Great writing begins--and ends--with the sentence. Whether two words ("Jesus wept.") or 1,287 words (a sentence in William Faulkner's Absalom! Absalom!), sentences have the power to captivate, entertain, motivate, educate, and, most importantly, delight. Understanding the variety of ways to construct sentences, from the smallest clause to the longest sentence, is important to enhancing your appreciation of great writing and potentially improving your...

Presents lectures (each 30 minutes in length) by Michael Starbird, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin. Presents a collection of topics that reveal the rich, wondrous structure of what we see around us. Patterns in nature are the source of our geometrical understanding of the world. Abstracting those patterns leads to concepts from classical geometry. Extensions of those and other ideas of form have created a landscape...

Presents a series of twenty-four lectures that examines in detail the New Testament. Professor Bart Ehrman discusses its form, the methods of composition, its authors and their original audiences, and the surrounding historical context. He focuses on questions of historical evidence and explanation rather than on issues of religious belief and theological truth.

An introduction to basic engineering principles and the science behind them. The course gives a new perspective on one of the most productive periods in the history of civilization. In case after case, you will find that engineering solutions reached during this era would not be surpassed for another thousand years or more

"In 36 half-hour lectures, this course explores myths from around the world, focusing in particular on myths outside the Greco-Roman world..."--Guidebook.

Ecology is to reveal the nature of ourselves and of our relationship with the species around us. The lectures in this course are often in pairs, with basic ecological principles discussed in the first lecture and the human role or human implications addressed in the second.

"Professor Francis Colavita offers a biopsychological perspective on the way we humans navigate and react to the world around us in a process that is ever-changing. Our experiences are vastly different today than they were when we were children and our senses and brains were still developing; and those experiences are becoming ever more different as we age, when natural changes alert us to the need to compensate, often in ways that are quite positive"...