This week, a feast at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for the Japanese cherry blossom festival, English pork pies and pricey ice cream from Connecticut cows.     Madonna joins Anderson Cooper, “Jersey Shore” cast and others at GLAAD Media Awards.THE
QUESTION When people think they're treated unfairly at work, does the way they deal with their anger affect the health of their heart? Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has suggested that online courses herald the end of traditional lecturesPhilip Hensher: novelist and professor of creative writing at the University of Bath SpaCan it be true? Are there still institutions where academics stand at the podium and start to read out from dog-eared print-outs of last year's lectures? Do undergraduates still take what notes they can for an hour, and then go and read a book on the subject?I went to Oxford in 1983, and I think in three years I went to seven lectures – not lecture courses, seven lectures.
One was a bloke whose book I had absolutely loved. His lectures – well, his first lecture, I never went to any

more – consisted of his reading from

the MS of his first chapter. I'd read it. The only lectures with anything to be said for them were brilliant performances. Learning? That happened in libraries, and talking to people who knew more than I did, not taking inadequate notes in lecture rooms.
In four years doing a PhD at Cambridge, I went to exactly six lectures, of which five were by Pierre Rosenberg on Fragonard, so those don't count.Since I took to lecturing myself, I generally approached it as cabaret. You and I have stood together and yammered in front of silent audiences of sighing Germans. Since nobody much walked out, we believed ourselves to be extraordinarily fascinating. This discovery for academics is thrilling, and so there is an incentive to hang on to the hour-long lecture. But, realistically, if one wanted to teach anyone anything, I think one should make them participate, interrupt, ask questions, disagree, talk back, and that's the alternative route I've taken. There are probably a dozen lecturers in this country so brilliant you don't want to do anything but listen to them for an hour.
The rest of them should approach learning as an exchange with students. Is the lecture room the best place for rapid exchange? No.
Rethink the lecture format entirely. Get students to ask questions and read books to find stuff out.Mind you, that bloke Mühlhäusler who used to lecture on pidgins and creoles at Oxford ought to have been on the telly.John Mullan: writer and professor of English at University College LondonIs there perhaps a logical flaw in your rhetorical swirl? Your poor lecture attendance record 30 years

ago, though sadly typical of undergraduates of that dark era, is not in itself evidence that the majority of lectures that were available to you at the time were dire, futile or ineptly delivered. Five years earlier, I was behaving in rather the same fashion as you.
I had gone along with the foolish idea, prevalent at the time, that a lecture, being a monologue, was an oppressive imposition on our free young intellects.
The lecture was inherently authoritarian and tedious. Then I discovered, in my final year, that lectures fat burning furnace download rather helpful.
In an effort to compensate for woeful second-year exam results I attended whole courses and found that many lectures economically yet humanely conveyed

information and – if you were lucky – argument.
In fact, when I remember inspiring teaching from those days it is mostly lectures: Tony Tanner on Conrad, Jeremy Prynne on strange poems, Eric Griffiths on almost anything.Participation,
interruption, disagreement – all those student responses you celebrate are virtuous, of course, so you have class or seminar teaching, where they are part of the deal. But sometimes the students want to know what the academic knows. Learning shouldn't all be exchanging thoughts with students (and in the sciences and quantitative subjects it often cannot be this). The students can find it frustrating (as they tell us) when they have to spend their time listening to the

least informed but most opinionated fellow student in the room.Your bloke who read out his chapter was hopeless, but nowadays there is rather more pressure on lecturers to produce something that actually animates his or her listeners.
Otherwise the punters complain, a fact of which you must surely approve.PH: The trouble is that, as I'm sure you know, there is not much correlation between students' lecture attendance and performance – I couldn't have got a better degree.
The students who skip seminars, on the other hand, don't do well.
The only thing I discovered from those seven lectures was how to say "The husband of the Queen" in Tok Pisin, which has, admittedly, come in surprisingly handy over the years. What I discovered in seminars and tutorials – well, there was eight weeks one-to-one with Roger Lonsdale on Pope, which was incomparable.In lectures, I let students disagree, but the aim is also to find out what they know, and to let them find out what they know without knowing it, like the characteristic superlatives of women and men, or the different ways people greet each other if they're friends or strangers.
Students who come to my lectures watch

disagreement, and get asked questions, and join

in. One day I am probably going to become the sort

of terrible writer who stands up and says: "It is possible to make your writing more vivid by shifting it into the present tense, and next week, I will tell you about the seven fundamental plot structures."
But not just yet.In the meantime, if you want to hear from experts, concisely, wittily, knowledgeably and without interruption, there are always books.JM: My experience is that plenty of the most brilliant students assiduously attend lectures: being intelligent, they intend to squeeze the most out of their passage through academe.
Of course they could find out things from books, but there are hundreds of these saying different things in different varieties of clotted prose. Much better 50 minutes of pithy introduction from someone who has sorted the wheat from the chaff on the students' behalf.What you say about the necessity of interaction is true of what you teach: creative writing.
But this is a special case.


It's not true for economics or geography or even English literature. A good lecture on Jonathan

Swift, say, will mean that undergraduates are then in a position to sit in class and have an informed micro niche finder Gulliver's Travels.Eight weeks one-to-one with Roger Lonsdale on Pope does sound great – I wish I'd had it – but most universities don't have the resources (or Roger Lonsdale) to provide anything like this.
Quelle dommage.PH:
I don't really know about economics or geography.
But I can't believe that a format that doesn't encourage immediate dissent or close questioning is ideal for learning.
There's a massive resource in a lecture room that most lectures don't exploit – an attentive and curious audience, who might be allowed to say, "I don't know" or "I don't understand" or "I don't agree" or "Why haven't you mentioned…"Of course that would slow things down, and cost more.
I can't help thinking the thing we're only touching on is that lectures are a cheap way of delivering an hour in the company of academics. Very few universities are ever going to be able to deliver eight weeks of one-on-one with Roger Lonsdale. But can anyone think an hour in a crowded room watching a series of PowerPoint slides that you could print out and read at home anyway is still ideal? Is it a good use of anyone's time and money?JM: But you can't profitably read PowerPoint slides or handouts or whatever illustrates a talk without the human who is doing the talking.
For there is human interaction at a good lecture, just as much as at any live performance.
(Which is why online lectures are disappointing.) Do come and sample any of my colleagues' lectures and you'll find nothing like that man in Oxford who bored you to death all those years ago.
Honestly.University
teachingHigher educationLecturersStudentsJohn MullanPhilip Hensherguardian.co.uk
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| Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds     Many policymakers and business leaders have come to see the most basic method of slowing global warming - cutting carbon dioxide emissions through a binding treaty - as elusive for now.
They are turning their attention instead toward a

more achievable goal: curbing other greenhouse gases that

are... Despite fears about getting embroiled in the fight against Islamist extremists, the Security Council on Thursday established a force for Mali, building on a recent military intervention by the French.
"Lose weight and get fit" is a good New Year's resolution. Not necessarily for you, dear readers, as half of you are extremely handsome and the other half, stunningly beautiful (and all of you have great taste in newspapers).
But for the government, it's spot on. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that

Toyota asked the group to hold off conducting the new small overlap crash test on the 2013 RAV4 until the company made changes to the crossover.
When the vehicle was finally tested, it failed.     The

comments from Yi Gang, a senior central bank official, emphasize the stability that Chinese policy makers want to ensure. At Vietnamese restaurants in America, all kinds of foods are served together — noodles, soups, stir-frys, spring rolls.
But in Vietnam, restaurants are often devoted to a single dish.     After over five years of delays, Fenway Park’s notorious "Green Monster" wall will at last have a neighbor. Boston’s Department of Transportation has granted final approval google sniper new Fenway Center Development. Rutgers is turning to

one of its greatest players to lead the basketball program past an embarrassing coaching scandal and into its future with the Big Ten Conference.    
All-American Otto Porter Jr.
is leaving Georgetown after his sophomore season and declaring himself eligible for the NBA draft.    
Angela M.
Belcher, the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering; Family members, friends and professors watched as a couple on opposite ends of the political spectrum got engaged.     What parents mean by “part-time” work, why the future of your Nook books is uncertain, free theater in the park (and parking lot) and other consumer-focused news from The New York Times.    
The new American Athletic Conference will hold its first men's basketball tournament at the FedExForum in Memphis next March.     Decision by movement founded by comedian Beppe Grillo not to form coalition with left or right raises fears for Italy's futureAs a self-denying Pope Francis settled in to the Vatican on Friday, 163 novice politicians – also inspired by the saint's frugality and ascetism – arrived for the first day of the new Italian parliament.Not since the 1940s, when ex-Communist partisans arrived in force, has the Italian legislature faced such a challenge to its extravagant ways, traditions, conventions and perhaps even its very existence.
The representatives of the Five Star Movement (M5S) – founded on St

Francis's feast day in 2009 specifically to draw attention to its respect for the great Umbrian mystic's values – do not really believe in parliamentary democracy in its present form.But on their first day as lawmakers it was their adversaries who caused deadlock.
After a first round of voting, no progress was made towards electing speakers for either house because the members of the two main parties of left and right cast blank votes in protest at M5S's refusal to agree to cross-party deals.The movement, founded by the comedian Beppe Grillo and his social media guru, Gianroberto Casaleggio, won about a quarter of the votes in last month's election and holds the balance of power.
But since the M5S wants to do away with Italy's traditionally spendthrift and corrupt parties, it refuses to go into government with either left or right.The resulting gridlock has raised fears for the country's future stability, and that of the eurozone. The only apparent ways forward are either a return to the polls or a non-party government like the one under Mario Monti that the election was intended to replace.The
so-called grillini, or little crickets (Grillo's name means cricket), unexpectedly respected the

rule that male Italian lawmakers must wear ties.
But that was as much compromise as they were prepared to make.Just
as Pope Francis travelled to work by bus in Buenos Aires, so the

M5S arrived by public transport and, in one case, on a bicycle.
Another came toting a toddler for whom a creche had to be hastily arranged.During the lunch break, a group of the movement's lawmakers

tried to get in to the canteen used

by parliamentary employees, but were turned back at the door. An M5S deputy – or rather, "citizen spokesperson" (grillini disown the titles of deputy and senator) - did manage to get in to the self-service restaurant in the basement, where he forex-growth-bot for his lunch, before posting the bill on the internet.Earlier, the M5S's representatives had been first in to the august Chamber of Deputies, all red plush and

gilt, but did not occupy a wedge of seats on the right or left.
Instead, they ranged themselves around the back of the amphitheatre-like chamber."Neither right nor left, but above (and beyond)," wrote one of their number, Tiziana Ciprini, on

her Facebook page, reflecting Grillo's view that the M5S cannot be fitted into conventional political categories.
She went on to explain that the choice of seating was symbolic in another way: it would allow the movement's representatives, seated above and behind the members of the other parties, to breathe down their necks.Grillo vowed to open up parliament like a tin of tuna and one of his lawmakers posted a photo of a can opener perched symbolically on a parliamentary bench. Already, as part of its campaign for greater transparency, the M5S has demanded that any talks its representatives have with delegates of other parties must be relayed to the internet via a live stream.The movement's other big concern is the environment. Casaleggio said in a recently published book-length interview that one reason it had been decided to launch the party on St Francis's feast day was that it shared his respect for animals and the environment.The
grillini have refused the mineral water that is available everywhere in parliament. Their leader in the chamber found a drinking fountain issuing what the M5S terms "public water", but was then dismayed to see it had to be drunk with a plastic cup.
She said she would bring her own glass to parliament on Saturday.Five Star MovementItalyBeppe GrilloEuropeJohn Hooperguardian.co.uk
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All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds An expedition to study the variable-scaled anole in the Andean uplands of Colombia begins with a less than scientific challenge: dealing with traffic. Jonathan Raab explores some nonprofit organizations and local community groups that are filling the gaps left by government agencies. Few household activities inspire more dread than reorganizing the garage.
In a statement, a publicist said AraabMuzik was”currently alive and well” and attributed the shooting to “being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”     Rudy Crew, 62, an educator who led public school systems in New York City and Miami, left both positions amid political differences.    
After two magnificent Champions League semi-finals, we've brought out the big guns for this edition of Football Weekly Extra, with James Richardson and Barry Glendenning joined by Michael Cox, Jonathan Wilson, Sid Lowe and Rafa Honigstein.After discussing at length Bayern's brushing aside of Barcelona and Dortmund's Robert Lewandowski-inspired masterclass against Real Madrid, we move on to more prosaic matters, such as the merits of Manchester United's latest league title, Luis Suárez's 10-match ban, and the rest of the key games in

the Premier League this weekend.Friday
brings you two videos in the shape of Jimbo's paper review and Football Weekly Very Extra – this week featuring, in all his piratical glory, James Horncastle – and on Monday we'll be joined by Philippe Auclair. Yes, we are spoiling you.James
RichardsonBen GreenJonathan WilsonMichael CoxBarry GlendenningSid LoweRaphael