August 2002 Archive Page

"Raaaah! Gronk hate H.R. 3712, the Income And Property Tax Reassessment Act! Senator Gronk crush middle-class tax hike!" Sen. Gronk --Me Crush Middle-Class Tax Hike!The Onion)

"MIT professors claim the gear would let grunts leap 20-foot walls, become nearly invisible on command, deflect bullets, heal their wounds quickly, protect against chemical and biological agents -- and strike fear into the hearts of evildoers everywhere. " Noah Shachtman --America's Might: A Comic TaleWired)

"My idea is to pollute the source in order to discourage students from eagerly grabbing papers off the Internet and assuming they will get the grade that the term-paper service almost guarantees. " Vincent Moore --Playing Dirty in the War on PlagiarismChronicle)

"A computer chat program that speaks Hindi could open up computers to India's illiterate millions. " --Hindi Chatbot Breaks New GroundBBC)

"But after spending 20 minutes just designing the introduction page, the students still can't answer the most basic question: What does the liver do? 'I don't know; we were supposed to do the gallbladder,' answers a shy Latino girl with pigtails. They are learning how to use PowerPoint, but they have no idea what the content means." Julie Landry --Is Our Children Learning?Red Herring)

"The next word in security is a system so thorough that it will reveal even the contents of a cigarette pack hidden in your coat pocket. Developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the scanner uses holographic imaging technology to provide full-body, 360-degree coverage of a person in near real time. " --There's No Place to HideWired)

"Navigating through digital texts was one of the e-book users' biggest complaints. They found moving from page to page 'tedious.' They also found it difficult to find specific chapters in texts and to find particular words." --Students Complain About Devices for Reading E-Books, Study FindsChronicle)

"Citing creative differences, SatireWire's founder and sole employee, Andrew Marlatt, announced that as of today, the site will no longer be updated. Unlike everything else on the site, this is not a joke." Andrew Marlatt --SatireWire Has LandedSatireWire)

"But what of the world's water crisis? Currently the UN identifies approximately six 'hot stains,' places where water is so scarce that human life may not be sustainable and conflict over dwindling resources is an ever present threat. " Ginger Adams Otis --A World Without WaterVillage Voice)

"Why does the developed world worry so much about sustainability? Because we constantly hear a litany of how the environment is in poor shape. Natural resources are running out. Population is growing, leaving less and less to eat. Species are becoming extinct in vast numbers. ....There is, however, one problem: this litany is not supported by the evidence." Bjorn Lomborg --The Environmentalists are WrongNYT -- registration req'd)

A goose fitted with a £3,000 electronic transmitter to chart its migration has been tracked 4,500 miles (7,245 kilometres) by satellite - to an Eskimo hunter's freezer. --Satellite Tracker Finds Goose in FreezerBBC)

"Science fiction has often featured 'evil empires' against which are set utopian ideas whose survival must be fought for against the odds by a small but resourceful band of men. Such empires often turn out to be amazingly fragile when faced by intelligent idealists." --War of the WorldsGuardian)

"U.S. federal Judge Colleen McMahon has dismissed a claim by British Telecom that it developed and holds a patent to the hyperlink technology used to whisk Web users from one site to another. " Michele Delio --Judge Tosses BT Hyperlink Case Wired)

"Counter to the stories about tainted candy, the only conclusion that might be drawn from social science research is not 'don't take candy from strangers' but perhaps 'take candy from strangers, just not from your parents.'" --Emotional Selection in Memes: The Case of Urban LegendsPersonality & Soc. Psych.)

I am Brazilian!
I'm here on tourism!
I really feel bad and sorry for what they've done to this the World Trade Center!!
This is such a blessed country!
God bless America!
God bless this land!
I've always loved America!
I wish this was my country!!!!
I just love the States!via E-mail)

Not! The headline says "Millions Behind Bars," but paragraph 4 says there are 1.3 million in prison. The lead paragraph counts not only prisoners but also those on probation or parole, to come up with a total six times larger. --Report: Millions Behind Bars in U.S. (AP))

"For six years in the 1990s, Lewis was a principal member of the MIT Blackjack Team, an infamous cabal of hyper-geniuses and anarchistic whiz kids who devised a method of card counting that took the gaming world completely by surprise. " Ben Mezrich --Hacking Las VegasWired)

"The aim of this essay is to explore the complex relationships that exist between Monkey Island, Postmodernism, Cultural Materialism, Roland Barthes' concept of the Death of the Author and the twin phenomenon's of corporate capitalism and globalisation. I shall attempt to resolve the antagonisms that exist by analyzing the Monkey Island texts using the tools of Postmodernism and Cultural Materialism..." Owen Clayton --Consumerism and Cultural Tourism in the Monkey Island Games.SCUUM Bar)

Two short items appeared recently in Associated Press reports.

• TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - One of four Democrats seeking a Sarasota-area congressional seat sued an opponent over the punctuation in her name. Patrick Feheley objects to his rival being listed as Candice Brown-McElyea because if left hyphenated, the name would appear before Feheley's on the ballot. A listing of Candice Brown McElyea would drop her behind Feheley in alphabetical order during the Sept. 10 primary. Feheley seeks to determine whether a candidate can change their surname to gain a preferable ballot position. Brown-McElyea says Brown is part of her last name, not her middle name.
• EL PASO, Texas - Christine Lynn O'Kane's name nearly cost her her job with the El Paso police. ''When you put it together, it spells 'cocaine,''' said police spokesman Al Velarde, referring to the e-mail moniker C. O'KANE. O'Kane resigned from the force in 2000 to take care of her ailing mother, the El Paso Times reported. But when she reapplied months later, police management cited the ''inappropriate'' use of her name as the basis for denying her return. O'Kane the won her appeal to the Civil Service Commission. Back on the job for nearly a year, O'Kane now uses her maiden name, Whitaker.

What's In a Name?AP)

"In a surprising departure from other findings that point to a warming planet, a NASA researcher has found that the amount of ice in the Antarctic increased from 1979 to 1999, as measured by satellites." --Antarctic Sea Ice Increases over Past Two DecadesSpace.com)

The recording industry blamed cassette tapes for killing disco in the 70s. Along came MTV, which found a brand new way to make money off of music. The recording industry is blaming file-sharing for the slumping sales in teen pop. Sound familiar? Mark Jenkins --Hit Charade: The music industry's self-inflicted woundsSlate)

"One by one, the [waste-bearing] casks smack into the Moon. The soft deep lunar regolith in the impact area should ensure proper waste burial. Plowing into the lunar surface at high speed, the waste would be buried under several feet of glassified regolith..." --Moon Seen as Nuclear Waste RepositorySpace.com)

"Tiny text tyrannizes users by dramatically reducing task throughput. IE4 had a great design that let users easily change font sizes; let's get this design back in the next generation of browsers." Jakob Nielsen --Let Users Control Font SizeUseIT.com)

"What happens to friendship when everything goes wrong all the time? Laurel and Hardy perpetually get in each other's way, they get on each other's nerves, and while the general battle is against humiliation, they are always busy with the effort to extricate themselves from the fine mess they bring about in one another's lives. " --How to Survive Your Own StupidityLondon Review of Books)

"They wanted to have an intelligent discussion, to avoid sensationalism, to give me a chance to make my arguments. They would have some representatives of the games industry and someone from one of the media reform groups. One producer almost convinced me that "Donahue" was a serious news discussion program." Henry Jenkins --Ambushed on "Donahue"Salon)

"What is a hoax, exactly? When does a good deal become too good to be true, and where does belief end and credulity begin?" Thomas Hayden --The Art of the HoaxUS News)

"We asked police why we were being arrested, and they said, `Everybody is receiving equal treatment from the Houston Police Department tonight.' It didn't matter what you were doing; they arrested you." --450 peaceful teens arrested in K-Mart raidHouston Chronicle)

"Welcome to the world of a half million (and counting) Weblogs, where anyone can instantly publish his passions and favorite Weblinks. And the fun's just begun." Steven Levy --Living in the Blog-osphereNewsweek)

Latest weapon against junk e-mail: poetry. --Haiku'da Been a Spam Filter Wired)

"The passion, if not the logic, of her argument is clear and perhaps casts a new light on the deliberate destructiveness of the motives that lay behind her literary innovations. She was nothing if not a great hater of all that had gone before her." Theodore Dalrymple

--The Rage of Virginia Woolf (City Journal)

"Before the Internet, the only opportunity most students had to speak with their professors was during scheduled class sessions or office hours. Now, more professors can be in touch with students at any time -- morning, noon, and night, seven days a week." [The article focuses mostly on courses that meet only online, but this article does reflect how I use e-mail to enhance my face-to-face teaching.--DGJ]

--The 24-Hour ProfessorChronicle)

"First released in 1989, HyperCard still has a fiercely dedicated following despite no meaningful update in about 15 years."

--HyperCard Forgotten, Not GoneWired)

The second issue of Game Studies is out.

"While 44% received "A" averages, fewer students than ever did even an hour's worth of homework a night... Consider the all-American high school... You're surrounded by other teenagers whose myopic view of the world creates a teen culture in which the cut of your jeans matters more than the content of your character.... Such conditions might be tolerated if students truly engaged their minds." (USA Today)

"D[ungeons]&D[ragons] sort of came about after a monster marathon week of reading Conan novels, eating popcorn until it was coming out of my ears-no I was not on drugs-and we got the idea to do something in a dungeon."

--Dave Arneson InterviewGameSpy)

"Once upon a time, in a part of the house where grownups rarely visited, there was the Land of the Stuffed Animals... But Professor Blue Smush DinoBaby's warning came too late. First a slight tremor came from within the box." Jon Hansen

--Tales of the Plush Cthulu

"The true link between technology and art, regarded in modern times as something shameful, is becoming increasingly apparent, and the evidence suggests that artists’ dependence on machines has been not only extensive but long-lived..."  Charles Paul Freund

--Traces of Genius: Is Art Sullied by Technology?Reason)

"Debate has raged in recent years whether it was even fair to call Pluto a planet, given its newfound status as one object among many in the Kuiper Belt -- which actually contains more mass than the better-known asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter." Steve Kettman

--Pluto: Too Hip to Be Out There Wired)

"Instead of a library, the school has a resource center equipped with computer workstations that can access the Web, e-books and online journals. The resource center also houses several meeting tables, audio-visual materials and a few paper magazines -- but no books." Katie Dean

--Who Needs Paper? Not Iowa CollegeWired)

Is this for real? "The controversial suicide device will be promoted under the name "Aussie Bags" and will be shipped with the warning 'DO NOT put this bag over your head. It could kill you.'"

--Aussie Suicide Bags Delayedb> (AAP)

"Mr. Storch has found that the ease, speed and accuracy of writing with a computer keyboard have vastly reduced the occasions on which he might turn to a pen or pencil. As a result, he and many others who spend hours a day using computers say that the penmanship they learned in school is deteriorating beyond recognition." Michel Mariott

--Tablet PC Makers Embrace a Dying Art: Handwritingb> (NYTimes -- registration req'd)

"Several years ago, the State University of New York at Buffalo took stock of its proliferating Web sites and found more than 250,000 pages spread out across 17 different servers. Not surprisingly, students and faculty members were having a hard time finding information they needed, even though they knew it was probably online -- somewhere." Florence Olsen

--The Power of PortalsChronicle)

"Soon. Like in the next half hour or so. Given that I can't do anything about it, I thought it might be interesting to stay online as long as I can and tell you what transpires.... I taste salt and something else. I exult in these moments. it's the payoff for the bad times, the weary times. In these moments I kiss God." Mordant C@rnival

--"I'm Going to Have an Epileptic Fit..."

"After posting his father's poem -- a bitter reflection on the state of Egyptian society and culture after Egypt was defeated in the 1967 war against Israel -- Shohdy was arrested in November 2001." Sergey Kuznetsov

--Father's Poem, Son's ConvictionWired)

: The Smoking Gun features a small trove of scanned images of Monroe artifacts, including her will and a love note to Joe DiMaggio.

Marilyn Monroe Died 40 Years Ago Today

When asked to read a magazine article, 40% of college students thought that the author had performed the research reported in the article: "The willingness of students to believe that anyone who writes is an expert and authority was striking." Kate Manuel

--How first-year college students read Popular Scienceb> (Studies in Media & Information Literacy Education)

There's been some discussion on webword.com regarding Austin Powers vs. Prof. Jerz.

In light of the above, it might be appropriate to mention Don't Link to Us!: "Stupid Linking Policies."