February 2003 Archive Page

"And now with Blogger, they can watch the people who are building the pages that comprise Google's map to gain knowledge about their map that they can't get from scraping." Jason Kottke --Google is Not a Search CompanyKottke.org)

"It moved silently through the living[room] and drifted to the staircase. Gliding wraithlike over the staircase it then entered the bedroom where my wife and I lay sleeping peacefully....On this occasion I awoke to the sense that there was a large menacing presence approaching me silently out of the gloom, so I opened my eyes, and there it was! A LARGE SILENT MENACING PRESENCE WAS APPROACHING ME OUT OF THE GLOOM, AND IT COULD FLY!!!" Scylla --The Horror of BlimpsTeemings)

"Hence its note to Word Spy, an online dictionary that compiles and defines new words popping up in the media. At issue is this Word Spy entry: 'google (GOO.gul) v. To search for information on the Web, particularly by using the Google search engine; to search the Web for information related to a new or potential girlfriend or boyfriend.' | Google lawyers sent the site's editor a letter (portions of which were later posted to an online discussion board) saying that it wants 'to make sure that when people use "Google," they are referring to the services our company provides and not to Internet searching in general.'" [My wife insists on sending me to the store for such items as Kleenex, Tylenol, Kool-Aid, and Band-Aids. Sometimes she wants me to purchase the cheaper store brand instead, and sometimes she insists that she really wanted the brand name she specified. If your office copier is not a Xerox but a Canon, do you canonize copies? Thanks for the link, Mike.--DGJ] --Protecting Google Brand "Tricky Business"Boston Internet)

Legendary scientist James Watson advocates therapies or screening to elimiate low-intelligence people from the population. That's called eugenics, an ideology that the Nazis were happy to adopt for their own purposes. Watson also wants to breed prettier girls. Apparently, even the most brilliant scientists can say things that are not only stupid, but also racist and sexist. -- DGJ --On 50th Anniversary, Co-Discoverer of DNA Now Advocates Racial Engineering (New Scientist)

"The cardiac unit at Derriford Hospital, the biggest hospital in the South West, is one of the most modern in Britain. It is equipped with three up-to-date operating tables costing about £50,000 each. | The tops of the tables slide on to the electronically operated base so that the patient does not need to be lifted onto a trolley after surgery. The operation was taking place last Thursday when the top of the operating table became detached. The woman, who has not been named, was 'jolted forward' as it slipped." --Heart Patient Dies After Operating Table CollapsesThe Times)

This table was designed to reduce stress on the patient after the operation is over. A malfunction during the operation had fatal results. Very sad.

"That happened to Cornell University on Wednesday: It sent welcoming letters to 1,700 high school students who had submitted early-decision applications, including nearly 550 who had already been rejected in December. 'Greetings from Cornell, your future alma mater!' the e-mail letter began... Within a couple of hours the university followed with an 'oops' letter, admitting that it had made a mistake..." --(Big) Red Faces at Cornell over E-Mail ErrorNY Times (Registration Req'd))

Here's a little salt for that wound, kid. Oh, whoops... sorry about that.

"Just as Icarus did not heed his father?s warning to stay away from the sun, NASA engineers ignored warning signs before and after liftoff that the shuttle was doomed to burn up when it re-entered the atmosphere. Like Icarus, they were guilty of hubris. | But the hapless engineers are not the only ones to blame. The entire shuttle program is corrupted by incompetence, arrogance, jingoism, and corporate greed. It is a dinosaur from the Cold War whose reason for existence has exhausted itself." Regis T. Sabol --It Didn't Have to HappenIntervention)

I'm not sure that Sabol's poetry adds much of value to this rant. He seems delighted to have this opportunity to lay into NASA, and has nothing but opinions to offer.

The lone link on this page disappears when you try to click it. Actually, your browser automatically loads another page that is completely blank. That link is labeled "FAQ". I'm sure the most frequently asked question on this page is "What the...!?" --DGJ --From the "I Don't Get It" DepartmentPurple)

"Similar-looking drug brand names can confuse doctors, nurses and pharmacists, causing patients to get the wrong medicine.... A patient confusing lente with Lantus could end up with his or her blood sugar seriously out of whack. Doctors insist that errors like these can be corrected if caught early enough.|The simplest way of fixing the problem would be banning brand names. Generic names are more descriptive and less confusing." Matthew Herper --Lethal ConfusionForbes)

"Media mega-star Oprah Winfrey?s announcement that ?I'm back in the business of recommending books?but with a difference,? drew a standing ovation from an audience of America?s leading publishers... [T]he new book club will focus on literary classics because ?I cannot imagine a world where the great works of literature are not read.? Her hope, she said, is that ?The Oprah Winfrey Show? will ?make classic works of literature accessible to every woman and man who reads.?" --Oprah's Book Club: Back to the ClassicsPress Release)

"In this time of great sadness about Fred Rogers' death, we understand that parents may be concerned about how to approach the Mister Rogers' Neighborhood series and our Mister Rogers' Neighborhood Website with their children. We here at Family Communications have given this a great deal of thought and have talked with our colleagues in child development and mental health. We'd like to share our thoughts with you."

--PBS Kids Statement on "Mr Rogers"PBS)

We don't get good reception on the PBS channel where we live, so Peter hasn't really watched Mr. Rogers, but maybe Carolyn will when she's older. At any rate, note how the main web page for Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood acknowledges its dual audiences -- the kids who are the primary audience for the website, and parents and causual Internet surfers who may be visiting the site after hearing the news.

"Newly disclosed e-mail inside NASA showed senior engineers worried a day before the Columbia disaster that the shuttle's left wing might burn off and cause the deaths of the crew, a scenario remarkably similar to the one investigators believe actually occurred.... After intense debate -- occurring by phone and e-mail -- the engineers, some supervisors and the head of the space agency's Langley research facility in Hampton, Va., decided against taking the matter to top NASA managers..." --NASA's Worst Fears Realized AP/Wired)

Engineers worry all the time, about all sorts of things. Before the Challenger disaster in the 80s, most of those worries, and the dismissals of them, were oral, presented via teleconferences. Diane Vaughan's The Challenger Disaster suggests that some engineers who worried the most weren't able to get their concerns through the administrative layers, to the people who could take action.

"The new building is planned to be taller than the trade center towers, which briefly stood as the world's tallest at 1,350 feet. Libeskind's tower also would surpass Malaysia's 1,483-foot Petronas Twin Towers, the tallest buildings in the world.|The choice was made by a committee with representatives of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the governor and the mayor. The committee met briefly on Wednesday afternoon and decided on the plan that was favored by Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, according to a source close to the process." --New Twin Tower Plan ChosenAP/CNN)

This article will whip your head around a couple of times... take it slowly, and don't stop until you get to the Looney Tunes references. "To mainstream researchers, Loebner is a self-aggrandizing fool and his contest is hokum: at best irrelevant and at worst a public disservice that encourages bad science..... [T]he closer one looks at the history of the Loebner Prize, the more it appears that Loebner's real offense was showing up the biggest stars in "real" artificial intelligence as a bunch of phonies. Thirty years ago, Minsky and other A.I. researchers were declaring that the problem of artificial intelligence would be solved in less than a decade. But they were wrong, and every year the failure of computer programs to get anywhere close to winning the Loebner Prize underlines just how spectacularly off the mark they were." John Sundman

[Sundman identifies himself as a technophobic cynic, but he clearly had so much fun writing this piece that his allegiances don't really matter. This character study of Loebner is a peach: "Loebner has many enthusiasms. He likes prostitutes. He likes marijuana. He likes pornography. He likes the Loebner Prize. He likes wine and fine paintings. And he likes Hugh Loebner. He spoke enthusiastically about all those things. But I was surprised to learn that he didn't seem to care much about artificial intelligence, per se. |His interest in the field has always been pragmatic, he told me, never philosophical. He's a hedonist who thinks work is an abomination and sloth is our greatest virtue. He got interested in A.I. because he hoped the day would come when robots and A.I.'s could do all the work and people could play all the time." That line sounds like something from R.U.R. Except for the parts about prostitutes, pornography, and marijuana. --DGJ --Artificial StupiditySalon)

"Israeli scientists have devised a computer that can perform 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC. The secret: It runs on DNA....|hink of DNA as software, and enzymes as hardware. Put them together in a test tube. The way in which these molecules undergo chemical reactions with each other allows simple operations to be performed as a byproduct of the reactions. The scientists tell the devices what to do by controlling the composition of the DNA software molecules. It's a completely different approach to pushing electrons around a dry circuit in a conventional computer." Stefan Lovgren --Computer Made from DNA and EnzymesNational Geographic)

Can the robot uprising be far away?

"Margaret Bourke-White hung out of bombers to take pictures, climbed out on a gargoyle high atop the Chrysler Building to take pictures, was the first Western photographer to go to the Soviet Union, covered the dangerous days of India's partition....Margaret Bourke-White was in love with the shapes of industrial design -- the mechanical muscle and sheen of it." Susan Stamberg reports on an exhibit of Bourke-White's extraordinary photographs of the mechanisms and infrastructure that were revolutionizing American society in the Age of the Machine. --Bourke-White's 'Photography of Design': Early Work Found the Hidden Beauty in IndustryNPR)

"The template system is also good for the audience. Apcar says that when readers come to a NYTimes.com multimedia project, it will look familiar to them -- they will know how to navigate it. That's not so for a news site that treats every multimedia project as an independent entity, not bound to existing practices or guidelines. Make it easy for the Web user to view your multimedia, he suggests, while still allowing yourself plenty of flexibility in how a package looks and what content elements are included." Steve Outing

--Breaking News Multimedia: Not an OxymoronEditor and Publisher)

In the Middle Ages, every book was a hand-crafted work of art, but the printing press led to standardization that vastly increased literacy across Europe. While the elite still enjoyed their hand-illuminated manuscripts, the populace had ready access to mass-produced versions. The current backlash against Jakob Nielsen's minimalist design aesthetic (if you can call "industrial ugly but dang efficient" an aesthetic) and the slow decline of Nielsen's once brilliant Alert Box suggests that the hypertext aesthetes are regaining some ground, but there's a lot to be said for templates, which free the individual author (whoops -- I meant "content creator") from having to master all aspects of a design system, and which is one important reason why weblogging services are bringing hypertext authorship to the masses. Thanks for the link, Mike.

"They aren't videogames, after all; except for the occasional cut scene, we almost never use video. We use images rendered on the fly--and the images are the surface of the game, the interface, the cotton candy. The meat of the game, the heart of it, is in the underlying code. These are games that run on processors, not on magnetic tape; algorithm and interactivity is what they are....Indeed, given the visual crudity of the original videogames, it's hard to believe that even non-gamers could have thought that 'video' was the single factor about those games that needed mentioning. But of course, the prevailing culture has never understood the game qua game." Greg Costikyan --Death to VideogamesGames * Design * Art * Culture)

A post from a few weeks ago, which I missed.

"When the company receives a call from someone who's clearly lost it -- which can happen several times an hour -- [psychologist]Chessin comes on the line to help the caller rediscover their happy place. Then the engineer returns to discuss the technical problem in detail." --Psychologist Helps Victims of Data LossSFGate)

At first I thought this article was a hoax, especialy when it mentioned that Chessin used to work for a suicide hotline. But I can imagine that busy (expensive) engineers don't want to be detained by the incoherent, impotent rage of hard-luck hard-drive-deprived callers. Still, this isn't a "Teen Helpline -- We're Here Because We Care" scenario -- the data recovery bill averages $900. Still, that would be a small price to pay for some of the work I've done. Hmm. I think I'll stop blogging and start backing some stuff up now...

The article is worth reading, but I'm quoting from the "Procedures for Shuttle Bailout" box at the bottom: "Although no formal requirements or plans exist for crewmembers to bail out of the orbiter during uncontrolled flight, they may be able to do so under certain circumstances. The hatch jettison pyrotechnics do not require orbiter power to function and can be activated even if orbiter power is lost. Each crewmember is wearing his or her own emergency oxygen bottles and parachute, and if the crew cabin were not spinning rapidly, at least some of the crewmembers should be able to get to the side hatch and get out." NASA

--Analysis Hints at Shuttle's Last SecondsM$NBC)

The phrasing is clearly designed to give the crew confidence in a hopeless situation. There's something almost touching about "uncontrolled flight" as a euphemism for "tumbling out of control". And note the positive phrasing of "at least some...should be able to...get out" as opposed to "all may die, and some certainly will". For cryin' out loud, these instructions are for bailing out at 40,000 feet!

"It's time for a reality check. Hypertext is not, and has never been, all that. Electronic literature is a tiny field and mostly, no one cares about it, except for a handful of endlessly bickering insiders. Maybe 200 people in the world are even marginally interested in the academic arguments....From the outside, though, it looks a bit like cursing a toilet manufacturer for providing the pot you shit in. If you felt better back in the outhouse, why not simply use that instead?" Diane Greco (no permalink; 24 Feb 2003)

--Hypertext & The OuthouseDiane Greco)

I enjoyed Greco's rant. Let me note first that she means something very specific when she refers to "electronic literature" and "hypertext" -- she means what I would call "canonical literary hypertext" or "that set of commercial hypertexts that tend to be studied in graduate seminars on hypertext theory," rather than the kinds of hypertext that millions of people encounter every day on the Web. Her conclusions suggest that critics who are unhappy with the state of literary hypertext should go back to what they were doing before hypertext came along. (This is how Mark Bernstein misreads my position, BTW.) But there are other alternatives -- such as looking at other kinds of cybertext that has not been oversaturated with scholarship. I'm thinking about computer games (particularly interactive fiction) and weblogs. While Espen Aarseth's Cybertext was written before the blogging boom, it offers a very thoughtful survey of a wide variety of different kinds of creative electronic texts. I tell my students to rent Landow's Hypertext, but I make them buy Aarseth's Cybertext and Killian's Writing for the Web.

"When writing a website the writer needs to be focused on the reader; that is write for readers. Even though human readers are those who are going to be active and do something about your site, one of your primary readers is Googlebot. Writers need to be aware that building information has an effect on your site and also any site to which you create links within that information. The web is a connected world and what you do on your site may greatly affect not only your position in search engine results, but also other people's position and how Google perceives their web pages." Elwyn Jenkins --Writing for GoogleGoogleVillage)

While Elwyn does acknowledge that human readers (or at least scanners and skimmers) are the primary audience for your web site, I think it's also worth noting that if your writing appears to be optimized to attract Google hits, expert readers may be able to detect the Googlebot bias, and may find themselves less likely to link to the page that you have designed to be so useful to the Googlebot. Just a thought.

"Forty German authors are hoping to set a new world record by conceiving, writing and printing a book in 12 hours, the event's organizers said on Tuesday." --Germans to Create Book in 12 HoursCNN)

I believe the German word for the activity is zuschnellbuchermachen. Thanks for the link, Mike.

"Baseball - a slow, serene game played with a wooden bat, a cloth ball, and cowhide mitts on a broad, grassy field - surged in popularity just when the industrial revolution was taking hold, leaving masses of urban workers and shopkeepers yearning for the pastoral peace and quiet of the fabled agricultural age. They could relive this for a day by attending a baseball game. By extension, no wonder stock-car racing - a fast, furious sport contended on a paved roadway with snarling, smelly machines operated by hand - is surging in popularity at the very time the computerized information revolution is transforming our society from top to bottom." --Social Science at 190 MPH on NASCAR's Biggest SuperspeedwaysFirst Monday)

The above speculation is from an article by David Ronfelt, who credits "long-time race promoter and track owner H. A. 'Humpy' Wheeler" as quoted in Scott Huler's A Little Bit Sideways: One Week Inside a NASCAR Winston Cup Race Team. This line of reasoning also accounts for the popularity of BattleBots.

"Dear Strong Bad,|Right now I am putting off writing a paper for my English class. Can you write my Englilsh paper? I don't even care if it's good or not. I just don't want to do it." --A Well Thought-Out Englilsh [sic] Paper, by Karl "The Yellow Dart" SmithHome Star Runner)

Never underestimate how a cool nickname and a little bit of cash can affect the grade of your "Englilsh" paper.

"People will soon be able to publish their own website via their phones as blogging goes mobile." --Blogging Goes MobileBBC)

Sounds a bit much like drafting a press release to fill a Sunday evening news gap, but journalists have been quick to grasp the social significance of weblogs. Thanks for the link, Rosemary.

The next time you publish a timely magazine article that gets mentioned by a lot of webloggers during the same week that you accept a new job, resist the urge to celebrate by sending out for Papa John's pepperoni pizza and getting laid up for three days with a bad case of food poisoning.

My wife got sick a day earlier, but we didn't connect it to the pizza at the time. I stayed home from work on Thursday in order to take care of her and the kids. My son Peter and I had some more pizza for supper, and by bedtime he was pooping and throwing up all over the bed and I was enjoying the same experience downstairs. It was really quite horrible, knowing that Leigh was still sick, and knowing that Peter was freaking out from being so ill, Carolyn was crying because she was hungry, teething, and, well, just because she is a baby.

OK, that's enough details. --DGJNote to SelfLiteracy Weblog)

"A NASA engineer warned of the possibility of grave damage to the shuttle Columbia days before the spacecraft broke up on Feb. 1 and complained that it was hard to get relevant information, according to e-mails released by the U.S. space agency on Friday.|The e-mails by safety engineer Robert Daugherty expressed concern that a debris impact on Columbia's left wing shortly after launch on Jan. 16 may have gouged a hole big enough to cause excessive heat in the shuttle landing gear." --NASA Engineer E-Mails Warned of Columbia DamageWashPost)

Dave Winer on scripting news quotes from my "On the Trail of the Memex" in order to disagree:

Here's one for the history books. "For all intents and purposes, Google owns the Web, by virtue of its superior and highly popular search engine." I don't agree. Teoma appears to be as good a search engine as Google...

Maybe Temoa is just as good, but at the moment anyway, Teoma isn't nearly as popular. Winer does make an excellent point that I didn't address: "BTW, anyone who believes that Google actually owns the Web should remember that Microsoft owns the browser. Google is a good search engine and blogging tool. We don't know how they will connect them yet. I bet they don't either." --Google Don't BlinkScripting News)

DADDY: Peter, the weather is so nice... let's play a game.
PETER (age 4): I do NOT want to play any game that's in the world. I want to play a game that's NOT in the world.
DADDY: Peter, what kind of game is not in the world?
PETER: (pointing towards computer) On a CD.Games: Not in the WorldLiteracy Weblog)

"The arts and the sciences are again joining together as one culture, the third culture. Those involved in this effort?on either side of C.P. Snow's old divide?are at the center of today's intellectual action. They are the new humanists.....In too much of academia, intellectual debate tends to center on such matters as who was or was not a Stalinist in 1937, or what the sleeping arrangements were for guests at a Bloomsbury weekend in the early part of the twentieth century. This is not to suggest that studying history is a waste of time: History illuminates our origins and keeps us from reinventing the wheel. But the question arises: History of what? Do we want the center of culture to be based on a closed system, a process of text in/text out, and no empirical contact with the real world? One can only marvel at, for example, art critics who know nothing about visual perception; "social constructionist" literary critics uninterested in the human universals documented by anthropologists; opponents of genetically modified foods, additives, and pesticide residues who are ignorant of genetics and evolutionary biology." John Brockman --The New HumanistsEdge)

Here is the complete text of a message in my inbox today, from someone who signed it "freak":

"help find information about the beleives of the pilgrims in 1620"

How Not to Request Help OnlineE-Mail)

Sorry. Please do your own homework.

"When we view the computer as an interactive artifact the computer exists as our partner in the completion of important tasks. We ask the computer to do something and it, by proxy, does it for us. We should, instead, view the computer as a tool that we use to perform tasks: we use it so that we can do the important task. Calling the computer a tool may seem a simple matter of word choice but changing the view of the computer from interactive artifact to tool has a significant impact on how we think about the computer, what we expect of it, how we design for it and how we train for its use." Chris Dent --The Computer as Tool: From Interaction to AugmentationBurning Chrome)

"Of course I wanted to be popular.|But in fact I didn't, not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design marvellous rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make great things..." Paul Graham --Why Nerds are UnpopularPaulGraham.com)

A lot of bloggers must be nerds, because the above story is currently #2 on Blogdex.

"I HAVE just ploughed through the first five books devoted to an Internet art form that fascinates me and may well be unknown to you. Where to start?|Say for the moment that the weblog - a log of the World Wide Web, as it were -can be personal publishing at its most liberating, an online guide through the thickets of the Internet, a journal or diary, easily updated and nestled in a global neighbourhood. It can be fresh and unpredictable, still something of a mystery to the American weblog pioneers of the 1990s who populate these books. " Bernard Lane --Welcome to Bloggers WorldAustrailian IT)

Good capsule summaries of books I'm going to ask my university library to carry.

"Hypertext as mediated by the Web browser has not proved to embody the qualities of the ideal post-structural text longed for by literary theorists such as George Landow; neither has the World Wide Web fulfilled the document-association function of the memex, the hypothetical research tool Vannevar Bush described in his 1945 essay, As We May Think. Bush’s memex was not merely a form of photo-mechanical hypertext, but also a means for the full-scale transfer of complex collaborative thought processes, as encoded by individual researchers via their own personal document association schemas. While weblogs, the most influential textual genre truly native to the World Wide Web, do facilitate the exchange of information across the Internet, that information must be carefully filtered in order to be useful. Google’s February 2003 purchase of the popular weblogging platform Blogger signals a shift towards content production that may create a conflict of interest; nevertheless, Google’s proven ability to mine the data encoded in annotated trails of linked documents may create the synergy necessary to fulfill Vannevar Bush’s vision." Dennis G. Jerz

--On the Trail of the Memex: Vannevar Bush, Weblogs and the Google GalaxyDichtung Digital)

Thanks to Nick Montfort, Clancy Ratliff, and Charlie Lowe, each of whom responded within hours of my request for help on my rough draft. I had this article ready to go this weekend, when Google's purchase of Blogger sort of threw me for a loop.

"Prompted by a complaint from the Liberty Legal Institute, a group of Christian lawyers, the [Justice] department is investigating whether Michael L. Dini, an associate professor of biology at Texas Tech University here, discriminated against students on the basis of religion when he posted a demand on his Web site that students wanting a letter of recommendation for postgraduate studies 'truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer' to the question of how the human species originated." Nick Madigan

--Professor's Snub of Creationists Prompts U.S. InquiryNY Times)

Does the law require a professor to write a letter of recommendation? Regardless of the sensitive nature of the issue, shouldn't a professor be permitted to choose who does and who does not get a letter of recommendation? Isn't Dini being excruciatingly fair by explaining, up front, his recommendation policy, when he could, if he were truly devious, simply write lukewarm letters for those students who don't meet his criteria? (Thanks, Ron Zeno and Chris Worth.)

"Andy Serkis' computer-aided performance was one of the best things about 'The Two Towers.'... Is Hollywood ready to acknowledge and honor digital performances, or even human-digital hybrids? This year, the answer seems to be a resounding no." Ivan Askwith --Gollum: Dissed by the Oscars?Salon)

"[A]cademics are throwing themselves into the study of emotion with the rapturous intensity of a love affair. In a sense, emotion has always been at the core of the humanities: Without the passions, there would not be much history, and even less literature. Indeed the very word 'philosophy' begins with philos (love)." Scott McLemee --Getting EmotionalChronicle)

"Unfortunately, most will just view the team projects, class presentations, software life cycles, and ambiguous problem statements as 'hoops they have to jump through' to graduate. I recall a meeting with a student who was having trouble working with her project team in a recent class. She actually asserted with some confidence that the problem she was having with her team members...wouldn't happen in industry. She was stunned when I explained..." William Harrison --The Software Developer as Movie IconIEEE)

What Prof. Harrison says about computer programming projects can also be said about techncial writing, or about almost any project. In the real world, rarely do workers have complete project specs handed to them; rarely do they have enough time and/or resources; rarely do all the team members have all the required skills; rarely are key personnel available to consult at convenient times; etc, etc.

Jesica Santillam, 17, suffers from a heart deformity...|After a three-year wait, she received a transplant on February 7 with organs flown from Boston to the Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina....The organs were sent with paperwork correctly listing the donor's blood type, says Sean Fitzpatrick of the New England Organ Bank.|But somehow, no one identified the donor had type-A blood while Jesica is O-positive. --Girl gravely ill in US after receiving organs with wrong blood typeAnanova)

While this sort of thing happens extremely rarely, it shows that proofreading can save lives... or take them.

"The dot-com economy is long gone, but that hasn't curbed the public's appetite for shopping, banking and generally amusing themselves on the World Wide Web, according to a recent study.|Significantly more people are using the Web to send pictures and videos, shop, download music, play games and do their banking, according a study that compares last year's habits with those of 2000.... That surge comes too late, however, for many now defunct Internet start-ups that tried to capitalise on people's urge to spend online." --Survey: Web Use Trends Ever UpwardZDNet)

--Google Blogging Right AlongWired)

There's nothing new in this Wired story that wasn't already covered by blogs over the weekend.

"Vatsim allows virtual pilots (but real people) and virtual air traffic controllers (also real people) to see each other and communicate. The result is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game patterned after the government's dullest bureaucracy." --Always a Dull Moment: The hottest game in the sky is simulating a holding pattern. Fasten your seat belt.Wired)

"In the autumn of their careers, they are in a mood to dispense the wisdom that comes of decades of slugging it out with editors, critics, other writers and, roughest of all, their own restless egos....Let us summon in spirit some of these authors of literary guides and memoirs and hear what they have to say. Aspiring writers pay attention." Philip Marchand --Write This Way, Gentle ReaderToronto Star)

Thanks for the link, Jim.

"We use music as a vehicle to engage, inspire and reinforce the magic of literature and the power of reading. We have launched an awareness and outreach campaign for one of this country's most critical problems: adults who cannot read or write."

From the Chapter One benefit CD for "Artists for Literacy":

• Bruce Springsteen - "The Ghost of Tom Joad" Inspired by John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath
• David LaMotte - "Dark and Deep" Inspired by Robert Frost's poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
• Suzanne Vega - "Calypso" Inspired by Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey"
• Ray Manzarek - "He Can't Come Today" Inspired by Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot

Songs Inspired by LiteratureSIBL)

Dan Gillmor's column reports that Google has purchased Blogging Company Pyra, which means that Google is becoming the AOLTimeWarner of the Internet. So far, I've been happy with whatever Google has done... but think about it -- I search the web with Google, I search Usenet with Google, I read the news with Google, and now (while I won't swtich to Pyra for my blogging software) potentially millions of bloggers will be using Google software. Is Google any less cool? No... but competition is good, and this news worries me just a bit. --DGJForget AOL -- Google will Bring Blogging to the Next LevelLiteracy Weblog)

We all know that technology makes it easier for some students who are tempted by academic dishonesty. I just recently used a little-known feature of MS-Word to cast doubt on a fairly standard -- and fairly lame -- student excuse.

Fifteen minutes before an assignment is due, I get an e-mail from a student who says he is too sick to make it to class. This happens all the time, but this particular message is a little fishy: instead of simply e-mailing the paper as an attachment and apologizing, the student lauches into excuses: he won't be able to get a doctor's note, he says, because he doesn't have insurance. As for the paper itself, the student says he'll give it to his roommate, who is "un-reliable at best." I suspect that the paper hasn't yet been written, and that "The Tale of the Unreliable Roommate" is intended to explain why the paper will not appear in my box until Monday. And, of course, his message indicates that he expects me to send him a personal e-mail that summarizes the material that he missed in class (see: "I Was Absent -- Did I Miss Anything Important?").

Unfortunately for the student (who probably thinks he's free to start his weekend now), I reply within seconds: "If you can e-mail it now & get me a hard copy ASAP that will be acceptable." The document arrives three hours later.

Another misfortune for the student: MS-Word has a feature (File | Properties | Statistics) that will display when a document was created and how long the author has worked on it. The screen capture suggests that the student started the paper at 12:30, just a half hour before it was due. The e-mail arrived 14 minutes later, apparently after he realised he wouldn't make the deadline. Despite the sudden illness, he managed to work on the paper for another 70 minutes over the next few hours.

It really ticks me off to be disrespected in this manner. I consulted with several faculty members, each of whom said I had no choice but to refuse the late paper. Fortunately, this assignment is only worth 5 points, and the student, who has otherwise been perfectly fine, will have plenty of time to redeem himself.

Dennis G. Jerz
Technology Catches Student in a FibLiteracy Weblog)

"'The Internet allows us to do all kinds of things quickly and efficiently, and that includes hoaxing,' Jerz says.|Jerz, an assistant professor of English at UW-Eau Claire, learned of the Olsen hoax when a skeptical student emailed him the fake CNN story....News hoaxes aren't the only ones that spread by e-mail, says Jerz, who often sees financial scams, false computer virus warnings and tales of fictional missing children. All of these are examples of 'memes,' the intellectual equivalent of genes, ideas that reproduce themselves by jumping from brain to brain, Jerz says. Many vanish quickly, but others spread swiftly." Tom Giffey --Gotcha! Olsen Twins Hoax Had 'em Fooled (Leader Telegram)

This local news story from the Eau Claire paper offers a good summary and reflection on the Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen hoax that was spreading across the Internet about two weeks ago.

"Once you've got her, the next step is keeping her. To do this, just remember that your geek girl has a few special things about her that distinguish her from other women. All women like gifts, but the geek girl's tastes are different. The average woman likes flowers, but the geek girl is not average, and would probably rather not be bothered with something so transient. A Star Trek mousepad would last much longer. Thinking of getting her a necklace? Why not a new sound card instead?" --Guy's Guide to Geek GirlsLisa Michaud)

Via Slashdot.

"All the scenester dudes are either dating a series of interchangeable high-school riot grrrls in baby doll dresses and an overdose of manic panic, or permanently shacked up with some bitter old lady who pays all the bills. Which will it be, a wifely prison or a humiliating one night stand? Into this void of potential mates comes a man you may not have considered before, a man of substance, quietude and stability, a cerebral creature with a culture all his own. In short, a geek." --Girl's Guide to Geek GuysMikki Halpin and Victoria Maat)

Via Slashdot.

"There are two types of people -- those who prefer to communicate via e-mail, and those who prefer the phone. What the phone people don't realize is that their need for information means that they're going to interrupt someone else's day to get that information. E-mail, on the other hand, is just as quick and non-intrusive. Whenever possible, I try to send an e-mail before picking up the phone. I love e-mail, it's the way people were meant to communicate -- I'm sure of it." Joezilla

--I Hate PhonesDissociated Presszilla)

While I sometimes complain about all the e-mails I get, I do like the fact that I can deal with them on my own time -- at 2am, if I feel like it. Unreturned phone calls don't pile up like unanswered e-mails, so the psychological pressure of that long list of messages in my in box mounts up; but that's nothing compared to the frustration I feel when a telephone call catches me at a bad time. I know, I know... I could just pay extra money for caller ID.

"If recent rumours are to be believed, AOL is getting ready in the next month or so to add blogging to the home-page services it offers users.|It is a sign of how far these regularly updated pages of web links with personal comment have come in the past five years." --Blogging for DollarsThe Age)

Hrmm. The article mentions "recent rumors" about AOL but doesn't invite comment from an AOL spokesperson. Maybe AOL is planning to join the blogging scene, but this article is speculation and reflection, not news.

"Google adds fresh pages to its database everyday. You can search these fresh pages to find new information from today, yesterday or over the last 7 days if you wish. The only thing is, do not head to Google." --Search the Fresh Internet in Google with GooFresh!Smoogle)

A description of GooFresh, a website that lets you filter your Google results by date. About that name... "FreshGoo" would have more character.

"Things like the Back and forward button, we never intended that to be a permanent part of the interface. But people get locked into metaphors. You have to be careful with the metaphors you put in front of people because once they click onto one, that's it." An interview with Netscape creator Marc Andreessen --Web Browsers: 10 Years Old ("Conversation With Marc Andreessen")Wired)

"Your task is to write the first line of an imaginary novel. Your goal is to make it hilariously bad.... Maximum sentence length: 25 words." (Deadline: 14 April 2003) --Jennifer Stood There, Quietly OvulatingAdam Cadre)

Adam Cadre, who started the Lyttle Lytton contest as a reaction against what he sees as the increasingly lengthy and unfunny entries in the more famous Bulwer-Lytton contest, is also the author of several top-notch works of interactive fiction, including the touching "Photopia" and the single-gimmick "9:05".

"Cool-2B-Real is about real girls like you! Whether you're in school, playing sports or just having fun, strive to be the best you can be! Real girls are 'keepin' it real' by building strong bodies and strong minds... and they're feeling great about themselves!"

Brought to real girls everywhere by the award-winning experts in girl culture, the Cattlemen's Beef Board and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. (I am not making this up.)

P.S. Eat beef, little girls... eat beef!

--Cool 2B Real Home PageAmerica's Beef Producers)

Concerned parents of beef-swilling girls everywhere will be happy to hear that the site is brought to us by kidscom.com. But if you go to kidscom.com, all you will get is the following message, with no links: "Come on kids, join the fun! KidsCom has plenty of games, message boards, kids chat, video game cheats, contests and prizes. This is a site for kids! KidsCom is a safe kid site, focusing on fun and Internet safety. Check back for new games, kids chat, prizes and tons of fun!"

"I want to invent a word which describes the experience of following all those links on the sidebar of someone's blog. Yeah, I know blogrolling exists. But that's just for making the links. When I visit DFWblogs or Grumpy Girl , I get hooked on all these fascinating blog names (ethnic lounge, not so girlie, bathtub gin, sqeeshee) and want to check out every site. Blurging? Blurfing? Nameadexing? Linkalogging? Gimmee a second to think of something...though I do like the toyish sound of Linkalogging." Jrice --What Do Ya Call ItKairosNews)

"Game importers and Internet cafés remain vulnerable. Police are cracking down on players of Counter-Strike, Age of Empires, and digital backgammon and chess. More than 50 people have been arrested and face up to three months in prison and 5,000-euro fines." --More Fallout Over Greek Game BanWired)

"Over the past month, the U.S. military has periodically sent e-mail to Iraqi military and government officials urging them to protect their families by helping U.N. inspectors and turning away from Saddam Hussein.|U.S. government officials won't comment on the campaign, but according to sources in Iraq and Iraqis living in the United States, each time the e-mails are sent, Internet access all over Iraq soon suffers a 'service outage.' Service resumes after the U.S. military missives have been purged from inboxes. " Michelle Delio --U.S. Tries E-Mail to Charm IraqisWired)

"By the time school opened, I was thrilled to start molding the brains of my children. My optimism and naiveté evaporated within hours.... Raynard had told [his mother] that I had violently shoved him in the chest out the door of my classroom, injuring his head and back. His mother had dialed 911 and summoned the cops and the fire department. Two months later, Raynard?s mother filed a $20 million lawsuit against the school district, Ms. Savoy, and myself?and the D.C. police charged me with a misdemeanor count of simple assault against my former student. Thus ended my first and last year as a public school teacher." Joshnua Kaplowitz --How I Joined Teach for America and Got Sued for $20 MillionCity Journal)

This story just made me sick.

"In its relentless pursuit of the power curve of Moore's law, at the expense of the much less interesting price curve, the entire electronics industry may be unknowingly trapping itself in a giant and attenuated version of the dot-com bubble--living years into the technological future, only to be painfully snapped back to the human and economic present." Michael S. Malone --Forget Moore's LawRedHerring)

Moore's Law observes that computers become twice as powerful every year and a half. But who really needs twice as much computing power every 18 months? The CEO of Google announced that he wasn't planning to upgrade Google's computers to make use of the newest, fastest computer technology -- instead, he will use the same money to buy a larger number of cheaper computers.

"We are a powerful race, but we are not a violent one. The wars you wage on your planet are an outdated notion to us, as we prefer more intellectual pursuits. We also enjoy jogging, hiking, basketball, and golf, so we will accept nothing but the best in athletic footwear from Adidas, Reebok, and Converse. The citizens of our planet are in need of all manner of sport shoes, from cross trainers to hiking boots.|Bring them now, humans!" --People of Earth: We Come in Search of Quality Name-Brand Footware at Reasonable Prices (The Onion)

My freshman composition students are about to submit a paper in which an imaginary stranger from a completely different culture examines the items that they are wearing or carrying with them. My "Stranger Essay" assignment is in many ways the opposite of the Onion's footwear article.

"When you play a multiplayer FPS video game, like Counter-Strike, you enter a complex social world, a subculture, bringing together all of the problems and possibilities of power relationships dominant in the non-virtual world. Understanding these innovations requires examining player in-game behavior, specifically the types of textual (in-game chats) and nonverbal (logo design, avatar design and movement, map making, etc.) actions." Talmadge Wright, Eric Boria and Paul Breidenbach --Creative Player Actions in FPS Online Video Games: Playing Counter-StrikeGame Studies)

"Remember, too: you've just been wounded, and in addition to the adrenaline that's just been dumped into your system, you're likely looking at anywhere from a few drops to a steady flow of your own blood - a highly upsetting experience for many. Which means you're shaking, and most likely trying to do this all one-handed. Under the circumstances, the odds of you landing four successive drops of liquid on a cotton-swab size applicator are not wonderful." Adam Greenfeld [Mac's comment from WebWord.com: "Does Adam cut himself more often than the rest of us?"] --Suspect device 003: Band-Aid Liquid BandageV-2)

"Over the next two and a half years, Güntürkün recorded 124 scientifically valid kisses in public places across the United States, Germany and Turkey." --Most People Kiss the Right WayNature)

The story cited above is a puffy little version of an academic article called "Adult persistence of head-turning asymmetry"

I got an e-mail from Bob Mosley, compiler of the Columbia loss FAQ, which called to my attention the latest updates to the Columbia FAQ resource, which was assembled rapidly by scores of volunteers on the day of the incident, --STS-107 "Columbia" Loss FAQsci.space.*)

"A homepage really has two main goals: to give users information, and to serve as their top-level navigation for information that's inside the site.... [S]ample sites allocated less than half the screen space to useful pixels." Jakob Nielsen --Homepage Real Estate AllocationUseIT.com)

"MMRPGs are pervasive virtual environments populated by human-controlled digital people from around the globe. | Players develop characters, work towards goals, solve puzzles and engage in social fluttery. They're the visual marriage of text-based adventures and chat rooms, and women are flocking." Alex Krotoski --Online Role-Playing Fits the BillGuardian)

Interesting... while Slashdot just posted a thread savaging The Sims Online, the article above praises it (but it apparently hasn't been released in the UK yet).

"[T]the bulk of the nineteen page document was copied from three different articles - one written by a graduate student." --Britain's Official Dossier on Saddam Plagiarized?Channel4.com)

"The computer industry defies the pattern of all previous technological revolutions, making little or no progress toward convenience. It takes much longer to turn on your machine in the morning now than it did 20 years ago. The reaction of the clueless masses is to grumble and crack wise and then meekly accept the commands of our techie masters." Marc Fisher

--Royal Standard Has Given Way To a Royal Pain WashPost)

I don' t think Fisher is right when he says computers take longer to boot up now. Maybe the c:> prompt would pop up right away, but then you had to load a program -- perhaps from a tape cassette, which involved pressing the "play" button and listening to the computer squawk and bleat for a few minutes. Then, you had to swap out the program cassette and insert your data cassette. And if you were in the middle of working on one file, you couldn't just hit ALT TAB to open up a new window. Of course, Fisher could save himself that trouble by not shutting down his computer in the evening -- just leave it on. The power-saving utilities will kick in, shut down the monitor and power down the CPU. But Fisher's main complaint is that he doesn't want to learn anything new -- which is kind of sad. When Sugatra Mitra installed a computer in makeshift outdoor kiosk in a slum in India, the street kids taught themselves how to use the machine almost instantly, with no formal instruction: "I contend that by the time we are 16, we are taught to want teachers, taught that we cannot learn anything without teachers." That mindset reminds me of the student who wrote on a recent course evaluation: "Why do you give us all these papers to do when instead you should just teach us to write?"

"That people are gravitating from the television to the Internet, especially for information, is, of course, extremely good news--at least for us. But while they are coming more, they are believing less: Last year the UCLA survey indicated that 58% of Internet users believed that most of what they read online was 'reliable and accurate.'" Dan Ackman

--For 53% Reliable Information, Click Here Forbes)

Unlike many journalists summarizing (and dumbing down) academic articles, Ackman offers an unusually close examination of the original academic study. I like it when news summaries of academic articles acknowledge when the journalists are moving beyond the gaurded conclusions offered by the academics, and into the kind of headline material that attracts readers (and undergraduates doing research online).

"The social structure of the Network Age is already evident, and we can potentially anticipate a great deal about the next few decades of our lives by examining the essence of the network, both in its literal and figurative manifestations. But understanding the order of the coming age of distributed culture requires us first to examine our most recent eras, Modernism and Postmodernism, because it is within this longer context that the next age begins to make sense." --Postmodernism is Dead: Now What? Distributed Culture and the Rise of the Network AgeIntelligent Agent)

See also "Cybertext Killed the Hypertext Star", Nick Montfort's insightful review of Aarseth's Cybertext. Thanks for the link, Mike.

"[R]esearchers had seen a precipitous drop in the use of books and an equally steep rise in the use of Web sites. Books composed 30 percent of cited sources in 1996, compared with 16 percent in 1999, with continued declines in the following year. Web sites, meanwhile, grew from about 8 percent of cited sources in 1996 to more than 20 percent in 1999. Most of those Web citations, around 40 percent, came from commercial sites." Scott Carlson previews a forthcoming article by Cornell librarian Phillip M. Davis --Web-Loving Students Can Be Prodded to Cite Peer-Reviewed Works in Term Papers, Study SuggestsChronicle)

The headline seems to contrast web resources with peer-reviewed sources, ignoring the fact that researching online does not automatically exclude peer-reviewed sources. Students who cite library databases often access those databases via a webpage interface, so they are both using the web and finding good sources. (The full article does not seem to be readily linkable.)

"Some see it as part of the same cultural continuum of reality TV programming. Others see a broader trend in which digital technologies are allowing everyone to participate more directly in media experiences. Under this scenario, an era of decentralized media is fast approaching in which the idea of "consumers" of mass-market media will become obsolete, because people will be making, not consuming, culture." Leslie Walker discusses the mainstreaming of blogs. --New Kids on the BlogWashPost)

"The BWCA is a pristine wilderness and a canoeist's paradise in north-eastern Minnesota. It has over 1,500 miles of canoe routes and more than 1,000 lakes and streams. It has been largely unaltered by human hands since the 1930's, and is today an official wilderness. You can plan a canoe route to "get away from it all" and never see another group for most of your trip, or you can take an easier trip and simply enjoy being away from civilization. Maybe even go fishing. Whatever you do, you will see beautiful wilderness, breathe in clean fresh air, and enjoy some of the cleanest water in the world." Will Gayther --Boundary Waters Canoe Area (Minnesota, USA) (BWCA info)

"There are dozens of well-designed studies that show that TV, movies and other media affect what viewers believe and how they behave. This is true of many different kinds of attitudes and behaviors -- positive and negative -- but many studies conclusively show a statistical link between watching violent programs and behaving aggressively. And, of course, billions of dollars have been spent on media advertising because it is well established that even brief messages can be powerful in shaping behavior. However, there are very few studies of whether exposure to media violence causes criminal behavior." Diana Zuckerman --What is to Blame for Youth Violence?: The Media, Guns, Parenting, Poverty, Bad Programs, Or? Nat'l Center for Policy)

I found this link on Donna Hibbs's Media Issues Weblog," which looks like it will be worth watching.

"But after being heralded on the cover of Newsweek and on '60 Minutes,' the $25-million 'Sims Online' has turned into an expensive letdown for Redwood City, Calif.-based EA. Sales are sluggish, reviews have been merciless, and many in the video game industry wonder whether online games will ever find a large following." Alex Pham --'Sims Online' Gives Creators a Painful Reality CheckLA Times)

A Slashdot poster sums it up well: "With The Sims Online, you basically end up with a graphical chat room. The tasks you perform are repetitive and dull. Each involves clicking on something and staring at the screen until that task finishes or your happiness levels go down far enough to finish it for you. Fix that up, rinse and repeat. All in all, the game ends up being a glorified IRC chat room that you pay for." And this is the next big thing in gaming?

"The kicker for economists is that these virtual economic relationships have broken into the real U.S. economy. When players found EverQuest's bartering rules inadequate, they started exchanging the armor, spells, and other Norrathian objects of value at real-world auction sites. These transactions are conducted not in Norrathian PP but in U.S. dollars and then completed between avatars inside the game. (You pay in dollars at a real-world site, then the seller's avatar gives your avatar the goods in Norrath.) You can even buy another player's avatar, complete with its accumulated skills and assets. Sony tried to stop all these transactions and persuaded eBay and Yahoo! Auctions to bar them on the grounds that they involve Sony's intellectual property. But this kind of protectionism is hard to enforce whether the goods are real or virtual: Trade in Norrathian goods and services simply migrated to other sites." Robert Shapiro --Fantasy EconomicsSlate)

"The genetic code is truly digital, in exactly the same sense as computer codes. This is not some vague analogy, it is the literal truth. Moreover, unlike computer codes, the genetic code is universal. Modern computers are built around a number of mutually incompatible machine languages, determined by their processor chips. The genetic code, on the other hand, with a few very minor exceptions, is identical in every living creature on this planet, from sulphur bacteria to giant redwood trees, from mushrooms to men." Richard Dawkins --Genetics: Why Prince Charles is So WrongCheckbiotech)

Note: The title of this piece most likely refers to a 2000 lecture series in which Britain's Prince Charles spoke against genetic engineering.

"In a milestone of scientific eccentricity, local astronomers have announced that they want to simulate the behaviour of falling meteorites by dropping bowling balls from aircraft - though the plan has gone down like a lead spaceship with government officials." --Utah Bowled Over by Meteor Plan Observer)

"Students expect, from their high school experience, to be told exactly what is required to receive a particular grade. They expect to be given 'study guides' before exams that lead them by the hand through the material that is likely to appear on the exam. And they expect tests and courses to be graded by 'rubrics' that assign a fixed number of points for the completion of each item assigned. Woe to the poor professor who sets exam questions that might require a smidgen of original thought or insight on the part of the student. He or she is likely to hear about that in spades when it's time to fill out those teaching evaluation forms." Mark H. Shapiro --The Lake Wobegon Effect - All Our High School Graduates are "Above Average". Irascible Professor)

"There: that red coal burning on the horizon. We?re going. And we?re not sending smart toys on our behalf - we?re sending human beings, and one of them will put his boot on the sand and bring the number of worlds we?ve visited to three. And when he plants the flag he will use flesh and sinew and blood and bone to drive it into the ground." James Lileks --Lileks on Space Exploration: Mars and BeyondLileks (The Bleat))

What looks like an unrelated introduction about a kid's mylar balloon actually fits perfectly with the essay's main theme.

"The grieving are calling out to Jesus--and God and HaShem and Krishna. They are chanting passages from the New Testament, the Torah, Unitarian readings, and the Vedas.| The crew of Columbia represents an extraordinary variety of faith traditions:

• Kalpana Chawla - Hindu
• William McCool - Roman Catholic
• Ilan Ramon - Jewish
• Rick Husband - Charismatic
• Laurel Clark - Unitarian
• David Brown - Episcopalian
• Michael Anderson - Baptist

"This is just the way America is right now. Seek the best and the brightest, and you'll invariably scoop up a great assortment of faiths."

--Seven Heroes, Seven FaithsBeliefNet)

I wish I had the time to delve into this excellent compilation of brief bios, commentaries on the funeral/memorial services associated with each faith, and links to off-site resources on the religious traditions of each astronaut.

"Once you get into space, you check to see if any tiles are damaged. If enough are, you have a choice between Plan A and Plan B. Plan A is hope they can get a rescue shuttle up in time. Plan B is burn up coming back. | But let's not worry about the tiles. The tiles should be okay. They're certainly spending enough time on them. So once you get back into the atmosphere, the mad joyride begins. You have no power now, the engines are spent and switched out. You get one shot at a landing. Originally the plans called for a couple of regular jet engines to give you enough power to maneuver, or maybe go around for a second approach if the first one doesn't line upright. But jet engines got killed in the cost-cutting. A billion-dollar ship, and this is how they were cutting costs .... " Gregg Easterbrook

--Beam Me out of This Deathtrap, Scotty: 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Goodbye, ColumbiaWashington Monthly; from 1980)

A haunting essay, written over 20 years ago, that criticizes the NASA shuttle program. This was extremely painful to read, since the tone is somewhat flippant and "in-your-face," and thus seems insensitive. But the author, writing over 20 years ago, was trying to point out flaws in the system. Any grand human endeavor will attract naysayers, who will jump up and down and shout "I told you so" when given the chance. Easterbrook's recent article, "Environmental Doomsday," shows he is still publishing unpopular views: he claims that ecological journalism silences good news about the environment and focuses only on bad news.

"But here's the dirty little secret that may go farther in explaining why usability stinks: Most developers and designers don't give a rat's ass about it. The developers want the thing to have lots of features, so usability is the designers' problem. The designers want the project to look great, so how it works is the developers' responsibility. And most companies never even bother to test their sites or applications for usability." Fredric Paul --Putting a Bad Interface on ThingsTechweb)

"Hello from above our magnificent planet Earth.|The perspective is truly awe-inspiring. This is a terrific mission and we are very busy doing science round the clock.|Just getting a moment to type e-mail is precious so this will be short, and distributed to many who I know and love.|I have seen some incredible sights: lightning spreading over the Pacific, the Aurora Australis lighting up the entire visible horizon with the cityglow of Australia below, the crescent moon setting over the limb of the Earth, the vast plains of Africa and the dunes on Cape Horn, rivers breaking through tall mountain passes..." Laurel Clark, astronaut. Sent from Columbia, the day before she and the other six astronauts were killed. --Astronaut's Touching MailBBC)

"As students, they were members of free-speech movements; now that they've earned tenure, they have become advocates of speech codes. Radicals when they were on the bottom, they've become censors when they're on top. And they see no discrepancy in their actions." Daphne Patai --The Great Tattling Scare on CampusesChronicle)

I recently had a very interesting conversation about the use of offensive racial language in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Since Samuel Clemens wanted to depict a society that included racists, it makes sense that his story includes characters who use racist language to make racist statements. It's too simplistic to say that everyone, therefore, who uses that same racist language should automatically be "the bad guy," since literature is full of protagoinists who sin in all kinds of ways, yet who can still teach us something about humanity. That means we have to be open to the possibility that a character who uses racist language might be "good". This is thin ice upon which to tread, but if we can't tread this ice in college, what's the point of teaching morals and ethics to students?

"But however it may be in the art gallery, in moral issues we often cannot agree to differ. Agreeing to differ with Genghis is in effect agreeing to tolerate fox-hunting, and my whole stance was against that. Moral issues are frequently ones where we want to coordinate, and where we are finding what to forbid and what to allow. Naturally, the burden falls on those who want to forbid: in liberal societies, freedom is the default. But this cannot be a carte blanche for any kind of behaviour, however sickening or distressful or damaging. It is just not true that anything goes. So conversation has to go on about what to allow and what to forbid." Simon Blackburn --Relatively SpeakingButterflies and Wheels)

"The Fake CNN News Generator was online only a week, but generated a lot of controversy after ersatz news stories were picked up by local outlets and reported as real. Phony stories about the death of musician Dave Matthews, or the Olsen twins attending local universities, for example, appeared in a number of local newspapers, as well as regional radio and TV news reports. Fake stories were generated the site's visitors, who filled out a form with the story's headline and text. After hitting a button, the site created a convincing facsimile that included CNN's logos as well as live links and banner ads." --Fake CNN Website Taken Offline Wired)

Humph. I thought the "Olsen Twins Attend UWEC" spoof required some effort on the hoaxer's part, and accordingly publicized it as a creative achievement -- but it turns out to have been a fill-in-the-blank exercise. For example, the Wired story includes a partial screen capture of a story about the Olsen twins attending Notre Dame.

I built a bloated icebox made to store
my ripe ingredients. Its shelves are crammed
with shrunken tentacles, and scalps are jammed
beside the vats of larva, pulp, and gore.
The handle's slick. It's hard to shut the door
against the swelling mold. It must be slammed.
This foul refrigerator of the damned
will always stretch to hold a little more.

The fearful call this fridge a gate to Hell,
the brave can't wait to stick their heads inside,
my neighbors can't endure the rancid smell
and wonder what the sticky magnets hide.
But now it's time to bid you, friends, farewell,
and save the nutrients your skins provide.
Jacie Ragan

--The HoardGorelets: Refrigerator of the Damned)

"The Refrigerator of the Dammed" lets you play with virtual tiles (refrigerator magnets) on a horror theme. Part of Gorelets.

"Horror is the genre of the jolt, the shock, the spark. The horror story's conflict is always a matter of life and death, but death -- even to an undead creature -- always comes as a surprise. The climax of a horror tale is almost unilaterally a killing blow, catching someone or something unaware. Death almost always comes too soon -- that's why we fear it. Life is always too short. Never long enough." Michael Arnzen --Knife Wounds: Horror and MinimalismGorelets)

"[I]ndividuals randomly assigned to write about emotional topics evidence improved physical health compared with those who write about superficial topics.... [F]lexibility in the use of common words -- particularly personal pronouns -- when writing about traumatic memories was related to positive health outcomes." R. Sherlock Campbell and James W. Pennebaker --The Secret Life of Pronouns: Flexibility in Writing Style and Physical Health.pdf; Psychological Science)

In other words, people who varied their personal pronouns -- sometimes writing about "I, my" and sometimes writing about "you, your," were demonstrably healthier than those who did not vary their point of view when writing. Thanks, pahiel, for pointing me to this small WashPost item.

"By providing a basic FAQ addressing what are expected to be the most common questions asked by persons new to the sci.space.* heirarchy and/or those regulars who are only now finding out about the tragedy, it is hoped that the degradation of the groups' signal-to-noise ratio that usually follows events of this nature will be curtailed to a tolerable level, as well as hopefully reduce the level of baseless and unfounded speculation that tragic events such as the loss of Columbia tend to foster." --STS-107 "Columbia" Loss FAQGoogleGroups)

An Internet community devoted to space science posted this FAQ page in order to protect itself against the inevitable rush of newbies. Note -- this FAQ page seems to have been compiled in advance of the onslaught of questions, which means that in this case, perhaps FAQ stands for "Fearfully Anticipated Questions"? (Found via Robot Wisdom.)

"NASA warned members of the public Sunday against trying to sell purported Columbia debris on eBay, as local law enforcement agencies struggled to cordon off and protect the hundreds of pieces of wreckage." --NASA: No Debris Sales on EBayWired)

"Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) members in Nacogdoches, Texas, have been assisting local emergency management officials and NASA to locate and catalog debris from the Columbia shuttle." --Texas Amateurs Aid in Shuttle Debris Recovery, CataloguingNat'l Assoc. for Amataur Radio)

My wife and I were married in Dallas and honeymooned in south Texas, which included visits to Nacogdoches and the Houston Space Center. I teach about the Challenger disaster in my advanced tech writing class. I don't have any deep thoughts or words of wisdom to offer... but I was watching CNN Saturday evening, and found the words of the Israeli ambassador to the US to be very moving. Thank you, ambassador Daniel Ayalon.

"The year is around 1952, the dead of winter in Chicago. I'm 18 years old, bucking the fierce winds off Lake Michigan and the below-zero temperature as I head across the parking lot to attend classes at the University of Illinois at Navy Pier. I wait freezing while a Cadillac approaches, a yellow convertible with the top down. The driver is immense with a lion's mane of hair blowing in the wind. He wears no coat, jacket, or sweater. Just a loud Hawaiian print, short sleeve shirt. His massive forearms almost obscure the steering wheel. I immediately recognize Yukon Eric. He is out for a spin along Chicago's Outer Drive. His car passes. Somehow it does not seem as cold as before." George Jerz

Memory of Wrestler E-Mail)

My father tried sending the above reminiscence to a Yukon Eric memorial page, but the e-mail got bounced back. I'm happy to publish it here instead.

"It baffles me that so many people would believe that the page is true, enough to be on TV 13, TV 18, I-94, and the Carp. I thought that in college we are supposed to learn to question what we see and read, and this page have proved to me that we don't." Benjamin Williams About the "Olsen Twins Attending UWEC" Hoax E-Mail)

I hardly watch the local TV news -- just the last few minutes before my four-year-old's favorite show, "Wheel of Fortune," comes on. But if the local TV news reporters fell for this hoax, as Benjamin says they did, I wouldn't be surprised at all.