What is the best search engine?

That’s a good one. Via Microdoc News. —What is the best search engine?Ask Jeeves) Similar:Will ChatGPT Kill the Student Essay? Universities Aren’t Ready for the Answer | The WalrusI’m still grappling with exactly how the…AcademiaYork Corpus Christi Play Simulator Screencast (PSim 2.1; D.G. Jerz)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwNv1lx3…AcademiaIs Google Making Us Stupid?Nicholas Carr, in The Atlantic: As the …Books[2.5]…

High Score Education: Games, not school, are teaching kids to think

“Forty percent of students lack basic reading skills, and their academic performance is dismal compared with that of their foreign counterparts. In response to this crisis, schools are skilling-and-drilling their way ‘back to basics,’ moving toward mechanical instruction methods that rely on line-by-line scripting for teachers and endless multiple-choice testing. Consequently, kids aren’t learning how…

Fisking as a Rhetorical Construct

fisk (v): debunk via critical annotation, typically with heaping doses of contempt. Recently Jill Walker lamented that it was hard to teach her students to blog critically. Perhaps we should first teach them to fisk. Over the past month, I’ve seen the verb “fisk” pop up in weblogs discussing media coverage of Iraq. The eponymous…

Blogger vs. Movable Type

Google: “switch[ed] to Blogger“: 165. Google: “switch[ed] to Movable Type“: 534Blogger vs. Movable TypeLiteracy Weblog) Similar:Google’s broken link to the webI guess now we know why for the past dec…BusinessHow Facebook and Twitter control what you see about FergusonOn Twitter, I see tear-gassed civilians,…CultureWhy You Should Blog to Get Your Next Job It’s your resume,…

Authors Plan 'Fastest' Book

“Forty German authors are hoping to set a record on World Book Day on Wednesday by conceiving, writing and printing a book in 12 hours. | Each of the authors has two hours in which to write two pages of the book.” —Authors Plan ‘Fastest’ BookBBC) Similar:NASA Just Found a Lost SpacecraftIf movies about space…

Notable Quotes

“Whoo whoo whoo oogh oogh oogh oogh oogh oogh oogh oogh ooh ooh oooh oooh.” — Primatologist Jane Goodall imitating a chimpanzee in the U.S. State Department, yesterday. —Notable QuotesABC News) Similar:I Cannot Begin to Tell You How Proficient I Am in Microsoft WordIs this satire? It doesn’t matter. It ga…AestheticsKnowing Poe [Annotated Version of…

BBC Screws Up Again

“With regard to the article by David Whitehouse posted Friday, 18 April, 2003, 13:45 GMT 14:45 UK: Does anyone actually read these BBC stories before they are posted? It would be polite to to spell Mr. Rutan’s name properly (‘Burt’ not ‘Bert’). Moreover, this is not the ‘world’s first manned sub-orbital space programme’. I cannot…

The End of Human Nature

“By ordering up athletics-enhanced, music-enhanced, optimism-enhanced children, you are not merely urging them in some direction – all parents do that; you are wiring your own tastes into their genes, literally twisting their minds and bodies into the shape you have chosen. And this staggering arrogance is bound to be futile because the technology will…

The 'Obliteration Phenomenon' in Science — and the Advantage of Being Obliterated!

What if “pi” were a recent discovery? How would journals publicize it, and how would the educational system absorb it? “Once the discovery had been reported in a contemporary journal, mathematicians could be expected to begin using and citing Archimedes? constant… While the term Archimedes? constant would become increasingly familiar even to school children, scientists…

The Nerd-ification of America

“My how times have changed! These days you hear nerd talk spewing out of everyone’s mouth! … Is it computer technology that’s made nerds of us all? Or perhaps it’s because we really do work for those former “losers” now.” Peter Bagge —The Nerd-ification of AmericaReason) I feel the same way about Star Trek, which…