May 2003 Archive Page

"Doctors said they were forced to refrigerate dead babies in hospital morgues until authorities were ready to gather the little corpses for monthly parades in coffins on the roofs of taxis for the benefit of Iraqi state television and visiting journalists. The parents were ordered to wail with grief - no matter how many weeks had passed since their babies had died - and to shout to the cameras that the sanctions had killed their children, the doctors said. Afterward, the parents would be rewarded with food or money." Matthew McAllester --Blood of Innocents: Doctors say Hussein, not UN sanctions, caused children's deaths (Newsday)

But see also: "Surveys pointing to high civilian death toll in Iraq".

"BlogTalk, the European blogging conference, is about to get under way. If you're in the U.S. and awake at this hour (which probably means you haven't gone to bed yet), you can add to your sleep deprivation by watching the conference's live video stream." Dan Gillmor

--Blogging and Streaming at BlogTalkDan Gillmor)

Dan Gillmor is one of many bloggers writing from BlogTalk, thus making me feel really grumpy because I can't be there (see my BlogTalk abstract). I remember checking with my wife before I submitted my proposal -- since we're moving in less than 10 days, I knew this conference was going to be coming at a bad time for us, but delays in closing the sale of our house and other general ongoing headaches of all sorts just sapped away what little time I had left, and there is no way I could manage a visit to Vienna (sigh) while at the same time remaining both sane and married. Oh, well.

"We wanted a true persistent world. If you walk into a room, turn on a light, and then leave, when someone else comes along three days later that light should still be on. There are a lot of games that clean up after themselves. If you open a door, it closes itself. If you kill a monster, it eventually disappears. That's not what we wanted. We also wanted a real physics engine. If you kick a ball, how far will the ball roll, and where will it stop? In a 3-D environment, that's been really difficult to do." Rand Miller --Exploring Myst's Brave New World (Wired)

While hard-core gamers despise Myst because the world is so static, it's exactly that stability that attracts casual gamers -- the ones who have kept Myst and Sim City and similar games on the shelves for about a decade now.

"The most common way for a story to get started is for mainstream media to comment about the world of blogs, Google, websites, or the development of some new facet of the Internet. Of those stories we traced, the least common way for a story to get started is for a blogger to start a new topic, although this was the case in two stories of the 45 we studied.|When a story starts in mainstream media which cuts across blogger opinion, it is likely that a blogosphere story gets started on three or four blogs almost at the same time and sometimes even more. Then within a day, the story becomes more focused..." Elwyn Jenkins --Dynamics of a Blogosphere Story (Microdoc News)

Excellent observations and a useful analysis of four types of blogging posts: opinion, vote, reaction, and summation. I think it's also useful to note that, because the outside world typically does not respond on an individual basis to what individual bloggers have to say -- that is, Google does not have a weblog where it comments on the rumors circulating on the blogosphere -- that sparks lots of people to offer their own commentary.

"Last week, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd misrepresented a Bush statement to imply that he said the Al Qaeda terrorist network is 'not a problem anymore,' and the distorted quotation has since been repeated by MSNBC 'Buchanan and Press' co-host Bill Press, CNN's Miles O'Brien and others, including numerous foreign press outlets. At a time when the New York Times is under fire for its conduct in the Jayson Blair scandal, Dowd's creation of an exploding media myth is cause for serious concern." Brendan Nyhan --Dowd Spawns Bush Media Myth (Spinsanity)

This link is currently popular with webloggers. It's a great example of how the public benefits from the attention weblogs focus on inaccurate media accounts.

• Hong Kong scientist: SARS came from cats.
• British scientist: SARS came from space.
• Disney: The Cat [came] from Outer Space.

Tracking SARSLiteracy Weblog)

"I'm 40 years old, I make my living as a consultant, and I've never created a presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint. Clients occasionally look at me as if I'm from Mars when I show up without slides. I've found PowerPoint presentations to be superficial ways of delivering information. They are not actual presentations; they are, in fact, speaker's notes on which a real presentation should be built." Jimmy Guterman reviews The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint by Edward R. Tufte --Unplug That Projector! (Business 2.0)

"Under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, passed in October 2001, a secret court can authorize the FBI to inspect or seize bookstore or library records without showing probable cause. Further, the law provides that the bookstore or library is forbidden to disclose that the inspection happened....Resistance to the Patriot Act has been building quietly since it became law. More than 90 cities and towns across the country have passed resolutions against it." David Mehegan --Literary Groups Decry Patriot Act as Invasion of Privacy (Boston Globe)

"[F]or the Web to flourish it needs to remain open, nonproprietary, innovative, free and inclusive.

"'Oh my God, the entire world is inside my laptop,'" Berners-Lee shrieked in pretend shock toward the end of his speech while pointing to the need to develop new ways to organize and access data.

"He also tried to assure the audience that both commercial and technical concerns could be addressed on the Web." Michelle Delio reports on a keynote speech by Web visionary Tim Berners-Lee. --Web 'Shaman' Fights His Demons (Wired)

"I'm following best practices for e-mail campaigns. I'm producing interesting (I think), well-designed newsletters. I'm including viral marketing within my newsletters, hoping to encourage pass-along. The Weblog landing page is pretty well designed and easy to use. I think the content is compelling. Why wasn't my traffic growing at the same rate as my coworkers'?

"I don't know the answer to that last question,nor do many marketers know why their site traffic lags. What I did know was it was time to bring out the big guns.

"I started buying Google keywords." Jared Blank --What If You Built a Blog and No One Came?  (ClickZ)

I wish Jared the best of luck. In the past, I have missed no opportunity to criticize the strategies of his employer (see: "Parasites on the Internet: The Jupiter Media Menace," written when I really had a chip on my shoulder about the excesses of the dot-com bubble). But this article, and the whole "create a reputation for your analysts by letting them blog" strategy benefits the whole Internet. Blog on, Jupiter... blog on.

Search Engine Rank Inflation: A Morality TaleLiteracy Weblog)

Lately I've been coming across some strange search engine results, that look as if someone has taken information from my web pages -- perhaps even dumping a Google listing for keywoards -- and used it to inflate the search engine results of pages that have nothing to do with me.

For example, a search for "'Dennis G. Jerz' editorial" led me to several pages on the www.1editorial.com website. There's nothing wrong with that, of course -- everyone wants to be linked to, since that's how you get traffic, right?

But when you click on any of those links -- surprise! You are redirected to a different page -- www.editorsink.com, which has no links to my resources. It would appear that the designer of this website intended to trap a visitor who might be interested in information found on my website, conceal the fact that I offer free online handouts, and charge. Since I have no particular interest in contracting out my services (I have plenty to do right now, thank you), I don't feel that anyone is stealing business from me. Still, I was curious as to why this website presumably thought that my online materials were valuable enough to co-opt in this way.

A little Googling led me to an article "Word of Mouth," by Matthew Blevins and Michael Wist. A line at the bottom mentions Blevins and Wist's editorial services at editorsink.com and also EI Web Promotion (which returns 404). The "Word of Mouth" article is really an advertisement for different webpage recommendation service, that also seems to be offline.

One would think that a company trying to sell search engine results would try to be the top hit on the company name. I Googled for "editorsink" -- but the first hit is for a completely different site: not editorsink.com, but "editorsink.net". In fact, the "editorsink.com" website is ranked lower than the Yahoo category page that includes a link to editorsink.com. Judging by the broken links and outdated information (one EI Web Promotion blurb talks about optimizing metatags, which most search engines completely ignore due to the ease with which they can be falsified by search-engine optimizers). I'd guess that the proprietors have all moved onto other things; maybe their rankins were a little better when they had fresher information online -- but I have seen on content of any value on the writersink.com or the EI Web Promotions website -- only marketing blurbs posted elsewhere that point inwards. We can see now how little that strategy yields.

My little investigation supports the basic idea that the best way to attract lots of people to your website is to put up lots of low-bandwitdth stuff that lots of people want to find. Once you've got that audience, I leave it up to the entrepreneurs and visionaries to figure out how to make an honest buck without driving away too many freeloaders (who might eventually otherwise turn into customers). But most of us who write online are content merely to have an audience. (Welcome freeloaders!)

"So how do you determine whether your writing is clear? Simple: let someone else read it—preferably someone from your target audience. Don't rely on your own intuition. Because you know what you meant to say, you'll likely be blind to any ambiguity that has crept in. What you meant to say doesn't matter—all that matters is what you wrote. Here's a sentence written by the CEO of a now-defunct Web-development company who relied on his own intuition to affirm its clarity:

Our method provides the flexible integration points required for working on complex system integration projects where effective deployment and engagement with specialized vendors is critical.

"Had he asked others to read this before he published it, perhaps someone would have told him it was a mess of corporate blather. But he didn't. He knew what he meant, and that was good enough for him." Kathy Henning --Take the Fat out of Your Writing (Harvard Business School: Working Knowledge)

I really like this model -- Harvard Business School is publishing articles on career development. The general public gets access to free information, which raises the profile of Harvard Business School, benefiting the existing students and attracting new ones.

Is that company really defunct? A quick Google search turns up the same text on a website called Vertebrae:

Our method provides the flexible integration points required for working on complex system integration projects where effective deployment and engagement with specialized vendors is critical.

A little further exploration on Vertebrae's site reveals that the author of the "Take the Fat" article is also listed as the media contact for Vertebrae. So I guess that explains it.

Is this an ugly page, or what? The grey shading makes the text all but unreadable, on both my laptop's LCD and my desktop's CRT. (Not that I would actually register for Salon... just wanted to clear that up.)
--Salon Registration: Ugly Text

"The Chinese government, fiercely vigilant when it comes to any manifestation of press freedom, are learning this lesson the hard way with regard to the viral condition known as SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. It used to be thought that in China, the only way of confirming if a story was true was if the state-owned press had already emphatically and categorically denied it. The belief persists." David Stanway --SARS in a Wilderness of Mirrors (Butterflies and Wheels)

A few hours ago, I got an e-mail from somebody named Kelvin Law:

The worst is over for Hong Kong with SARS, the number of cases is on the way down, and the number of recovered people discharged from hospital significantly outnumbered new cases. I hope very soon you will have confident again to come over to visit, to shop and or to open up the 1.2 billion people market here for your products.

I don't know about you, but this e-mail does absolutely nothing to boost my confidence about the ability of China's leadership to control SARS (which seems of late to be gaining ground in the copyediting battle against "Sars").

I imagine I got that message because a long time ago I used to participate in a listserv devoted to teaching English to international audiences (because the engineering school where I used to work had more than half of its students who had learned English as a foreign language). I get periodic invitations to submit proposals to academic conferences in China. As fun as that might be, with 2 small children at home and a career track that rewards teaching instead of globe-trotting, I've had to prioritize lately.

Neil McIntosh separates the tiny mite of truth from the wishful thinking that led Andrew Orlowski to announce that Google would solve the blogging noise "problem" by removing weblogs from its main search tab. --The Blog Clog Myth (Guardian)

Yet another example of the difference between journalism and academic research. Journalists, in their noble and important efforts to communicate complex subjects to a broad audience of non-specialists, often get basic facts wrong -- the kind of mistakes that peer-readers are supposed to catch in articles submitted to academic journals. But building a whole news item on a stretched point of interpretation, and not checking with sources to confirm the stretch, is not good journalistic practice. Where is Mr. Orlowski's editor, and why isn't Orlowski simply posting his opinions on a weblog -- where the ethical standards of journalism don't apply?

"A debate is a contest between adversaries, and only one can win. An essay is more like a foray into a partly mapped landscape in the company of others who are seeking the same endpoint that you are seeking--the truth, or at least a truth." Tina Blue --Don't Get Emotionally Attached to Your Own Opinion (Teacher, Teacher)

"When my children were in junior high, students who maintained a 4.0 average all year were rewarded at the end of the year with a '4.0 pizza party': they got out of one hour of class to go outside and eat a slice of pizza and drink a can of soda....No parades, no full-color photos in the newspaper, no mention on the local newscast that evening--all rewards routinely given to successful student-athletes. Just a slice of tepid pizza and a can of pop."

On a college football player whose teammates derided him for loving poetry:

"He would glare at them and mutter obscenities as he lumbered up to drop yet another unrequired essay on my desk, and they would howl and guffaw and slap their desks at this poor fool who was studying poetry as if it actually mattered. At six foot five and 285 pounds, this student was a mountain of a man. But under the relentless teasing of his teammates, he would hunch down and pull in, trying to shrink and disappear to escape their notice." Tina Blue --It's Stupid to Be Smart (Teacher, Teacher)

From the tens of millions of consumer reviews posted on retail giants like Amazon.com to the more specialized message boards of Motorcycle.com and Macaddict.com, Piersall estimated that 80 percent of all human discourse now takes the form of product reviews on the web.

While some online reviewers give little more than basic pros-and-cons of a product or a one- to five-star rating, many use the write-ups as a vital means of self-expression, providing in-depth anecdotes about their own experiences with a particular product, or even their autobiography. --Majority of Human Discourse Now Occuring in Online Product Reviews (The Onion)

Spot-on social satire. Four and a half stars.

"Blogs are one big fat op-ed section for the news organizations out there. Thanks to the ethics of linkage (crediting sources — a polite grace learned from orthodox journalism and years of compiling footnotes and bibliographies for term papers in high school and college) and of Google's PageRank algorithms, the blogosphere is a vast watershed of credit-giving: an authority-granting system of a high order.|It is vastly dumb, given this situation, for the newspapers to continue hiding their stories and archives from search engines. The cost in lost authority far outweighs the benefits in selling those archives for $2.95 (or whatever) per story." Doc Searls --Printwash (Doc Searls)

Especially notable is Doc's response to Orlowski's rant on "googlewashing".

"Live web cam video from the dentist office." --DentCam (Pearly Whites)

"Can no clock chip designer figure out that no one needs to get up at exactly 6:03? If they just allowed the alarm sequence to go forward in five minute increments, instead of one minute increments, they would improve our lives immeasurably....The complexity of other people's screens, particularly that of new users, who leave everything open everywhere, often leads observers to conclude that something must be done to take control of their screens and clean them up, by putting everything away neatly. No! Many people work well in clutter." Bruce Tognazzini --Multiple Mistakes Drown Interface (Ask Tog)

Is Tog back for good? I hope so!

Progress: Since its inception almost 30 years ago, the internet has been transformed from a primitive device for sharing thoughts and ideas, into a massive network where people pay to connect and read advertisements they don't want, while calling each other "asshats". --History of the Internet (The Lemon)

I presume "The Lemon" is a takeoff on "The Onion".

"This video was uploaded to humiliate an awkward and overweight computer geek. But the truth is, he's not too different than many of us (were) in 10th grade. I was furious at the hypocritical comments being posted to my site ... all these geeks and dorks were trashing one of their own.... I'm hoping he records a sequel." Andy Baio, quoted in Leander Kahney's article.
--Blog Bucks Aid Laughingstock Kid (Wired)

I posted this Friday to KairosNews:

Several years ago, a student in one of my tech writing classes needed a bit of extra credit, so I asked her to write up a set of tips on e-mail etiquette. I've modified and expanded it since then, and now it's one of the most popular pages on my website. Today I found that an e-mail marketing company has reproduced the text of that handout, re-branded it, changed the title, removed our names from the top, and left them in very small type at the bottom.|I'm flattered, of course... and it's not actually plagiarism -- though I certainly feel my intellectual property is being misused. What should I do? What would YOU do?

--Worse than a Plagiarist.. a SPAMMING Plagiarist! (KairosNews)

"When I wrote in one story about 'bloody street fighting in Baghdad,' it appeared the morning TV viewers were seeing jubilant Marines and Iraqi civilians tearing down statues of Saddam Hussein on the eastern side of the Tigris River. Some readers, believing all of Baghdad was like that, were livid. They did not grasp the fact that, on the western side of the river, pitched battles were still taking place. Because they did not see it on TV, it was not happening. And it did not fit their view of the war." Ron Martz --Embed Catches Heat: TV Sanitized the Iraq Conflict, But a Paper Gets the Hate Mail  (Editor and Publisher)

In response to an older blog entry, Michael Turton e-mails me:

You are correct in saying the truth will not come out. If you look at the first site above, the anti-protester site, and scroll down, you'll see a picture of an Iraqi in a B&W striped shirt kissing a soldier. Look down further at the pictures and see who is in the center of the statue wrecking party.

That event was staged, my friend. The B&W striped kisser made the cover of USN&WP kissing one soldier, and Newsweek kissing another. He's probably one of the Iraqi freedom fighters shipped in prior to the taking of Baghdad.

Whatever the truth about the photo in question, it's abundantly clear that those who relied only upon TV for their understanding of the war are getting a flashy, shallow package. But that's true of any TV news product.

"The hunter-gatherers whose genetic make-up we inherit devoted all their energies to getting food. Labour, danger, stress and companionship attended their provisioning. Having secured their meal through their shared hardship, it is hardly surprising if our ancestors consumed it in a common ceremony, with rejoicing, affection, and gifts to the gods. | That experience of food lies buried within us, and the species-memory of it will influence our conduct however much we wish to grow out of our genes." Roger Scruton --Eating the world: the philosophy of food  (openDemocracy)

I'm not actually very interested in food. For lunch I tend to choose foods that I can eat with one hand that won't make crumbs on my keyboard as I surf and blog. If I could take a pill instead of eat real food, I probably would.

"As technological utopians, they believe that everything will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds, if technology is modelled on the American dream and the American way. And as opinion formers, they claim no formal power base, operating instead by linking exhaustively to one another.|Fortunately for them, in the hyperlinked world it is not necessary to airbrush dissenters out of the group photograph. You can simply wait for Google's PageRank to promote the ideas the A-list find acceptable and linkworthy to the top of the page, while the websites of apostates disappear below the fold and out of history." Bill Thompson continues the anti-blogging backlash, which seems to be gaining momentum.

--Blog Eats Blog (Spiked Online)

Thompson suggests the term "blogeoisie" (bloj-wah-zee) to refer to the A-list bloggers whose favor (and linkage) rules the blogosphere.

"In the study, teens who had no cell phones and whose numbers were not included in someone's phone book could pretty much write off the possibility of speaking with any of the teens with cell phones, a group Blinkoff refers to as 'mobiles.' | While saying he didn't think the cell-phone-toting teens were intentionally acting rude, he said he suspects that a new kind of 'digital divide' has been created, similar to the gap among PC haves and have-nots." Elise Batista --She's Gotta Have It: Cell Phone  (Wired)

"It may still be a man's world. But it is no longer, in any way, a boy's. From his first days in school, an average boy is already developmentally two years behind the girls in reading and writing. Yet he's often expected to learn the same things in the same way in the same amount of time. While every nerve in his body tells him to run, he has to sit still and listen for almost eight hours a day. Biologically, he needs about four recesses a day, but he's lucky if he gets one, since some lawsuit-leery schools have banned them altogether. Hug a girl, and he could be labeled a 'toucher' and swiftly suspended -- a result of what some say is an increasingly anti-boy culture that pathologizes their behavior.... Now, in every state, every income bracket, every racial and ethnic group, and most industrialized Western nations, women reign, earning an average 57% of all BAs and 58% of all master's degrees in the U.S. alone. There are 133 girls getting BAs for every 100 guys -- a number that's projected to grow to 142 women per 100 men by 2010..." Michelle Conlin --The New Gender Gap: From kindergarten to grad school, boys are becoming the second sex (Businessweek)

This story starts out with an alarmist tone that is designed to get the reader riled up -- so read it with care. It does settle down and become more balanced. But anyone who can look at these stats and say "It's about time men paid for what they did to women for centuries" is completely missing the point.

"Linguists estimate that there are 6,809 'living' languages in the world today, but 90 per cent of them are spoken by fewer than 100,000 people, and some languages are even rarer – 46 are known to have just one native speaker....By applying the same principles used to classify the risk to birds and mammals, Professor Sutherland demonstrated that languages were subject to similar forces of extinction." Steve Connor --Alarm Raised on World's Disappearing Languages Independent (Via Common Dreams))

Fascinating connection between language and nature. Thanks for pointing it out, Jim.

"Officials of past Democratic and Republican administrations marvel at how the White House does not seem to miss an opportunity to showcase Mr. Bush in dramatic and perfectly lighted settings. It is all by design: the White House has stocked its communications operation with people from network television who have expertise in lighting, camera angles and the importance of backdrops." Elisabeth Bumiller --Keepers of Bush Image Lift Stagecraft to New Heights (NY Times -- will expire.)

Thanks for the link, Beth Ann.

"Often, when information goes through a formal marketing or PR process, the end result is an attractive, expensive, stale, diluted document written in corporate speak. This result is generally due to the processes that evolved to accommodate the costs and standards of print technology, rather than to the incompetence or malevolence of corporate communicators. The edge, the authenticity, and the voice of the professional speaking to his fellow professionals is lost.|Blogs offer the human voice that can be loud, controversial, and even wacky." Todd Brehe --Adapting Blog Technologies to Corporate e-Newsletters (Opt-In News)

Blogging is the new black, as they say in the fashion world. But I praise anyone who criticizes "corporate speak, " even though I think the problem is that administrators write to impress other administrators, just as geeks design for geeks, and small fuzzy creatures from Alpha Centauri flollop for small fuzzy creatures from Alpha Centauri.

Speaking of market-speak: I enjoyed the MetaFilter fisking of the BlogTalk website.

"Fugitives can best be recognized by their relaxed attitude during office hours. However much work they have to do at the office, it can't be any more stressful than what they have to deal with at home. Fugitives usually have at least one extremely comfortable chair in their office, and can occasionally be spotted sitting in that chair and staring off into space, just enjoying the peace and quiet." James M. Lang --Office-Hour Habits of the North American Professor (Chronicle)

I would have to say that, according to the taxonomy presented by this amusing article, I am definitely a fugitive. But instead of spending my lonely office hours reading, I blog.

"If your name is David Nelson you can expect to be hassled, delayed, questioned and searched before being allowed to board aircraft anywhere in the United States for the foreseeable future."

--David Nelson, Could You Step Aside for a Few Moments? (The Oregonian)

I have a David Nelson in one of my classes. This is really scary. And by "this" I do not mean having a David Nelson in one of my classes.

"What we can know, just by reading his blog, is that this Salam is up to no good. He is spreading "inside views" of the new Iraq, not only to the blogosphere, but directly among the journalists still encamped at the Meridian (formerly Palestine, formerly Meridian) hotel. Not the "embeds" who've gone home after remarkable learning experiences, but those "hacks" not yet transferred to the next breaking news story, and so still kicking around this mysterious city of Baghdad, trying to figure out what's happening without exposing themselves overmuch to danger.|And they lap it up...." David Warren --'Salam Pax' Plays Americans for Fools in Iraq (Ottawa Citizen)

Hmm. Now if Salaam Pax were to meet up with isabella v....

...and watching the fur fly sure is fun.

Paul Krugman (of the for-the-forseeable-future-always-to-be-associated-with-sloppy-reporting New York Times) wrote on Tuesday:

Neil Cavuto of Fox News is an anchor, not a commentator. Yet after Baghdad's fall he told "those who opposed the liberation of Iraq" — a large minority — that "you were sickening then, you are sickening now." Fair and balanced.

Cavuto quickly responded:

Look, I'd much rather put my cards on the table and let people know where I stand in a clear editorial, than insidiously imply it in what's supposed to be a straight news story. And by the way, you sanctimonious twit, no one -- no one -- tells me what to say. I say it. And I write it. And no one lectures me on it. Save you, you pretentious charlatan.

Journalists are Acting Like Bloggers (Literacy Weblog)

I'm interested in this exchange for several reasons. First, JawsBlog introduces Cavuto's response as a "fisking" -- even though Cavuto doesn't quote very much of Krugman's editorial. A fisking seems, then, to require a combination of using your opponent's words against him or her, particularly in disdainful attacks on the personal character or professional credibility of your opponent.

On another note... "shock and awe" is embedding itself in our public language, thogh the meaning is still fluid. Jim recently sent me a link to a speech in which Kurt Vonnegut uses ironic repetition to deflate the rhetorical power of "shock and awe." But Donald Luskin of the National Review uses the term like an old, reliable friend:

Paul Krugman took at shot at Cavuto in his Tuesday column in the New York Times — and Cavuto shot back with what can only be described as a generous serving of good old fashioned shock and awe.

The military imagery delivered by Fox and all the other news companies will be affecting our language and our culture in many ways.

"Yes, Neo has to save humankind. Yes, it is a job for the mind over computer-simulated matter. And yes, he is Jesus....There is no end to the biblical parallels that have been found. There are names like Trinity and Zion. There is a baptism and a betrayal. After a while though, the parallels start to get rather debatable, and more to the point nerdish.|But where the jury is really out is on the spiritual message of the film. What does The Matrix 'believe'?" Steven Tomkins --Forget Sci-Fi and Guns -- The Matrix is Really about Religion  (BBC)

Reviews of The Matrix Reloaded have been underwhelming, so I'll probably wait until it comes out on video. Lately I've only been motivated to get a sitter for the Lord of the Rings movies.

Update: This quote from the Wired review says all I need to hear: "It looks more like a high-end video game than a grandly cinematic kung fu battle. It'd be a blast to play, no doubt. But it isn't all that fun to watch."

"Despite the crash and the resulting disruption, more marriage licenses were granted in 2001 in San Francisco than any year prior. In Santa Clara County, more babies were born in 2002 than in any year of the boom, and house purchases have bounced back to near-record levels, despite the massive evaporation of wealth. The culture of shifting alliances and temporary agreements is out; permanence and settling down is in." Po Bronson --Life in the Bust Belt (Wired)

"It’s true that in the recent culture wars academics and journalists have often been at each others’ throats. But this very antagonism is now a sign of proximity rather than of distance. Whereas academics and journalists once disdained one another from afar, they now compete for preeminence in the common role of explaining the contemporary world....Bridging the gap between the discourse of students and teachers starts with the recognition that there is a continuum between the adolescent’s declaration that a book or film 'sucks' and the published reviewer’s critique of it." Gerald Graff --Higher Education as Popular Culture (U Chicago)

Via KairosNews.

"In 1987, Brown told Hunter and two dozen other first-graders at Brookfield Elementary School that she would put them through college if they graduated from high school. Four years ago, most of them did, with 19 enrolling in college.

On Saturday, Hunter became the first person in her family -- and the first from that first-grade class -- to earn a college degree, a bachelor's in accounting from Alcorn State University. And Hunter's beloved Miss Brown was there to see it..." --Struggle, Support, Sheepskin: Oral Lee Brown's 1st-graders Reach for Finish Line (SF Gate)

I've often blogged my complaints about the system that prepares my incoming freshmen, so its only fair to mention when somebody is doing something right.

Oral Lee Brown is a hero in my book -- I'd much rather hear her opinion on any subject under the sun, instead of listening to random music stars, supermodels, actors, sports figures, or talk show hosts.

Brenda Laurel's Purple Moon computer games aimed for the tween girl market. Her book Utopian Entrepreneur is excellent -- I'll certainly use it in an upcoming media course at Seton Hill. Here's a choice quote from the Stanford talk:

1. We covered a truck in pink fuzzy material. Boys didn't go for it. Pink fuzzy overrides truckness.
2. We took a diary and put some bulletholes in it and labeled it "War Journal". No go. Diariness overrides warness.

--Brenda Laurel at Stanford (GameGirlAdvance.com)

"Today, students who come to a campus with Spider-Man on their minds may have trouble believing it, but they share the superhero with middle-aged professors. For, in our scholarly lives, many of us are not just harking back to distant memories of the Marvel comics of our childhoods, but creating a new scholarship on the comic book and the comic strip." Paul Buhle --The New Scholarship of Comics (Chronicle)

"A high school teacher could be out of a job in a dispute over a personal web site he created before he was hired by a western Pennsylvania school district...The Grove City Area School District placed music teacher and assistant band director Dan Konnen, 24, of Hermitage, Pa., on an unpaid suspension in March when students found his personal web site, which contains jokes about genitalia and scatological references extracted from the controversial Comedy Central cartoon series South Park, as well as other sources." --School Board: Teacher'sPersonal Web Site is Grounds for Dismissal  (eSchool News)

The teacher created the site in 1997, when he would have been -- what, about 19? I did plenty of stupid things when I was 19, but I didn't publish them on the Internet. I think Konnen showed extremely poor judgement leaving this content on his website -- if I were him I'd have removed it during his job-search phase, or at the very least posted it under an alias.

Konnen was incredibly naive to think that 1) nobody would ever find his material, or 2) that it wouldn't matter if it was found. The teacher's union is defending his right to freedom of speech, and there is no indication that he spent his workday fiddling with his website (ahem... that stack of papers is calling me...). The offensive material appears to be mostly quotations taken from the South Park TV show, which means the teacher wasn't even creative enough to get himself fired by inventing his own offensive material. That's gotta hurt.

Usability note: on the eSchoolNews website, half the screen is taken up with an annoying and distracting plea to register. I suppose that's better than forcing you to register before showing you the story.

--Open Anarchy or Closed Dictatorship: Methods of Producing Collaborative Teaching Texts (KairosNews)

I won't be blogging much today, not only because of exams, but because I'll be contributing instead to this online conference session.

Update: Will writes, "I'm greatly amused that you wrote 'I won't be blogging much today...' on your weblog. Notice that it's the 6th entry in the 7 entries dated today. :-)"

My name is Dennis, and I'm a blogaholic.

Sheila Webber blogs thus: "Lowe, who teaches in the Media Department of Thames Valley University, describes how he simulates a breaking news story by using email, audio and video tapes. The students have to put together a story and reflect on the experience. Variations on the exercise, including using the internet to search for background stories, are suggested at the end of the case study." --The Breaking Story: Creating a dynamic learning environment for journalism students (PDF) (Via Information Literacy Weblog)

I'll have to take a closer look at this as I start putting together my journalism courses for Seton Hill University. It reminds me of the premise for several online interactive fiction stories, such as Online Caroline and Majestic.

The too-stupid-to-be-true-iLoo turns out not to be a hoax after all:

"We jumped the gun basically yesterday in confirming that it was a hoax, and in fact it was not," said Lisa Gurry, MSN group product manager. "Definitely, we're going to be taking a good look at our communication processes internally."

It's a public relations embarrassment for a company famous for micromanaging news releases, interviews and promotional events.

--Microsoft: iLoo No Hoax After AllAP)

What next... will the Iraqi information minister be spotted emerging from an iLoo, and will he announce to the assembled reporters that the iLoo doesn't exist?

"When lawmakers and companies fight spam, they're not up against teenage hobbyists and pranksters. They face thousands of pros like Shiels, who have high-tech tools and an immense network of knowledge that is difficult to overcome." Jeffrey Kosseff --Confessions of a Former SpammerOregon Live)

"Every once in a while, in order to remind myself of the quality of information typically reported, I trace down the source of a particularly ridiculous story. The 'Klingon Language Interpreter' myth, which is spawning now, provides an amusing case study of the process of pack journalism." Seth Finklestein --Klingon Language Interpreter Story DebunkedKuro5hin)

See also the truth about the Microsoft iLoo.

Update: Apparently the iLoo is true after all.

"grandtextauto is about computer mediated and computer generated works of many forms, including interactive fiction, net.art, electronic poetry, interactive drama, hypertext fiction, computer games of all sorts, and shared virtual environments. The discussion, by people who all work as both theorists and developers in these forms, considers questions of authorship, design, and technology, as well as issues of interaction and reception." --grandtextautoGrandTextAuto.org)

A new communal blog, kept by Michael Mateas, Nick Montfort, Stuart Moulthrop, Andrew Stern, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. This one is going into my blogroll right away. One hopes that the activity in the comments section, spurred by the contributioins of the co-bloggers, will be as much of an attraction as the main log.

"But I still feel sorry for Blair Hornstine. Because all the hard work and courage it took to get where she is will forever be eclipsed by what she's come to represent: A system that's gone so far to level the playing field that it's created a culture of entitlement instead of gratitude.|A society that seeks redress of every slight in a lawsuit, no matter how frivolous. A culture in which young people are groomed to be so competitive that they value advantage over everything else.|And because of that, Blair Hornstine is now an object of ridicule rather than a role model worthy of well-earned respect." Jill Porter reflects on the high school student, already accepted by Harvard, who sued to prevent the school board from naming someone else co-valedictorian. --For Blair, It's Victory She Can't Really SavorPhiladelphia Daily News)

As I write this, my freshman comp students are writing a final exam in which they take a stand on how grading has impacted their education. My guess is that Blair Hornstine has learned quite a lot about grading, but little about the real world. Let's hope that Harvard really does dish her up a challenge that will cause this little Veruca ("I want an Ooompaloompa!") Salt to grow, rather than cause her turn to litigation to get what she wants.

"His tools of deceit were a cellphone and a laptop computer -- which allowed him to blur his true whereabouts -- as well as round-the-clock access to databases of news articles from which he stole." --Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of DeceptionNY Times)

Jayson Blair demonstrated talent that many junior high schoolers are developing -- the ability to assemble bits and pieces culled from different sources into what looks like a coherent narrative. People who do this are bound to make mistakes. In Mr. Blair's case, the mistakes cost him a promising career at a respected institution.

"Google is to create a search tool specifically for weblogs, most likely giving material generated by the self-publishing tools its own tab...." Andrew Orlowski trolls bloggers by taking a tidbit from a Reuters article from last Monday and gleefully spinning another anti-weblogging story. --Register to Fix Orlowski Noise Problem?  (Register)

Under the subheading "Unearned Reputations," Orlowski refers to "blog-infested Google results." Perhaps I don't search for the same things that Orlowski searches for... but I've never noticed that blogs crowd out more useful results. In fact, since bloggers tend to point to (and comment on) sources that they themselves find useful and noteworthy, I'm generally happy to run across a good content blog.

Orlowski does usefully remind us that Google is not perfect, is not omnisicient, and does not replace human expertise. Orlowski is the voice that whispers "Remember Caesar, thou art mortal" even as the throngs bow before him. But Orlowski can't stand on his own balcony and shout those words -- he'd need to whisper it into the ear of each individual blogger out there who casts a vote by posting a link. Since the only thing bloggers agree on is that blogging is cool, I don't think the rest of the world is going to suffer due to the efforts of webloggers to help filter the mass of information in cyberspace.

At any rate, Evhead gets the credit for the "Orlowski Noise Problem" quip.

"After many painful review meetings, and hearing advice from seasoned designers, I learned the right way to present ideas - you have to show the other candidates in order to help support the good ones. I began the habit of presenting three to seven different ideas, culling from my total set of ideas the ones that represented the most distinctive or meaningful choices. When in a meeting I now walk through the different designs, calling out what the key trade-offs are between them. When discussing ideas, I call out important negative qualities that are only answered by the idea I'm recommending, which helps set up my recommendation to be well received. Often someone will make a good suggestion for taking something from design A and adding it to design B. That wouldn't be possible if I had only fleshed out a single idea." Scott Berkun --Why Good Design Comes from Bad Design (UI Web)

This is excellent advice, applicable not only to design and to communication in the buisness world, but also to any kind of argument. Just as a painter who wants to paint light needs to put a lot of dark in the picture for contrast, anyone who is advancing a particular idea needs to be able to present the opposing view (or several opposing views). If you neglect the opposing argument (reducing it to a straw man, or omitting it entirely), you aren't doing a good job presenting your own argument.

"Western medicine is a war against disease, and the immune response is the first line of defence.... A world of molecules and cells becomes a battlefield, complete with alerts, invaders, recruitment and mobilisation, search-and-destroy missions and natural-born killers.... Medical school textbooks and immunologists' research papers are imbued with the same ideas. They are so central to the discipline that their use often passes unnoticed.... | David Napier is worried about all this." Jon Tunney reviews A. David Napier's The Age of Immunology --Siege Mentality: The Language used by Immunologists... (Guardian)

"Six key factors have led to children watching less Saturday morning cartoons: more recreational sports, the introduction of cable and satellite TV, the Internet and video games, a poorer quality of animation, and a greater emphasis on family time." *Gerard Raiti* --The Disappearance of Saturday Morning (Animation World Magazine)

An excellent paper, written by an undergraduate student and published in a general-interest magazine.

This article makes a lot of sense to me. I recall one summer when my sister and I would get up at 6:30 am to watch "Star Blazers." On a related note, I remember that great movies such as "The Wizard of Oz" and "Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang" and "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" would be aired on TV once a year. The promotions would start a week or more in advance, and the next day everyone in school would be singing the songs or role-playing the characters. Because I own copies of each of those movies, my son can watch them on demand. I'd much rather that he ask to watch a particular movie that he's in the mood for, rather than have him sit in front of the TV and watch whatever happens to be on.

"Police found another away message on Lucien's account on March 20 that also said he could provide alcohol. Part of the text of the message read: 'U wanna drink?... U tell me what u want, gimme the cash, and I'll get you the bottles like lickety split, yo.' The message included his room number, police reports show." --Alleged Instant Message Offered Liquor to Minors (Centre Daily Times)

Who would have imagined that some totally uncool adult would know how to follow up on an IM away message? Some young people are stunned and amazed when authority figures intrude upon "their" electronic space.

"The reporter interviewed someone from 'fedayeen saddam' he said that he is in Mosul to 'kill the Americans and kill anybody who does not fight the Americans', there in one short sentence you have the whole situation in Basra, and most probably many Iraqi cities, explained." Salaam Pax is back, with a backlog of blogs written during the Coaliation assault on Baghdad. He describes elation at being finally free of Saddam, but reminds us that "War sucks big time. Don’t let yourself ever be talked into having one waged in the name of your freedom." --A Post from Baghdad StationWhere is Raed?)

"Writing requires quiet and reflection, and that’s something that quite scares most people anymore. They’ll do almost anything to avoid being alone with their own thoughts. | It also takes a familiarity, a facility, with the written language which many people lack because they’ve never learned to read very well, if at all.... I’ve had people protest that 'it’s just wrong' to say that some words are more important than others." Craig Russell

--Liberate LiteracyStrike The Root)

Another good suggestion from Jim.

"Myst is not a novel or a feature film, it is instead a different sort of creation whose nearest non-electronic relative may be diorama. Any approach to this work must take account of this fundamental difference from familiar forms. World matters more here than characters or conflict, and in Myst the world is suffused with, if not entirely given over to interface. Objects exist to orient us or point our way, or they present themselves, in the case of valves, switches, doors, and such, for active engagement. Unlike in print or cinema, successive presentations of the text are elicited through feedback (as in Aarseth's concept of "cybertext"), by selecting or manipulating an item in the current view. | Yet for all its valuable insights (to which this brief summary does not do justice) Johnson's commentary on Myst also represents a fairly obvious misreading." Stuart Moulthrop

--Misadventure: Future Fiction and the New Networks (Style via Moulthrop)

Moulthrop's cogent, respectful, thoughtful response to another author's misreading of interactive fiction demonstrates that he is not only intelligent and polite, but also clearly appreciates and understands the differences between literary hypertexts (a form he helped pioneer) and more mainstream modes of computer-mediated entertainment.

Some recent comments by Matt Kirschenbaum praising the efforts of amateur interactive fiction scholars and curators are also very encouraging to read. (See sections three and four from my Annotated Bibliography of Interactive Fiction Scholarship.)

"No doubt the English language, which survived "groovy," is sturdy enough to withstand this. | But are the kids? | If they don't learn how to use the written word to communicate the kind of complex concepts that the colonists wanted to convey to King George, they may well find themselves speechless when the course of human events demands eloquence."

--rite ths dwn: Techno shorthand is turning the magic of fine writing into a lost artArizona Republic)

While this editorial does rise above the usual curmudgeonly hand-wringing that laments what "the kids" are up to, and while as a writing teacher I, too, cringe when I encounter informal writing in a formal context, I have yet to encounter a student who is incapable of switching to a more formal mode when the situation requires it. In my experience, students who are used to typing thoughts off the top of their heads need a lot more practice in pre-writing (including research) and heavy revision (rather than focusing on making the green and red wavy lines disappear from their MS-Word documents).

Just as the arrival of the automobile threatened the trade of horseshoeing but opened up a huge new realm of possibilities, I think that students who grow up socializing on IM develop the ability to think on their feet, react quickly to changing situations, multitask, and do all sorts of other things that were really hard for our ancestors to learn while scratching out their lessons in their log cabins.

Teachers need to adjust their methods, in order to draw upon the strengths that our students bring with them into the classroom.

"I was in an ideal location at an observatory in Hampshire, England, where in the pale light of the pre-dawn, I gathered with a few other enthusiasts to watch the event. | A transit of Mercury is a rare thing. These days it is of no great scientific importance, but it is fascinating to watch nonetheless as an example of the "clockwork" of the Solar System." David Whitestone
--The World Watches MercuryBBC)

"Okay, now the big question: Do we turn this student in? (has anyone already?) I think the idea of having your work reviewed by a large viewing public is cool, especially if it helps enforce better scholarly standards. That is one thing no one ever mentions when they talk about online journals--the ease with which shoddy academic work can be exposed." EMason

[A student posts a history of videogames. An impressed reader posts it to KairosNews, where I find it and begin quibbling with a few minor details. Then, I stumble across long passages that I recognize from another website. Thanks to Google, the plagiarism is easily exposed. What happens now?

P.S. The student's domain name is "StupidMike".

Update: Rosemary Frezza found what appears to be the curricular web page for this assignment, which includes the following quote: "You will be able to explain the societal and ethical implications of this technology... Research skills will be developed through topic definition and finding of graphical and sound files". She also supplies the URL for the professor's teaching philosophy page, which includes the following quote: "develop individuals who take responsibility for their actions in independent as well as in group learning, and further, in society". I wonder how this will play out.--DGJ] --Online Plagiarism Spotted: What to Do?KairosNews)

"Infogrames bought the right to the Atari name when it bought toy maker Hasbro's Hasbro Interactive division. Hasbro got it from JTS in 1998. JTS, in turn, bought Atari in 1996. Before then, Atari had many owners, including AOL Time Warner, known as Warner Communications back then. Warner bought Atari in the early 1980s, splitting it into Atari Games and Atari Corp. in 1984. It retained the Games division, which produced arcade titles, and sold Atari Corp. to..." blah blah blah.

--Infogrammes Rechristens Itself AtariRegister/Reuters)

Pretty dry stuff, I know. The history of the Atari name bounces around like the famous square "ball" in "Pong". Reuters broke the story, but since that link will eventually die, I held off blogging it until now. In unrelated news, the Henson family has bought back the Muppets.

"I suppose from my perspective I don't really care what people think. If I say it's not fiction, then that's just part of the hoax. If I say it is, I'm just covering up to stay safe (both of these possibilities have been suggested). If I don't give details it's because this is an elaborate ruse. If I do then I'm an idiot for being so reckless (though this entire post-it-to-the-web endeavor is reckless).|I can't keep everyone happy, so I'll just write- as I have been. As for you, I don't know. Just read? Love, hate, enjoy, despise... whatever suits your fancy." "Isabella"

--She's a Flight Risk: To Flee... Or Not to Flee... To Tell... or Not to Tell...She's a Flight Risk)

Here's how this literary faux blog began:

"On March 2, 2003 at 4:12 pm, I disappeared. | My name is isabella v. | I'm twentysomething and I am an international fugitive. | My name is isabella v. But it isn't."

A pretty good read... it's obviously not a "real" weblog, because the long prose chunks are too well-digested to have been written in one sitting (though the blogger does suggest that these long chunks are excerpts from an existing work). Still, it's an amusing read.

"Hackers write cool software, and then write a paper about it, and the paper becomes a proxy for the achievement represented by the software. But often this mismatch causes problems. It's easy to drift away from building beautiful things toward building ugly things that make more suitable subjects for research papers. | Unfortunately, beautiful things don't always make the best subjects for papers....So why do universities and research labs continue to judge hackers by publications? For the same reason that 'scholastic aptitude' gets measured by simple-minded standardized tests, or the productivity of programmers gets measured in lines of code. These tests are easy to apply, and there is nothing so tempting as an easy test that kind of works." Paul Graham

--Hackers and PaintersPaulGraham.com)

I wouldn't consider myself a hard-core, full-fledged hacker, but I certainly invest a lot of time revising my existing battery of web pages to keep them current (for instance, I regularly update a set of pages on the York Cycle that were published in (Re)Soundings in 1997, and for two years after my IF bibliography was accepted for TEXT Technology, I continued to update it until it came out in print). As I move into my new career in new media journalism, I shall have to keep the wisdom of this article in mind.

"Hannas draws on a raft of data about Asian scientific research practices, technology piracy and graduate study abroad, all intended to show that Asians are brilliant imitators but poor innovators, adept at borrowing and improving on Western science but not so skilled at making advances themselves.... he cites a Japanese Nobel laureate in medicine, Susumu Tonegawa, who said, 'It is very clear that Japan is making money by taking and applying the fruits of science that the West creates at great expense.'|Yet Nathan Sivin, a professor of Chinese culture and the history of science at the University of Pennsylvania, said he was not impressed. 'That's nonsense,' he said." Emily Eakin reviews The Writing on the Wall: How Asian Orthography Curbs Creativity by William C. Hannas

--Writing as a Block for AsiansNY Times)

When I used to teach technical writing at the engineering school at the University of Toronto, where about a third of the students were first- or second-generation Chinese, I found the students to be very good at imitating models, but they struggled with any writing that asked them to show independent thought. But it wasn't just the Chinese students who had that difficulty -- the native English speakers also had that problem. I think it had more to do with the way the engineering school was set up.

Since it was arguably the top engineering school in Canada, the professors (many of whom were brilliant engineers, poor speakers of English and even worse teachers) used huge lecture classes to weed out those students who couldn't grasp the material on their own. The assignments the students were given in the first few years didn't require original thought, so the only way the students could learn was by watching the professor do equations on the board and then copying what they did. As a result, cheating (uh... I mean "answer sharing") was rampant, which meant that students were conditioned to expect that the way to get ahead was to memorize and spit back (or churn out on demand), rather than to theorize or innovate. One challenging writing assignment in a materials science class involved writing a memo that referred to the Leidenfrost effect (where a boiling droplet of liquid rides on an insulating cushion of vapor) to explain to an imaginary employer that there is no need to worry about the tank of liquid oxygen on the roof of a building; if the liquid were to spill out, it would not freeze the roof and damage it, but the vast majority of the liquid would simply slide right off the roof and into the rain gutters, where it would liquefy harmlessly. That assignment (created by my former colleage Robert K. Irish) not only asked the students to demonstate their knowledge of a materials science phenomenon, but it asked them to explain it to a non-expert. Simply spitting back the equations would not be enough.

Shortly before I left Toronto, I proposed to Rob the idea that we could modify a level of Quake (or some other FPS game) so that players had to investigate a building looking for evidence of structural decay, and then write a report based on their findings. Of course, to keep things interesting, the building in question would be infested by zombies with blowtorches. Now that would have been a fun assignment.

"Regardless of motive, the race to patent the SARS virus has revived the debate about the ethics of a pivotal U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1980 that cleared the way for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to award patents for living things, most notably individual human genes." --Researchers Race to Patent SARS VirusAP/Daily Press)

"Instead of firing hundreds of deadly .223-caliber bullets, the soldiers fired sponge-tipped rounds?40mm-wide canisters capped with green high- density foam, shot from rifle-mounted launchers. One of these hit the man who threw the rock at Brown. He screamed, threw his hands to his face, and bolted in the opposite direction. 'The nonlethal rounds achieved a tremendous effect: Everyone backed up immediately and settled down,' Brown recalls. 'By the rules of engagement, my soldiers could have chosen to shoot people. We would have had a very bloody day, and it would have had a terrible effect on everyone in Kosovo.'" Eric Adams

--Shoot to Not KillPopular Science)

It's tempting to wish that all American soldiers had such nonlethal weapons -- but would that soften what little reluctance we in the U.S. have for sending forces elsewhere to enforce peace? As Adams notes, "Nonlethal, after all, does not mean nonviolent." Would removing the reluctance soldiers have for firing on civilians mean that civilians would be fired upon (non-lethally) more frequently, and for increasingly mundane reasons?

If nonlethal weapons got in the hands of criminals (most of whom would probably pefer to steal, and only kill when something goes wrong with their plan), how would that change the way in which crimes are prosecuted?

Incidentally, the title is an excellent example of when it is probably acceptable to split an infinitive.

"Through the interlocked network of weblogs, information can spread like wildfire. Very few blogs have a large audience - the largest, Instapundit, attracts only some tens of thousands of readers. But the network of weblogs forms a set of interlocking communities, so that on the whole, a new idea or a link to a new article can move very quickly. What's even more significant is that these ideas and links will only propogate to those parts of the network where the information is of the most interest. The weblog community is therefore a highly efficient filtering community..." Stephen Downes --More Than Personal: The Impact of WeblogsAfter 5)

"The facilitator wasn’t giving up on her blame-the-white-Republicans theme, however. 'But why should we have to go to prison to get help?' she asked petulantly. The sex convict stood his ground. 'I was one of those that got rescued,' he replied. 'I was raised twisted: raping women, stealing?that was normal. I had to go to prison to educate myself. I needed that, because my decisions are not always the right decisions.' | I heard this honest self-appraisal again and again, suggesting that the biggest risk in some prison programs is that the offenders will absorb the worldview of the providers." Heather MacDonald

--How to Straighten Out Ex-ConsCity Journal)

A provocative essay that challenges views widely promoted in the media and widely believed by the public.

"The 3-year-old website offers dozens of love letter templates covering various aspects of relationships, including love at first sight, Internet courtship, apologies, long-distance, drifting apart, breakups and even secret romances. | Subscribers to the site, who pay an annual rate of $40, can download a letter, add their own personal touches and send it to their special someone who's none the wiser." Jenn Shreve

--Cyrano at Your Lovelorn Service Wired)

Here's a sample:

"If we were eels would we migrate together? I envision us intertwined riding the Gulf stream across the cool oceanic depths, a slipknot, a caduceus wand, writhing our way aloft on our private eddy of warmth."

Uh... sure. If you don't have an ounce of romantic blood in your veins, you can buy some words, and your partner will never know. This is the "Cliffs Notes Guide to Relationships." Does the market exist because so many young people used similar shortcuts to get through all their English lit and writing courses? Why should I tax my brain struggling with that question -- I'll just buy a copy of the "Cliffs Notes Guide to Being a Writing Teacher" and copy the answer.

"The drill follows a similar exercise three years ago that focused on how well authorities would respond to the release of a deadly disease like smallpox, and whether putting entire cities under quarantine would lead to national panic. | But that drill came a year before the attacks of September 11. This exercise is intended to test how well the nation responds to a much more deadly terrorist attack, one involving nuclear and biological weapons." Nick Simeone

--US Prepares for Large-Scale Terrorism DrillVoice of America)

This massively-multiplayer real-world role-playing scenario is scheduled for May 12.

"Today, United States district court judge, Florence-Marie Cooper, will hear the latest arguments in one of the most drawn out cases in show business legal history. On the result of the case hang billions of dollars in revenue for Walt Disney Co in what has become the case of the Mouse - Disney's nickname in the business, from its own profitable four-legged creature - and the Bear."

--Mouse Fights Back in Case of Bear of Little Brain but Billions of DollarsGuardian)

I've never particularly liked Mickey, so I don't really care; but the way Disney has co-opted Pooh is... well... a bother.

Visualizing huge numbers can be very difficult. People regularly talk about millions of miles, billions of bytes, or trillions of dollars, yet it's still hard to grasp just how much a "billion" really is. The MegaPenny Project aims to help by taking one small everyday item, the U.S. penny, and building on that to answer the question: "What would a billion (or a trillion) pennies look like?"

--The MegaPenny ProjectKokogiak)

Wow... extremely entertaining to move gradually from a familiar scale to a gigantic one. When does your brain boggle?

"'Have you ever noticed how much Hillary Clinton looks like [Star Trek's] Nurse Chapel?!!!' Beagle, our ironically-named gopher, was dispatched to find photo evidence. When it came back there was sure, incontrovertable proof of the rightness of this designation."

--BILL AND..... HILLARY!Astrea)

Rosemary Frezza writes: "I saw a picture of Nurse Chapel from the animated series and thought of Hilliary Clinton. Then I did a search and found this." My life has meaning once more.

"For more than a decade, the consumer electronics and technology industries have awaited the collision of media that would bring television, the computer, the video-game console and the stereo into one tidy convergence box.|Turns out, we've been looking in the wrong place. Convergence has already happened -- inside the minds of kids who've grown up with both crayons and computer mice in their hands." Dawn C. Chmielewski

--For Kids, Media Convergence Just Seems NaturalMercury News)

When my son Peter was three, he came downstairs from his nap and found me playing an old copy of X Wing vs. Tie Fighter, and was entranced. When you chase an enemy fighter, you match speed by pressing the "enter" key. A few months later, we were playing tag at a social gathering, and when he got worried I was about to catch him, he turned around, punched an imaginary key, and shouted, "Enter! Enter!"

"Writing for the Web requires careful planning. Your content needs to fit well within the context of your website. When a reader finds your content, they need to be able to scan it quickly. That's what metadata is about. In order for your website to be found, you need to write for how people search." Gerry McGovern

--Writing for the Web Part 2McGovern.com)

Second of two parts. Haven't read it yet, but I liked part 1, so here you go.

"No there is no page here. There is no page within a hundred kilobytes of here. I am not worried. And neither should you be. In fact, as we speak, viruses are committing suicide outside the firewall of this server, and we encourage them to continue doing so."
--Error 404 -- File Not FoundBush World Tour)

"One of the first scientists I spoke to, a highly decorated nanochemist, confessed in the most forthright way that he felt he had been duped. It turned out that his candor was typical.|But these physicists were more than helpful. They were downright friendly. They often had to stop to explain concepts that were elementary to them, but obscure to me. Though they were talking down to me, they made generous efforts to make it look like they weren't....I find it significant that almost every humanist I've spoken to can easily summon up recollections of mean-spirited treatment at the hands of our own scholarly community." Leonard Cassuto

I find it significant that almost every humanist I've spoken to can easily summon up recollections of mean-spirited treatment at the hands of our own scholarly community." Leonard Cassuto

--A Humanist's Sojourn Among ScientistsChronicle)

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, I worked briefly writing press releases for the music department. When interviewing a faculty member about an upcoming performance, I asked all kinds of layman's questions about a particular piece that was to be performed; what was the occasion for which it was written, what was going on in history and culture at the time, what should a visitor listen for during the performance that was unique or unusual? After answering two or three such questions, the faculty member rolled her eyes and said, "Just put the name of the symphony in the paper. The people who really want to see it will come; the rest wouldn't get much out of coming anyway." Bear in mind this was a music teacher. But a year or two later, when I was writing press releases for U.Va.'s School of Engineering and Applied Science, a faculty member who was working on virtual reality goggles (this was in 1990 or 1991, so that was very cutting edge) took the time to demonstrate his work for me. When I asked him whether he spent a lot of his time giving demonstrations, he said that if he didn't say "no" most of the time, the lab would be completely tied up with giving demonstrations.

"To an amazing degree, the Baghdad-based press corps avoids writing about or filming the friendly dealings between U.S. forces here and the local population--most likely because to do so would require them to report the extravagant expressions of gratitude that accompany every such encounter. Instead you read story after story about the supposed fury of Baghdadis at the Americans for allowing the breakdown of law and order in their city." Jonathan Foreman --Bad Reporting in Baghdad: You Have No Idea How Well Things are GoingWeekly Standard)

"The Baltimore Sun essentially accused me of pretending to witness an incident of friendly fire in Kandahar, Afghanistan. When I explained that I had made an honest mistake in the heat of combat confusing that incident with another we videotaped in Tora Bora, the paper countered that there was no friendly fire incident in Tora Bora, according to the Pentagon." Geraldo Rivera

--Geraldo Rivera Has a Weblog?Roughpoint)

Regardless of whether this is supposed to be a weblog (as it was called on catch.com), and as the current site promises it will soon be, from what I see so far, Geraldo doesn't seem to 'get' the web. This site is made up of blocks of prose, chopped up into separate sections. A section entitled "What is this website about, and why," begins with a rambling anecdote: "When I was younger, I had no notion that I would spend 32 years as a reporter. With my parents' help and a partial scholarship..."

Didn't Geraldo learn about the inverted pyramid? The "statement of intent" for the website is broken up into four parts, and the website itself isn't even mentioned until the fourth section. It's as if he's so addicted to writing for TV, that he feels he has to tease his audience to keep their attention. "More coming up soon, after you click the 'next' button." Some parts appear in all caps, AS IF SHOUTING WILL MAKE MORE PEOPLE LISTEN TO HIM.

While Geraldo has a right to defend himself and publicize his side of things in the Tora Bora incident, and I think the blogosphere will be richer for his participation in it, I worry that the blog will look like the last few seasons of Roseanne, when the star's comic talent was completely overwhelmed by an irrepressible ego.

As they say in TV land, stay tuned for further developments...

"The decision to make the cafeterias into 'no pay zones' spread through the 40-acre complex like wildfire. Soon, the hungry patrons came running. 'It was chaos, wild, something out of a war scene,' said one Aramark executive who was present. 'They took everything, even the silverware,' she said. Another witness from U.N. security said the cafeteria was 'stripped bare.' And another told TIME that the cafeteria raid was 'unbelievable, crowds of people just taking everything in sight; they stripped the place bare.' And yet another astonished witness said that "chickens, turkeys, souffles, casseroles all went out the door (unpaid)."

--Food Fight: When the Food Workers Union stages an impromptu walkout at the U.N., the diplomats start looting for lunch and booze Time)

A famous scene from Dr. Strangelove was supposed to culminate in a food-fight, but it was cut because it would have hurt the smober tone of the movie. From now on, any fingers the U.N. points regarding the looting in Iraq will recall the U.N.'s looting of its own cafeterias. This sounds like it really should be from from The Onion. Unbelievable.

"What can one say to a writer who thinks he’s arguing for the existence of our very essence? Thanks, but, uh, your timing is bad? That you have the misfortune of living in a time of exponential technological growth, where miniaturization is colliding head-on with genetics, where technologies may so on have the potential to turn the world to dust in a matter of mere hours, but get over it? Where parents, of course, will want to genetically enhance their children as soon as they’re safely able, as biologists Lee Silver and Gregory Stock have notably argued?" David Appell --Bill McKibben Spanks the FutureQuark Soup)

"What the heck is Jakob Nielsen doing goofing around with a lightsaber? Or is he conducting a useability [sic] study of it, perhaps?" filmgoerjuan

--Star Wars KidMetaFilter)

Be sure you watch the original first, and then the remix.

"Thanks to the forthcoming changes to the law on marriage, you will soon be able to 'tie the knot' wherever you wish..........YOU decide, we will provide a church for you !!"

--Inflatable ChurchInflatableChurch.com)

Words fail me.

First, take the survey; then read the results.

--Roper Geographic Survey 2002National Geographic)

An intersting tidbit: "Americans who reported that they accessed the Internet within the last 30 days scored 65 percent higher than those who did not."

"It's about making sure an employee is doing the job he was hired to do, not getting caught up in some overgrown, overly opinionated diary/hobby that unfairly treads on his association with his employer and has the potential to damage his employer's reputation." Eric Meyer --Meyer: Employers have Right to Ban BloggingCyberJournalist)

"To suggest, then, that a newspaper has the right to force a newsroom staffer to kill his weblog is tantamount to saying the newspaper has the right to prevent newsroom staffers from publishing any personal website, or perhaps even from posting comments to an online-news mailing list. Woe to ye who enters a newsroom -- you must remove yourself from all quarters of cyberspace. No pictures of the kids. No photos of your cat." J.D. Lasica --Lasica: Let Journalists Blog!CyberJournalist)

[An article I wrote on Vannevar Bush is second on the list of 23,800 hits. It's just a fluke, really -- the word "George" is in there because of hypertext theorist George Landow. But that's part of what makes it so amusing. Thanks for the chuckle, Elwyn. --DGJ

Update: Added vidcap.] --Who Blogs Better Than George Bush?Google via Microdoc)

"We studied several of the best bloggers and their styles. The best blogs, we found, are not those that actually get the most page views in a day, or that get the most links. In fact, the blogs that get the most links are the ones who find the best blogs and then point the best blogs out to the rest of the world." Elwyn Jenkins

--What Makes a Top Blogging Story?Microdoc News)

An interesting observation of the fact that some bloggers are influential because people link to what they write, and others are influential because they direct people offsite. Jenkins uses Roland Piquepaille as an example. When I compare Piquepaille's blog on ShapeTape with its source, Martin's article on ShapeTape, the reasons why I prefer the blog include the cleaner design of the blog page (no ads or busy graphics), the running commentary that introduces important excerpts from the source, the bold keywords, and the addition of the photo. Since Piquepalle has already highlighted the main points in a readable way, if I were interested in making a point about interface design, it would be less work for me to refer casually to Piquepalle rather than Martin's original article. Still, Piquepalle's post depends upon Martin's article, but Piquepalle also drives traffic to Martin's site, thereby supporting Martin's publisher (and Martin).

"The first federal antispam bill was introduced in 1997, and after six years of closed-door wrangling and repeated delays, Congress still has not acted. But consumer outrage and complaints from legitimate businesses have been keeping pace with the growth of bulk e-mail. Now it's open season on spam in Washington."Dellan McCullagh

--Lawmakers: It's Open Season on SpamNews.com)

While I get spam all the time, I just recently got one from a local business, so I reported it (politely) to the guy's service provider. It seems to me that a politician who would like to court the family values types who want to protect their innocent children from the evils of the Internet and also win support from the technoweenies who want to keep vultures and leeches from making money by nibbling away at our valuable time and attention on line would be smart to line up behind anti-spam regulations. Why has it taken so long, and is it just a way for politicians to appear hip to the new technology?

The Digital Revolution
Oh my goodness gracious,
What you can buy off the Internet
In terms of overhead photography!

A trained ape can know an awful lot
Of what is going on in this world,
Just by punching on his mouse
For a relatively modest cost!

-- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

--The Poetry of D. H. RumsfeldSlate)

An amusing compilation of quotes from Rumsfeld, formatted by Hart Seely to look like free verse.

"One could spend less time and money and gain employable skills in other ways. Too many people who do not really value learning or respect academic accomplishments are in college classrooms, and this cheapens the experience for everyone.... [O]nly go to college if you really want to become an educated person.|That means learning to use your intellect and engage in critical thinking in whatever discipline of study you undertake. If a good job happens to follow, that is good luck and wonderful. If not..." Carol Holden --What's Education Really For?The Pittsburgh Channel)