Is there a site that will give you daily chunks of knowledge -- particularly science and history?

April 4, 2006 8:11 AM

A coworker is interested in broadening her general knowledge with an emphasis in History and Science. So, she's looking for a site she can set to be her home page where she can get bite sized chunks of interesting information (like 5 to 15 minutes at a time). Any suggestions?

She is aware of wikipedia, but says they don't update quickly enough for her. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but I've never just browsed wikipedia. If I'm going there, I'm always searching for something specific.

posted by willnot to education (11 comments total)

The National Archives' Document of the Day
posted by grateful at 8:19 AM on April 4, 2006

Oh, and Library of Congress' Today in History
posted by grateful at 8:21 AM on April 4, 2006

My experience with Wikipedia is: Read an article about a war. Follow some links. I've found that War articles are the hubs of geopolitical/historic content on wikipedia. If you start reading the article in the Vietnam Conflict, and following the links you find interesting, and don't look at the time, you can waste half a day at that.

Oh, and direct her to the "date" articles on wiki, not the front page. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_4 has quite a lot of info.
posted by qvantamon at 8:26 AM on April 4, 2006

No offense, but that dosn't sound like a very good way to "broaden" anything.

I think she means that wikipedia's front page (their featured article) only updates once a day. She should try the random page link. Hit it two or three times and you'll get something intresting, for sure. I just dug up this page which is something I'd like to know..
posted by delmoi at 8:26 AM on April 4, 2006

Typing Alt-x while viewing wikipedia will send you to a random article.
posted by stavrogin at 8:30 AM on April 4, 2006

I recommend http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/
posted by atom128 at 8:52 AM on April 4, 2006

One of the most rewarding things I've ever done online is sign up for the Oxford DNB (Dictionary of National Biography) Life of the Day email service. Every morning, seven days a week, a new biographical entry (often of someone I know nothing about, though I minored in history) arrives in my inbox and gives me about 3 minutes of pure intellectual pleasure...
posted by Chrischris at 9:23 AM on April 4, 2006

www.damninteresting.com
posted by flabdablet at 9:31 AM on April 4, 2006

If she has more time to listen to something rather than just read 5-15 minutes, Cal Berkley is podcasting several history lectures. The History 5 (Euro Civ) is especially good.
posted by jmgorman at 10:06 AM on April 4, 2006

Arts & Letters Daily - perhaps a bit more scholarly than she's interested in.
posted by glibhamdreck at 10:09 AM on April 4, 2006

Another suggestion is that she could set up Google alerts for articles related to science and history for up-to-the-minute trends and discussions.
posted by Venux at 8:59 PM on April 9, 2006