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My latest at the RD blog is up: Eid ul-Isa Mubarak. … Happy Kwanzaa | RD Blog: The Devil’s Advocate | ReligionDispatches

Mountain View’s global teacher of 1,516 lessons and counting – Inside Bay Area. From a tiny closet in Mountain View, Sal Khan is educating the globe for free.  His 1,516 videotaped mini-lectures — on topics ranging from simple addition to vector calculus and Napoleonic campaigns — are transforming the former hedge fund analyst into a YouTube sensation, reaping praise from even reluctant students across the world.  “I’m starting a virtual school for the world, teaching things the way I wanted to be taught,” explains Khan, 33, the exuberant founder and sole faculty member of the nonprofit Khan Academy, run out…

Islamic Innovation Celebrated in Queens Exhibition – NYTimes.com. There lies the heart of the problem. An awfully long time has passed since anyone thought of the Muslim world in general, let alone the Arab world in particular, as an incubator of great ideas in science or technology. Not to be flippant, but radicals’ devising ways to equip suicide bombers doesn’t cut it.  The fact, however, is that some of history’s finest scientists and scholars once emerged from predominantly Muslim societies, extending from Spain to China across a long stretch of time that began in the seventh century.