Rube Goldburgh + Honda ==> an amazing commercial.
My mom was a “gifted and talented” teacher in an elementary and middle school. Each year her kids had to design and build a Rube Goldburgh devices to compete in the Olympics of the Mind.I'm sure they'd appreciate this an amazing commercial. (Flash 6 required)
Brilliant commercial. Of course, most of the systems we live with day to day have the complexity without the payoff.
Moonset, viewed from the Space Station.
This NASA website offers a streaming quicktime movie of our moon setting on the horizon, as viewed from the International Space Station. The moon turns into a squashy, pink pancake as it sets, and this science primer explains why. Link to article, Link to movie, Discuss
[Boing Boing Blog]
Something fun to end the day. Appropriate in part because my youngest boy and I are about to start work on a model of the ISS.
I’ve decided to add comments to my blog.
Initially, my purposes in blogging didn’t require comments. My weblog was my backup brain. Later when I started to use it to supplement my teaching, my primary audience was my students and they could either comment in class, use blackboard (which I hate), and use their own blogs (a largely unsuccessful experiment).
As I’ve begun to develop a bit of a small audience, the issue of comments now needs to be revisited. I have reservations about Radio’s default comment system because there is no way to exercise any control over postings. Not that I want to censor so much as I worry about comments getting spammed and inappropriate off-topic comments. I think I now have things almost set up to get what I want. I’ve implemented comments with a “Manila” site that I do have control over should I receive comments that I believe are inappropriate. It also will let me subscribe and track any comments that do get posted.
Over the years, I’ve generally been disappointed by threaded discussion as a tool. I see what ought to be possible, but getting knowledge workers in organizations to develop the skills and norms to realize that potential seems to be awfully hard to do. I haven’t had enough hands on experience with wikis yet to have a strong opinion about where they fit it. Blogs do seem to have some characteristics that contribute to more robust thinking. I’m still trying to parse why I think that and where comments fit into that mix. I guess it’s time to get some primary data.
Springsteen on the Dixie Chicks
Here’s a courageous statement from Bruce Springsteen on the plight of the Dixie Chucks, who are suffering boycotts of their work by the pro-war jingoists (including faux-patriotic corporate interests) throughout the land:
The Dixie Chicks have taken a big hit lately for exercising their basic right to express themselves. To me, they’re terrific American artists expressing American values by using their American right to free speech. For them to be banished wholesale from radio stations, and even entire radio networks, for speaking out is un-American. The pressure coming from the government and big business to enforce conformity of thought concerning the war and politics goes against everything that this country is about – namely freedom. Right now, we are supposedly fighting to create freedom in Iraq, at the same time that some are trying to intimidate and punish people for using that same freedom here at home. I don’t know what happens next, but I do want to add my voice to those who think that the Dixie Chicks are getting a raw deal, and an un-American one to boot. I send them my support.
Bruce Springsteen
[from JD Lassica’s New Media Musings ]
Good to see that some people get the basic premise of free speech. If you don’t like or agree with what they say, say something else in rebuttal. But don’t engage in forms of attempted censorship. The whole point of free speech is to permit ideas that the majority don’t agree with to be heard. Guess it’s time to buy some Dixie Chicks CDs. Too bad most of the money won’t get to them, but that’s another story.
The Buffalo Theory. I’m gonna go have a six-pack.
The Buffalo Theory As explained by Cliff Clavin, of Cheers. One afternoon at Cheers, Cliff Clavin was explaining the Buffalo Theory to his buddy Norm. Here’s how it went:
“Well ya see, Norm, it’s like this… A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and Weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. “In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks The slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the Brain a faster and more efficient machine. That’s why you always feel smarter after a few beers.”
Now I really regret giving up drinking :)!
Super-DMCA Already Law in Several States. Louis Trager at the Washington Internet Daily reports that Super-DMCA bills have already passed in several states: The low-profile lobbying effort was under way about 2 years before it burst into the open in recent days. Legislation supported by MPAA… [Freedom to Tinker]
Apparently Illinois is among the states that have passed some form of this legislation. Which means that I may be breaking the law as I write this since I sit behind a firewall, use NAT on my home network, and use VPN to reach the office network. I'm going to see what I can learn about the Illinois legislation. Meanwhile, I'll continue my civil disobedience. Maybe this is actually a clever strategy to jumpstart the ailing technology industry by forcing all of us to redesign our net access? Somehow I doubt it.
Ignorant Legislators in Michigan. When lawmakers create stupid laws, they reduce respect for the what they do and injure civil society. With hardly any… [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
Ed Felten picked up on this the other day. If you use a VPN to connect to your office and you're in Michigan, then it would appear that you are breaking the law. There are other, equally stupid aspects of this new legislation. Why is it so hard to learn the most fundamental things about technology before acting?
Now listed on blogshares.
Morons in the News: Zero-Tolerance: The 'Tolerance' Stands for 'Intelligence'. If there's one thing I love as much as I hate zero-tolerance policies, it's clever use of a system… [Morons Dot Org]
Oh. What a wonderful Catch-22. A 6 year old is facing expulsion for having a plastic butter spoon in his backback. A spoon he got in the cafeteria and wanted to take home. So if they press for expulsion, the parents will sue the school for provding a dabgerous weapon to their 6 year old. Zero-tolerance is for morons. I hope the parents get a ton of money. [A Man with a Ph.D. – Richard Gayle's Weblog]
Something to brighten your day
Brockman on “The New Humanists”. Arts and Letters Daily features this essay from a forthcoming book by John Brockman that explores “New Humanism”: new ways of understanding physical systems, and new challenges to basic assumptions of who and what we are and what it means to be human:
“We live in an era in which pessimism has become the norm,” writes Arthur Herman, in The Idea of Decline in Western History. Herman, who coordinates the Western Civilization Program at the Smithsonian, argues that the decline of the West, with its view of our “sick society,” has become the dominant theme in intellectual discourse, to the point where the very idea of civilization has changed… As a counternarrative to this cultural pessimism, consider the twofold optimism of science.
First, the more science you do, the more there is to do. Scientists are constantly acquiring and processing new information. This is the reality of Moore’s Law just as there has been a doubling of computer processing power every eighteen months for the past twenty years, so too do scientists acquire information exponentially. They can’t help but be optimistic. And second, much of the new information is either good news or news that can be made good thanks to ever deepening knowledge and ever more efficient and powerful tools and techniques.
A worthy upbeat attitude in the midst of so much other negativity. Consistent with the Dorothy Parker observation that I use as my tag line.
I used to use a simple diagram in some of my presentations. It represented knowledge as an expanding circle. What was interesting to me is that if you looked at the interface between what you knew and what you didn’t know, the “boundary of your ignorance” grew as you learned more. The more you learned, the more things to be learned you became aware of. That’s a very energizing prospect and a humbling one at the same time. It means I will always have a list of things to learn.
