Are You Lost in Learning? I Am.

I know we won't be here much longer, but I would really like to share this with anyone who happens to read these last posts on the blog.  And of course, it has a story with it, though mercifully short.  :-)

When I get bored with homework in the library, especially chemistry, I start exploring the art exhibits throughout the library.  They are always interesting, if not always the most amazing art.  So the awesome exhibit that was in the Library Auditorium Entrance was really cool just a little while ago.  I felt that it also adeptly applied to our class and what we have been learning, which is why I am sharing it with you all.  It is titled "Lost in Learning" and is about the amazing men and women of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution (Leonardo DaVinci, Columbus, Newton, etc.).  It is a photographic exhibit and they are just really inspiring to me.

Just a taste, and not her best in my opinion.  Titled "Journal".  

The coolest thing is that her website about the exhibit is just as masterfully done.  And she has a blog!! So here are the links to these great pictures and the blog, and I hope you enjoy this artistic inspiration and want to keep that great curiosity that inspired these people alive in yourself.  Keep reinventing knowledge, and expressing yourself with our limited institutionalized freedom.  It is part of our heritage as humanity and divinity to create and discover.  Enjoy!!

Wrap It Up, or Maybe Just Leave it Open- Ended?

According to Webster, the first known usage of "wrap up" to refer to summarizing or completing something was in 1568.  But I couldn't find much more why about that phrase became synonymous to finishing and summarizing something.  I know why with a film reel, but that early....  Just thought I would end on a self-directed-learning note.  :-)  

I am going to organize my notes based on the unit, a paragraph for each one.  And Alicia and Mike, I love your posts.  If you don't mind I would love to use them tomorrow in addition to my own reflections.  

See my other post for credit of this amazing picture - Eva Timothy

Thoughts on my Library Exhibit Exploration

It might be too late to get credit for my visit to the Bible exhibit, but I did go earlier, I just forgot to post on it, until I reviewed the posts I have made and it wasn't in there.  I even tried to go to the print museum, but that failed when I arrived 1 hour after it closed.  Who closes at 2 p.m.? So then I visited the HBLL exhibit instead. 

Anyway....

Learning is the Purpose... Or is it to Produce a Paper?

A master of comic rhyme in our time, I had to add him in. :-)

I have had a marvelous time learning all about Rhyming and its origins and development in the English language, but no matter how much I research, I can't seem to find the information I am looking for.  I can't find evidence to support the connections that I have hunches for, but I have found a lot of great information on the device of rhyme and its history throughout our society.  So I am afraid that I am going to write a thesis paper on what I have been learning about even though it doesn't necessarily correlate with the topic assigned to me. 

(I am building my argument... please keep reading...)

The Story of the Dictionary (and my discovery of it)

The English Dictionary is the second most purchased and most used book behind the Bible only.  Of course, there isn't just one dictionary or version of it, just like there are multiple versions of the Bible.  Nevertheless, it is a popular book.  But as one renown dictionary maker (also known as a lexicographer) said, it is meant to be browsed in, not read cover to cover. 

There are several parts of language, and one of them is the actual words that are used, the vocabulary or the lexicon of a language.  This is what a dictionary is meant to help with at its fundamental level: allow people to understand the lexicon of the language.  That is why the first dictionaries were what we would call translation dictionaries and have two different languages in them, usually comparing Latin to some other language.  Later the idea developed to define the vocabulary of one language, creating monolingual dictionaries.  Then the development of ordering a dictionary in alphabetical order was introduced by Englishman Robert Cawdery, which became such an intrinsic part of dictionaries that books that don't do anything similar to a dictionary (define the lexicon) have acquired the title because of the alphabetical listing of their entries.  Then, finally there was the idea of an American dictionary, because our version of English was different from the British, and that's how Merriam-Webster became a household name. 

But really, you don't want to hear the story of the dictionary.  You would much rather hear about my story in the library finding out about dictionaries.  I dislike the fact that we have to put our annotated bibliography in alphabetical order, because that doesn't fit the order of the story, so I have numbered them in chronological order if you want a continuous story of discovery. 

Print and its Effects on Medical Advances

(So according to some suggestions by our professor I'm adding this note.  This post is part of my ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY assignment.  The bibliography is below the page break and is about THE EFFECTS OF PRINT ON MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE.)

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Venturing into the strange world physical research in a library with actual books, moving bookshelves, and code-like numbers on the sides of these books can be a pretty scary task for today's college student.  I probably do about one or two research assignments in the library each semester, but I swear that each time a have I have to again overcome my fear of doing research and actual physical movement at once.  I also have to relearn how to look stuff up there every time I try to use the numbering system, which reminds me of the library card song from Arthur - An integral part of my childhood.  Please enjoy:

"Who's Dewey?": one of those questions we will never know the answer to. . . or maybe we could look him up on wikipedia.  Anyway, after getting reacquainted with the cataloguing system again, (which is actually not the Dewey Decimal System in the HBLL) I started to search for books that teach about how the printing press affected medicine.  So here it is:

"A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible"

bible: (lowercase) any book, reference work, periodical, etc.,accepted as authoritative, informative, or reliable: Heregarded that particular bird book as the birdwatchers' bible. (from dictionary.com)


note: in this post I do not intend to summarize the exhibit because we are all going to go there but rather analyze my thoughts on the exhibit. This seems kind of obvious but I thought I should add that...