Category — General

[From Coca-Cola United States]

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this is just surreal…

Do not get a Ph.D.!

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this is someone else’s crusade, not mine. my position is pretty much the same, there is only one reason to get a ph.d. and it has nothing to do with future employment. a ph.d. is closer to a possession, and not even a qualification, unless you want to be a certain type of professor (and you’ll want to find out what that job really is because it is not happy-go-lucky reading and teaching as many students tend to think). The sole reason to get a ph.d. is to have one because you can’t imagine your life otherwise. it is something you accomplish, it won’t get you a job in any necessary way, all you get necessarily from a ph.d. is the experience and the ph.d., both of which are interesting commodities, but not universally valued..

stolen from new kid on the hallway

Things I’ve done are in bold.

Things I am indifferent towards or actively would like to avoid are crossed out.

Things in normal type face are things I’d like to do (or at least, that I’d rather do than not).

Comments in parentheses are my additions.

Start my own blog

Sleep under the stars

Play in a band

Own a cell phone

Visit Hawaii

Watch a meteor shower

Give more than I can afford to charity

Visit Disneyland / Disneyworld

Climb a mountain

Sing a solo

Bungee jump

Participate in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony

Teach myself an art from scratch

Adopt a child

Purchase real estate

Had food poisoning

Visit Parliament / Capital Hill

Grow my own vegetables

See the Mona Lisa in France

Sleep on an overnight train

Have a pillow fight

Hitchhike (car blew a tire and the jack was missing in a rural area, many miles from home)

Take a sick day when you’re not ill

Build a snow fort

Hold a lamb

Go skinny dipping

Run a Marathon

Been on television

Ride in a gondola in Venice

See a total eclipse

Watch a sunrise or sunset

Hit a home run

Go on a cruise

See Niagara Falls in person

Visit the birthplace of my ancestors (grew up there)

See an Amish community

Teach myself a new language

Have enough money to be truly satisfied

See the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

Go rock climbing

See Michelangelo’s David

Sing karaoke

See Old Faithful erupt

Buy a stranger a meal at a restaurant

Visit Africa

Walk on a beach by moonlight

Be transported in an ambulance

Have my portrait painted

Be arrested

Go deep sea fishing

See the Sistine Chapel in person

Go to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

Kiss in the rain

Play in the mud

Go to a drive-in theatre

Be in a movie

Visit the Great Wall of China

Start a business

Take a martial arts class

Visit Russia

Serve at a soup kitchen

Go whale watching

Get flowers for no reason

Donate blood, platelets or plasma

Visit a Nazi Concentration Camp

Bounce a check

Fly in a helicopter

Save a favorite childhood toy

Visit Quebec City

Eat Caviar

Piece a quilt

Stand in Times Square

Tour the Everglades

Been fired from a job

See the Changing of the Guards in London

Been on a speeding motorcycle

See the Grand Canyon in person

Published a book

Visit the Vatican

Buy a brand new car

Walk in Jerusalem

Have my picture in the newspaper

Read the entire Bible

Visit the White House

Kill and prepared an animal for eating

Had chickenpox

Save someone’s life

Sit on a jury

Meet someone famous

Join a book club

Lose a loved one

Have a baby can’t do that

See the Alamo in person

Swim in the Great Salt Lake

Been involved in a law suit

Been stung by a bee

Ride an elephant

34…

Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep.

[From Scientists extract images directly from brain ::: Pink Tentacle]

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can’t be long now…

You can’t fully understand how hemoglobin molecules interact until you’ve seen them depicted through a classical pas de deux.

[From Dance Your Way to a Ph.D. - The Daily Beast ]

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pretty funny:) dance your ph.d.

http://websurvey.sfu.ca/survey/28872637

Please do this for my colleague Richard

Here’s another way to frame publishers like IGI: they are vampire presses. They appear to be alive (disseminating ideas), but really they are dead (concealing ideas). They capture and feed on fragile individuals in order to advance their kind as a whole. They move in the shadows, sealing deals with institutional buyers under cover of night. Their goal is to hide their secret and pass it down through generations, adding to their number only as many as are needed to progress the line.

[From Ian Bogost - Write-Only Publication]

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I think Ian hit’s it on the head. I’ve long had IGI/Idea Group on my boycott list. I have heard many stories of poor editing and low standards of acceptance in relation to their books. There are many publishers pursuing the ‘lower barrier to entry’ model of academic publishing and it is putting quite a bit of pressure on the system as a whole. We need to be careful with these presses and all secondary presses in terms of academic productivity, as they aren’t necessarily helping anyone and in the end as Ian says they are praying on people.

I’ve been working on our annual report. Here are some interesting stats:

The CDDC has been referenced in over 250 books, over 500 scholarly publications total. We’ve appeared in numerous textbooks, academic papers, etc. Last year we had over 2 million unique addresses visiting our servers and we transferred over 4terabytes of information. We have around 65000 links to our site, many are duplicates, but around we do have links from at least one university on every continent that has a university, and usually we have many links from many universities. We have links from corporations, and many links in the international non-profit sphere. Our materials have been used by millions of people and in hundreds courses and likely will continue to be used for some time.

I think the point of this little review is to say, while the CDDC isn’t hugely productive in its own research, though we have done some cool things and will try to do more, what we do well is that we do provide an anchor and the infrastructure for past, current, and future research. This provision of resources is something that we do, that not many organizations do and we do it in a way that does not usually intrude upon the work being done.

[From Center for Digital Discourse and Culture | @ Virginia Tech]

Open Source, Open Storm!
Want to share ideas? The world’s coolest brainstorming and mind
mapping software has now joined the open source community.

[From XMind - Social Brainstorming and Mind Mapping]

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they just made xmind free. i don’t use it, but it looks useful. I used novamind for a while.