Sunday, March 26, 2006

Folksonomy, meet personomy. Xeni Jardin: Over yonder on his blog, Bruce Sterling says, I've been noticing that successful tech neologisms tend to have children. For instance, the term "AJAX" was a little suspect at first, because the acronym for "Asynchronous Java and Xtml" doesn't always entirely jibe with programmers' actual usage of web techniques that get called "Ajax." However, Ajax spawned "COMET" and "FLORWAX." This lineage makes Ajax much harder to kill. "Folksonomy" has now reached a similar fertile-adult stage with the coinage of "personomy." Link [Boing Boing] 8:47:00 PM    comment []

Marketing philosophy to admitted students.. My university had events on campus today for newly admitted students. My department tapped me (and two of our fabulous philosophy students) to man the Philosophy Department table at the College of Humanities and Arts open house. Hundreds of admitted students -- many with their parents -- milling around in a room with such enticing major departments as English & Comparative Literature, Art & Design, Music & Dance (yes, the cool ones have ampersands), and we were supposed to sell Philosophy. We opted for brazenness, and wrote in big letters on the white-board/easel we had brought with us: Read the entire post  [Adventures in Ethics and Science] That is such a tease. So, I'll give. She asys it said: PHILOSOPHY: Proudly corrupting youth since Socrates. 8:46:28 PM    comment []

Ten worst pop albums ever (UkInd-2col-list) .... Ten worst pop albums ever (UkInd-2col-list) [robot wisdom weblog] 8:46:18 PM    comment []

Some of the very smartest writing going on the Web is at Dave Pollard's How to Save the World. Did I say "on the Web?" You can ignore the qualifier. Some of the very smartest. Full stop. Check out: Men Offer Appreciation; Women Offer Attention. 5:57:57 PM    comment []

MIT Media Lab Guru Says No Computers in Schools. MIT Media Lab Guru Says No Computers in Schools: Michael Schrage of the MIT Media Lab wrote a piece for The Financial Times saying that there should be no computers in schools. He argues that billions could be saved by keeping useless technologies out of schools. As an educational technologist, I felt that I needed to address his critique. I think his main argument is with educational software companies, but he fails to differentiate between them and between teachers using technology in the classroom. His article cites nothing other than his own opinions, but it is an interesting read nonetheless. ——– No to computers in schools… but…. having the underfunded developing world pay for laptops from their national budget to the tune of ten’s of millions of dollars… that’s a great idea… Isn’t it? I’m not sure computers should be ubiquitous in education at all. I think that students need to experience diverse informational experiences, not just computer based, not just book based, but also oral traditons, etc. [Too many topics, too little time.] Curious and ironic. Quick agreement here on that point. (Now I have to read the piece, don't I?) 5:57:55 PM    comment []

Video: Bill Gates being grilled by US anti-trust lawyers.    This YouTube clip purports to be footage of Bill Gates being grilled by US government anti-trust lawyers in 1998 -- though you don't really get a clear look at his face, but that autistic rocking is pretty characteristic. The video closes with a come-on to get a multi-DVD set of the entire deposition. Link (Thanks, Dave!) [Boing Boing] 5:57:51 PM    comment []

Top 10 Vehicles Owned by Billionaires. A list compiled by Forbes Magazine, garnered from motor vehicle dept. records, on the 10 richest people on their 2005 list, to whet the appetites of the superrich-watchers while waiting for the 2006 richest list. Forbes observes, "It seems that for the super-rich, a vehicle is seen not as a status symbol, but as a means to an end in which to get from point A to point B. Status is something that these billionaires need not prove to others. In many cases, the people on our list prefer to live inconspicuously, avoiding the limelight at all costs;" feels like a stretch to me, given that there are lots of Porsches, some Bentleys and of course the Lincoln town cars even if no Ferraris, Lamborghinis, etc. And no BMWs. How about concluding that some billionaires are more ostentatious than others? Here's an exercise for you to do. Before you check out the cars themselves, look at the list of ten and rank them based on your intuitive sense of where they fall on a continuum between ostentation and humility. [Follow Me Here...] 5:57:48 PM    comment []

All Scientists Left Behind. Orac beats me to commenting on today's depressing New York Times story about NCLB. It seems that, faced with strict "No Child Left Behind" requirements in reading and math, some schools are shifting things around so that their low-performing students take only reading and math: Rubén Jimenez, a seventh grader whose father is a construction laborer, has a schedule typical of many students at the school, with six class periods a day, not counting lunch. Rubén studies English for the first three periods, and pre-algebra and math during the fourth and fifth. His sixth period is gym. Because God knows, we wouldn't want anybody miss gym... Now, granted, the only students affected are the lowest of the low performers, and not too likely to be future Nobel laureates in the physical sciences, but this is really a terrible message to send. It's not just that this devalues science, it also devalues the kids affected-- what this is saying is that the school doesn't really care about them as people, or about getting them the skills they need to make a better life. All they care about is that they do well enough on the test to keep the money coming. I don't usually go in for conspiracy theories, but the claim that the real purpose of "No Child Left Behind" is to break public education so badly that everybody will agree to discard it looks more plausible with every new story about its effects. Read the entire post  [Uncertain Principles] 5:57:43 PM    comment []