ALT Lab

"Food Designer Chloé Rutzerveld believes 3D printing will revolutionize the food industry, and she is getting the ball rolling by developing a 3D printed cracker that consists of living organisms such as seeds, spores, and yeast. In three to four days, the seeds and spores sprout into a miniature salad that is said to be completely natural and healthy, demonstrating the potential the technology has to "make the [food] production chain very short," with less transportation and land requirements. "

h/t Michael Price

A real store for items from a work of fiction. h/t Molly

Interesting to see different approaches to the same data and how people build compelling and understandable data visualizations.

"It was 2:45 a.m. on a Thursday last April. Matthew Rognlie was still awake, like a lot of graduate students. He had just finished typing 459 words and a few equations. They totaled six paragraphs, which he posted to the comments section of a popular economics blog. Thus begins the unlikely story of, arguably, the most-influential critique of the most influential economics book of this century."

"The weird stellar winds of Eta Carinae are hard to visualize -- so astronomers used a Makerbot to create 3D models that they could hold in their hands. "

"Be deeply curious about the world around you. Become aware of your thoughts and learn to think about thinking. Practicing metacognition will help develop a sense for the tricks your mind plays, and how to overcome them. With this awareness, learn to overcome automatic processing. When confronted with something new or unfamiliar, withhold judgment; if you see something you don't understand in the negative space, go with it and see where it leads. Remember that impossible geometry exists, and your mind is constantly trying to force you to see things that you already know how to see. It's learning to see the unseen that makes this practice valuable! Be aware of the limitations of the labels that have been applied to the world. Keep in mind how small the grid of words is compared to the wordless plane. Opportunity exists where words don't exist, yet. Learn to sit with Keats in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts without grasping for conventional explanations. Allow time to visit the fantastic and the unconventional, and become aware of the moments when you're avoiding staying in these contexts. Meditation can be essential here."

History podcast - might be a resource or might provide a fodder for a discussion about the differences between educational content and entertainment content

A hackathon for Explorable Explanations, hosted by *Carnegie Mellon*! http://t.co/anZRtOgzsq (May 1-3) So excited~ http://t.co/BOb0kOafZI

This is one of the most depressing charts you will see in the foreseeable future http://t.co/BlHNmufut0 http://t.co/utvG1squcQ

Worth thinking about for our own space (digitally and otherwise). "It is important when you walk into any studio that you feel as much as see what is being built - the studio should crackle with creative energy. Specifically, I believe you can determine the health of any design studio simply by looking at its walls."

Some really interesting stuff going on in the science/art sphere. Really seems like VCU ought to be able to do some amazing things here especially with student clubs like the scientific illustrators society.

"The art of science and the science of art. "

"A group of almost 40 mathematicians wrote a 600 page textbook on Homotopy Type Theory in less than six months. They taught themselves git, and they used GitHub for hosting, pull requests, and discussions. The book simply wouldn't exist without GitHub. That. Is. Amazing. I subscribed to the project on GitHub and I receive email updates every single day. The book has been released, but they're still iterating constantly. I can't even begin to comprehend the complex mathematics racing through my inbox, but the fact that these brilliant mathematicians are collaborating like this, creating something that has never existed before, out in the open, and I have a front row seat... it just blows my mind."

I could have written this (absent email arguments). "I could have written that yesterday. I've learned a ton more about programming and databases; I've spent time getting the basics of computer science; and it's all to just keep doing the same damn things over and over again, and then forgetting I did them, and repeating them. Like a version of Groundhog Day about making Groundhog Day. "

Worth keeping mind . . . . "Originally, reading about the assignment for what we have to do for class on Wednesday I got kind of annoyed. I am not good at open ended assignments and they frankly frustrate me to no end."

"We would much rather define rigor as the pursuit of solving a really difficult task that you care about solving. And that persistence can be taught in that way as opposed to, "Yeah, let's teach kids persistence by having them do this thing that they couldn't care less about, but it's really hard and just if you can survive it, that's persistence.""

"In short, says Stahl, "[infants] take surprising events as special opportunities to learn." This theory, that we're born knowing certain rules of the world, isn't new. We see evidence of it not only in humans but in lots of others species, too. What's new is this idea: that core knowledge seems to motivate babies to explore things that break those rules and, ultimately, to learn new things."