Category — General

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25-MAY 1

Yeah but no but yeah but:
Condoleezza Rice. Photograph: RIMGA/GettyThis morning Condoleezza Rice – or was it Vicky Pollard? – made one of those terrible errors foreign language speakers sometimes make when they are put on the spot. The worst I’ve done was ordered boiled fish…

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it is not uncommon for an expert in russian affairs to mess up yes and no… it just follows the general white house confusion on ‘truth’

Interest in CS as a Major Drops:

According to an analysis of results from a survey conducted by HERI/UCLA, the percentage of incoming undergraduates indicating that they would major in CS declined by over 60 percent between the Fall of 2000 and 2004, and is now 70 percent lower than its peak in the early 1980s.
Alarmingly, interest in CS among women fell 80 percent between 1998 and 2004, and 93 percent since its peak in 1982.
Results from CRA’s Taulbee Survey show that the number of newly declared CS majors has declined for the past four years and is now 39 percent lower than in the Fall of 2000.
All told, a decline in undergraduate degree production is likely in the next decade.
The full article is here.

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it is probably because that other than to itself as a discipline, c.s. is not that innovative or interesting. tell a student that loves computers about your average c.s. curriculum and they will probably go find an information technology program or something. however, that c.s. is less interesting does not mean the full set of computing disciplines is losing interest… and i strongly suspect that they aren’t… it is just that c.s., like physics, has dug a nice deep hole for itself and is busy looking at walls of the hole.

Early History of Wikipedia:
Slashdot | The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir
Slashdot | The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia, Part II

jason thinks this is important…. unsurprisingly i played a minor part in some of this history and likely no one will remember. i made my arguments though, and know the difference between gnu and nupedia… and all that history which really isn’t here. others know it too, but it will likely die.

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GBjab:

classic jibjab

neocon quiz:

it says that i’m a liberal… really, i’m a progressive, but this was as close as they’ve come.

Liberal
Liberals…
Are wary of American arrogance and hypocrisy
Trace much of today’s anti-American hatred to previous US foreign policies.
Believe political solutions are inherently superior to military solutions
Believe the US is morally bound to intervene in humanitarian crises
Oppose American imperialism
Support international law, alliances, and agreements
Encourage US participation in the UN
Believe US economic policies must help lift up the world’s poor

Historical liberal: President Woodrow Wilson
Modern liberal: President Jimmy Carter

Out loud:

nice bit of prose on reading out loud. I read all of my writing out loud at least once before it hits other people’s ears. It sounds different and otherwise when i read it out loud. I can tell where the differences between my thoughts and my ears are. What sounds like a thought vs what is a thought in my mind are different things, and i know this, because what is in my mind relies on much more than its audiality provides. so when i say something in writing that could be profound in something like 10 words, i usually come to realize that outside of my mental context is almost nonsensical.

this is why i ask my students to do the same out loud.

Deathbed Dollars:
During the weeks preceding Terri Schiavo’s death, a number of radical right wing Christian fundamentalist groups stepped up to take full advantage of what the Traditional Values Coalition’s (TVC) Rev. Lou Sheldon characterized as a “blessing…to the conservative Christian movement in America.” Established organizations like the TVC, relative newcomers like RightMarch.com, and newly formed coalitions, like Voice for Terri, had their Web sites sizzling with news of the case and extensive fundraising appeals.

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it is like none of these people have ever read anything that Jesus said, it is right there in the bible people. this is the shite that sends those that believe in such straight to heck. it is giving falsely, which in many places mentioned many times as ‘wrong’.

Mesa police want to add monkey to SWAT team:
The monkey weighs only three to eight pounds, has tiny humanlike hands and puzzle-solving skills. Police say it would be able to get into places no officer or robot could go and could unlock doors, search buildings and find suicide victims on command.

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cool.