Leah Libresco's Blog, page 32
March 18, 2015
Learning Math Adds Up to Good Citizenship
I’ve got a book review of David Smith’s If: A Mind-Bending New Way of Looking at Big Ideas and Numbers in the latest issue of Social Studies and the Young Learner, and I figured it might be of particular interest to parents/friends of parents, but also of general interest to all of you who love math (or [Read More...]
March 17, 2015
Play in the Mini-Ideological Turing Test
UPDATE: I’ve closed the survey, since you all have provided over 100 responses! Thanks for your suggestions of questions for the mini-Ideological Turing Test that I’ll be running at UPenn this week. Now, I could use your help answering them! Just a reminder, an Ideological Turing Test is modeled on a conventional Turing Test, [Read More...]
March 15, 2015
Help Pick Questions for my Ideological Turing Test Talk
I’ve got two speaking engagements coming up this week, and I could use your crowdsourced help for one of them. How to Have Better Fights About Religion Wednesday, March 18, 7p Shotel Dubin Auditorium, Penn Hillel 215 S. 39th St. Philadelphia, PA 19104 A Night of Intra-Christian Dialogue Thursday, March 19, 7:30p [Read More...]
March 14, 2015
Terry Pratchett’s Morals and Magic [Radio Readings]
You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and tomorrow (Sun) at 1pm I’ll update this post when the episode is available to stream and download on demand. After Terry Pratchett passed away this week, I wanted to take some time to talk about how his Discworld books shaped my [Read More...]
March 13, 2015
7QT: Preachy Swords and Pricey Peanut Butter
— 1 — I’ve been recommending Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip hop musical for a while (tickets now on sale for Broadway!) and you can see a few nice clips in this CBS story, which also includes interviews with Miranda: — 2 — If you need any further persuading, take a look at how Miranda wrote the [Read More...]
March 12, 2015
Learning about Sainthood from Terry Pratchett #LittleAngelsReadUp
Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, passed away today. I’m encouraging other fans to celebrate his life and writing by giving a copy of one of his books to a friend and/or donating one to a school or library today. I’ve made an image and hashtag to share below, if you’d like to join [Read More...]
March 10, 2015
The Last 5 Years’s Primer on Loving Badly [Guest Post]
Monique Ocampo recently joined the Patheos Catholic channel and is also a big fan of The Last 5 Years. In the guest post below, she discusses what she learned from Cathy and Jamie’s relationship. Time is a big theme in “The Last Five Years.” The original stage production shows a large clock on the set. [Read More...]
March 7, 2015
Reaching Out through Retold Stories [Radio Readings]
You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and tomorrow (Sun) at 1pm I’ll update this post when the episode is available to download. This week, Rosamund Hodge’s Crimson Bound served as a jumping off point to talk about why I love reading retold stories. Every week, I put up [Read More...]
March 6, 2015
7QT: Moss Troll Ichor and Human Hearts
— 1 — This week, I had a lot of fun reading an observational study of the rituals we’ve built up around our interactions with technology–what they tell us about how we understand our relationship with our devices and what they portend for designs to come. I particularly enjoyed seeing one I frequently employ: The [Read More...]
March 5, 2015
Effective Altruism & Ethically Questionable Cookies
Earlier this week, I linked to the Yale Effective Altruists’ writeup of my visit (my radio program on Effective Altruism and Christian Charity is here). Today, Slate Star Codex has a post up that’s a nice encapsulation of my discomfort with the more totalizing part of EA. Peter Singer talks about widening circles of concern. [Read More...]
