Posts from — November 2004

Physics.org – Physics Life: “”

(Via .)

—–

i wonder who makes the argument that physics is irrelevant…..

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Politics (H. L. Mencken): “The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

(Via .)

——

mob politics, that makes sense….

Depanneren: “”

(Via .)

——

and that no one read them, something about putting out the bracing or something before performing a lift.

The Continuum International Publishing Group – Series Detail: “”

(Via .)

——–

i like Bataille’s on neitzsche…. it is well worth reading.

EDUCAUSE | Security Task Force | Publications and Reports: “”

(Via .)

interesting set of reports on higher education information security.

Launch of Google Scholar: “Tomorrow Google will launch the beta version of Google Scholar, although it is online today for use. From the press release: ‘[W]e are excited to announce Google Scholar, a free search service that helps users find scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts, and technical reports. This service will be available tomorrow morning….Like Google Web Search, Google Scholar orders search results by relevancy to ensure the most useful references appear at the top of the page. This ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article’s author, the publication in which the article appeared, and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature….Whenever possible, Google searches across the full text of a paper, not just the abstract….Google Scholar offers relevant results for a wide range of scholarly materials including research that isn’t yet online. For instance much of Einstein’s work isn’t online, but it is heavily cited by other researchers. Google Scholar leverages these citations to make users aware of important papers or books that are not online, yet may be available in their local library.’

(PS: This is an important development. It will make OA literature even more visible and retrievable than it already is. It will give authors new incentives to make their work OA. It will help readers find what they need. Because it indexes work that is not online, even non-OA publishers will have an incentive to participate, making it more and comprehensive and useful. When you run a search, Google Search labels each hit by the number of citations it has, presumably from other works in the index. It also lets you click through to a new page showing just those citing works. Authors and publishers: see the FAQ for instructions on how to make sure that your work is included.)”

(Via Open Access News.)

———-

i think it is good, but it doesn’t do the metadata well and really… i find the metadata search on things like ingenta.com to be very useful.

Strong-Ties: “Heavy-duty erector sets”

(Via Cool Tools.)

handy….

Colleges Easy Prey to Hackers: “Conmputer-security experts say that college networks will increasingly be infiltrated by hackers unless campus computing officials take more aggressive steps to protect sensitive data. (Denver Post)”

(Via Chronicle.com – The Wired Campus.)

—–

this is pretty clear…..

in just the last week, we’ve had 2 computers hacked.

TCS: Tech Central Station – The Ivy League’s Missed Connections: “”

(Via .)

It is as if perennial college football powerhouses like USC, Oklahoma and Miami were obliterated in national Bowl games by tiny programs not even ranked during the regular season.

——-

i think the author greatly misses the issue. it isn’t that the powerhouses win at football, they still win at football, but any university might beat their ping pong team, because your money, reputation, or anything else doesn’t guarantee that you will have a good ping pong team, only the good people you have do and that is a problem at large institutions where you have more people and thus it is harder to concentrate really good technical people and technical systems because you will have more people and more people will usually approach normal instead of approaching greatness.

Theocracy Watch: “”Christians are mandated to gradually occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns -Definition of Dominion Theology by sociologist Sara Diamond link…”

(Via Spitting Image.)

——-

cause you know, jesus was a christian warrior……