utnereader:

The art of cursive handwriting is at a crossroads. Touch-typing on a computer keyboard has replaced hand-writing on a sheet of paper so fully that the Indiana Department of Education, in a memo to the state’s elementary school principals (April 25, 2011), has officially canceled cursive writing from the state curriculum, replacing it with keyboarding.

Some educators have been calling for the end of handwriting for years. But handwriting is not an antediluvian method of communication to be tossed aside in favor of e-learning, reports the Los Angeles Times (June 15, 2011). The motion of writing out letters and words and sentences by hand stimulates the brain in a way that keyboarding does not. Perhaps it is not so different than the way reading a book activates the brain differently than hearing the same information or watching it on a television screen. None of this is to say that computers and TV can’t be educational, but the tactile, memory-creating relationship between you and your language lessens once the re-creation of the letters by your own hand is taken out of the equation.

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ewilcox:

buddhabrot:

René of Châlon (1519 – 1544) was a Prince of Orange and stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht and Gelre. René inherited the Princedom of Orange on condition that he used the name and coat of arms of the Châlon-Orange family. History knows him therefore as René of Châlon instead of as “René of Nassau-Breda.” René of Châlon married Anna of Lorraine (1522-1568) on 20 August 1540 at Bar-le-Duc. They had only one child, a daughter named Maria, who lived only 3 weeks and was buried in the “Grote Kerk” in Breda. In 1544, René took part in the siege of St. Dizier in the service of Emperor Charles V. He was mortally wounded in battle and died with the Emperor attending at his bedside. René was buried in Grote Kerk in Breda, near the resting-place of his short-lived daughter.

A commemorative cenotaph stands in the church of St. Etienne in Bar-le-Duc, France. Sculptor Ligier Richier did this macabre masterpiece in 1547 on request either of Rene or his widow that Chalon portray him in his tomb figure as “not a standard figure but a life-size skeleton with strips of dried skin flapping over a hollow carcass, whose right hand clutches at the empty rib cage while the left hand holds high his heart in a grand gesture” set against a backdrop representing his earthly riches. 

This is the best thing I’ve seen today.

I feel like what I’m doing is a waste of time. No matter how much I try there’s always someone better. Always. My efforts go unnoticed. I know that you’re supposed give and expect nothing in return but when you give an give and give an someone else gets the credit that’s not cool. try so hard and I do it bc I care not so I can get an award but it pisses me off that the people that don’t care get the awards and recognition.

I’m always in need of inspiration. I would be dead without it. Its what keeps me alive, what gets me through the day. it could be a song, a poem a video, a picture, a person, ANYTHING! Today it was a video in class. Normally I just sit there and daydream but the video really spoke to me. I love unexpected inspirations.