sassy, Stirring] [|Draft] is a series about the art and craft of writing. Writing

NYT Opinion: [|Salt, We Misjudged You] Food, Health

[|Your words matter] New science shows brains are wired to respond to certain kinds of speech. An expert explains -- and talks politics Communication, Persuasion, Mind, Relationships

[|15 Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent] from Mental Floss funny stuff, language, writing (for those students who ask why there isn't one word in English that means the same thing as ...)

[|Can you identify? Science shows that the only way around some readers' prejudices is to trick them] Persuasion, Mind,

Slate: [|Dodgy Boffins--What's wrong with science journalism in the U.K.?] Communication, Culture, Science, Writing (Be skeptical about writing you see on the internet)

The Atlantic: [|Fact-Checking Claims on the Wonders of Pomegranate Juice] Food, Business, Writing (See how ads twist the facts; be skeptical and learn how to fact check)

The Atlantic: [|Dumb Kids’ Class--The benefits of being underestimated by the nuns at St. Petronille’s] Culture, Funny Stuff, Writing (See how a personal experience is extrapolated on to come up with a lesson about life)

The Atlantic: [|In the Forests of the Night--Along the Bay of Bengal’s wild tidal basin, the scorpions and crocs can seem relatively harmless.] Culture, Writing (Narrative, lots of vocab, can also discuss whether there really was a tiger in camp)

[|The Cosmopolitan Condiment--An exploration of ketchup’s Chinese origins.] Culture, food, writing (common food item but a little research reveals an interesting story, could also be used for History of English paper.)

[|A brief history of four letter words] Language, Funny Stuff, Culture (Could also use in History of English)

[|6 questions to ask a job interviewer] Business, communication

The Atlantic: [|Humanity's Best Friend--How Dogs May Have Helped Humans Beat the Neanderthals] Evolution, culture

NYT: [|Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?] Mind, Writing(?) consider how the writer profiles the subjects

[|The TIME Breast-Feeding Meme Is Here] Funny stuff, culture

[|Machines Shouldn’t Grade Student Writing—Yet] --Standardized tests will finally ask good essay questions. But robot grading threatens that progress. Writing, Tech

NYT: [|The Pleasures and Perils of the Passive] [|Draft] is a series about the art and craft of writing. Writing

NYT: [|Can You Make Yourself Smarter?] Mind, Learning

[|How Exercise Could Lead to a Better Brain] Mind, Health, Learning

[|Readers' Revenge--Your Most Shameful Lie] Funny Stuff, Culture, Relationships, Writing (students can write anecdotes like these)

[|Making Progress Against Clutter] Mind, Health

Profiles in Science | Elizabeth S. Spelke--[|Insights From the Youngest Minds]
Mind, Learning, Language

[|Talking to yourself may boost brainpower] Learning, Mind, Language

[|Serious About a New Language? Begin With Lesson 1]--review of mobile apps for language learning Language, Tech, Learning

[|How Language Is Like Fashion--The Case of 'Hopefully'] [|The audacity of “hopefully”] The AP Stylebook makes a change -- and breaks our hearts Language, Writing [|Don’t kill the Oxford comma!] The university hands down a new edict about punctuation -- but the world's grammar nerds will never back down [|The Oxford Comma--Hart’s Rules] Language, Writing

[|10 Untranslatable Words (And When You’ll Want to Use Them)] Language, culture

[|‘What Were You Thinking?’ For Couples, New Source of Online Friction] Relationships, communication, culture

[|Facing a Robo-Grader? Just Keep Obfuscating Mellifluously] Writing, Learning, Tech, Communication, Language

[|I made out with a jerk] We work together and now things are very, very awkward Relationships, sex, communication, culture

[|TED launches a groundbreaking online education initiative] Learning, tech

[|An Optical Illusion that Explains the Origins of Imaginary Monsters] Mind, funny stuff, culture

[|Will Sweden abolish the concept of gender?] Language, communication, culture

[|Color-coded text reveals the foreign origins of your words] language, writing (see how many words are of OE origin)

[|12 Golden Rules of Email Etiquette] writing business

[|Writing advice from C.S. Lewis was both adorable and concise] writing

[|When corporations abandoned the 99%] Over the last 30 years, companies have shifted their loyalties from employees to shareholders politics

[|America, the new Saudi Arabia] As overseas production grows more expensive, Big Oil is pushing to turn the U.S. into a Third World petrostate politics

[|“Game of Thrones” parenting lessons] The HBO show is violent and sexually graphic -- and it's filled with wisdom about being a dad culture funny stuff

[|What do you love online?] Writing: link to an example of a tap essay for the iphone

[|Robo-readers--the new teachers' helper in the U.S.] communication language tech writing (can consider how students in Taiwan would react to robo-graded essays compared to teacher graded essays)

[|The //Bully// Rating Controversy and the Effect of the F-Word on Teenage Eardrums] Funny Stuff culture writing-funny and satire writing

[|Why won't they listen? 'The Righteous Mind' by Jonathan Haidt] Books Communication Culture Politics Persuasion

[|A Crowd-Sourced Lab for Collective Nouns] Language Funny Stuff

[|What attributes Set a Great Barista Apart from the Run-of-the-Mill?] Business Communication Persuasion Relationships

[|6 Tips for Better Portraits]

[|Expensive, Useless, Exploitative--Why we should celebrate the end of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s print edition.] Writing: stuff about using wikipedia and how it leads you to more investigation

[|10 Amazing Real-World Locations for Fantasy Worldbuilding]

[|All the shengnu ladies]--Accomplished Chinese women are a new "leftover" generation: Too successful to marry, but disrespected without a man

[|10 Weapons That Animals Use]

[|Try the Santorum--Santorum cocktail taste test]

[|How Not To Apologize--Rush Limbaugh’s statement on Sandra Fluke was a textbook example of what not to say.]

[|//Game of Thrones// Scenes + //Arrested Development// Quotes = Pure Magic]

[|When the Facts Don't Matter--Same-sex marriage isn't hurting anyone. So why are so many people still afraid of it?]

[|Is Prostitution Really the World's Oldest Profession?]--Info on animal prostitution also

The Atlantic: [|I Am Gal, Hear Me Roar//--It's time to reclaim the female version of "guy."//]

[|The art of visual punning]--A New York designer uses wordplay as the inspiration for her funny, creative brain teasers

[|Dictionary of American Regional English reaches final volume]

[|Bathed in smog--Beijing's pollution could cut 5 years off lifespan, expert says]

The Atlantic: [|MIT Online vs. Your Local College--How Will Web Learning Stack Up?] Harvard Magazine: [|Twilight of the Lecture--The trend toward “active learning” may overthrow the style of teaching that has ruled universities for 600 years.]

The Atlantic: [|Playing 'World of Warcraft' Boosts Spatial Ability and Focus in Adults]

[|The Most Popular Chinese Movie of All Time--It’s a Western. It’s a comedy. It’s a critique of corruption. It’s a send-up of the Chinese movie industry. It’s going to confuse the hell out of Americans.]

[|The Power of Habit--How the history of toothpaste explains why you can’t lose weight.]

NYT: [|Young Women Often Trendsetters in Vocal Patterns]

[|When Did Douche Become an Insult? And what exactly does it mean?]

NYT: [|One Is the Quirkiest Number--The Freedom, and Perils, of Living Alone]

The Atlantic: [|Why the Obesity Epidemic Could Be Much Worse Than We Think]

[|100 Skills Every Man Should Know: The Instructions (With Videos!)]

[|Did You See This? Downtown Abbey Anachronisms]

Episode 1: [|Where //Did// That Sentence-Ending Preposition Rule Come From?] Episode 2: [|The Other F-Word--Listen to //**Slate**//’s show about the history and future of the word //faggot.//] Episode 3: [|Between You and I--Listen to **//Slate//**’s show about a grammar mistake that won’t die.] Episode 4: [|Is Black English a Dialect or a Language? Listen to **//Slate//**’s show about America’s fraught relationship with Ebonics.] Episode 5: [|The Story of //Ain’t//]--Listen to //Slate//’s show about the most controversial dictionary ever published. Episode 6:[|The Meaning of Scrabble]--Listen to **//Slate//**’s show about how much language really matters in the hugely popular word game. Episode 7: [|So …Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo on a little word with big ambitions.] Episode 8: [|When Nouns Grew Genitals]--Listen to **//Slate//**’s show about what it means for language to have gender. Episode 9: [|How English Lost Its Genders]--Listen to **//Slate//**’s show about how a simple quirk of grammar may affect the way we think. Episode 10: [|For He/She’s a Jolly Bad Pronoun]--Listen to **//Slate//**’s show about whether English needs a gender-neutral alternative. Episode 11: [|“The House is Building”? Why you never learned the passival tense, even though it used to be proper English grammar.]
 * [|Slate--Lexicon Valley]:**

[|The French Government Wants To Tone My Vagina]: Inside my amazing and embarrassing postnatal “perineal re-education” class, paid for by la France.

[|At 500 Episodes, How Does 'The Simpsons' Say Something New?]

[|Linsanity vs. Lindsanity]: THG Tale of the Tape! [|The 25 Best Jeremy Lin Signs We've Seen So Far] [|No More Chinks in the Armor--The Jeremy Lin controversy suggests it’s time to retire the phrase for good.]
 * Linsanity:**

[|The Sidney Awards, Part I] [|The Sidney Awards, Part II] [|Arts & Letters Daily] [|Longform Best of 2011] [|The Browser--Writing Worth Reading]
 * Long Internet Essays**:

[|How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body]

[|Can dogs tell when we’re talking to them?]

[|The answer to the most famous unanswerable fantasy riddle]

[|You Need To Learn How To Program--Make a free weekly coding lesson your New Year’s resolution.]

[|Back to the Grind--Sara Dickerman responds to the black-pepper enthusiasts.]

=Interesting Articles from 2011=

=Interesting Articles from 2010 and earlier=  [|1.] [| Why Animal Planet’s Fake Documentaries About Mermaids Are Dangerous]