Category — General

Down and Out in Discount America: “Al Zack, who until his retirement in 2004 was the United Food and Commercial Workers’ vice president for strategic programs, observes that appealing to the poor was ‘Sam Walton’s real genius. He figured out how to make money off of poverty. He located his first stores in poor rural areas and discovered a real market. The only problem with the business model is that it really needs to create more poverty to grow.’ That problem is cleverly solved by creating more bad jobs worldwide. In a chilling reversal of Henry Ford’s strategy, which was to pay his workers amply so they could buy Ford cars, Wal-Mart’s stingy compensation policies–workers make, on average, just over $8 an hour, and if they want health insurance, they must pay more than a third of the premium–contribute to an economy in which, increasingly, workers can only afford to shop at Wal-Mart.”

(Via .)

this is one of the reasons that i boycott walmart.

Guardian Unlimited | Arts features | ‘We have to protect people’ : “But more than one gay playwright is at a stake here. Allen claims he is acting to ‘encourage and protect our culture’. Does ‘our culture’ include Shakespeare? I ask Allen if he would insist that copies of Shakespeare’s sonnets be removed from all public libraries. I point out to him that Romeo and Juliet was originally performed by an all-male cast, and that in Shakespeare’s lifetime actors and audiences at the public theatres were all accused of being ’sodomites’. When Romeo wished he ‘was a glove upon that hand’, the cheek that he fantasised about kissing was a male cheek. Next March the Alabama Shakespeare festival will be performing a new production of As You Like It, and its famous scene of a man wooing another man. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival is also the State Theatre of Alabama. Would Allen’s bill cut off state funding for Shakespeare?”

(Via .)

ignorant and uninformed legislators…. yes, it likely would ban shakespeare…. and reading the constitution would likely be next.

totse.com | Chemistry of women: “MATERIAL SAFETY DATA SHEET

Woman–Chemical Analysis
“

(Via .)

somewhat sexist, but all jokes like this are.

lab for social computing at rit: “Over on Many-to-Many I’ve made an announcement about a new Lab for Social Computing here at RIT….”

(Via mamamusings.)

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interesting project.

“Successful” Class Blog: “Hopefully, we’ll be seeing more and more of this:

I have to hand it to all of you, you’ve done an amazing job with keeping things fresh and real at the Class Blog this semester. If you remember, I started the semester with a plea to participate and a flat out declaration, that ‘this is a grand experiment.’ Well, for my money, this has been a great success!

Cole Campalese at Penn State used a Weblog with his Information Sciences and Technology class this fall to discuss issues related to class. The part I really like is that he hopes to add to the blog in upcoming semesters, making it a course text. It’s good stuff. Take a look, for instance, at this thread about computers that can make themselves smarter.

I know it’s obvious, but I just want to point out that the instructor’s investment in this blog is probably what made it a success in large measure. Teaching with a Weblog takes work, but it’s work that I think, and it seems others think is well worth it.”

(Via Weblogg-ed News.)

been there, done that. this is a pretty good example, but it doesn’t really integrate as much as i like.

Stocking Stuffer: “Now available: the Blackwell Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens and John Unsworth. Tabke of contents below the fold. Note the heavy representation of UMD folk: in addition to Susan’s leadership in co-editing the volume, I…”

(Via Matthew G. Kirschenbaum.)

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several good reads in it though. from Matt to my colleague Charles, to Anja, and others, it is a solid and thorough volume.

Library or Tower?: “Matt K. has started a bit of a debate over on his site about the significance of Google’s recent foray into digital libraries. Many have lauded this move as a gigantic leap forward for us thinking (and, potentially, non-thinking) humans…”

(Via Things as They Are.?.)

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library or tower or…. ocean…. or market.

Battelle Argues that Google Is Mutating: “

Search guru John Battelle thinks Google has just undergone a major mutation, but I’m not so sure I agree. Here’s his case:

John Battelle’s Searchblog: Print Implications: Google As Builder

—snip—

Now Google has in effect become a subcontractor to libraries who will be deciding what to put on line from their collections. It’s still the library’s decision, Google is just providing technical help (and getting paid for it, I’d imagine?).

As Battelle notes ‘Google has announced that the results will be included in the index, not separated out in a vertical book search engine.’ There is an issue as to how the stuff is ranked at first, although Google Scholar gives us some hints. Over time, it gets linked to like everything else and it seems to me the problem shrinks, no?

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tp://www.discourse.net/”>Discourse.net.)

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they key problem to me is that google will eventually de-hierarchize traditional assumptions about what is knowledge, what is ‘good’ information, what should be read, and what should be scanned, etc. if slashdot is on the same plane as a peer-reviewed academic journal, then, i think there will be some issues to resolve in the educational infrastructure, moreso than we have now.

Computer Stupidities: Operating Systems: ” The interview seemed to be going well up to this point, with the guy seeming to understand most of the stuff I was throwing out (even the stuff I wasn’t too sure about myself) until I happened to mention that the DG workstation, along with all the other workstations and servers in our office (save the NT server, of course) ran DG/UX 5.4R3.10:

Me: ‘Yeah, and this thing runs DG/UX 5.4R3.10.’

Him: ‘What’s that?’

He stares blankly. My heart sinks.

Him: ‘So does that run as a thread under NT?’

Me: ‘No. It’s an OS. It just runs by itself.’

Him: ‘Oh oh, so you start up NT, then–’

Me: ‘No. UNIX. It’s an operating system. It runs by itself, not under NT.’v

He stares blankly. So much for this prospective employee.”

(Via .)

funnies

Highly Recommended: “

Bloggers Beware: Debunking Eight Copyright Myths of the Online World

‘Kathy Biehl addresses eight ‘myths’ about copyright law with factual responses, resources and guidelines that are of special relevance to bloggers and website owners.’ [LLRX.com]

“

(Via The Shifted Librarian.)

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interesting….