"... Disabilities are less the property of persons than they are moments in a cultural focus. Everyone in any culture is subject to being labeled and disabled... A disability may be a better display board for the weaknesses of a cultural system than it is an account of real persons... This paper is not about disabled persons. It is about the powers of culture to disable..."     /sci_cult/culturedisability.html

"Culture As Disability"

    Pigeons respond better when confronted with the Monty Hall Dilemma (MHD) than humans? Many would probably wonder how on earth this could be true. Are humans not supremely more intelligent than pigeons? I must admit that after watching television shows such as Deal or No Deal and witnessing the ridiculous measures contestants take (most notably rubbing the boxes as if that will bring them luck in the game) I can see how pigeons would have a leg up over humans in this experiment.

Having taken a class where Serendip was used extensively, I see many parallels between it and this course.  My Serendip experience began in a Literature course (much different than this Neurobiology course--or is it?) and consisted of many of the same features as Professor Grobstein's class: extensive discussion on the Serendip forum, online class notes with contributions by students who had commented in said forum, and web papers commented on by the professor himself.

Monday, May 24th & Tuesday, May 25th Update

So. I've actually never played Sudoku before, but I am pretty excited to start. The game is incredibly addicting!

After three games (with the omission of one game) I'm averaging about 20-24 minutes per game.

Hopefully the phrase practice makes perfect is relevant to the game of Sudoku...

I look forward to posting some more (lower) times very soon!

Wednesday, May 26th Update

Two games today, 10:27 for the first, 10:32 for the second.  My concentration has seem to augmented, or maybe I simply had two lucky games...guess we'll see!

 Thursday, May 27th Update

Students (and visitors) should be aware that this is a "non-traditional" science course in several respects (see course information).  Its primary goal is not to convey a particular set of observations and understandings but rather to facilitate the sharing of observations and understandings so as to generate understandings as yet unconceived and further inquiries reflecting them.’- Introduction to the course s/exchange/courses/bio202/s10/syllabus.

‘The Three Doors of Serendip’ invites ideas about much more than its designed purpose, to explore the Monty Hall Dilemma (MHD).  The visuals used in the exhibit are thought provoking; the applets are a wonderful way to bring readers into the world of thinking, guessing and understanding (however, the applet found on the Achieving Broader Understanding page does not work, a logistical glitch that overall doesn’t affect the quality of the exhibition or its message).
    

Playing at this website.

Playing at the "Easy" Level:

5/24/10

Spent 27 minutes on one puzzle. I found myself having to focus very hard on what I was doing, and once I got distracted (even if just for a second) it was very hard to get back into the game.  Not sure if this is because I am a Sudoku newcomer or my attention span is waning.  Time will tell!

5/25/10

29 minutes?? I blame lack of sleep. But such a satisfying win.

 5/26/10

3 puzzles, all solved: 12:37, 9:53, and 14:19 minutes! Much better than previous days.

5/27/10

My experience with education has been very little—and by that I mean the size of the actual schools.

I’ve never been one for large institutions where it is easy to slip through the cracks.  I started small and stuck with it.  First a tiny Catholic school with an eighth grade graduating class of almost thirty.  Then, a private college preparatory high school with almost sixty graduating.  And here I am now, at a college boasting less students than most large high schools have in one grade level.  In terms of numbers I’ve progressed, but I often wonder whether I paid a big price for these small favors.  
    

One of the papers that struck me most was the second paper about Learning Languages and the ways in which one learns and reciprocates a language. For me, throughout my life the acquisition of new languages has always been very difficult. I struggled in middle school with Spanish and although I did well in Spanish in college overall and have completed my language requirement, I admit that for the amount of time I spent studying Spanish I probably should have been better. The same is true for Latin which, despite how many hours of studying I put fourth I was never quite successful in this discipline. This article also had me thinking about the ways in which I was instructed in these languages. Latin class was time spent only memorizing grammatical information.