Posts from — March 2005

Magic-Sculp:
Epoxy clay

cooool

[Read more →]

The answer to the student evaluation problem!:
This is beautiful. It’s a simple, elegant solution, the Jedi mind trick:

———–

classic, i’ve actually had similar experience. i explain several time how my grading system is the fairest to everyone, and i always get at the end of the class comments that i’m remarkably fair. but then again… it is fair, uncommon, but fair.

$25,000 for a CMS??? You’ve got to be kidding!:
In Oh, What a Tangled Web…, University Business has a feature describing the need for content management systems on college campuses. Only wait? The feature focuses almost exclusively on expensive proprietary systems. Can’t imagine that any CMS is worth $25,000 plus $5,000 a year in maintenance cost with so many good open source apps out there. Bowling Green’s and Gonzaga’s new websites could easily be done with many open source solutions. I would have built Gonzaga’s expensive site for them with Drupal for 1/10 the cost. ‘Course the open source development communities and consultants aren’t going to come take a dean or IT director out to dinner and give them all kinds of other perks
Disclaimer: I don’t want to suggest that this is what happened at these institutions, but I suspect that open source CMS developers need to do a better marketing job and get their apps out there in the public eye and in whatever trade journals are featuring these needlessly expensive alternatives.

———

seems like a reasonable assumption though… why do we use x vs y, there is a reason…..

Proposed Law on Bankruptcy Has Loophole ….:
Proposed Law on Bankruptcy Has Loophole. A proposed law being debated by the Senate leaves open a loophole that lets wealthy people protect assets from creditors even after filing for bankruptcy. By GRETCHEN MORGENSON. [NYT > Business]

I feel so much better now that I know the wealthy will be protected from adverse effects of the bankruptcy bill! As long as only middle class and poor people can be hurt, and banks, credit card companies, and the rich are protected, I guess it’s a good thing. Yeesh.

———–
it is like people don’t know that others care that they game the system….. or worse, that they don’t care.

New Scientist Breaking News – Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon:
“I am deeply concerned about the ethical aspects of this research,” says Andrew Rice, a consultant in pain medicine at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, UK. “Even if the use of temporary severe pain can be justified as a restraining measure, which I do not believe it can, the long-term physical and psychological effects are unknown.”

The Decembrist: How Social Security Phase-Out Makes Republicans:
Now, there is another way that Social Security privatization could create Republicans, and I think this is actually closer to what’s on the mind of the less utopian strategists. (That is, those not named “Gingrich” or “Kemp.”) It’s the negative: they believe Social Security creates Democrats, by fostering a positive sense of government, which in Texas is called “dependence.” They don’t care about the private accounts so much as eroding as much as possible of the guaranteed benefit. I heard Gene Sperling, the head of the National Economic Council under Clinton, make a point related to this the other day: that the reason the White House seemed to be structuring the privatization in the bizarre and awkward way that they are, especially the reduction of the regular benefit by any gains in the private account, rather than just guaranteeing the benefit and making the account smaller, was to make sure that the guaranteed portion of the program appeared to be as trivial as possible.

———-

hmmmph

Wallace and Gromit Ride Again:
Wallace and Gromit have a movie coming out this fall, The Curse of the WereRabbit!
There’s a trailer and also a short about the making of the movie accessible via clicking “video” at this site. The short is spoiled by some pretty dorky narration, but it will interest true fans.
Er, Helena Bonham Carter has a part? Well Gromet, that’s almost as good as cheese.

————

wow, this is some great news. i love wallace and gromit movies.

i put the new website up today…

Association of Internet Researchers

F3ll0wsh1p of teh R1ng :
Merry: “OMG!!!”
Sam: “O.M.G!!!11″
Pippin: “***”
Frodo has left the server
**head nazgul stabs Frodo’s ghost
Frodo has connected to the server
Frodo: “***… hax!”
**Aragorn lraps into the fray with a flaming brand
Aragorn: “PH34r!!!!!!”
Merry: “LOLOL flamed! “