Posts from — November 2006

jakemandell.com » Test your musical skills in 6 minutes!:

it says i have excellent musical abilities…..

Ethics of Science in Africa:
A Youth Forum on the ethical and social responsibilities of scientists in Africa is also planned, in order to involve young researchers or representatives of youth organizations in the work of COMEST.

Finally, a Regional Ministerial Meeting on the incorporation of ethics of science and technology in African public policies will also take place in order to assure visibility and political support to the debate of this matter in the West Africa region.
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This is a great idea and a good program. The issues of ethical research always pops up on my agenda… I think we need to be very careful about the way we imagine the relationships between ethics and the power dynamics of the developing/developed world.

Elderly harmonica player arrested for performing copyrighted songs at bar – MSN-Mainichi Daily News:
A 73-year-old bar manager who illegally performed copyrighted tunes by the Beatles and other artists on the harmonica was arrested Thursday on suspicion of violating the Copyright Law, police said.Arrested was Masami Toyoda, of Tokyo’s Nerima-ku. He has reportedly admitted to the allegations against him.

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when copyright law goes wrong….

UNESCO/Jikji Memory of the World Prize: Call for nominations:
Significant contributions to the preservation and accessibility of documentary heritage are now being sought to be nominated for the second UNESCO/Jikji Memory of the World Prize.

The Prize of US$30 000 was created to commemorate the inscription of the Buljo jikji simche yojeol, the oldest known book of movable metal print in the world, in the Memory of the World Register. The Jikji is the second volume of “Anthology of Great Buddhist Priests’ Zen Teachings”. It contains the essentials of Zen Buddhism compiled by Baegun, a priest. This book was printed at the old Heungdeok-sa temple in Cheongju city, using movable metal type in July 1377. The book was printed in two volumes: the first volume has yet to be found and the second volume is being kept in the National Library of France. View the Digital Jikji .

The Prize is awarded every two years to individuals or institutions in recognition of their contribution to the preservation and accessibility of documentary heritage as a common heritage of humanity. Funded by the Republic of Korea through arrangements made with the Municipal Council of Cheongju City, this Prize was approved by UNESCO’s Executive Board in April 2004.

Nominations to this second edition of the Prize should be submitted by 31 December 2006. Each nomination must include, in English or French, a description of the candidate’s background and achievements, a summary of the work submitted for consideration and a review of the way in which this work has contributed to the preservation and accessibility of documentary heritage.
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this is a great idea and program….

The Irreverent Archivist: Recipe for Appraisal of Random Items:
This recipe for appraisal of random items is a tried and true formula, tested in many archival work places throughout the world over the past century. It never fails to produce a certain light-headed, clean feeling, and it is possible to modify this recipe to include different proportions and ingredients without negative side effects.

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ohhhhh nooooeeeeesssssss! the truth of work practices is out in the wild. this changes everything.

What About Public Trust?:
Not too many years, the Harvard Program for Art Museum Directors sponsored a series of lectures about art museums and the notion of the public trust. As James Cuno, editor of the results of these lectures published as Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), ISBN 10:0-691-12781-6, argues as a starting point for these lectures, “The more art museums look like multinational corporations and the more their directors sound like corporate CEOs, the more they risk being cast by the public in the same light” (p. 17). In other words, such behavior throws into question just what public good art museums address (if any, anymore). What is fascinating to me as an archivist is the greater dexterity by which art museum directors and those of other museums can discuss the idea of public good. A few examples from Whose Muse? will demonstrate my point.

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This looks like a great book….

LIS Zen Heaven:

LISZEN: Library Blog Search Engine

“Wanting to find out what other librarians are saying about Library 2.0? Or perhaps you can’t remember who talked about ‘Fighting the Stereotypes!’ a few weeks ago. Welcome to the search engine for librarians!

I’ve been slaving away, taking links from LISWIKI and importing them to Google Co-op. The result is a custom search engine that sifts through 530 individual blogs.” [Library Zen]

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This looks cool

Miles away, ‘I’ll have a burger’ – The Boston Globe:

NASHUA — When Jairo Moncada pulled up to the drive-through at Wendy’s in Burbank, Calif., for his usual cheeseburger, fries, and soda, he knew things looked different. There was an extra lane.

But the 25-year-old could not see the biggest change: The woman taking his lunch order was sitting 3,000 miles away at a computer terminal in Nashua, and fielding calls from Wendy’s customers at drive-throughs as far away as Florida and Washington, D.C.

“I had absolutely no idea I was talking to someone in New Hampshire,” Moncada said in a phone interview later that day. “Our order was ready at the window. It was really quick.”

It took a total of 66 seconds.

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wow…. this changes…. something…. not sure what, but something.

Change Magazine Article(s): A Tectonic Shift in Global Higher Education:

For two decades, worldwide enrollment growth in higher education has exceeded the most optimistic forecasts. A milestone of 100 million enrollments was passed some years ago, and an earlier forecast of 120 million students by 2020 may be reached by 2010. If anything, enrollment growth is accelerating as more governments see the rapid expansion of higher education as a key element in their transition from developing to developed countries.

That is the situation in China, where enrollments doubled between 2000 and 2003. With 16 million students enrolled by 2005, China had overtaken the United States as the world’s largest higher education system. Malaysia also illustrates the trend. It plans to increase enrollments in higher education by 166 percent in the next four years, from 600,000 to 1.6 million, to achieve college participation rates similar to those of developed nations. Mauritius has recently passed legislation to create a third university for its 1.2 million people, having added its second only five years ago.

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Some would say that this will ruin…. the american university… I say… contrarily that the key is to encourage learning and that doesn’t have to be ‘american’

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Columnists – A closed mind about an open world:
Studying intellectual property and the internet has convinced me that we have another cognitive bias. Call it the openness aversion. We are likely to undervalue the importance, viability and productive power of open systems, open networks and non-proprietary production. Test yourself on the following questions. In each case, it is 1991 and I have removed from you all knowledge of the past 15 years.

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I agree there is an aversion to openness, and i think this is very problematic. when professors and scientists won’t share data because they are afraid of competition, you have a real problem with innovation, that you might have to make a law to make people share is utterly surprising. openness and sharing are being overwritten by other values and those values are not market values, but anti-market, monopoly capital values. However, this was predicted by Simmel, so….