Random Acts of Music

Random Acts of Music Just now, a student crept up behind me and slipped a pair of headphones over my head. I don’t know her. She doesn’t introduce herself. Small voices, like backwards chimpmunks, say something inaudible to a hip-hop beat. “I randomly subject people to whatever I’m listenting to,” says the student. I thank…

blogs.setonhill.edu is down

blogs.setonhill.edu is down I’ve notified the server admin, who says he’ll won’t be able to look at it until early this evening. A shout out to Rachel Crump, who was just about to give an oral presentation on Dungeons & Dragons when the blogs went down at about 3:45 … she had prepared thoroughly enough…

Haunted by Penguins

Questions (by whom, I don’t know) had been raised about my collegiality and some had reached the ears of the search committees where my applications were under review. I racked my brain for the comment or incident that could have sparked such rumors. Had I inadvertently said something in a seminar or a conference that…

Broadband Penetration on the Upswing

Rural users lag in broadband adoption, and infrastructure availability is a reason for this. Here are some highlights from the Pew Internet Project’s February 2004 survey: 55% of all adult Internet users – or 34% of all adult Americans – have access to high-speed Internet connections either at home or on the job. 39% of…

What's love gotta do with it?

So much for the evolutionary advantage of love. As to the proximate, immediate cause of love, scientists have found that the mother-offspring bond in humans and other animals is mediated by the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin. What researchers at University College London have now found is that romantic and maternal love activate many of the…