Posts from — June 2007

The Bitchy Sweetness of Peperoncino Honey:
Just add a cup of a neutral honey to a pot, along with a generous pinch of peperoncino. When just at the point of boiling, pour the honey into a container and let it cool for a few hours. The oils of the chili will have infused into the honey, creating a bottle of bitchy sweetness all your own.
—-

i think the bitchy sweetness is a bit much, but peppery good honey…. i can see the merits of that.

GOOD COPY BAD COPY:
GOOD COPY BAD COPY
- a documentary about the current state of copyright and culture

—

I watched this is in second life, it is a pretty good overview of some of the issues in copyright culture.

Steve Talbott:
Why should I pay a school $160,000 for a vocational education when I can almost certainly find a business or agency or laboratory or nonprofit organization willing to hire me for nothing, assign me some useful chores, and give me an opportunity to start learning my desired vocation?
—-

The purpose of education, at least in the liberal arts and in the sciences, is not vocation, vocation comes later, you are not prepared for some vocations without an education in the liberal arts and sciences. Oh you can do the job, but you won’t be able to go as far in the job as quickly, and you will have much fewer faculties and tools to adapt to changes in the jobs, to understand what the real job is, beyond the performance of work. we need to be careful here, because there are to few vocations left.

Threat Level – Wired Blogs:
The four librarians under the gag order weren’t allowed to talk to each other by phone. So they e-mailed. Later, they weren’t allowed to e-mail.

—–

librarians are dangerous folk, they must be hiding something.

Facing Middle Age With No Degree, and No Wife – New York Times:
Beyond the questions of finances and health, there is the issue of how content these men are. All the men interviewed for this article looked younger than their age. All said they were happy with their lives, even Mr. Cunningham, with his clear longing for a family of his own, and Mr. Thomas, of Fort Collins, who said he might move to Denver to meet more women.

—-

there seems to be an implicit assumption that they would be better off married in this article. I find that problematic.

About:About – Shareideas:
ShareIdeas.org is an online community and a wiki for sharing ideas on how to use mobile communications for social and environmental benefits.
ShareIdeas.org was created with support from Nokia and Vodafone, but belongs to the growing global network of individuals and organizations that use this virtual gathering place to communicate – and collaborate.
The idea for ShareIdeas.org came from Ndidi Nwuneli, founder and CEO of LEAP Africa, a Nigerian NGO dedicated to nurturing a new generation of African leaders.
“Groups like ours would really benefit from a resource that shows us how to use mobile technology to carry out our work more effectively,” said Ndidi at a Nokia stakeholder event of NGO and corporate leaders.

—–

this seems like a great project.

FBI targets universities in new scheme to recruit informers:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently paid visits to a number of universities in New England as part of an effort to enlist faculty, students and staff in informing for the national police agency. The bureau’s rationale for its campus initiative is the danger posed by foreign spies and terrorists stealing sensitive research. It provides briefings on what it calls “espionage indicators” supposedly aimed at protecting the data in question.

—–

hmmm, very good, new england is certainly where the majority of terrorists would be. or or… canada!

Core ICT Indicators:
This report provides definitions, model questions and methodological notes relevant to the core indicators agreed at the February 2005 meeting. By making this information available to a wide audience, in particular in developing countries, it is hoped to be of use to countries developing their statistical data collection programmes on the information society.

http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/partnership/material/CoreICTIndicators.pdf

—

this could be handy.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”:

–

best cover in ages

Teachers not staying in the profession, report finds:
To stem the flow, districts must first determine the annual turnover rate and then focus on hiring well-prepared teachers who have a clear understanding of content, curriculum and how to manage a classroom, Carroll said.

—

and carroll would be wrong. to stem the flow, we must address the lack of respect and trust that we put in teaching professionals, we need to ensure that they have a solid middle class lifestyle, can be happy teaching, and aren’t working 14 hour days.