Category — General

as explained by red vs blue.

don't miss… you could hit this…

Sigh…. Everything I know about schools and “education” was already common knowledge to Leo Tolstoy…

…when it has been decided somewhere that such and such a subject has an educational value, and the teacher is instructed to teach, and the students to listen — the teaching accomplishes the very opposite results: the … By Julia (mailto:spamthis@youidiots.com). [Flailing in the Surf!]

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this is why it is called classic literature, to prevent people from reading it, so they don't realize that they will learn from reading it. tolstoy knew about education, and it is why i don't teach, but i create, as best as a i can, a structured learning environment, where i allow students to find the answers they want, with me providing guidance, when needed.

Service Providers Put Up Their Guards. Worms, viruses, spam, denial of service attacks. Addressing the litany of network security issues these days is scarier than watching the local news. So service providers increasingly are stepping in to help „?ustomers figure out how to best guard themselves… [InternetPolicy.net]

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well, this is good, they do have a responsibility to their users, but also to the larger community of users. the more that realize this, the better.

i like them, and i read them, and people wonder why i know wierd things.

“Science and Citizenship in a Global Context”. “Political and economic changes are altering the contexts, spaces and ways that people perceive and act on citizenship rights, as are scientific and technological changes and the new risks and opportunities they present… In this paper we begin to explore… [InternetPolicy.net]

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worth the read, i think.

Frustrating the man. How to herd cats: tie a small bright object to a string; place it in the peripheral vision of the cat; and then pull it around a corner out of sight.
Ben Laurie’s been trying to entice me to pounce on tor. … I pounced yesterday morning.
Tor helps to frustrate the man in the middle’s attempt to monitor your internet usage patterns. For example every time you send mail to Joe the man can see that your talking to Joe. This lets the man draw social network drawings that are both static and dynamic. Even if your mail’s encrypted.
Tor frustrates by mixing your traffic up with that of other tor users. Picking your traffic out of the crowd’s traffic is harder. The traffic of the tor users is bounced around the internet thru tor router nodes run by volunteers.
On my Mac this was really easy to set up; well in the usual geek sense of easy: download; build; install; cleanup; run it.

curl -o f.tgz http://freehaven.net/tor/dist/tor-0.0.8pre3.tar.gz
tar zxt f.tgz
cd tor*
./configure; make; sudo make install
Password: …
F=`pwd`; cd ..; rm -rf $F f.tgz
tor

But you should proably follow the directions.
Then you need to adjust your Network Preferences to use it. Each interface has settings for proxies; you need to set the ‘Socks Proxy’ to use 127.0.0.1 (i.e. your own machine) and port 9050.
If this get’s popular then I suspect the hive mind will cough up a Mac disk image and some GUI facade for running it.
I had having trouble with reaching things on my local private network; until the nice folks in the tor community tapped me with the clue stick and pointed out that you can write domain names to not route thru the proxy – it’s right there on the same page where you turn on the proxy – duh. [Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm]

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handy bit of technology, bound to tick off someone though.

Here's your fucking latte, sir.

I looked this one up for an argument in comments to Belle’s post below, and I’ve been laughing and crying ever since. It’s a useful way to think about the extent to which “trickle down” economics has worked for the poorest in society. As we all know because people who know we’ve read Rawls keep telling us, the poorest benefit from economic growth. How much do they benefit?

[Crooked Timber]

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real economic policy….. someday they will be able to afford another cup of coffee….

Where's Mine!!??!! . Half a Man”Single women won't have to sleep alone much longer,” writes Sheila Halloran in The Boston Herald. “Women in Japan are wrapping themselves in the arms of a new alternative bed-mate. …The Boyfriend Arm Pillow, a realistic version of the real thing, features a squeezable upper body of … By Julia (mailto:spamthis@youidiots.com). [Flailing in the Surf!]

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ummm, why would you want one? seems like something that would be better if it were real.

Open Source Academia.

Laurie Taylor and I have recently finished an article drawing on many of the currents in thinking about Open Source and suggesting some ways to integrate those thoughts into a classroom pedagogy. C&C Online has accepted the article and published it, retroactively, in the Spring 2004 Virtual Classroom section. I'd be interested to hear any comments y'all have.

[Kairosnews - A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy]

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interesting, of course, i have just started practicing my method of open learning environment based education with my last course. i guess i should write it up somewhere.