The last 200 years have driven centralization and changed the human experience in ways that conflict with evolution. The Internet will reestablish a more balanced, decentralized lifestyle. —Jakob Nielsen —Undoing the Industrial Revolution (Alertbox) Similar:A former student contacted me to share her thoughts.A few years ago, I told myself I would s…AcademiaUdacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of…
In the universal, ritualistic adulation, it was no surprise that Google’s latest service received publicity that was as wide as it was shallow. The blogorrhea and avalanche of e-mail was as if a free, magical cure for cancer had been announced by the National Institutes of Health. I like and use Google a lot, but…
The Sims 2 now has a patch that fixes a few bugs. If only real life was debuggable like this. Here’s a few highlights: Fixes a problem with Sims’ jobs not functioning properly when 3 or more Sims go to work in a helicopter. Visitors will no longer kidnap a baby or toddler by leaving…
They reported that the more someone heads a soccer ball, the lower that player will score on tests measuring attention, concentration, and general intellectual functioning. Lezak is unsurprised. “I know what happens when you bat on the brain,” she says. “Given what we know about boxing, it would have been surprising if we hadn’t found…
Minorities who complain of underrepresentation might want to consider this still rather arcane problem. Television doesn’t just represent you; it usurps you. In this respect, to be underrepresented might be seen as a kind of privilege. It means that those bright and literate tv people haven’t really discovered you yet and set you going like…
In August of 2003, I spent $280 on X-rays and $400 on laptop repairs. I was in between fellowships and had no health insurance. I had slid down the steps of my charming two-floor walkup, resulting in an injury to my arm and, more painfully, damage to computer files containing my dissertation-research notes. Those charges…
Santa, enraged, kills Ensign Jones and attacks the Enterprise in his sleigh. As Scotty works to keep the power flowing to the shields, Kirk and Bones infiltrate Santa’s headquarters. With the help of the comely and lonely Mrs. Claus, Kirk is led to the heart of the workshop, where he learns the truth: Santa is…
At home, dads read to their daughters and throw footballs to their sons. In elementary school overwhelmingly female teaching staffs naturally teach in ways that connect better with girls. Fidgety boys are quickly defined as suffering from reading disabilities. In middle school, teachers – still unattuned to the boys’ disadvantages – take no action to…
—MSN Spaces = soylent green (BoingBoing) A good introduction to the online reaction to MSN Spaces, Microsoft’s new blogging service. Note particularly the terms of service that says anything you post using the service becomes a product that MSN can sell without reimbursing you. Similar:In November 2001 I was blogging aboutIn November 2001, I was blogging…
Lycos Europe has shut down its screensaver, makelovenotspam, which delighted many Internet users with the opportunity to flood spammers’ Web sites with junk e-mail. ISPs and anti-virus developers objected to the tactic, and at least one spammer found a way to turn the tables…. One Web site reportedly spammed by the screensaver simply forwarded its…
How indulgent is World of Warcraft? The game actually rewards you for not playing it. If you log out of the game in an inn, you get double experience for a while when you return later. According to the documentation, staying away from the game for a week should give you about a level and…
—Subjects > News > Colleges and Universities (Alexa) The web indexing service Alexa rates my academic site (jerz.setonhill.edu) as the fifth most popular in the “News > Colleges and Universities” category. Then again, there are only five sites in that category… so “Alexa puts my site in last place” is another way of looking at the…
Three major network television stations – NBC, CBS and ABC – have provided news and entertainment to American television viewers for decades. Each network broadcasts the evening news at 6:30 p.m., and for many American families, gathering around the television set to watch NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, CBS anchor Dan Rather, or ABC anchor Peter…
“Troops crossed the line of departure,” 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert declared, using a common military expression signaling the start of a major campaign. “It’s going to be a long night.” CNN, which had been alerted to expect a major news development, reported that the long-awaited offensive to retake the Iraqi city of Fallouja had begun.…
A spokesman for the Oxford University Press said that the word was now being put into other dictionaries for children and learners, reflecting its mainstream use. “I think it was the word of last year rather than this year,” he said. “Now we’re getting words that derive from it such as ‘blogosphere’ and so on,”…
In justifying this nightmare society [Orwell’s 1984], Winston’s torturer, O’Brien, explains: “You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable.” Fortunately, O’Brien, like the Director in Brave New World, is wrong. People…
Indeed, the core problem facing women who want to advance in academe appears to be at research universities. The higher up the academic-prestige ladder a university is, the fewer women it usually has in tenured faculty positions. Research released this year shows that while the nation is doing a good job of turning out women…
The whole affair shows that in fact bad writing is a joint academic/public matter, and to broach it as one would in a professional journal article or seminar presentation is to continue to theorize as if theory were never in doubt. In “interrogating the terms” of “bad” or “difficult” indictments, the contributors follow an academic…
Internet portal Lycos has made a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail. Lycos hopes will it make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers soar by keeping their servers running flat out. —Screensaver tackles spam websites (BBC) A very interesting strategy. Similar:A computer scientist urges more…
Through a new effort, Wikinews, members of the open-source community who write and edit Wikipedia’s encyclopedia entries are encouraged to test their skills as journalists. The news site follows a similar set of rules as the encyclopedia, which allows anyone to edit and post corrections to entries, so long as each change is recorded.–Joanna Glasner…