Why students should memorize dates

This post isn't in in line stated subject of this blog, but I'm not about to make another blog just to post this, so there.

Knowledge of dates is, primarily a tool for the organization of facts. While dates are arbitrary in themselves---for a given event might have fallen the day before or after on chance---when assigned to a collection of events they provide the basis for chronology which then allows for notions of logical progression and from there a story – the most persistent structure for human memory storage. Nassim Taleb’s denunciations of the human fixation on story-making aside, if we want students to learn history, they need, as in all other areas of learning, a meaningful framework on which they can seat new ideas. Stories provide such a framework, and dates are instrumental to their formation when the parts of those stories, given piecemeal in books and lectures, must be put back together.

Dynamo Bit 313-A

Really cool film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb6AqhT9quA&feature=player_embedded

Web bugs

Ever wonder why your email client typically blocks images from loading?
Here's a good reason: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_bug

I'M MOVIN' TA CANADA

People who claim they're "moving to Canada" in the face of legislation they oppose (or believe they would oppose if they actually read and understood it) really disgust me. When did the value of your personal freedoms become so cheap that you aren't willing to defend them? That you aren't willing to even face the reality of an ailing nation that you, and others like you, helped to create by consistently blaming others for making mistakes where you might have done worse and in any case wouldn't bother trying?

If you want to forfeit what greater men have fought for all I can do work is harder in your stead. Even so, I implore you, don't shout your cowardice in every forum of your precious Internet -- your time would be better spent packing.