All those topics that i wish i had time to pursue more earnestly.

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lord of the rings 2.0

why do you get up in the morning from cat and girl

[From Cat and Girl]

If science is neither cookery, nor angelic virtuosity, then what is it?
Modern societies have tended to take science for granted as a way of knowing, ordering and controlling the world. Everything was subject to science, but science itself largely escaped scrutiny. This situation has changed dramatically in recent years. Historians, sociologists, philosophers and sometimes scientists themselves have begun to ask fundamental questions about how the institution of science is structured and how it knows what it knows. David Cayley talks to some of the leading lights of this new field of study.

[From CBC Radio | Ideas | Features | How To Think About Science]

This is a podcast/radio show on the cbc that interviews many of the leading scholars interested in science and technology studies.

Music special: Five great auditory illusions
14:50 24 February 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Mike Marshall

[From Music special: Five great auditory illusions - being-human - 24 February 2008 - Print Article - New Scientist]

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this is a great set of demonstrations about how our mind works.

Why let all of your ideas die with you? Current Copyright law prevents anyone from building upon your creativity for 70 years after your death. Live on in collaboration with others. Make an intellectual property donation. By donating your IP into the public domain you will “promote the progress of science and useful arts” (U.S. Constitution). Ensure that your creativity will live on after you are gone, make a donation today.

[From Public Domain Donor ]

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this is brilliant.

[From pictures for sad children]

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just another word for exploitation

The verdict, announced this afternoon, allows Blackboard Inc. to demand a ban on sales of Desire2Learn’s products in the United States.

[From TheRecord.com - News - Local: Jury rules against Desire2Learn in patent case ]

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I cannot help but wonder why this patent has not been invalidated. There has to be innumerable examples of this actually occurring in universities before blackboad, and beyond that, the patent does not seem to be particularly innovative in context, it seems to me to be mapping practices, but hey that’s my opinion, and the court disagrees.

A colleague brought up the recent inquiry on technology in the classroom here which led to my general use of high technology in the classroom as found below:

me:

10:33 way back when i started teaching

10:34 my colleagues introduced me to the most handy bit of kit

10:34 it’s called a codex

10:34 it is a collection of paper bound at the edge with glue or other means

10:34 now quite amazingly… you’d think that this bit of technical kit, well, it’s useless.

10:35 but people have appropriated it and filled it with all kinds of things, pictures, drawings, and words

10:35 some people have even taken the explicit step of ordering these things, pictures and words in a way that apparently is intended to convey meaning

interlocutor:

10:36 well that’s crazy

me:

10:36 and i’m like ‘holy cow!’

10:36 you mean someone

10:36 has gathered all their knowledge on a topic

10:36 and put it in a codex

10:36 and students can get hold of this thing

10:36 isn’t that dangerous?

interlocutor:

10:36 HORRIBLY DANGEROUS

me:

10:36 i mean what if it tells them how to skip class

10:37 or worse, how to fold their graded assignments in to lewd origami?

interlocutor:

10:37 I’m shocked and apalled

me:

10:37 but then i saw one of these things, and tried to use it in class

10:37 and OMG

10:37 the students that could read and spent time reading it…

10:37 their performance improved dramatically

10:37 no more did they just have to reiterate what i said before

10:38 though that is always appreciated, and some still strive for that

10:38 they could actually ‘interpret the meanings’ in the codex and occasionally you find one or two that will combine those meanings with other meanings and actually teach me something

10:38 man… that’s scary

10:39 but it adds a new exciting edge to the classroom

10:39 so… technology in the classroom, it’s great!

interlocutor:

10:41 I dunno

10:41 it sounds…dangerous

me:

10:42 well, I have to admit that it is actually slightly less dangerous than having the students re-enact the lessons of history with pointed sticks and rocks, though that was all in all very learning intensive on many levels

After spending 1/2 hour or so this afternoon discussing his projects and ideas with Hackshaven of NOAA, I went downtown and met with Suzanne Seggerman of Games for change to talk about having some games for change in Second Life. She was in town because there was a Macarthur event. Rik showed up a little later, he seems to be getting on very well at global kids. I met a few other of the people associated with various projects and we came up with some good concepts for second life projects for games for change. It was a good time, I like hanging out with the macfound folks.

After that I came home and ran into Joi on IM and we chatted about Kula, CC, Icommons and Larry’s possible congressional bid. Joi said Mimi had asked about me, so i dropped her an email to see what’s up. While i was talking to Joi, Bryan Campen said hi on im, good to see he survived the days illness.

Similarly, i was talking with my fiance most of this time. Though, in parallel, i was also talking to my friend merentha in sl, she was taking photos and playing with windlight. so expect more buridan simon photos to randomly appear on the intarweb.

Other things in that regard, I submitted a panel proposal to internet research 9.0 on Science in Virtual worlds. My paper looks at the indices of interaction and information in virtual worlds as education environments. Other people from OII, FSU, and Ryerson also submitted.

I’m working with Aleks Krotoski on the proposal for a journal special issue on second life and I’m working with Aaron Delwiche on a separate publishing project related to second life. There is another one that includes Tracy, but that is farther out.

Linden Lab is sponsoring the second Preconference workshop on Learning and Research in Second Life at Internet Research 9.0. That CFP should be out by the end of the month.

oh i’m also going to WORKSHOP ON EMERGING NORMS, LAW AND ETHICS IN VIRTUAL WORLDS co-organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Science & Technology Law, and The Center for the Study of Law, Science and Technology at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law (Arizona State University) on march 10 @ ASU. It is invite only and I’m glad i was invited as it is right up my alley.

The final things going on in second life for me is Lessons in Second Life, which I think is going to hit 20 meetings next week or perhaps last week. It is a weekly get together on the topic of ‘learning’ in second life. Usually 5 to 20 avatars show up and we discuss anything they want in an open table format.

I was working on an ‘ethnographers in second life event’, but it looks like that is not going to occur this semester.

Archival collections, impossible to house centrally at many campuses, are about to get easier to use. Starting today, librarians and archivists can upload digital content into online collections with relative ease, allowing them to effectively curate items with open-source tools instead of relying on third-party consultants to build specialized Web portals.

[From New Tool for Online Collections :: Inside Higher Ed :: Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education]

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this quotes the paper that I wrote with brent at the end.