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• Salon talked with Orlando Patterson, editor of The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, about the tension between the “intractable” socioeconomic crisis experienced by young African Americans and the cachet of the culture they create.
• Christopher F. Jones, author of Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America, spoke with NPR’s All Things Considered about the first commercial oil pipeline in the U.S.—a wrought-iron “engineering marvel” that, upon its completion, put 500 out of work.
• On KTEP (El Paso, TX)’s Focus on Campus, Michelle Miller, author of Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology, shared techniques from cognitive psychology that both students and teachers can use to improve memory.
• Rebecca Spang, author of Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution, wrote at History News Network about parallels between the currently-tense Eurozone and pre-Revolutionary France.

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February 20: MOOCs Are the Thing with Feathers

If we could channel a time before “how to code” seemed deemed the only thing worth learning, an enhanced appreciation for poetry would probably feature highly on surveys of edificatory aspiration. Such a goal may also be among those most rarely pursued, though, given the barriers—real or imagined—that surround that most refined of literary forms. Enter the MOOC. Maligned as they are, MOOCs can actually be just the thing for someone looking for a bit of guidance on a first foray into an area they may never have visited on their own. And so Harvard’s edX Poetry in America series has hopefully been received as a welcome entry point for the masses to whom it’s open. The next…