August 2003 Archive Page

Hadar, whose age wasn't available, and DeCrow, 49, went into Hubbards Cave in Glenwood Canyon on the afternoon of Aug. 24 with flashlights but no food or water, said DeCrow's daughter, Ramiah DeCrow. | Their flashlight batteries died and the pair couldn't find their way out, the daughter said. --Cave-Exploring Couple Nearly Eaten by Grues (Wired (AP))

I watched my mom -- a woman with three Master's degrees, in library science, comparative literature, and management and public policy; a woman who was fluent in French and German and did her Stanford undergraduate senior thesis on Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger -- lose her mind over the course of two years. She was 58.... [S]he had noticed her spelling getting worse because MS Word's spell-checker was catching more errors in her writing. --Mike Edwards --I Dreamed about Mama Last Night (Vitia)

Despite the fact that Dr Dennis Jerz professes to be quite knowledgeable in web page design, and in fact has taught classes about it, his own weblog front page suffers from a classic newbie mistake that one would not expect to see on a professional web site. Newbies at web page design often attempt to "do things the cool way", and when it doesn't work out quite right, insist on sticking with it simply because of the amount of work put into it and it's "coolness" factor. Dr Jerz recently decided to change from using tables for layout, the traditional and well established way to do web layout, to using a newer cascading style sheet layout on the front page of his weblog. Some of his users complained that they could no longer see his web page - for some reason, their browsers smushed his main page into a one character wide vertical line. So, to fix this compatibility problem, he gave the main section of his page a fixed width of 700px. Instead of the text gracefully wrapping itself to the size of the browser window, the text now leaves a really ugly white gap on the right hand side of his weblog. Even worse, on an 800x600 pixel display, a fairly common display setting in the web world, the right side of the text gets cut off which forces you to use the now present horizontal scroll bars to read his entries. In conclusion, after putting much time and effort into improving the front page of his weblog, Dr Jerz now has an uglier, less usable front page. Isn't changing technology great? -- Will GaytherProfessor claiming to teach 'web usability' makes classic mistake.E-mail)

I tried to do without the table in order to reduce the download time. Unless you give it a fixed width, the contents of a table don't display until the whole table has been downloaded. When you use CSS columns, the text starts displaying right away, and then the browser redraws it if necessary. When it worked, the page seemed to load a few seconds faster... but as several Mac users pointed out, the results were often chaotic.

Will is a former student who created the weblog software I use, so I'm more than happy to let him poke fun at me. He's absolutely right about how people (whether newbies or not) are reluctant to change things that they've worked hard on.

I'll just note that in the title he suggested for this blog entry, he used double quotes, which I had to change to single quotes because because otherwise the "preview" button will mangle all the data! :P

The special efforts made by schools to steer more girls into advanced math and science classes came after powerful advocacy groups embraced the problem. But Gurian and other advocates for boys say they run into resistance from educators who point to males' success in the workforce as proof that advocacy for boys is unnecessary. | In spite of the lack of research, anecdotal evidence shows that far more effective strategies are available for teaching boys than plying them with Ritalin. -- USA Today --Girls get extra school help while boys get Ritalin (USA Today Op/Ed)

The message to women and girls is clear: You are taking more than your fair share. You are too successful. You have come too far, and boys are paying the price for your accomplishments."

Topics of interest to most boys (sports, adventure stories, comic books, computer games) are sometimes seen as too competitive, too aggressive, etc. While boys from an early age outperform girls in areas like spatial relationships, which may account for why mathematics and engineering continues to be a male-dominated field, see: BusinessWeek, Christina Hoff Summers, CBS News.

The anonymous e-mail offered $5,000 to any vendor capable of promptly delivering a collection of far-fetched gadgets for conducting time travel. Among the mysterious devices sought by the message's author were an "Acme 5X24 series time transducing capacitor with built-in temporal displacement" and an "AMD Dimensional Warp Generator module containing the GRC79 induction motor." --Brian McWilliams --Building a Time Machine by Spam (Wired)

With great anticipation, I contacted the project manager -- let's call him A.H. -- who would copy-edit my manuscript and, I genuinely hoped, find ways to improve it. I had no idea things could go so wrong.

as he kept the schedule.

...

For the book to be published on schedule, I would have needed to return the corrected pages no later than October 14. Clearly, we would not make that deadline.

round of copy-editing.)

--Rescuing My Manuscript (Chronicle)

"I moved away bravely because I did not want to be blown up." --Peter Jerz, age 5, playing "Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter."

--Nerds and Geeks (Kairosnews)

I had a minute before heading home for the day, and thus spake Google:

http://jargon.watson-net.com/jargon.asp?w=geek

http://jargon.watson-net.com/jargon.asp?w=nerd

The Jargon Lexicon notes that the word "nerd" probably derives from the Dr. Seuss book "If I Ran the Circus," but as I recall reading that book to my son (it was one of a dozen or so Seuss books we regularly checked out of the library) I'm fairly sure it was spelled "nurd".

Howard Dantzler stood among a sea of people on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., 40 years ago today. | He was 29 years old then. He had been in the service. He had earned a master's degree. | But he was not free. --King speech still rings true for retired professor (Tribune-Review)

Like most new college students, Carabella will spend the week before the start of classes doing routine tasks that we take for granted: opening a bank account, receiving new checks, using a credit card, and shopping at a grocery store that has a "club card". She will learn how such simple activities can have major consequences for her privacy. --Carabella Goes to College (Privacy Activism)

Part of me wants to compare this to grade-school pageants in honor of tooth decay prevention... but maybe this is a good way to teach this particular subject. And a good primary document to use in a study on gaming as propaganda.

I've half-remembered a science fiction game that I read in some anthology... some government agents were charged with protecting Earth from the culturally dangerous messages that might be in imported toys. The story starts off with the governmnet dudes playing a board game like Monopoly, but they are really more concerned with a game that has little robot soldiers scurrying around a play fortress of some sort. Gradually, the soldiers start disappearing, and it turns out that they insert themselves into the fortress for some reason. Anyway, the whole soldier/fortress thing turns out to be a distraction -- the offworld cartel that has produced the toys is only importing the soldier toy as a smoke screen for the strategy board game. Had the government agents read the rules to that board game, they would have learned that the game rewarded players who made bad business choices (that would, the story suggests, leave Earth open to financial take-over from the outside). I'm pretty sure I read the story during the late 80s, when Japanese technology was displacing the U.S. auto industry.

[W]ith the Mona Lisa, the Madonna was among only a handful of paintings known to be authentic Leonardo works. | The thieves arrived just before 11am. They were flamboyantly dressed, polite and personable until the moment one of them presented a knife to a woman tour guide who had led them to the Madonna. -- Jim Mcbeth
--Stolen [Leonardo Da Vinci] masterpiece rivals the Mona Lisa  (Scotsman)

A getaway car, its engine idling in the expansive castle car park, moved slowly away...

"The latest assessment indicates that criminals are likely to be responsible for most cultural property theft," said a spokesman.

At around 11 o'clock that morning Lewis departed from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with a a party of eleven men. They arrived shortly after at Bruno's Island which was a mere 3 miles from Pittsburgh. Once ashore Lewis demonstrated his airgun to the men, while citizens watched. However, one citizen accidentally caused the gun to discharge, sending the bullet through a woman's hat where it brimmed across her temple. The woman was assumed dead immediately, only to be revived moments later. Afterwards they proceeded to McKees Rock, where the water had fallen so low that they were forced to raise the boat for 30 yards. --Lewis & Clark Expedition Left Pittsburgh 31 Aug 2003 (LewisAndClark1803.com)

Link goes to a summary of the diary kept during the expedition. The photo of the model is from a different site, lewis-clark.org.

Usually, the bears would come to greet him within a day or two of his arrival, sniffing his scent in the air, nuzzling his footprints and then making contact.|This year, there was nothing. But there were fierce snowstorms and he thought they might be keeping the bears away. He travelled far and wide, looking for any sign of the bears he knew. --Alanna Mitchell --Bear Slaughter Ends Wilderness Research (Globe and Mail)

"[E]excuse me, I just got my sight back last week after being totally blind for 43 years. Could you help me figure out what I am seeing?" -- Mike May --Mike's Journal (Sendero Group)

I found it very distracting to look at people’s faces when I was having a conversation. I can see their lips moving, eye lashes flickering, head nodding and hands gesturing. First, I tried looking down and if it was a woman, a low cut top would be even more distracting. It was easiest to close my eyes or tune out the visual input. This was necessary often in order to pay attention to what they were saying. I am sure there will come a time when all this visual communication will mean more to me but for now it is just distracting.

When I noticed dark patches behind me, it didn’t register right away that these were my footprints. I never thought of footprints as images other than when reading about them in an old west novel. To me, they were the thump; pivot push and the texture of the sand on my foot not dark splotches following me around like a shadow.

'What Some Might Call Evil'

What made me sit up and take notice was the musician's over-careful characterization of the former inhabitants. He referred first to all the "important figures" who had been there, and then, almost as an after-thought, he said that "some might call them figures of evil" who brought "what some might call evil" to the world.

Excuse me? He's talking about the leadership of the Nazi party and their allies. If you're writing a history book, it makes sense not to demonize the side that lost; it makes sense to present, factually and dispassionately, the military objectives of each side, their strengths and weaknesses, their successes and failures, how their propaganda portrayed themselves and their opponents, etc.

But if you're a tourist gushing over the gorgeous fireplace that Hitler and Mussolini huddled around, and marveling at the engineering feat of drilling an elevator shaft through the core of a mountain, well, I think being this kind to the memory of fascist dictators is a sign of rhetorical tone-deafness.

How two 1940s conservative Australian poets tried to mock modernism by submitting the works of fake poet Ern Malley to the Angry Penguins literary magazine. When the truth emerged, the magazine's editor was pilloried -- and the fake poet became a star. --Ern Malley: The Poet Who Never Lived but Who Lives On... (ErnMaley.com)

Among the water-lilies
A splash — white foam in the dark!
And you lay sobbing then
Upon my trembling intuitive arm.

Such concerns about donations have been raised in fields of study as diverse as auto engineering and medicine, but Microsoft'sdonations are a special case. Because students are likely to keep using the technology after graduation, they help to maintain Microsoft'ssoftware industry dominance. -- Ariana Eunjung Cha --Microsoft'sbig role on campus : Donations fund research, build long-term connections  (MSNBC/WashPost)

Slashdot Takes 'Gullible' out of Dictionary

Journalism 101... check your sources. I'll help you. Google for Samuel D. Forrester. Nothing (although Google will soon pick up on the Slashdot story, much to Orlowski's dismay).

Note "Forrester"'s definition of immunology:

Immunology is the study of the complex and sophisticated immune system. The immune system is a network of cells and organs that work together to defend the body against attacks by "foreign" invaders or germs. The body provides an excellent environment for germs. When they do break into a system, it is the immune system's job to keep them out or to seek and destroy them.

Immunology is the study of the complex and sophisticated immune system. The immune system is a network of cells and organs that work together to defend the body against attacks by "foreign" invaders or germs. Our body is susceptible to invasion from germs. When the germs do break into the body, it is the immune system's job to keep them out or to seek and destroy them.

We reached our intellectual adulthood with daily close-ups of the inequality in a nation that was founded on the commitment to equality for all. So we are inclined to side with the powerless rather than the powerful. If that is what makes us liberals so be it, just as long as in reporting the news we adhere to the first ideals of good journalism -- that news reports must be fair, accurate and unbiased. That clearly doesn't apply when one deserts the front page for the editorial page and the columns to which opinion should be isolated. -- Walter Kronkite --Siding with the powerless: Ideas from 60 years in journalism  (Salt Lake Tribune)

NASA mission managers fell into the habit of accepting as normal some flaws in the shuttle system and tended to ignore or not recognize that these problems could foreshadow catastrophe. This was an “echo” of some root causes of the Challenger accident, the board said. --Shuttle [Columbia] Report Blames NASA Culture (MSNBC)

Yet even though Mr. Crowley had moved mountains on the scientific and business fronts to get the treatment into testing, he couldn't seem to speed the drug to his own rapidly weakening children. When he sold his company, he gave up control of the medicine they needed. The shortage of the drug, conflict-of-interest questions and Genzyme's own internal protocols rose up in his path. His personal goal -- getting the drug to his kids -- at times conflicted with the company's view of how to get the drug to market as soon as possible. --Geeta Anand --For His Sick Kids, a Father Struggled to Develop a Cure (Wall Street Journal)

Witty, ironizing Rorty,
Fought he metaphysics grey.
Joshing gently with the haughty,
He commended Dewey's way;

Dewey who - he too the sort he
(Rorty) wrought a giant from -
Redescribed the true, for taught he
Pragmatism with aplomb.
--Roaming in Thought [after reading Rorty] (Normblog)

The Dutch PC-Active magazine has done an extensive CD-R quality test. For the test the magazine has taken a look at the readability of discs, thirty different CD-R brands, that were recorded twenty months ago. The results were quite shocking as a lot of the discs simply couldn't be read anymore. --CD-Recordable discs unreadable in less than two years (CD Freaks)

Next to page views and hit counts, the blog indexes are a good way to see if your story has people talking -- with either good or bad feedback. Plus, marketing folks at media companies are starting to watch them, and PR people are using them to track companies and product releases, according to David Sifry, who runs Technorati. --Mark Glaser --Weblog Indexes Help Journalists Track Stories -- and Boost Their Egos (OJR)

I am cutting the whole thing into paragraphs, using my very sharp scissors. I will read a paragraph at the time. I will read it disjointed and jumbled, and see what I can do about the argument before me, without linking it to the devastating argument over or under on the page. Doing this I am asserting my power over the criticism, which, right now, does feel like an attack. -- Torill Mortensen --Panic Attack (thinking with my fingers)

I daresay that in the months since she completed her dissertation, Torill has been doing more blogging than grappling with the specific issues that formed her 400-page dissertation. So she is going to chop up her committee's comments into blog-size chunks, defamiliarizing the old-media scholarly essay, forcing it into the realm of the trackback, the ironic quip, and the fisk -- a realm where Torill feels she comfortable.

But you've already spent years preparing for this defense, Torill -- you can draw on that, along with your mastery of connection-building weblogging, to pull through. Good luck!

A New Zealander who sent millions of junk emails out every day has shut his business after his personal details were posted on the web. --Spammer ducks for cover as details published on web  (New Zealand Herald)

Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. -- Jakob Nielsen --Usability 101: The What, Why and How of User-Centered Design (Alert Box)

Nielsen appears to be re-trenching; the internal links in his document point to meaty sites on the NNGroup (a research team that sells reports) -- he seems to be calling attention to work done by his associates. Jakob is possibly hoping that more people will use this "101" page as an entry point to usability studies, rather than some of his older classic works (the ones that contributed to his near-cult status).

Technonerds go to movies strictly for entertainment, and of course, the most entertaining part comes after the movie when they can dissect, criticize, and argue the merits of every detail. However, when supposedly serious scenes totally disregard the laws of physics in blatantly obvious ways it's enough to make us retch. The motion picture industry has failed to police itself against the evils of bad physics. --Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics (Intuitor)

Humboldt traveled to the cave where hundreds of the Atures were buried, weighed down his mules with some of their skeletons, then headed to a nearby village. There, the local people showed the foreigner a talking parrot that no one understood: It was the last living thing to speak the language of the Atures, the people whose bones Humboldt had collected. -- John McMurtrie reviews Spoken Here by Mark Abley --Dying cultures have the last word: A journalist documents the alarming loss of languages around the world (SF Gate)

A Picture is Worth...

"Save Brian" is a slick and impressive website designed to counter the local media's representation of Brian Derrick Robinson. (Via Wired: "Write a Story, Go to Jail.")

Am I blogging this in order to atone for the small role I played in popularizing the story of the Star Wars Kid, another chubby guy whose private creative activity was discovered by "friends" who then publicized it?

The increasing rate of litigation means that there is a far higher chance that doctors will be asked in court to explain the exact meaning of NFN (Normal for Norfolk), FLK (Funny looking kid) or GROLIES (Guardian Reader Of Low Intelligence in Ethnic Skirt). --Doctor Slang is a Dying Art (BBC)

• DRT - Dead Right There (patient dead at scene of accident)
• DRTTTT - Dead Right There, There, There and There (patient dead and in multiple parts at scene of accident)

"The Berenstain Bears taught me about not being greedy. I used to have the 'galloping greedy gimmies,' but not anymore." ... Delighted by the positive influence of [The Berenstain Bears] Get The Gimmies, Johnson's parents purchased their daughter 14 more books from the series. --Precocious 6-Year-Old Claims Berenstain Bears Book Changed Her Life (The Onion)

Inspired by an article in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. Read more about the algorithm at nature.com. --The Gender Genie (Bookblog)

Some of the passages that I co-authored with a female student were flagged as female, and even some of the boxes that I added all by myself were tagged as female. Was I miraculously successful at emulating Jessica's writing style?

The site lets you provide feedback on whether the Genie is right or wrong. Right now, the Genie is just barely over 50% accurate. As it is now, you paste in your text, push a button, read the results, and then either push the "go back button", erase your old text and paste in new text; or, you tell the Genie whether it was right or wrong, view a popup with the results, close the popup, push "go back," erase the old text, and paste in new text.

When I give feedback to the Genie, I am committing myself to some extra (boring and unnecessary) steps. When the Genie is right, I am not particularly motivated to tell it so; when the Genie is wrong, I am more motivated to tell it. Thus, it may be the case that the feedback form is attracting more negative than positive responses.

I suggest that on the screen that displays the results, there be two buttons: one pink and one blue; the user clicks "The writer was female" or "The writer was male", and then is taken immediately to a screen that not only shows the current accuracy ratings, but also has a blank form.

As the hobbyhorse of a few crackpots, Holocaust Denial seems harmless. But retum to CODOR on the web and you may reach a different conclusion. The benign image of Brad Smith (who includes a Christmas letter each year in his newsletter) asks only that we come to the topic with open minds, and with just the slightest willingness to doubt the "official" story. And how many of us lack that small willingness to suspect that "official" versions may serve some dark interest? How many Americans have believed in Communist conspiracies (and with some justification) or in governmental coverups (with even more justification)? For someone unfamiliar with the historical literature and the primary documents on the Holocaust (and let's face it, that is most of us), the notion of the Holocaust as an "official" version may have some credibility. As the deniers quibble over some tiny piece of evidence, they may appear to know what they are talking about. -- John Spurlock --Holocaust Deniers Invade World Wide Web (National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education)

You might be surprised to learn that the outskirts of the solar system are loaded with Plutinos, Centaurs, cubewanos and EKOs. Astronomers didn't even know this a decade ago. In fact until 1992 they hadn't even invented three of the terms. | Now it seems they don't have enough of these crazy names. -- Robert Roy Britt --Crazy Names: The Solar System's Nomenclature Wars (Yahoo/Space)

Cyberslackers, egosurfing, data smog? All three terms have entered the English language, according to the compilers of the Oxford Dictionary of English, who have added 3,000 more words to the 350,000 words and phrases in modern usage. --Charles Arthur --Internet terms make entry in dictionary (The Independent)

Blair Hornstine, whose court battle to be her high school's sole valedictorian ended up throwing her life in turmoil, settled her differences with the Moorestown School District yesterday to the tune of $60,000 - all but $15,000 to pay her lawyers. -- Toni Callas and Joseph A. Gambardello --Valedictorian settles suit against district (Philadelphia Inquirer)

The bomber was a father of two. A man who has children who walks down the aisle of the bus, looking at the children whose small short cheerful lives he is about to destroy, contenting himself with the knowledge that they are mere Jews - such a man has abdicated his humanity. The fact that he died in an instant and 100+ victims survived to live with the pain for the rest of your days makes you wonder which side God is on. Or it makes you certain there'sa hell. Or it just makes you not want to think about these things at all. -- James Lileks --As a Species, We're Doomed... (Bleat)

How might science engender democracy? I'd like to suggest two mechanisms: first, by changing the way people think; second, by altering the interaction among those who make up the community. The more scientifically literate people become, the more they will expect, even demand to participate in the political process, and the more effective they will be at it. Such social evolution may be slow, nonlinear and chaotic, and periodically may even reverse course, but it is probably also inexorable, as the recent history of the former Soviet Union and other Communist countries in Europe shows. -- Robert Lawrence Kuhn --Science as Democratizer (American Scientist)

Please don't interpret the following comment as my attempt to brand Kuhn a mad scientist (he's clearly not)... but Kuhn' s earnest vision of the heroic scientist stands in the way of social chaos -- is the germ of truth behind the "mad scientist" mythology.

To his great credit, Kuhn addresses this issue in the following passage: "When citizens can distinguish among proof, likelihood, opinion and hope—and get into the habit of so doing—democracy cannot long be kept from them."

Amen.

Update: 22 Aug. I should have used Frank J. Tipler as an example of a scientist whose rhetoric doesn't need much exaggeration to be seen shaking his fist and shouting, "Fools! I shall crush them all!"

"With the help of Miss Sunshine they discover that he is allergic to the feathers in his pillow. | However, Mr Sneeze then receives a visit from Mr Silly and his pet chicken Rover which causes him to start sneezing again.... The story is followed by four pages of information on allergies from Allergy UK and two pages promoting the use of GSK products Piriteze and Piriton." --Mr Sneeze in drug row (BBC)

While we might take the phrase "bright lights, big city" for granted, the fact is that for most of recorded history, nocturnal urban darkness was the norm, not the exception. --Jeet Heer --Cultural history of the night (National Post)

Here's a gem from a 1970 study: "It is evidently pleasing to many people to fantasize that when people are trapped by some immobilizing event which deprives them of their usual activities, most will turn to copulation." (cited by Newsday)

"In the old days, there used to be a term, 'buying your gross'," said Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax.

"You could buy your gross for the weekend and overcome bad word of mouth because it took time to filter out into the general audience."

But those days are over, because the technology of hand-held text-message devices has drastically cut down the time it takes for moviegoers to tell their friends that a heavily promoted summer action movie is a waste of time and money. -- --Hollywood finds itself at the mercy of cellphone-toting teenagers (Cape Times)

If we find what we're looking for, we will suddenly know life on another planet is highly probable and that we may not be alone. The discovery would arguably be the most profound one in human history. But what then? --William Speed Weed --starTREK: NASA thinks we can find another Earth in another nearby star... (Discover)

1. Another Earth in a nearby star? Wouldn't it be better to find a planet orbiting a nearby star?
2. William Speed Weed? Really?

This is Dan Rather's profile. Expanded to the nth degree. Taken to infinity. Overlayed on the back of Patrick Stewart's head. It's recombinant phrenology. The elements of phrenology recombined in ways that follow the rules of irrational logic, a rigorous methodology that follows nonrational rules. It is a structure for following your intuition and your obsessions. It is the hyperfocused scribblings of the mad and the gifted. -- David Byrne
--Learning to Love PowerPoint (Wired)

"Art and technology mean essentially the same thing,? says Montfort," explaining that, contrary to his interviewer's suggestion, poetry and computer science do go together. "Go back to the Latin ars and the Greek tekhne -- both refer to ways of doing things that aren't in nature already. In new media, the computer is being employed as a means for creating arts. So art and technology are not opposing threads. When you study a poem, do you consider sound or sense? Well, you consider both. It's not a question of there being one of those elements that's not important. It's the ways in which they work together." --Creative Computing: Where poetry and programming make a new art (Boston University Alumni Web)

I do wish the sharp-eyed designer who created BU alumni magazine's website didn't rely upon fixed-pitch type -- those letters are just too small for me to read.

Baby books have gotten way weird. Today's bookstore shelves spill over with tot-oriented "toybooks" shaped like cats, dogs, hens, horses, lions, elephants, insects and other things... --Linton Weeks --Touchable and Teachable, Toybooks are Big Business (Washington Post (registration; will expire))

He was that rarity among physicists, one who could write in a clear, persuasive and entertaining way. His "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems," in which three noblemen, Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicio, meet in Venice to argue over the relative merits of Ptolemy's ancient Earth-centered cosmos and the newer Sun-centered Copernicanism, may be the first great piece of popular science writing. | The book was also his downfall. It was Galileo the writer, not Galileo the scientist, who got himself into trouble. Like so many people who are good with words, he succumbed to the temptation of making his opponents seem not just wrong, but also stupid. -- George Johnson --Contrarian's Contrarian: Galileo's Science Polemics (NY Times)

This is really nothing new... but it's good to see the idea getting coverage in the mainstream press.

I have stage-fright. Teaching starts today, you see. I have stage-fright far worse than when I present a paper in front of a few hundred people at a conference, even though I taught all last semester, and loved it, and the stuff I'm planning on doing today is based on a recipe I've used three or four times before with various groups of students. I'm convinced that only two students will turn up and this will prove the basic untenability of my future career in academia.

I'm all aglow. Teaching starts today, you see. I feel that same excitement that I feel at conferences, that thrill at meeting new thoughts and approaches to the world. I taught all last semester, and loved it, and the stuff I'm planning on doing today has worked well before and I love the texts we'll be talking about. Do you know, I've been astounded at how I enjoy teaching. I like research too, but teaching is for me a real reason to stay in academia.

-- Jill Walker --Stage Fright/Glow (jill/txt)

Inspectors from the TV Licensing Agency patrol neighborhoods using wireless detectors to attempt to pick up the "local oscillator" signal from a television in use. Anyone caught using a TV without a license is subject to a fine of up to $1,600. It doesn't matter if you watch TV once a month; it doesn't matter if you heartily disapprove of the BBC's editorial direction (or, indeed, its existence); it doesn't matter if you think the Beeb hasn't produced anything worth watching since "Fawlty Towers" went off the air in 1979: You still have to pay. | What do you get for your money? --Josh Chafetz --The Disgrace of the BBC  (Weekly Standard)

[O]n April 3, after U.S. troops had taken control of the Baghdad airport, Andrew Gilligan (remember that name) reported on the BBC World Service and on the BBC website, "Within the last 90 minutes I've been at the airport. There is simply no truth in the claims that American troops are surrounding it. We could drive up to it quite easily. The airport is under full Iraqi control." That was Gilligan's story, and the BBC was sticking to it--until another correspondent pointed out that Gilligan was not, in fact, at the airport, but U.S. troops quite clearly were.

Why should my child work on a Mac in class when most people use PCs at home and in the office? I've heard this lament time and again in my son's schools over the years. To listen to these parents, you'd think the schools were forcing children to use a history book that says the world is flat.|Such complaints speak loudly to Apple's (AAPL ) fall from grace in education. -- Charles Hadad --Apple's School Days Are Numbered (Business Week)

With a bachelor's in chemistry, a Ph.D. in history (with a concentration in the history of science) and publications in hand, I applied for the job. The director never interviewed me. He hired a 22-year-old communications major but promised me work as a landscaper and all-purpose cipher as long as I wanted it. | He reinforced an important lesson I learned long ago: Class trumps everything else. I was not part of the middle class and never would be. -- Chris Cumo --Blue Collar Ph.D. (Chronicle)

Alas, the searches prove fairly elusive. But boynton found Sylvia Plath Engineering so intriguing and poetic a concept that she thought the only thing for it was a Googlepoem. Here are some edited couplets freshly compiled:

plath sylvia plath on engineering
engineering, accounting, working

Nonfiction Technical Romance Sports
the engineering part poets

own sketches the: Cognitive
by Sylvia Plath. - - "You leave

to express deep emotions toward
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard

engineering. A Marriage of True
and as scaffolds for tissue
--Sylvia Plath Engineering (boynton)

"NOAA today posted online satellite images taken before and after... the historic blackout of the Northeastern United States, which plunged millions of people into darkness." --Satellite Images of Northeastern US Blackout (NOAA)

One day in the future all the lights in the city go out. The turbines stop, the telephones become quiet, the traffic lights shut down, TVs dim and computers download, and elevators wedge between the office towers’ floors. Hospitals with battery-run backup supplies stay functional, but the banks and the stock exchange with their E-Money, the government offices and transnational boardrooms, the TV studios and radio stations, the cafes and bars and restaurants, are all unplugged. We’d be engulfed by a night unlike anything anyone has known since before the Edison Illumination Company lit up New York City in eighteen eighty-two, extending the hours of the day, turning the streets into a twilight spectacle of artifice, priming the crowds for the first time to watch and wait. --Powe's Outage (via Matthew G. Kirschenbaum)

But "computers download"? That makes no sense in this context.

"Many had wondered beforehand if there would be any foul play involved in the rematch. But Pirates first baseman Randall Simon, who made national headlines on July 9 after hitting the Italian Sausage in the head with his bat during a race at Miller Park, promised Friday afternoon not to get involved with the race." --Smoked Sausage: Pierogies Prevail (Pirates)

In lieu of a truly good design, often people on the team will accept any design that makes the specific feature they care about (because they like it, because it'snew, because they work on it, etc.) discoverable, regardless of it'srelative importance compared to other features (note that this corollary is often applied without knowledge of the base myth). Scott Berkun --The Myth of Discoverability (UI Web)

At UWEC, for a while there was a very strange link on the home page... I asked one of the IT people about it, and was told that one of the board of directors had complained that he couldn't find a particular report, so they added a link to the home page just for him. **Shudder! **

"In solitude, he continued his mathematical and physical studies, but also embraced alchemy and esoteric biblical scholarship. He felt himself to be seeking ancient knowledge that had been lost or hidden in the dark centuries of the more recent past. Today's scientists tend to be embarrassed by Newton's religious and alchemical studies, but Newton was looking for deeper, unifying truths than the superficial speculations of the secular empiricists of London." Chet Raymo --And God said: 'Let there be Newton' (Globe and Mail)

--I Feel Faint (Weblogg-Ed)

"I always wanted my work to be read by someone else, someone out there who would grade me seriously, a regular person," [10-year-old Raya Allen] said. "With a teacher, it's their job. When someone else is reading it, they are doing it on their own free will." --A Young Writers' Round Table, via the Web (NY Times)

Weingarten shifts uncomfortably in his chair and stares at the glittering gems on his dining room table. "Unless they can be detected," he says, "these stones will bankrupt the industry." --The New Diamond Age (Wired)

A letter has been sent to a woman who died three years ago ordering her to tidy up her own memorial plaque. Leeds City Council mistakenly gave Moira Thoms 14 days to remove two vases, each containing a single white rose, from around the plaque at Lawnswood Cemetery where her ashes are scattered. --Dead Woman Told to Tidy Grave (BBC)

"One of the younger guys had been a prison guard and thought this would be less demanding; another was finishing a computer science degree and needed a part-time job in his Queens neighborhood. The military man listened to the rest of us and declared, 'I wanted to serve my country.'" Beth Pinsker --Confessions of a Baggage Screener (Wired)

UK online centres are for people who have limited or no access to skills in using new technologies. The centres will help people to develop the skills to use the Internet to access information, send email using a PC, mobile phone, digital television or games console; (please note not all centres will have the same facilities), and explore the opportunities that new technologies offer such as for further learning and updating skills. --What is a UK Online Centre? (UK Dept. for Education and Skills)

"The purpose of this study is to further investigate breadcrumb usage by evaluating the following research questions:

1. Do users choose to use breadcrumbs as a navigational tool?
2. Does breadcrumb usage improve navigational efficiency?
3. Does the location of the breadcrumb trail on a page effect usage?
4. Does a breadcrumb trail aid the user’s mental model of the site structure?

Rogers and Chaparro --Breadcrumb Navigation: Further Investigation of Usage (Usability News)

The researchers did note a slight usability increase if the breadcrumb trail is placed below the title, rather than at the very top of the page. I'll probably implement that soon.

While this study suggests that the presence or absence of breadcrumbs makes little difference to the users, I like breadcrumb navigation because:

If you only have a few pages on your site, this kind of structure probably seems like it's more trouble than it's worth. But if you plan to expand the site organically (that is, adding new articles wherever the need arises), this kind of navigational structure saves you from having to re-edit the navigation bars on unrelated pages, every time you add a new page. ("Navigation")

Of course, professional developers have access to menu-generating tools, and typically the new content is generated by someone else and handed to the web editor.

See also Croc o' Lyle's related links for "Breadcrumbs Affect User's Mental Model of Web Sites".

"The social scientist Ray Oldenburg talks about how humans need a third place, besides work and home, to meet with friends, have a beer, discuss the events of the day, and enjoy some human interaction.... In creating community software, we are, to some extent, trying to create a third place. And like any other architecture project, the design decisions we make are crucial. Make a bar too loud, and people won't be able to have conversations. That makes for a very different kind of place than a coffee shop. Make a coffee shop without very many chairs, as Starbucks does, and people will carry their coffee back to their lonely rooms..." Joel Spolsky --Building Communities with Software (Joel on Software)

Q. Why don't you show people their posts to confirm them before you post them? Then people wouldn't make mistakes and typos.

A. Empirically, that is not true. Not only is it not true, it's the opposite of true.... It's like those studies they did that showed that it's safer, on twisty mountain roads, to remove the crash barrier, because it makes people scared and so they drive more carefully...

But I do think it's important to note Joel's community is all about software development... the behaviors he has observed may be particular to or more prominent in software developers. Perhaps readers of a weblog on literacy will behave differently, and will prefer to see their post in-context before the submit.

But maybe I'll be a weasel and ask for a prominent "Post Without Preview" button and a smaller, less obtrusive "Preview" link. Well, this is food for thought.

Update: Nick writes: "How about 'I'm Feeling Lucky'?"

"What we need is a C-SPAN for science: a cable science network (CSN). This network would carry live lectures by knowledgeable scientists on topics ranging from climate change to biological warfare, as well as debates on issues from the biological basis of aggression to missile defense." Terrence J. Sejnowski --Tap into Science 24-7 (Science)

"Too many ?studies? and ?reports,? with tables of data in small print appended, have purported to reveal truths about welfare or policing or sex education but in fact have revealed nothing but the initial prejudices of the ?investigators.? For me, the epiphany came when I interviewed the nation'sleading climatologists for a magazine article on acid rain (about which I knew nothing) and discovered mostly ideology, not knowledge?among scientists. When I also learned some years ago that academic paleontologists at that time couldn't hope to get tenure if they questioned the theory that a giant meteor explosion had caused the extinction of the dinosaurs?thus providing a model of what a so-called nuclear winter would produce?my own skepticism took on a certain wryness." Myron Magnet --What Use Is Literature? (City Journal)

--Bikini Model Photos, Before and After Retouching (Greg's Digital Portfolio)

The bags under her eyes are gone... smoother skin... a tighter, smaller navel... bigger you-know-whats.

I can easily see how fake the "after" photo is when I compare it with the "before" -- but then I look away and look back, and the fake seems real.

"I have concluded that AOL's brand would benefit from being removed from the corporate name..." AOL executive Jon Miller --AOL Time Warner (Internal Memos)

This is an amusing attempt at corporate spin. He even tries to beat the critics to the punch: "there is no question this will provide the media yet another opportunity to write negatively about the merger of AOL and Time Warner." You can't blame the guy for trying.

"Yes, the game business is increasingly reliant on movie licenses and sequels. It is less willing to take big risks, particularly in themes or audiences. But that risk aversion reflects an industry that largely is making fewer, bigger titles with absorbing, often branching narratives, well-written dialogue and much larger budgets -- as much as $10 million or more -- for audiences of growing maturity and sophistication.|Combine that with the increasing technological proficiency of the current set of gaming consoles and more capable PCs, and what players are getting are games that technically and artistically are starting to realize the true power of an industry Holy Grail -- the interactive movie." Suneel Ratan --Games Close In on Citizen Kane  (Wired)

This preoccupation with holding on to pre-college relationships would often get in the way of students forming new relationships in college. Female students seemed to fear that new friendships formed in college would lack the depth and intimacy of those friendships that took root in their growing-up years. --'Friendsickness' affects freshman female college students (EurekAlert)

"When students in Biloxi, Miss., show up this morning for the first day of the new school year, a virtual army of digital cameras will be recording every minute of every lesson in every classroom.|Hundreds of Internet-wired video cameras will keep rolling all year long, in the hope that they'll deter crime and general misbehavior among the district's 6,300 students -- and teachers." Greg Toppo --Who's Watching the Class? Webcams in schools raise privacy issue  (USA Today)

Page, a former biology teacher, granted open access to anyone who wanted to view his classroom, no password required. He says families tuned in regularly and loved it. ''You could see if the kid was wearing the same thing they left the house in that morning.''

Jeremy Bentham, the British philosopher and social reformer, published his plan for the Panopticon penitentiary in 1791. Essentially, it was for a building on a semi-circular pattern with an 'inspection lodge' at the centre and cells around the perimeter. Prisoners, who in the original plan would be in individual cells, were open to the gaze of the guards, or 'inspectors', but the same was not true of the view the other way. By a carefully contrived system of lighting and the use of wooden blinds, officials would be invisible to the inmates. Control was to be maintained by the constant sense that prisoners were watched by unseen eyes..... Beyond the metaphor, a model of power also lies in the concept of the panoptic, and it takes us well beyond the Orwellian jackboots and torture, or even the rats. The normalizing discipline, the exaggerated visibility of the subject, the unverifiability of observation, the subject as bearer of surveillance, the quest for factual certainty - all are important aspects of the panoptic as model of power. The question is, to what extent are all these necessarily present in each context? Sociologically, is electronic surveillance panoptic power?" (Lyon, "From Big Brother to Electronic Panopticon.")

"As most people know by now, dictionary makers today merely record how the language is used, not how the language ought to be used. That is, lexicographers are descriptivists, language liberals. People using "disinterested" when they mean "uninterested" does not displease a descriptivist. | A prescriptivist, by contrast, is a language conservative, a person interested in maintaining standards and correctness in language use. To prescriptivists, "disinterested" in the sense of "uninterested" is the result of uneducated people not knowing the distinction between the two words. And if there are enough uneducated people saying "disinterested" (and I'm afraid there are) when they mean "uninterested" or "indifferent," lexicographers enter the definition into their dictionaries. Indeed, the distinction between these words has all but vanished owing largely to irresponsible writers and boneless lexicographers." Robert Hartwell Fiske --Don't Look It Up: The Decline of the Dictionary (The Weekly Standard)

Be warned; this is a (strictly hypothetic) Google fan's nightmare.

• 2014: Google, using its Geolocation feature, starts to heavily censor content for certain countries. Entering "Hitler" at Google.de returns zero results.
• 2015: Google buys the Yahoo! Directory and removes the DMOZ Open Directory Project.
• 2016: Google is successfully sued by Microsoft for spidering Windows Servers. Also, Internet Explorer 9 won't allow accessing anything but MSN search.

--Phillip Lessen --The Rise and Fall of the Google Empire (Google Blogoscoped)

Fully 80% of adult Internet users, or about 93 million Americans, have searched for at least one of 16 major health topics online. This makes the act of looking for health or medical information one of the most popular activities online, after email (93%) and researching a product or service before buying it (83%). | Our finding represents a substantial enlargement of the population we have called online "health seekers" in the past. Previously, we have reported that 62% of Internet users said "yes" when we asked if they look for health or medical information online. For the first time, we prompt respondents with questions about specific health topics, to give a fuller portrait of what Americans are looking for online. Not surprisingly, the number of health seekers increased when we asked Internet users more specific questions. --Half of American Adults Have Searched Online for Health Information (Pew)

"After a user selects ?print? from the browser, the page is formatted before it is sent to the printer. The width of the layout is reduced to about 650 pixels for 8.5" x 11" paper, or 630 pixels for A4, assuming normal margins.|If all the elements of a page can't wrap around to fit within this 630-650 pixel area, content on the right will simply be cropped off. This is often caused by absolute positioning of page elements, such as fixed table widths, or large images. A web page with a fixed size of 800x600 pixels may look great online, but will lose its right edge completely when printed.|Flexible layouts relying on relative positioning are better for printing, allowing the page to compress down to fit onto paper." James Kalbach --Printing the Web (Boxes and Arrows)

Now I'm experimenting with a CSS layout that doesn't rely on table. The Boxes and Arrows article looks like a good starting point.

"Information pollution is a worldwide scourge that afflicts not just travelers but everyone. In the United States, for example, you can't buy a lawnmower without a label saying that you're not supposed to mow your feet. |Most instruction manuals are littered with "important" warnings that caution against obvious stupidities, burying actual dangers amid a mass of irrelevancy. An out-of-control legal system has made a joke of the entire warnings concept; products are now less safe because nobody bothers to read warnings anymore. | In information foraging terms, information pollution is like packing the forest with cardboard rabbits: frustrated wolves are bound to hunt elsewhere." Jakob Nielsen --Information Pollution (Alert Box)

"I couldn’t help reflecting on the connection between hypertext and napalm, via Vannevar Bush..." Jonathan Delacour --As We May Incinerate (Jonathan Delacour)

John Scalzi writes:

So basically, my job:

1. Demystify the journaling and blogging process for AOL members so they can jump in and start doing it.
2. Encourage the writing, reading, and linking of blogs and journals on AOL and in the blogoverse.
3. Write a kick-ass blog worth reading.

Why me? Well, why not?

--AOL Hires Blogger (Whatever)

Hard-core bloggers are bracing for another September that never ends.

Every September, a wave of newbies arriving at college and posting to Usenet for the first time used to upset the geektopian community carefully crafted by its participants. In September of 1993, hordes of AOL newbies with net access but no clue about netiquette lumbered into cyberspace.

I recently read a snarky troll commenting on a blog (can't remember where) that Usenet is better than it has been in a while, since the newbies are all blogging now.

My opinion of AOL is pretty much the same as my opinion of Barney the Dinosaur -- it's great for its intended audience, but that audience isn't me. (There are plenty of kids shows that I can watch without vomiting: Teletubbies, VeggieTales, The Wiggles. But Barney? No.)

Since AOL is staying away from the term "blog", it's likely that the culture of the AOL journal community will be a bit insular, like the LiveJournal communities; but overall I think the blogosphere will probably benefit.

"Textual history teaches us that authors have been taking back their words for a long, long time (in the form of variants and revisions and new editions), and that 'their' words, as we read them on the page, might or might not originate with the person named on the title sheet. In other words (so to speak), the textual critic knows that all writing is, of necessity, social." Matthew G. Kirschenbaum --Social Hardware (Matthew G. Kirschenbaum)

I was thinking a little more about folk authorship as it appears on the Internet, where it seems most changes are additive -- comments tacked on at the bottom of the page, blog posts marching across pages of archives, blogrolls swelling in length.

But maybe the most significant way that the Internet changes is simply that pages disappear -- whether the author takes them down deliberately, or (as in my own case) the author moves, and takes on a new URL as a sign of a new affiliation.

As a compromise between chaos and fixity, I like the idea of saving old versions of texts. I like the idea, but I'm too lazy to bother saving versions of my own texts. Well, shortly before each major site-wide change I make a copy of the whole website... but the chance of anyone out there actually needing a particular version of one of my pages is probably insignificant.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to ping The Wayback Machine, to ask it to archive a particular page for posterity?

(Checks Google.)

Lo and behold... if you use the Alexa toolbar or you click on "Show Related Links" (MS Internet Explorer), the Wayback Machine will check the site within a few days and the archive will appear six months later.

"The Forever Flashlight uses no batteries or bulbs. Instead it uses Faraday's Principle of Induction and a bright LED to produce light without batteries. The light is shaken for about 30 seconds to recharge a capacitor and it will then provide about 5 minutes of light. As the light is shaken, a magnet passes through a metal coil generating electricity. During prolonged use it can be shaken for 10-15 seconds every 2 or 3 minutes." --Forever Flashlight (Think Geek)

P.S. My birthday is October 11. Hint, hint, hint.

I already have a blue LED on a flexy neck that plugs into my laptop's USB port. It casts out a fairly nice general light, with a little spot that I aim at the keyboard (particularly at the navigation keys, which are in different locations on every keyboard I use, so the light really helps when I'm up late typing and don't want to disturb anyone else).

I can't remember if I cried
When he cut me from his blogroll side
But something touched me deep inside
The day the blogging died
--The Day the Blogging Died (Radio Free Blogistan)

"I still have strong reservations about removing entries but I've changed my mind about pretty much everything else. And while I can understand the impulse to encourage 'accountability', I find I've crossed over to Dave Winer's side of the fence as regards 'substantially editing (although not removing) content after having posted it to the web.' For me, since writing is rewriting, the idea of tracking changes to a text is inimical to the essence of writing. But then I don't define weblogging in terms of journalism, which is Rebecca Blood's frame of reference for the rules she suggests in her essay Weblog Ethics, rules that she believes 'form a basis of ethical behavior for online publishers of all kinds.'" Jonathon Delacour --Weblog Ethics (Jonathon Delacour)

"I consider my using weblogs in class this summer to be, for the most part, a failure. I'm glad I tried it, but my students didn't enjoy blogging. I even thought to myself, at some points in the semester, that maybe blogging is something someone should do because he or she wants to do it; in other words, it should be more organic, not a class requirement. But I don't really believe that." Clancy Ratliff --Assessing Weblogs in College Writing Classes (KairosNews)

"Academics are already seeking to study early games as the awakening of a potent new art form. Future developers will want to see how earlier designers approached play and mechanics -- and solved complex problems using limited technology." Suneel Ratan --Arcade Addicts Joust with Past (Wired)

Software that emulates the old consoles will help somewhat, of course... but the hardware is important, too.

Update, 11 Aug: Matt Hoy send a link to his collection of restored arcade games and writes, "There is definetly a "purest" movement in the collecting community. They recognise the usefullness of emulation, but would rather have original hardware, even if it's buggy and prone to failure."

I had forgotten about the monster-looking guys on the "Space Invaders" console -- those figures had nothing to do with the images displayed on the screen (since we only saw the exterior of the ships).

"Rush is almost always armed for his shows with reams of data and analysis from a wide variety of news and information sources. His commentaries indicate that he has actually read his sources, thought about their meaning, and prepared his own in-depth analyses before trying to persuade audience members during his three on-air hours each day. | By comparison, many bloggers? preparations for their stream-of-consciousness commentaries seem limited to reading the ruminations of other bloggers and scanning Internet news. Because some bloggers, even prominent ones, spend so much time writing throughout the entire day, they don't research their own ideas well enough to be persuasive." David Hill --Bloggers Won't Match Limbaugh (The Hill)

--Merely OK -- Usability Testing: What is It? (EServer TC Library)

The rest of my resources are at least "Good", so I'm not at all unhappy. At any rate, I think this model of online review is desperately needed in academia.

"When small independent online publications and collaborative news sites with an amateur staff perform original reporting on community affairs, few would contest that they're engaged in journalism.|When citizens contribute photos, video and news updates to mainstream news outlets, many would argue they're doing journalism.|But when bloggers comment on and link to news stories, is that journalism?" J.D. Lasica --What is Participatory Journalism? (OJR)

"University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty member dangled from his parachute on a wire 150 feet above the Seattle area for more than two hours Monday after his jump off a radio tower went awry." Nahal Toosi --Professor Arrested after Jump from TowerJournal Setntinel)

Found via Incoming Signals, who files the folowing passage under 'Great moments in anonymity':

Law enforcement officials declined to fully identify Wade, but they said the dangling parachutist was a 43-year-old business professor at UW-Madison.

--Manufactured Landscapes: The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky (Cowles Gallery)

There is really no quotable text in the gallery press release ("BURTYNSKY's photographs, monumental both in scale and subject, capture the indomitable spirit of nature in the face of human-imposed adversity." Bleah.)

There's also edwardburtynsky.com, where the artist writes:

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.

"Why is it, a growing number of people are asking, that anyone can download medical nonsense from the Web for free, but citizens must pay to see the results of carefully conducted biomedical research that was financed by their taxes? | The Public Library of Science aims to change that. The organization, founded by a Nobel Prize-winning biologist and two colleagues, is plotting the overthrow of the system by which scientific results are made known to the world -- a $9 billion publishing juggernaut with subscription charges that range into thousands of dollars per year." Rick Weiss --A Fight for Free Access To Medical Research  (WashPost)

I pointed out that there is nothing wrong with electronic text as a medium -- what matters is whether the information has been peer-reviewed. I suggested that students who repeatedly hear their teachers tell them to avoid the Internet are getting only half the message. While it's true that the costs involved mean that less crap gets printed than gets thrown online, we aren't doing our jobs as educators if we simply tell students "Stay in the print world because there you're less likely to come across a document that requires you to use your critical thinking skills to evaluate its credibility."

Since the Washington Post article on which this blog is based will expire soon, here's a link to zonker's comments: "Dissociated Press | Fighting for Access to Taxpayer-funded Research".

"For years, researchers have worked to improve gloves that can translate American Sign Language into spoken and written speech.... Some members of the deaf community are ambivalent about the technology, which aims to 'fix' deafness, a trait they accept and even embrace as culturally unique. Many also are wary of a machine that can translate only a few hundred words -- much less the nuances crucial to human communication." Elisa Batista --Glove Won't Speak for the Deaf  (Wired)

The play/movie Children of a Lesser God does an excellent job examining the biases that the hearing world brings to its understanding of the deaf world.

Kudos to Batista for doing more than simply writing a cheerleading "ain't technology great" article (the kind of thingone often finds in Wired).

"This is a very bad time for a new, young anchor to be starting out, because they'll be the first to go. The point and click selection process of INTERACTIVE communication will eliminate the need for a news jockey--and certainly for the tiring 'teams' of too friendly, overly made up glamor clones we get on 3 affiliate stations in every market in America." Greg Bryon --News of the Future: Will the Internet spell the death of local television news as we know it? (TV News)

"Turns out Alex had been snooping in her Web cache, found the URL for the blog, and voilà, her secret was out." --Busted By a Blog: Online Journal Reveals Relationship Infidelity (ABC News)

Alex and Johanna have mended ways and learned a lesson: "We clear the Internet cache after we talk online."

As Sartre wrote in No Exit, "Hell is other people."

"Lord willing, AOL stock would rise high enough that Colburn would make enough to donate $1 million to the rabbis, with plenty to spare. The stock was a pretty sure bet. The way AOL's stock was ticking up, up and away, reaching beyond $90 a share that December, he didn't exactly need God's help.|Then again, why take chances?|One rabbi, however, wasn't completely sold on the deal. |Apparently sensing that Colburn was open to further negotiations, the rabbi offered a counterproposal. He said he would pray for AOL's stock to rise only if Colburn started showing up at synagogue." Alec Klein --Lord of the Flies (WashPost (registration))

"Like any successful scam, the hoax worked for two reasons: it seemed believable, and it was beautifully executed. Metallica are well known (and frequently vilified) on the net for their legal tactics, and the story was posted on a perfect copy of MTV's news page. Because it looked like a genuine story and was written in the same style as MTV's other news stories, many net users didn't notice that the page was not on MTV's site; it even linked to an official statement on the Metallica website - again, a clever fake." --Word of Mouse [Metallica E and F Chord Spoof] (Guardian)

"The National Council of Teachers of English, recommending the use of hip-hop lyrics in urban public school classrooms (as already happens in schools in Oakland, Los Angeles, and other cities), enthuses that ?hip-hop can be used as a bridge linking the seemingly vast span between the streets and the world of academics.?|But we?re sorely lacking in imagination if in 2003?long after the civil rights revolution proved a success, at a time of vaulting opportunity for African Americans, when blacks find themselves at the top reaches of society and politics?we think that it signals progress when black kids rattle off violent, sexist, nihilistic, lyrics, like Russians reciting Pushkin." John H. McWhorter --How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back (City Journal)

"[I]t should come as little surprise that a technology behind blogs--online chronicles of personal, creative and organizational life--has manifested the kind of bitter fight for control that is inevitable in any truly democratic institution....The dispute offers a glimpse into the byzantine and highly politicized world of industry standards, where individuals without legal authority over a protocol may nonetheless exercise control over it and where, consequently, personal attacks can become the norm. Despite the apparent pettiness of developers' sniping, their arguments over digital minutia may carry enormous consequences, and corporate interests remain poised to capitalize on the conflicts if they are not resolved." Paul Festa --Battle of the Blog (CNet News)

It's always good to pause and look at the big picture. I was at a faculty meeting today where I mentioned in passing that I am a weblogger... several of the people in the room hadn't heard the term, though when somebody asked, "Do you mean 'blogger', then heads started nodding. I would never have imagined that a person would know what a blog is but not what a weblog is.

"One of the great tales of World War II concerns an American fighter pilot named Marcus McDilda who was shot down on Aug. 8 and brutally interrogated about the atomic bombs. He knew nothing, but under torture he 'confessed' that the U.S. had 100 more nuclear weapons and planned to destroy Tokyo 'in the next few days.' The war minister informed the cabinet of this grim news — but still adamantly opposed surrender." Nicholas D. Kristof --Blood on Our Hands? (58th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima) (CNN/NYT)

--New Google Operator: ~synonyms

An interesting detail... if you search Google for "~blog", one of the words added is "blogger", while if you search Google for "~weblog" you don't see "weblogger" added.

It wouldn't be because Google now owns blogger, would it?

"The folks running media outlets -- who tend to be even more establishment-oriented than front-line journalists -- don't complain much about the way in which officials control the news because it reduces labor costs. If news managers encouraged reporters routinely to go beyond the canned press releases, briefings, and insider interviews, those reporters would not be able to pump out as many stories as quickly. (I know this not only from research and analysis, but personal experience; for a number of years I was one of those reporters doing the pumping, making my editors happy by providing a reliable flow of stories.)" Robert Jensen --News Media Industry's Criticism of Iraq Coverage Reveals Deeper Problems with Mainstream Journalists' Conception of News  (Common Dreams)

Anyway, Jensen praises Robert Fisk for his refusal to rely on "official" news sources -- refusal that leaves him open to attacks by webloggers who are themselves relying on unofficial sources. Just how "unofficial" a source can be and still be meaningful is a battle that's being fought out in weblogs.

Thanks for the link, Jim.

"The show is called, 'PhD Island.'|Ten or so (somewhat attractive) men and women in their early twenties, maybe with a token older contestant, endure a numbingly drawn-out series of trials and humiliations. These include hostile dissertation-committee meetings, labyrinthine statistical methodologies, and ramen. Some contestants are eliminated along the way -- we watch their tearful exits with the comforting knowledge that by the end of the show, it is the survivors who will envy the escapees." Bob ("His real name is Ted, a pseudonym.") --Reality Show Concept: 'Ph.D. Island' (Unfogged)

"On 27th August, Mars will be at its closest to Earth for almost 60,000 years. On that date, the Red Planet will approach to within 34,646,418 miles (55,758,006 km) -- 145 times the distance of the Moon. The last time the two planets were so close our ancestors were living in caves and struggling to survive the extreme conditions of the Ice Age. Who knows what will have happened by the time they are as near again -- 284 years into the future?" Royal Astronomical Society
--Mars in Opposition: One for the Record Books (Mars Today)

"Superintendent of Schools Wilfredo T. Laboy, who recently put two dozen teachers on unpaid leave for failing a basic English proficiency test, has flunked a required literacy test three times... Laboy, who receives a 3 percent pay hike this month that will raise his salary to $156,560, recently put 24 teachers on unpaid administrative leave because they failed a basic English test..." --School Chief Failed Literacy Test  (AP/Boston.com)

Over on KairosNews, blacklily8 writes: "Sniff. Poor old super intendent of schools; someone pass me a hanky, please."

Update: Rosemary Frezza sends a link to a Laboy quote in a brief piece about a culturally biased question on a student test that asked students to write about a "snow day".

"As an investor, are you Mr. Spock, a rational, unemotional decision-maker who weighs all the options, or Captain Kirk, who is likely to respond with his feelings in making a decision?|At first glance, Mr. Spock would seem to have the advantage and make the best judgments about which stocks to buy.|Not necessarily, say a trio of visiting scholars at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta." Tom Walker --How Capt. Kirk would out-invest Mr. Spock (AJC)

have you guys ever seen gummi octopi before? they are so much fun to eat!

gummi octopus
gummi hectopus
gummi hexapus
gummi pentapus
gummi quadrapus
gummi tripus
gummi bipus
gummi monopus
gummi oedipus!

mmm

"stacey" --have you guys ever seen gummi octopi before?  (it makes sense that it should happen this way)

The plural of octopi octopus ["Pedant, heal thyself," writes Nick.] is actually octopodes, but that's nit picking. Oh, and stacey -- check to see whether it's gummi octopus residue that's keeping your shift key from working.

Found whilst googling for "hectopus".

"Video games offer worlds for players to explore. Parents and politicians aren't always happy with what goes on in digital realms, but now universities want to use gaming technology to build better teaching tools for schools." -- Wired's blurb for an article by Brad King --Educators Turn to Games for Help (Wired)

Minibar MunchkinsLiteracy Weblog)

A toddler is also a marvel, of a different sort. My daughter Carolyn loves repetition. She particularly enjoys opening things, taking something out, and then putting it back. Again, and again, and again.

Put these two marvels together over a long weekend, and what do you get? A minibar bill five pages long.

"A bright feature story on 16-year-old 'Mary' might refer to her by first name throughout. A straight news story on how she was charged with a crime might use her last name instead.|Youth can be a big factor in how we report the news. In the case above, the tone of the stories would be dramatically different, and we try to mix common sense with reader sensibilities in determining how to refer to minors." Lewis Brissman --Covering Youth an Exercise in Judgement (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

"How can you boost your web site's credibility?|We have compiled 10 guidelines for building the credibility of a web site. These guidelines are based on three years of research that included over 4,500 people." --Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility (Web Credibility)

Unlike most online web-writing tip pages (ahem), this one offers links to supporting research. Very useful.

"Surveys show that about half of 20 to 29 year olds read the newspaper every day in 1972; by 1998, just 20 percent of twenty somethings read the paper every day.|'The younger audience is not subscribing to the newspapers. This is a major concern for us,' said Noe. 'But we also know where they are -- they?re on the Internet. We?re just trying to get them to look at our site.'"

But for
--Newspaper Web Sites Struggle to Attract Younger Readers (OJR)

I'm writing this during a break in the Associated Collegiate Press/Advisers of College Media convention, which is full of bright young people who not only want to read the news, but want to write it.

At the convention, I was fortunate enough to run into a former student, Ben Charbonneau, who is an occasional contributor to this weblog.