Category — General

tonight i heard the joyous words that a student reported learning more in my class at pratt than the others together. that…. a student learns… that is the goal, that the other students learn is also of merit, but not everyone can express, at the same time, their view. I like to think that i teach on a 5 year idea… i give you ideas, methods, and tools that today are seemingly meaningless, or perhaps even abhorrent, transgressive, or otherwise nulled, but… in time, these ideas seed growth and interest, which might beget… fruit.

Largest library closure in U.S. looms / Federal funding dries up, leaving 15 branches in Oregon county on brink:
Largest library closure in U.S. looms
Federal funding dries up, leaving 15 branches in Oregon county on brink

Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, March 4, 2007

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the death of libraries looms.

Quote of the Day:
“In times of change learners inherit the earth, while
the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world
that no longer exists.“–Eric Hoffer
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one of the best ones yet.

Second Life Education Research » Blog Archive » Will Voice Chat make Second Life a more Cohesive Community?:

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No. but that does not really matter. the introduction of any new technology into an environment is always divisive, until there is enough momentum to encourage everyone to migrate to that… the real question is.. will voice enable or hinder activity and enjoyment in sl? which ones and why?

Eric’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea: steampunk star wars:
Inspired by this neat little project, I decided I wanted to reimagine the Star Wars universe in a steampunk context. I know, whenever anyone reimagines anything, they either make it a) adult and edgy (99%) or b) steampunk (1%), so I’m not getting any originality points, but it’s still a pretty exciting idea for me. Meaning I’ll be bored of it in a week and start drawing dogs wearing hats or something.

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cool

Dissertation Advice:
The point is: what are you trying to show?
The point is: what is your point?
If you can get that straight in your head, and put it up front
at the beginning of your document, you will be able to proceed in a straight
line.
You will know what things are essential, and what things are distractions
or detours.
You will know when to stop writing: when you have demonstrated your thesis.
If your thesis committee makes unreasonable demands of you, you will be
able to tell them:
“(a) My thesis, as stated, is a solid advancement of the field, and
(b) I have supported my thesis.
This is all I need to do to graduate;
your requests are above and beyond this threshold.
Cancel them and give me my degree.”

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my thesis is… more or less that software is policy. not that code is law, but that software interfaces are policy devices that control and normalize humanities interaction with machines and that these policy devices have a politics, which plays a part in the political economy of the internet as seen through the open source/free software tradition.

LiveScience.com – The Rich See What They Believe:
The Rich See What They BelieveBy Jeanna BrynerLiveScience Staff Writerposted: 28 February 200704:22 pm ET

People see
what they believe, not vice versa, when it comes to social injustice.

And this mind-altering trick of perception
keeps moral outrage at bay, especially among the rich, a new psychological
study suggests.

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it is not just the rich, everyone sees what they believe, umberto eco has a nice essay with evidence about seeing color through culture that demonstrates this quite well.

Dr. Joan Bushwell’s Chimpanzee Refuge : In th’ethic of ruinous “modern” standards:
“Ethics” can be rewritten and as ostensibly objective principles are no less malleable than the DSM-IV criteria for various versions of “crazy.” Humanism? That grasps something a little more unyielding and a lot more desirable, but one wonders how timeless a concept it, or anything, will prove to be, given the tenor of prevailing minds.

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you decide. I suspect that people frequently use ‘covering norms’ to hide their preferences and biases… You can generally see this in the differences between Christianity in terms of say ‘the sermon on the mount’ and that religion practiced in churches. The religion in many churches has no clear relation to most of, what i would think would be ‘important bits’ of religious teaching and quite a bit to do with other bits… specifically the post – calvin bits.

dmiessler.com | study | hide_ip:
Just remember that proxies aren’t magical; they simply add extra hops in the middle. Each person still has an address (you, your buddy, and the pizza place). So don’t think of it as “hiding” or “becoming invisible”; this isn’t how the Internet works. The Internet needs to know your exact location or else you can’t use it. If you were truly hidden, nobody would be able to bring you the stuff you asked for — whether that something was a pizza or an email from a friend.:

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short… pretty true.

Version 3.0 Launched – Creative Commons:

The latest version of the Creative Commons licenses — Version 3.0 — are now available. To briefly recap what is different in this version of the licenses:

Separating the “generic” from the US license