A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people. Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif. We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I didn’t know much about computers. I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco. Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. Dr.

Doubling in the Middle Discussed: Epic Struggles, The Distance Between Masters and Hacks,Palindromic Taxonomy, A Convenient Ampersand, Cutting-Edge Work in Reversibility, Some Limitations of an Untrained Audience, A Strange Kind of Amazing, The Relationship Killer, Disproportionate Responses, A Surfeit of Calendars, A Deficit of Wool and Illusions In March 2010, Barry Duncan, master palindromist, was locked in an epic struggle with the alphabet. He was totally absorbed in the completion of a commissioned piece. You know palindromes—words or phrases that read the same forward or backward. For Duncan, though, they’re much more than that. Duncan’s in his early fifties, fit, with receding salt-and-pepper hair and a short beard that he trims three times a week. It was actually while working at Encore Books in Philadelphia in 1981 that he started playing with palindromes, after a volume of wordplay caught his eye. Even before actually meeting Duncan, I’d been told about his palindromes. Miss apt A-W on oud?

Princeton Brews Trouble for Us 1 Percenters: Michael Lewis To: The Upper Ones From: The Strategy Committee Re: The Alarming Behavior of College Students The committee has been reconvened in haste to respond to a disturbing new trend: the uprisings by students on elite college campuses. Across the Ivy League the young people whom our Wall Street division once subjugated with ease are becoming troublesome. Our good friends at Goldman Sachs, to cite one example, have been forced to cancel their recruiting trips to Harvard and Brown. At Princeton, 30 students masquerading as job applicants entered a pair of Wall Street informational sessions, asked many obnoxious questions (“How do I get a job lobbying the U.S. government to protect Wall Street interests?”), rose and chanted a list of charges at bankers from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, and, finally, posted videos of their outrageous behavior on YouTube. The committee views this latter incident as a sure sign of trouble to come. No. 1. No. 2. Avoid taking questions from college students. No. 3.

Let computers grade your tests & re-gain your Fridays! What if I told you that you could throw your grading pens away, because I had a faster, easier method? How would you like to have more time with your family and your WEEKENDS back?! Can I get an Amen? You may already have tests online. Using Computers to take assessments The second grade teachers at my school have their students trained to take their weekly reading test on the computer. Increasing teacher evaluations are unfortunately part of this equation. Here is a short video to explain Google Forms: Richard Bryne of Free Tech for Teachers explains Flubaroo:"Flubaroo is a free script that you can use to grade the quizzes that you administer through Google Docs. Let me predict your schedule: Monday: Introduce topicTuesday: Get more in-depthWednesday: Keep going...Thursday: Still going, but maybe a review & pre-testFriday: Test day & then "Friday Funday" Ok, ok, yours may or may not look like that. This technology can free us from the outdated model.

The fine art of medical diagnosis | Art and design | The Observer At the Sainsbury Wing of London's National Gallery, in Room 58, a painting by the 15th-century Italian artist Piero di Cosimo of a woman lying on her side has been hung opposite Botticelli's Venus and Mars. The fame of the latter makes it a significant attraction for visitors. Yet those who shuffle past Cosimo's canvas miss an intriguing work, not just for its enigmatic content but for the unexpected way it shows how art can be opened up through scientific scrutiny. The painting shows a young woman, half-clothed, lying on the ground as a satyr crouches over her corpse. According to the gallery's guidebook, the work – A Satyr Mourning over a Nymph – depicts the death of Procris, daughter of the king of Athens, who was accidentally killed by her husband Cephalus during a deer hunt. Put "death of Procris" into Google and the search throws up countless versions of Cosimo's painting. Now Baum, visiting professor of medical humanities at University College London, is widening his audience. c.

What Clint Eastwood Teaches Barack Obama and Mitt Romney Written by Brad Phillips @MrMediaTraining on February 6, 2012 – 9:47 am During halftime of Sunday’s Super Bowl game, Chrysler aired a stunning two-minute commercial featuring Clint Eastwood. The ad was a masterpiece of political writing. It acknowledged in stark, unequivocal language that the United States is in rough shape – but it wrapped that tough message in optimistic language that aimed to rally the nation. Here’s the ad: “It’s halftime. So what lesson can President Obama and the eventual Republican nominee take out of this ad? There have been eight general elections since the beginning of the 24/7 media age in 1980. THE OPTIMISTSRonald Reagan, whose 1984 “Morning in America” campaign was the obvious inspiration for this ad George H.W. It’s easy to see the theme here. When trying to predict the outcome of the 2012 election, you can almost forget about the economy and foreign affairs.

Scott of the Antarctic: the lies that doomed his race to the pole | UK news | The Observer On 12 November 1912, a party of British explorers was crossing the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica when one of the team, Charles Wright, noticed "a small object projecting above the surface". He halted and discovered the tip of a tent. "It was a great shock," he recalled. With his companions, Wright had been searching for Captain Robert Falcon Scott who, with four colleagues, had set off to reach the South Pole the previous year. The team, from the Scott expedition base camp, knew their comrades were dead: their provisions would have run out long ago. But how and where had Scott perished? Wright had found the answer. The cold had turned the skin of Scott, Wilson and Bowers yellow and glassy. It took three more months for the expedition's survivors to reach New Zealand and to cable Britain. Amundsen's victory and Scott's defeat have acquired a mythic status over the years: a battle between cold, Scandinavian efficiency and British have-a-go pluck and cheery amateurishness. Oates was next.

10 Amazing Letters From Presidents We’ve scoured the Letters of Note archives once again, this time for notes from men who would hold or were holding the highest office in the land. Here are ten of our favorite letters from the presidents. (There’s a Letters of Note book in the works — learn more and preorder a copy here. ) 1. "Liberty-loving people everywhere march with you." General Eisenhower’s Order of the Day on June 5, 1944, was a call-to-arms for members of the allied forces before they would begin a two-pronged assault under the codename Operation Neptune. Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! 2. As a new Boy Scout, 10-year-old John Fitzgerald Kennedy knew better than anyone that success is not cheap. A Plea for a raise By Jack Kennedy Dedicated to my Mr. 3. On New Year's Eve of 1990, then-president George H. Dear George, Jeb, Neil, Marvin, Doro, I am writing this letter on the last day of 1991./ First, I can't begin to tell you how great it was to have you here at Camp David. 4. 5. 6.

What You Don't Know Can Kill You | Memory, Emotions, & Decisions The strategy persists even today. In the aftermath of Japan’s nuclear crisis, many nuclear-energy boosters were quick to cite a study commissioned by the Boston-based nonprofit Clean Air Task Force. The study showed that pollution from coal plants is responsible for 13,000 premature deaths and 20,000 heart attacks in the United States each year, while nuclear power has never been implicated in a single death in this country. True as that may be, numbers alone cannot explain away the cold dread caused by the specter of radiation. Just think of all those alarming images of workers clad in radiation suits waving Geiger counters over the anxious citizens of Japan. Seaweed, anyone? At least a few technology promoters have become much more savvy in understanding the way the public perceives risk. The odds of nanotechnology’s killing off humanity are extremely remote, but the science is obviously not without real risks. The nanotech community is eager to put such risks in perspective.