The Greening of the Arctic (GOA) IPY initiative is comprised of four projects each contributing to documenting, mapping and understanding the rapid and dramatic changes to terrestrial vegetation expected across the circumpolar Arctic as a result of a changing climate.
Together with representatives of the university, Bell set up a program called the Institute of Humanistic Studies for Executives. More than simply training its young executives to do a particular job, the institute would give them, in a 10-month immersion program on the Penn campus, what amounted to a complete liberal arts education. There were lectures and seminars led by scholars from Penn and other colleges in the area — 550 hours of course work in total, and more reading, Baltzell reported, than the average graduate student was asked to do in a similar time frame.
@ NY Times (via)
Which all sounded great, until I reached this sad bit toward the end:
The institute was judged a success by Morris S. Viteles, one of the pioneers of industrial psychology, who evaluated its graduates. But Bell gradually withdrew its support after yet another positive assessment found that while executives came out of the program more confident and more intellectually engaged, they were also less interested in putting the company’s bottom line ahead of their commitments to their families and communities. By 1960, the Institute of Humanistic Studies for Executives was finished.
Cannonball from California is a place. on Vimeo.
(via Infocult)
A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.
~ Christopher Isherwood (via plsj)
It seems inevitable that eventually this story about cruise ships stuck in unusual levels of Atlantic ice, and this one about a growing Atlantic garbage patch, will merge into floating islands of plastic settled by the pilgrim/passengers of trapped cruise ships.
Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.
~ Martin A. Schwartz (via)
Over at Necessary Fiction I’ve been sharing contributors’ responses to a question about what news stories or events sparked their imaginations in 2009. The answers so far have been diverse and fascinating, and I hope you’ll pop over for a look.
…most publishers have dispensed with tours—or they make the author foot the bill. But Flatmancrooked believes engaging directly with an audience is a major key to the success of a title. Therefore, the more people we can reach, the better. How, though, can a small company afford to send an author on a trip across the country? It’s simple: Make the tour as exciting as the book itself.
For the Zero Emission Book Project, Flatmancrooked will partner with sponsors who will fund a transnational book tour—by bicycle. ZEB isn’t an ordinary book, so the tour can’t be, either. My collection We’re Getting On, the book at the center of the project, offsets all of its production emissions. How, you ask? Firstly, it’s printed on 100% post-consumer material. But the really exciting feature is its cover. Porridge Papers in Lincoln, Nebraska has created a special paper containing spruce seeds. So, if you plant the book in the ground, it will turn into a tree.
Over at Necessary Fiction, the webjournal I edit, we’ve begun a new undertaking this morning. The first chapter of Grant Bailie’s novel New Hope For Small Men is now available for your reading pleasure, and new chapters will be posted each Monday and Friday for the next few months. I hope you’ve been reading NF’s weekly stories already, and I hope you’ll enjoy this novel, too.