Posts from — March 2009

Ontario judge orders website to reveal identity data on anonymous posters

[From Ontario judge orders website to reveal identity data on anonymous posters]

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someone probably needs to explain to the judge that there is a huge difference between the state having a compelling interest to protect children thus over-riding privacy rights and the compelling interest of a private entity seeking personal remuneration for alleged defamation. state entity vs private entity, crime vs tort, physical harm vs monetary/reputation harm. I’m sorry… someone is being dumb or lazy to accept this parallel.

[From YouTube - JamesBurkeWeb's Channel]

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i think i only saw a few shows, but it definitely influenced the way i see the world. now connections is on youtube…

I think for Ada Lovelace day I’ll have to mention my mom. She might not be a high tech wizard like my sister and my wife, but my mom is on facebook and twitter. She knows how to do what she wants to do; she even has a programmable sewing machine for doing things that she might not want to do, heh. In my life, I’ve actually never seen her stumped by technology, granted she isn’t so much of a ‘rip it apart and see how it works’ sort of person, but she is a ‘let’s do the job’ sort of person and she has mastered technologies the whole way. She worked in a sewing factory, she worked on the family farm, she was a certified emergency medical technician even served in a helicopter for that, worked as a nurses assistant, she worked in several restaurants, she helped run the hotel and now she is a baker after going back to school in her late 40’s and getting her b.a. in baking. She’s inspiring because she always does what she needs to do to accomplish her tasks and some of those technologies I can imagine could have been quite daunting at first, yet she was unflappable and kept going. Baking, her current occupation, is a technology intensive job, like all of her other positions, and we shouldn’t forget that, because while some might focus on ‘high technology’ or ‘information technology’… technology is everywhere and the use of technology in everyday life and labors in all occupation is growing.

I don’t think that I can say that I ever studied from Marjorie Grene, but I did study with her. She sat in on an Ancient Philosophy graduate class I took and came to the weekly Ancient Greek translation and reading group we had for a while in the philosophy department. She was a real spitfire in both arenas. Many people will remember her in philosophy for her contributions to the philosophy of biology, but I’ll remember her for her work in ancient philosophy and her work surrounding descartes. She was working on those topics most of the time that I knew her. She was a figure to be reckoned with and she will be missed.

Jody’s Memorium, far better than mine

For Lennard J. Davis, universities are akin to licensed madhouses and obsession is the name of the game.

[From Times Higher Education - You don't have to be fixated to work here...]

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the sad thing is that this is mostly true….

The Infoscape Research Lab is pleased to welcome a lecture by

Jeremy Hunsinger, Virginia Tech
‘Exploring Science in Second Life through the Interplay of Information
and Interactivity’

Mar 10, 1pm
Rogers Communication Centre 329
gelmer@ryerson.ca

Science in Second Life operates through the modeling and interacting
with virtual objects. These objects are primarily visual constructs
represented on the screen. There is an interplay of interactivity
and information found in constructions of scientific environments and
tools in Second Life. In this presentation I analyze builds in Second
Life that do one of three goals, either they are classroom materials
about sciences, sites aimed at toward improving the public
understanding of science, or sites that represent scientific history
and institutions. Construing the construction of objects as locations
of intersubjective experiences about science, I argue that there is a
varying mix of information and interactivity that is necessary for the
production of knowledge in virtual spaces and the lack of information
and/or interactivity hinders that knowledge production.

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