NYT: Masters of Math, From Old Babylon

 While I am a bit of a math dunce, this is an amazing article and could be highly valuable for your math class!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/arts/design/27tablets.html

NYT: Night at the Museum

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/27/opinion/20101127_stevenson.html?hp

NPR: We Can't Walk Straight

 This is an amazing animated story from NPR.org about some experiments from the early 20th century looking into to our inability to walk or drive straight when we do not have a fixed point to guide us.

Outstanding!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2010/11/03/131050832/a-mystery-why-can-t-we-walk-straight?sc=fb&cc=fp

NYT: Finding the Right Tool to Tell a War Story

 This is an amazing collection of images.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/finding-the-right-tool-to-tell-a-war-story/?hp

NY Times Video: Animators of Life

Excellent video highlighting advancements in biological animation.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/11/15/science/1248069334032/the-animators-of-life.html

Tony Horwitz: The 150-Year War

"But as we approach the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s election, on Nov. 6, and the long conflict that followed, it’s worth recalling other reasons that era endures. The Civil War isn’t just an adjunct to current events. It’s a national reserve of words, images and landscapes, a storehouse we can tap in lean times like these, when many Americans feel diminished, divided and starved for discourse more nourishing than cable rants and Twitter feeds."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/opinion/31Horwitz.html?_r=1

Now to post it on twitter...

Bristlecone Pines Trees in Trouble...After 4500 years.

Seeing Bristlecone Pines on a cross-country trip about 10 years ago was one of the most amazing things I have ever done.  Students are fascinated by them.  

Here is an article from the Times about a alien fungus that may kill them, after nearly four and half millenia:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/science/28pines.html?_r=1

Today, I used this article to compliment a book we are reading called "To Spoil the Sun".  In it, Europeans indirectly bring disease to a group of Cherokee living in the Appalachian Mountains in the early 1500's.  Obviously, the majority of the Cherokee attribute the disease to an imbalance in the natural world and the result of several omens early in the book.

We discussed the plight of the Bristlecones as an example of an invasive species taking hold and upsetting the balance of nature.  The conversation got pretty deep (for 7th grade) as we agreed that there are spiritual, moral, and natural consequences/implications of cultures merging throughout the world.