July 2003 Archive Page

PDF's are a Pain in the ButtLiteracy Weblog)

On WebWord, I found a link to a PDF advocate's lame critique of Jakob Nielsen. It's an attempt to sidestep Nielsen's usabilty observations by mounting an ad hominem attack.

It's becoming fashionable to pick on Jakob Nielsen these days, due to his visibility and the shift in his website towards self-promotion, but for the record, I do think PDF's are a pain in the butt.

They are convenient for designers who want to retain the integrity of the documents they designed for print... but something happened to me yesterday morning that illustrates exactly why a "click here to download the glorious PDF" link is a miserable subsitute for even a plain HTML document.

I'm writing this from Washington D.C., where I am attending a convention for advisers of college media. Yesterday, my bags were packed and the car was loaded up, when I suddenly remembered that I wasn't staying at the same hotel where the conference was taking place. I logged onto the Internet and searched for the conference website -- and there wasn't one. There was merely a link to download the pdf brochure (which I had left at the office). While the five minutes it took for me to download the brochure wasn't really all that much of a time investment, all I wanted was the darn name of the hotel -- I didn't care about downloading the whole brochure. Because all the conference information was hidden within a pdf, it wasn't indexed by Google.

Yeah, boo hoo, you might say, the poor guy had to wait five minutes. I can't help feeling insulted that the two minutes that the designer did NOT spend creating a "Save as HTML" version of his/her precious brochure ended up forcing me to sit through a download. I had already signed up to attend the conference, so I didn't need the carefully-crafted marketing presentation. I just wanted a quick bit of information. Boo, I say, boo to those who stuff bloated marketing down my throat after I've already committed to something.

There. I feel a little better.

Update, 01 Aug: OK, I was wrong. The convention does have a web page. But my hasty conclusion that the site did not contain the information I wanted -- a conclusion that was hurried along by the site's instruction that I click on the PDF link for more information -- is exactly what designing for usability is all about. When a design expects its users to be at their best, all the time, then the design is probably flawed.

"Although it does make a reasonable anecdotal case for investing in usability, the report methodology is so fundamentally flawed that any financial analyst worth her salt would immediately question its findings. Very simply, the authors do not make a strong business case for usability?a requirement for passing the muster with the accountants and senior managers who have ultimate accountability for profit and loss in a business." Peter Merholz and Scott Hirsch --Report Review: Nielsen/Norman Group's Usability Return on Investment (Boxes and Arrows)

Via WebWord.

"In the visual-effects community, ILM’s Hulk was seen as a major achievement: the life in the creature’s eyes, the way light played naturally off its skin, its synthesis into its surroundings, all were deemed first-rate. Film critics, however, panned not only the movie but ILM’s work. The monster didn’t look real. Case closed." Devin Gordon --The Problem with FX (M$NBC)

Hollywood's waste of technology is following the same path worn by the computer gaming industry. Great FX excites geeks, but can't substitute for a good story.

In The Langauge of New Media, Lev Manovitch notes that computer-generated objects can be too real. I'm always impressed by the very few occasions when I see special effects purposely degraded by shaky cameras (emulating a the POV of a hand-held camcorder), or when a futuristic spaceport shows swirls of heat on the tarmac (like you see on a real airport). Realism isn't the only artistic style, after all.

"Is the skeleton still hiding in the closet as it should,
Is the needle in the haystack, are the trees still in the wood?
Is the worm still in the apple, are you merrier if more,
Are the birds still in the bushes and the wolf yet at the door?" Jim Eccleston --Face It (The Electric Eclectic)

Jim writes in praise \Of trite cliches.

"[P]prior to the Second World War the refereeing process, even where it existed, had very little effect on the publication of novel ideas, at least in the field of physics. But in the last several decades, many outstanding scientists have complained that their best ideas? the very ideas that brought them fame?were rejected by the refereed journals. Thus, prior to the Second World War, the refereeing process worked primarily to eliminate crackpot papers. Today, the refereeing process works primarily to enforce orthodoxy." Frank J. TiplerRefereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy? (ISCID)

Unfortunately, the Tipler article is in PDF format. I'll post a few excerpts below. Tippler says that the universities' shift to "publish or perish" means that

the production of scholarly articles has increased by more than a fatcor of a thousand over the past fifty years. Since earlier there was no financial reward for writing a scholarly article, people wrote the papers as a labor of love. They had ideas that they wished to communicate with their peers, and they wrote the papers to communicate those ideas. Now papers were mainly written to further a career.

Hmm. While it was wonderful and great that a few brilliant scientists of previous generations wrote their most influential papers in their spare time, not everyone has the kind of spare time that leads to productive academic work.

While Tipler complains about careerism, he seems to conflate "scientific advancement" with "winning a Nobel Prize," as in the following passage:

The number of physicists, for example, has increased by a factor of a thousand since the year 1900, when ten percent of all physicists in the world either won the Nobel Prize or were nominated for it. If you submitted a paper to a refereed journal in 1900, you would have a far greater chance of having a referee who was a Nobel Prize winner (or at least a nominee) than now.

Tippler sounds fairly elitist and very embittered when he writes, "Today, Einstein’s papers would be sent to some total nonentity at Podunk U, who, being completely incapable of understanding important new ideas, would reject the papers for publication."

Elsewhere, Tipler refers to "the ratio of giants to pygmies", "powerful but mediocre scientists [who] suppress any idea that would diminish their prestige", and notes that "If the referees for a grant proposal submitted to this division of that bureau happen not to like your work, your grant proposal will not be funded—period."

Tipler says he himself experienced discrimination because his scientific theories include references to the Judeo-Christian God; he thus places himself in the path of the dangerous Darwin vs. Intelligent Design debate (if you can call it that -- the idea that evolution is directed at a distance by divine intervention is violently rejected by all-or-nothing scientists and all-or-nothing creationists alike).

I think Tipler's problem is that he thinks knowledge should simply float from one scientist's brain to another's -- without the bother of having to put it into words for real human beings to read. The title of this article suggests a balanced inquiry, but the argument is emotionally-driven, not balanced. Regardless of what you think about Darwin or Intelligent Design, if you were a scientist, how would the following make you feel?

Most referees are “stupid” (to use Nobelist Blobel’s adjective), at least relative to the authors whose breakthrough work we would most like to see published in the leading journals. But I will grant that these “stupid” referees serve a useful purpose if the scientific community remains as large as it is today. Most papers written by most members of the scientific community are worthless. (Most papers are never cited by other scientists.) These trash papers are written because of the “publish or perish” rule imposed by universities. A referee, even a stupid one, can at least keep out the worst of the trash papers from the journals. But we don’t want to misidentify works of genius as trash. Which is exactly what the typical referee in fact does.

Tipler says that up-and-coming geniuses ought to be able to bypass the peer-review process if their articles are submitted with cover letters from established geniuses. We all know what would happen in that case. While the present peer review process may not be perfectly suited to separate the wheat from the chaff, at least that work is delegated to hundreds of thousands of researchers. In Tipler's world, the few established geniuses would be flooded with papers begging for cover letters, which would keep them out of their laboratory and turn them into gate-keepers. Since all this paper reviewing, if done correctly, would take up a huge amount of their time, they would have less time in the laboratory. If the geniuses did what most human beings in their sutation would do -- protect their time by doing only precursory reads, or asking someone else to filter the initial flood of submissions, then Tipler's ideal system would once again be inefficient and wasteful, and scientific progress would be controlled not by anonymous reviewers but by a small number of well-known and easily assailable public figures. You'd have to be a politician to handle that kind of power without stirring up even greater resentment within your discipline.

Tipler does point to an electronic peer-reviewed database that seems to operate as a surrogate for the perfect system Tipler suggests.

Whoops, my 1-year-old just woke up, so my blogging is over for now.

Link found via Ed Tech Dev.

--Did you hear the one about men hunting women with paintballs? (Sun-Sentinel)

Good post-mortem of the whole ridiculous "Hunting for Bambi" scenario. It's amazing how gullible people are.

I still can't believe the "There will be no bananas in 10 years" story because I first heard it around the time I heard the "Blondes will become extinct" story.

"Most of the Web's content today is designed for humans to read, not for computer programs to manipulate meaningfully. Computers can adeptly parse Web pages for layout and routine processing?here a header, there a link to another page?but in general, computers have no reliable way to process the semantics: this is the home page of the Hartman and Strauss Physio Clinic, this link goes to Dr. Hartman's curriculum vitae. | The Semantic Web will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users." Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila --The Semantic Web (Scientific American)

A long article -- I haven't had time to look through it all. Thanks for reminding me about this, Jim.

Update: Well, that wasn't so long after all. I'm dialing up over a slow modem connection, so I was rather intimidated by the number of nav subpages -- I didn't want to download all those ads eight more times. But fortuantely the "print format" link is much easier to read.

On another note... when Jim sent me the URL of this page, it was so long that the last 2 characters scrolled off onto the next line. I didn't notice that problem when I clicked the link. Use shorter URLs, Scientific American!

One of the stars of cult sci-fi series Blake's 7 has signed a deal to bring the show back to screens more than 20 years after it ended. Paul Darrow, who played the ruthless anti-hero Avon, is in a consortium that has acquired the rights to the show from the widow of its creator, Terry Nation. --Blake's 7 Set for Hi-tech Return (BBC)

Blake's 7 is a wonderful British soap-opera style TV show, following an episodic format that J. Michael Straczynski followed for Babylon 5. The special effects were cheesy, but the portrait of a small band of criminals on the run from an even more evil Federation was excellent (in the first three seasons anyway). And the series finale -- a close-up on the psychotic anti-hero, a final chilling gunshot, and then blackout: no explanation, no apologies.

"I'm no more "unprotected" from spammers on my WiFi node (something I've yet to see a single published account of, despite the continuous warnings about it) than I am from spammers sending Nigerian 419 letters from the next terminal at the library. It's like saying that restauranteurs are "unprotected" from bank robbers who use a back table to plan their next job. Sure, they're "unprotected." So what?" Cory Doctorow --WashPo Embarasses Itself with Hysterical WiFi FUD Article (Boing Boing)

Cory Doctorow fisks a Washington Post article on WiFi security, and sees a conspiracy of old business and software protection scams behind the "Fear Uncertainty and Doubt" (FUD) spread by this article.

"There were no traffic helicopters swooping down to get a better look at the crash and no reporters dispatched to the stretch of highway where the pileup took place that morning. Instead, Japanese TV viewers first saw the crash thanks to another truck driver who used his camera phone to shoot video of the wreckage." Bruce Rutledge --Conference Panelists See Bright Future for Mobile Publishing (Online Journalism Review)

"The rule of thumb is: you need to give before you receive. That is, you need to give other people loads of links, point to them, talk about their sites and have your readers go and check them out. When your readers appreciate that you have pointed them to some good sites, and/or they fell they have learnt a lot from you, or been entertained by you, or have received something from you whatever that is, they will start blogging on their sites and point people to your site. You will get good online traffic from readers who want to hear what you have to say, and you business will benefit from the exposure because people see the real you. And you will get good additional traffic from Google to your blog and to your website. " Elwyn Jenkins --Why Many Business Blogs Are Failing (Microdoc News)

"I understand that news wire services often edit, add, remove or write new leads for stories. What amazed me was that a story could have my byline on it when I contributed only a few sentences at the end--and in later versions I didn't contribute anything at all." Deanna Wrenn --Dear Elizabeth: I Didn't Do It -- Why Did Reuters Put My Name on a Horribly Slanted Story? (WSJ Opinion Journal)

Wrenn complains that the British wire service Reuters completely changed the fair, balanced story she submitted.

This is yet another reason why I warn my students not to rely upon news sources instead of adacemic journal articles.

"The study found that young adults spend more time on the Web than with any other media source and are not likely to be partial to one medium, as older generations are. Teenagers surveyed spent an average of 16.7 hours online per week, excluding e-mail. The next most popular medium was television, which teens turned to 13.6 hours per week, followed by radio, which took up 12 hours of a typical teen's week." Lisa M. Bowman --Web Marketing Sells Like Teen Spirit (News.com)

The study was funded by Yahoo! and something called "Carat North America". It's being touted to gain publicity for Yahoo's "Born to be Wired" conference, in which, according to News.com, "media experts will examine the media consumption habits and lifestyle of today's youth." Note the reference to "consumption," which doesn't really take into the account the paradigm shift that interests me -- young people are not merely consuming web media, they are creating it, sharing it, critiquing it, and archiving it like never before. There's obviously a sliding scale of derivative work (such as ripping and burning a custom CD made from professionally-produced music) and completely original work, but the Internet is already threatening the traditional hierarchy.

(Link via Ron's Ramblings. Incidentally... with a cool name like "Ron Zeno," why call your blog "Ron's Ramblings?" Was "Zeno's Paradox" taken?)

"The number one criticism of Johnson is that he's a dipshit who can't work Google: if only the poor fool were slick enough to type 'apple fruit' or 'granny smith' in the search bar, he wouldn't get three pages of computer links. That may be true, but that's the point: apple, the fruit, is conceptually prior to Apple, the computer, and the fact that Google doesn't spit out any links whatsoever related to the fruit without one refining one's search criteria reflects all sorts of different biases on the part of those using the engine, and thus on the engine itself." analytic --Google and Statistical Bias (Analytic)

While I criticized Johnson's apple example in a previous post, I agree with him that Google exhibits a bias. Here's part of a comment I made on analytic's weblog:

Language has meaning only in context. Anyone who uses a computer to search for "apple" ought to expect a pro-computer bias, just as anyone who walks into a grocery store and asks for an opinion on apples ought to expect a food bias.

"Once you start, you will be presented with two poems. In all likelihood they will both be abysmal pieces of nonsensical garbage. That's ok. All you have to do is read them both and pick the one you find more appealing, for whatever reason. Your decision might be based on a single word that you happen to like. It doesn't matter. Just pick whichever one strikes your fancy." --Darwinian Poetry (Code As Art)

The project began with a sample of randomly-generated poems. Visitors read two poems and choose which gets to survive. The survivors are somehow combined to make new poems, which again compete for survivial. Interesting concept.

The words being used in these poems ("throne," "sword", "lord", "king") suggest a kind of Anglo-Saxon bias. Did the pool of words start out this way, or are we seeing the results of cybergeek bias? I also find myself preferring the shorter poems, since they are more likely to make sense.

Update: after playing a little more, I found a poem that included "neurosis" and "syringes". Hmm.

"I was in a lot of pain, but managed to do about 15 minutes of material while on the floor, passing out every now and then because of the pain, and then coming round to do the punchline." -- Mark Olver --Funny Bone (This Is Bristol)

Olver broke his leg onstage 15 seconds after beginning his... er... "stand-up" routine. The show must go on.

"The self-service checkout lines that are springing up everywhere are the first sign of the trend. | The problem, of course, is that all of these robots will eliminate a huge portion of the jobs currently held by human beings. For example, there are 3.5 million jobs in the fast food industry alone. Many of those will be lost to kiosks. Many more will be lost to robots that can flip burgers and clean bathrooms. Eventually they will all be lost. The only people who will still have jobs in the fast food industry will be the senior management team at corporate headquarters. | The same sort of thing will happen in retail stores, hotels, airports, factories, construction sites, delivery companies and so on. All of these jobs will evaporate at approximately the same time, leaving all of those workers unemployed." Marshall Brain --Robot Nation (MarshallBrain.com)

For the record, the idea of cheap Robot labor causing a worldwide economic depression, leading to food riots and internation wars (fought with Robot armies) forms part of the backstory of Karel Capek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), the 1921 Czech play that introduced the word "robot" to the world.

"The chief innovation of the new edition has been to thread coverage of electronic publishing throughout the Manual, to address 'all of the changes in the way people now work with words,' says Anita Samen, the 15th edition's chief manuscript editor. People wonder, she says, 'what is a publication anymore? And, what is a page?' Previous editions dealt primarily with the traditional book. The new edition also takes on journals, electronic publications, online multimedia, informally published material, and even corporate reports, publicity material, and the like." --For the 15th Time, Look It Up: 'The Chicago Manual of Style' Enters the 21st Century (Chronicle)

"The parents of Ghyslain Raza, the Quebec teenager who became a celebrity this spring after classmates posted on the Internet a video of him mimicking a Star Wars character, allege that their son was so humiliated by the experience that he had to get psychiatric care." --Parents File Lawsuit over Star Wars Video  (Globe and Mail)

Eww. This sounds really bad. Court documents include transcripts of chat sessions in which the Star Wars Kid's classmates plot agaist him.

"The antiquities dealer who shocked the world last year with a burial box purported to hold the bones of Jesus' brother was arrested yesterday, after Israeli police found forging equipment in the man's home." --Ossuary Owner Arrested for Forgery (Canada.com)

I've blogged this story a few times before, but this little twist is worth mentioning.

"What is so interesting about death? Is it the science? Is it like a 'forbidden fruit' that you want to know about, but are too afraid to touch? Is it because it is such a taboo subject in our society? Why is it such a taboo subject? Are we afraid of it or are we afraid to offend someone who has lost a loved one? Also: What makes forensics so interesting? Is it a new twist on all those classic mystery stories (Sherlock Holmes)? Is it because of all the new scientific advancements?" --Friday Was Busy (Autopsy Report: Log of Experiences as a Medical Examiner Intern)

Suggested by C.M. Worth.

"Mr. Berk has become higher education's humor guru, a title for which, admittedly, there wasn't much competition. Along the way, he has racked up a shelf full of teaching awards, a cadre of wisecracking disciples, and stacks of gushing student evaluations." Thomas Bartlett --Did You Hear the One About the Professor? (Chronicle)

"'There is no more feminism,' I explain. Game Over. But it took me a day or two to name the new game. It's 'girlism' -- women want to be sexy girls and use all the tricks girls use. Crying, flirting, begging, winking, stomping their feet when they don't get their way, general trotting around showing off their long legs and whatever else they decide to show off thereby distracting and derailing men." Halley Suitt --Whatever Happened to Feminism? (Halley's Comment)

Oh, the battle of the sexes can be so... cute. Hollywood ditches women over 35 because the men (see "laddism") who are likely to be influenced by crying, flirting, begging, winking stomping, trotting and leg-showing-off women are far more likely to be influenced by a crying, flirting, begging, winking, stomping, trotting and leg-showing-off 20-year-old than by a crying, flirting, begging, winking, stomping, trotting and leg-showing-off 40-year-old.

Though it's hard to tell (what with all the girlist bloggers crying, flirting, begging, winking, stomping, trotting and showing-off their legs so much), Girlism sounds to me like ageism -- a reaction against the vigilance and self-control espoused by feminist foremothers (who seem far less relevant to many of today's young women).

"Google is beginning to have a subtle, but noticeable effect on research. More and more scholarly publications are putting up their issues in PDF format, which Google indexes as though they were traditional Web pages. But almost no one is publishing entire books online in PDF form. So, when you're doing research online, Google is implicitly pushing you toward information stored in articles and away from information stored in books. Assuming this practice continues, and assuming that Google continues to grow in influence, we may find ourselves in a world where, if you want to get an idea into circulation, you're better off publishing a PDF file on the Web than landing a book deal." Steven Johnson --Digging for Googleholes (Slate)

Johnson is the author of the mind-bending but very accessible Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software. Slate is, of course, published by Micro$oft, which has a vested interested in shaking Google's hold on the hearts and mouses of the global village.

While I have great respect for Johnson as an author and scholar, he (like Orlowski) is apparently not a very good Googler. He notes that a hungry surfer searching for "apple" will be inundated by Apple Computer and Fiona Apple. Fine. But surely a man as intelligent as Johnson knows that a search for "apple growers" or "apple fruit" would quickly solve the apparent problem.

On second glance, I see that Johnson has addressed this very concern in a comment way down at the bottom of the page, and offers a different example that makes the point more clearly.

"Walter 'Matt' Jefferies, the art director who designed the original Enterprise vessel for the first Star Trek series has died, the official website of the sci-fi series has announced." --Star Trek Enterprise Designer Dies (BBC)

True Star Trek nerds will know Jefferies from the eponymous "Jeffries Tube," where Scotty was often found reversing the polarity of a thingy while staring into flashing lights.

The photo in the above story is actually of the Enterprise NCC-1701-A, from the fourth movie (if memory serves).

Slashdot Poll

• Yes.
• No.
• !
• Worst Poll Ever.
• No, there's been a worse one.
• No, there hasn't.
• Yes, there has.
• No! Yes! No!

--? [Slashdot Poll] (Slashdot)

Nearly 70,000 people took the time to vote in this poll. This is beyond stupid -- so far beyond stupid that it approaches significance. It's impossible to deconstruct this poll because it has no content, but how many equally pointless polls have appeared in USA Today or sparked local TV news stories? I am both amused and repelled by its vacuity.

"In watching the aftermath of the recent discussion of humanism and anti-humanism (now there's a fine reductive binary that could use some deconstructing, no?) at Invisible Adjunct, I was startled by the apparent hostility of the fisking performed by Robert Schwartz. Certainly, others in the discussion engaged in a bit of fisking, but none to Schwartz's degree. It got me thinking about fisking as a genre particular to the net, and so I did a little googling." Mike Vitia --Easy Online Agonism? (v i t i a)

Mike does a good job contextualizing and extending some thoughts on fisking that I had posted to KairosNews. Since my own rhetorical training is only basic (I could figure out "agonistic" but I had to look up "irenic"), my understanding of fisking benefits greatly from Mike's probing. Mike, would you consider a wiki to be an irenic rhetorical form? While it's certainly possible to carry on arguments in a wiki, the tool is much better as a concensus bulider.

We are seeing Vannevar Bush's memex in action -- through weblogs, we are exchanging the "trails" (networks of links) that trace our thought processes as we explore a subject.

"The Complaint states that through use of such Fake User Interface ("FUI") dialogs that gave the false appearance of being computer error messages, DoubleClick tricked millions of Internet users into interrupting the work they were performing to respond to the fraudulent error message, only to unexpectedly find both computer and computer user thus hijacked to the commercial websites of DoubleClick'scustomers." --DoubleClick Class Action Lawsuit (Frerence & Associates)

Is this just a publicity stunt to attract links from credible webloggers? After the "Hunting Bambi" and the recent "Metallica Suing over Use of E and F Chords" hoaxes (neither of which I fell for), I'm a bit suspicious of this one -- simply because I want so badly for it to be true!

"Lileks is widely linked to and commented upon, and his fans stretch across the vast political spectrum of the Internet's chattering class. This is a sure sign of broad appeal because the weak are never recognized by the blogosphere and the old and the lazy are mercilessly culled from the herd. Lileks is prospering on the web because Lileks is good." Hugh Hewitt --The Bleat Goes On (Weekly Standard)

My former student Matt Hoy first introduced me to Lileks via a column he (Lileks) had written about a classic text adventure game. That started a chain of events that brought Scott Adams to UWEC for the "Storytelling in Computer Games" roundtable.

Traditionally, male writers have separated their public and personal selves; the blending of spheres is supposed to be characteristic of female writers, but Lileks achieves a pleasant balance almost all the time. I'm not a regular reader, but I do check him out anytime he appears on Blogdex or Daypop.

"Back in the day, having a board with more than one phone line was huge. Two lines meant more than one person could be online at the same time. This was heavy. But it was the end of something, too: the end of that amazing solitude you felt when the busies stopped, and the carrier finally screeched through, and you knew the board was yours. And then, for as long as you were online, nothing changed unless you changed it. Everything stopped; frozen in time, waiting patiently for you to peruse it, or ignore it. Two lines, though, and it was gone. It was just one more person, but that was a lot." N. Z. Bear --When 300 Baud Was the Bomb (Salon)

I just came across this essay on "The Truth Laid Bear." I love retrotech.

Update: 22 July. Jim Eccleston sends me a link to retroarchive, which features an assembly language program he wrote in 1980. Makes my head spin!

"A Taiwan man who used a different identity through the Internet to double-date his girlfriend, has committed suicide after the girl fell for his email-based alter ego, a Taiwan newspaper reported on Wednesday." --Woman Dumps Man for Online Alter Ego (IOL)

Sounds like an urban legend, but then again so does "Escape" (better known as "The Pina Colada Song").

Whoops, I may have just revealed far too much about my musical tastes.

"We actually asked for a great big red button, but they wouldn't give us one." -- Royal Navy submarine crewmember, on the method for firing cruise missiles.Notable Quotes (BBC)

From an article titlled "10 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Week".

"Goodbye 'e-mail,' the French government says, and hello 'courriel' -- the term that linguistically sensitive France is now using to refer to electronic mail in official documents." --France Bans 'E-Mail'!  (Wired)

What a difference quotation marks can make!

And for those of you who are sneering at the silliness of the French, Samantha tells KairosNews readers to remember "freedom fries".

"Yes, in the world of blogs there are people who specialize in writing for the web. One of those is Dennis Jerz, a good weblog friend of mine. What do I mean by a weblog friend? A weblog is where people are turned into webpages. Dennis has turned himself into webpages in Literacy Weblog. I read his pages, we interact through email and occasionally I quote his site, and he links to interesting ideas on my weblog. Some good resources here in Literacy Weblog, and you can also see the other side of Dennis by exploring his site and finding the utterly pointless Rainbow Hector Weblog. Who is Rainbow Hector and what has that got to do with writing and learning to write?" Elwyn Jenkins --Writing Resources and a Rainbow Hector Site (Microdoc News)

The Microdoc uses my utterly pointless (and sadly out-of-date) Rainbow Hector website to make a point about how weblogs organize information in a manner that assists search engines (for the three or four people in the world who are dying to know more about Rainbow Hector).

"There's a reason they call these places 'bedroom communities' -- you'll sooner be snoozing before anything exciting ever happens.|But while the news might be snooze-worthy to the world at large, there are people who really do care about what goes on in their community. And as newspapers see a readership in decline, online-only news sources are starting to sneak in from the fringes." Mark Glaser --Local Web-Only News Sites Are Storming the Suburbs (Online Journalism Review)

"To be named after the number one website for vegetarian information -- what could be better?" -- GoVeg.com, formerly known as Karin Robertson --Woman Changes Her Name To GoVeg.com (NC Buy)

See an earlier entry about the Cool 2B Real Home Page, ( "Sponsored by America's Beef Producers").

"Yahoo! are integrating their services much more than Google -- not only can you move from one service to the next withough inputting the search term again, but also the new dictionary service. In the query box type define egregious and you obtain a result from the American Heritage Dictionary a definition, plus you also get web results directly under using that term. Want to move from one service to another, you type in the word Mail! with the exclamation mark and you are immediately transported to that service." --Is Yavistawinkoture! the Winning Search Forumla? (Microdoc News)

Look out, everyone... with instant messaging leading the way and Yahoo forging new ground, we may be witnessing the return of the command line!

P.S. That funny-looking word in the title above is a combination of Yahoo, Alta Vista, Windows, Inktomi and Overture. How about "YahaltaWinktover!" instead?

P.P.S. Microdoc has redesigned his site. Nicely done.

"I'd stumbled onto solving my first murder case, having found myself the only eyewitness, yet no matter how frantically I pleaded with John Law that the perp was right in front of them and the very dame they'd been grilling - the sultry but devious Miss Kitwinkle, who played the grieving patsy the way a concert pianist player plays a piano - the cops just kept smiling and stuffing crackers in my beak." Chris Esco, recipient of a "Dishonorable Mention" --Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2003  (San Jose State University)

Bulwer-Lytton was, of course, the Victorian novelist infamous for the opening line, "It was a dark and stormy night." Esco's was really the first on the list that made me laugh. Nicholas Eaton's Romance entry was also pretty good.

The winner in the Science Fiction entry is Mark Silcox, formerly the editor of an interactive fiction website on Suite 101.

Incidentally, IF author Adam Cadre has pretty much pegged the formula that the winners usually follow -- see Cadre's "Lyttle Lytton" contest for an alternative.

"Socializing is always an option, and as with other online RPGs, real life is certainly at its most rewarding when you manage to find and consort with other like-minded companions. At any rate, it's hard to fault the game for lack of content or viable activities, and even when certain players try to subvert the system or harm others, it still makes for some exciting and spontaneous events for other players who happen to be in the area or just hear of the event. Beyond that, real life can indeed be very time-consuming, and some of the less exciting moments, such as when your character is tired or injured, can be annoyingly so." Greg Kasavin --Real Life: The Full Review (GameSpot)

I had seen this link floating around in the blogosphere for a while, but I didn't click the link and thus didn't get the joke.

"Arnold N. Nawrocki, 78, who made eating processed cheese more convenient for billions of consumers by developing individually wrapped slices, died June 30 in Sun City, Ariz." Gayle Ronan Sims --Sliced-cheese Inventor Dies at 78Knight-Ridder)

He was paid $1 for his patent, which obviously brought his employer barrels of money.

Via Blogosphere Daily News.

"After reading this, I don't see how anybody can be concerned about computer game players axing orcs." Torill Mortensen --Game Violence (Thinking With My Fingers)

I'm hoping somebody will jump up and announce that the whole "wimpy guys dress up in camoflage gear and hunt naked women with paintball guns" thing will be exposed as a PR stunt or a performance art project (Snopes says this one is 'undetermined' at the moment):

Perhaps more significant is that no business address or phone number is to be found on the Hunting for Bambi site, and several readers who expressed interest in booking a "hunt" have told us their e-mail inquiries to the Hunting for Bambi folks went unanswered. Those are rather odd business practices for a legitimate company looking to book customers at $10,000 a pop.

And will someone tell these guys that in the movie, "Bambi" was a male deer?

Update: 17 July. I looked more closely at the website, which is pretty obviously geared towards selling videos that are pretty obviously staged. How low can we -- as a society -- go?

Update: 22 July. Snopes now classifies the Bambi story as "false."

"If you really want to get to know someone, try rummaging through their CD collection. An study has proved that when it comes to judging a person's character, their favourite music is one of the most valuable clues....Almost anything about a man or a woman - from their looks, intelligence and fitness, to politics, wealth and even conversational ability - can be gleaned from the tunes they enjoy most." --You Probably Think This Song Is About You (The Age)

You can also tell a lot about a person's personality by the way they dress, what they have on their hard drive, what books they read, what TV shows the watch, and what they link to on their weblogs. While the science behind the academic article being reviewed is probably sound, this is a fairly puffy news story.

Music is simply not a huge part of my life -- I go for days without listening to any, and months or years without buying any.

I can hear the shocked voices now -- "Oh! How can he hate music! Has he no soul?"

Of couse I don't dislike all music... it's just that I'm not particularly passionate about the music I do like (and I couldn't even classify that for you).

This isn't a rant against music... I gather that other people's passion for music just seems as strange to me as my passion for writing and cybertext probably seems to some of my non-technical associates.

"Microsoft's Internet Explorer might have trounced the likes of Netscape Navigator, but the folks at Mozilla.org insist the browser wars aren't over." Amit Asaravala --Mozilla Wants to Rumble with IE (Wired)

My weblog developer Will Gayther recently showed me a 1999 Jakob Nielsen article that suggests that by now it is reasonable to expect that most web users have upgraded their browsers so that some of the HTML/design tricks I have been resisting for the past few years are are probably OK to use now.

Don't worry, Will -- posting the Mozilla article isn't meant to subvert your position. I'm posting it becasue I admire the idealism of these Mozilla folks.

"Some claim that games were like this only because that was what the current technology would bear, but I swear that those were still some of the best games ever made, and even today you could make a good one in this genre, which is now old enough to buy alcohol. | Thank heavens someone came along to prove me right. 1893: A World's Fair Mystery is a text adventure game, and it really brings out the simple elegance of this genre. I am amazed once again how a simple paragraph of descriptive text can show more than any flashy graphics." Greg Crowe --1893: More than Fair (Game Industry News)

This game is getting exposure in the broader gaming community... here's hoping that more of them discover the contemporary text adventure game scene.

Note: The review contains a reference to a puzzle from Scott Adams's Adventureland. Here's Scott Adams telling an hilarious anecdote about the bear puzzle (transcript | MP3).

--Journalism Organizations & Related Sites (A Journalist's Guide to the Internet)

An excellent collection of journalism links, compiled by Christopher Callahan.

"Tulip is working with Ironstone Partners, which will handle all sales of Commodore 64-related products worldwide and take over the main C64 Web portal. Enthusiasts have made over 10 million game downloads, the site owners have said.|Unauthorized use of the Commodore name by other organizations will be stopped, Tulip said in the statement." --Commodore 64 Makes a Comeback (PC World)

So... what will happen to the enthusiasm of the enthusiasts when Tulip Computers tries to turn the free retrogaming scene into a commercial market? Would there be a community of C64 gamers for Tulip to make money off if the retrogaming scene hadn't been free in the first place?

Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary.

"Of the 25 or so people in Electronics Boutique, six were women. Three of them looked bored -- they were accompanying their gamer boyfriends. Two Korean-American girls were in the store on their own, but they were buying a copy of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne for a male relative. And the last woman? She was working one of the cash registers." Suneel Ratan --Game Makers Aren't Chasing Women (Wired)

This article offers brief quotes from a depressed-sounding Brenda Laurel, and notes that a recent Pew report indicates that college women play games as often as college men. So, what games are these women playing? In my experience, female students tend to like Tetris-style games -- "Joop" was the rage about two years ago; another female student played online Bridge with her dad (while she was in class and he was at work). I know my sister is playing Space Quest 0 right now (a fan-produced prequel to the classic Sierra adventure series). These games are posted online, and don't require the kind of technological outlay that hard-core, male-oriented gaming systems involve -- this may be why the games industry isn't interested in pursuing this angle.

Don't miss game developer Caroline Trujillio's comment: "It's not that we're failing to tap into that audience because there aren't enough women on our end. It's just the nature of the industry and the product we're developing. It's like saying men would buy more makeup if more men were working in that industry."

"Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that's it. Don't use it for online presentation." Jakob Nielsen --PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption (UseIT)

I'm so conditioned to dislike PDF documents that I actually hesitated before clicking the link -- the "PDF" in the title threw me.

I just got this in my in box, with instructions from my division chair that all faculty members are henceforth to paste the following block of legalese into their e-mail signatures:

This document may contain confidential information and is intended solely for the use of the addressee. If you received it in error, please contact the sender at once and destroy the document. The document may contain information subject to restrictions of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Acts. Such information may not be disclosed or used in any fashion outside the scope of the service for which you are receiving the information.

--Mandatory Legalese in E-mail Signatures: Seeking PerspectiveLiteracy Weblog)

I certainly understand and appreciate the need to protect a student's privacy, but quite frankly over the course of my daily communication, I often write e-mails that I want and expect people to forward. Long e-mail discussions will be somewhat harder to follow, and the emotional tone of even the friendliest "hello" sent to an incoming freshman or a "thank you" sent to a webmaster who has linked to my work will be considerably modified.

Does anybody else have any experience with this? How would you react if you were asked to append such a message to every e-mail you sent? What if received such an e-mail? Since I never see signatures like this from any of the colleagues I correspond with, I'm guessing that either this is a brand new thing that will sweep the nation, or Seton Hill is, to quote one of my colleagues, "using a hammer on an eggshell."

P.S. I can't actually comply with this until I get a computer with the full version of Outlook installed -- unless there's a way to change the signature via webmail.

Cross-posted to KairosNews, where you can add comments.

Update: Moments after I posted it, Charlie perfectly capsulized my concern: "Stick this legalese on the end of every email, and students will perceive every correspondence as formal."

"Fred and Tiffany quickly came to one of their first decisions as a couple. It was about computers: Sharing was not going to work. Each one of the four children would get his or her own machine. It wasn't a choice they made lightly....The cost, some $800 per computer, seemed like a reasonable investment for peace within the family." Ariana Eunjung Cha --Home Alone: One of the First Decisions This Blended Family Made Was: to Each His Own Computer (WashPost -- Will Expire)

In high school I pitied a friend of mine whose parents limited her to 15 minutes of telephone conversation per day. "Why don't you get another phone?" She would only smile brightly sweetly like a good little Catholic school girl and say, "Train the teenager, not the technology," or something like that.

Last I heard, she had run away from home to be a roadie for a heavy metal Christian band.

A comment by dsquared says it best:

"I have to say that I too have been waiting for a word to describe the kind of atheist that spends nine hours a day militantly denying the existence of a massive God-shaped hole in his worldview, and 'bright' will suit just fine."

--Bright Is as Bright Does (Crooked Timber)

"In most job-filling situations, the employer has the luxury of choosing from several well-qualified applicants, all of whom could probably do the job. It is then that the little things, like the common but often unrecognized mistakes described here, almost always come into play. Make sure you avoid them, so they don't cost you a shot at the job." Peter Vogt --Five Ways to Say, 'I'm Unprofessional' (MonsterTrak)

One of the tips is a warning against "cutesy" e-mail addresses. Are you reading this, anniepookins? :)

Via the apparently defunct Envision Entrepreneurship Weblog.

"The majority of companies that only make content for mobile phones will go out of business within the next four years.... many independent content providers are cranking out rich media for mobile phones, but have no marketing plans or strategy to get their products out to market." Elisa Batista summarizes findings from a W2Form report. --Little Room for Content Providers  (Wired)

"The European Commission report on ambient intelligence describes a fanciful scenario in which Maria, a businesswoman, arrives at a foreign airport and walks through immigration unchecked, thanks to a wristwatch computer that presents her ID and visa for validation. At the kerbside, a rental car unlocks itself as she approaches and then guides her to a reserved parking bay at her hotel. As Maria enters her room, it adapts to her preferences by adjusting the temperature, lighting and choice of TV and music channels. Later, she talks to her daughter on a video wall while inserting local references into her presentation for the morning using the hotel's special software.|Yes, all science fiction today." --The Sentient Office is Coming (Economist)

While this article approaches scientific advances from the standpoint of financial incentive (perfectly appropriate, given The Economist's reader base), I'm personally more interested in ways that established institutions thwart technological advancements that threaten it (c.f. the Napster debate). A related problem is how technology cheerleaders try to court big existing markets, such as education. (See Vitia's thoughtful response to EDUCAUSE's techno-cheerleading.)

Since I have no viable plan for making money off of instructional technology without becoming evil, I feel a bit guilty for criticizing someone else's business plan... but I never planned to make big money with my English degree anyway. It's a luxury to be able to sit back and offer thoughtful critiques of the hype technology companies try to generate.

"The 'blogosphere' may never be the same after America Online releases free blog-publishing software to its 34 million members this summer.|AOL this month began showing demos of its tools for creating Web logs, or blogs, to veteran bloggers. AOL has dubbed its service 'AOL Journals' because its surveys showed that members found the word 'blogs' confusing...." Leslie Walker --'AOL Journals' to Bring Blogs to Millions (WashPost)

This is good. Potentially millions of AOL users could begin blogging without knowing the term "blog" and all that goes along with it. While the AOL newbies will undoubtedly make mistakes because they have not learned in advance the 'right' way to blog, a new culture will emerge as blogging becomes slightly more ubiquitous.

"If you go out this Sunday evening and look up at the Moon, you will see not only our closest celestial neighbor, but a piece of art history as well. The rising full moon will appear exactly the way it did 114 years ago, when Vincent Van Gogh captured the scene in his famous painting 'Moonrise.'" Melanie Milton Knocke
--Van Gogh's Moon Shines Again This Weekend (Planetary Society)

Umm... if you're going to view a moonrise, you shouldn't look up at the moon, you should look at the eastern horizon. And while the term "evening" is a bit flexible, you won't see anything until around sunset (since the full moon rises as the sun sets). Here's a more accurate but much less quotable press release from Southwest Texas State University about the atstronomers who figured out the exact date of the painting.

"In this game, you ride a lightcycle around the game grid. You can only make sharp turns of 90 degrees and a wall constantly builds up after you. Make your enemies crash into your wall, but be aware that they are trying to do the same to you. Only if you are fast enough, you may be able to trap them; but the only way to speed up your lightcycle is to drive close to the dangerous walls." --Armagetron: A Tron Clone in 3D (Source Forge)

I'm always in the mood for a little retrotech. Here's an open-source clone of the lightcycle game from the movie Tron. Suggested by my brother John.

"Harvard has revoked its admission of Blair Hornstine, the prospective member of the Class of 2007 who made national headlines when she sued her school system to ensure she would be her high school'ssole valedictorian. | Following a widely-publicized report that Hornstine had plagiarized material in articles she wrote for her local paper, the Harvard admissions office has rescinded her offer to attend Harvard in the fall..." --Harvard Takes Back Hornstine Admission (The Harvard Crimson)

When I first blogged the Hornstine lawsuit, I suggested that Harvard might issue her a challenge that forced her to grow up. This wasn't exactly what I was thinking about, but she'll remember this lesson. (Assuming she doesn't sue to get Harvard to accept her anyway.)

Update: 16 July. The Blair Hornstine Project contextualizes, excerpts from, and archives many of the documents in this very unfortunate case. I hope future students can learn from it.

"Edward James Olmos, the star of the new 'Battlestar Galactica,' has some advice for devoted fans of the 1970s sci-fi series: Don't watch the remake." Charlie McCollum --New Galactica Star to Fans: 'This Program... Will Hurt Them.' (Kansas City (Mercury News))

Frack! Only the Lords of Kobol could get my interest in this daggit of a show out of the turboflush.

"One guiding principle of committing the perfect crime is to leave or no evidence of the misdemeanour. | Sadly, the five Texas men who took an axe to an oak tree in Austin completely ignored this criminal tenet when one of them posted a full photo spread of the outrage on his website. Three of the five are core members of the distributed.net cryptography project, used by 60,000 computer users worldwide." Lester Haines --Axe-wielding Texans Savage Oak Tree, Post Pics, Get Caught  (Register)

While the photos have been removed from the site, Google's cache shows some of the Riata Tree captions.

--Ahoy Desklubbers! [Ergonomic Keyboard for Pirates] (Defective Yeti)

An R be there on the scurvy dog of a keyboard, but where be the A? And where be the X that marks me buried treasure? Arrrr!

"[S]ending still pictures from cameraphones to Weblogs is almost 'no big deal' among teenagers in Tokyo, Helsinki, London, Rio de Janeiro. However, instantaneous street video of world-class breaking news beamed directly to the Web has yet to occur.|A pivotal moment like this, balanced on the inflection point between the deskbound regime of the PC era and the necessarily more fluid and untethered mobile-and-pervasive era, is the perfect time to ask whether the inevitable media incident will necessarily lead to peer-to-peer journalism." Howard Rheingold --Moblogs Seen as a Crystal Ball for a New Era in Online Journalism (OJR)

It's something of a journalism cliche that TV news was invented during the coverage of the JFK assassination. While live coverage of Coalition troops charging to Baghdad was certainly gripping, the coverage was provided by professional journalists attached to military units.

On another note... I don't want to sound like a spoilsport, but I think it's intersting that Rheingold's article about instantaneous popular journalism needed such a long introduction in order for it to make sense to the general reader. Just as Rheingold's article needed to be contextualized by a careful editor before it was really useful, the reports of on-the-spot amateurs will likewise need some contextualization.

"The bottom line is that someone has been running a con on me for 20 some years and I fell for it like a little old lady in a pigeon drop scheme. I've spent the last two hours going through the database of Capitol Hill Blue stories and removing any that were based on information from Wilkinson (or whoever he is). I've also removed his name, quotes and claims from Tuesday's story about the White House and the uranium claims.|Erasing the stories doesn't erase the fact that we ran articles containing information that, given the source, was probably inaccurate. And it doesn't erase the sad fact that my own arrogance allowed me to be conned.|It will be a long time (and perhaps never) before I trust someone else who comes forward and offers inside information....Any news publication exists on the trust of its readers. Because I depended on a source that was not credible, I violated the trust that the readers of Capitol Hill Blue placed in me."Doug Thompson

--Conned Big Time (Capitol Hill Blue)

I feel for Thompson and applaud him for admitting his mistake. But erasing the stories? I think that posting a disclaimer or a correction on every affected story is probably more ethical than simply throwing the mistakes down the memory hole. Certain stories might have been spiked if it had not been for the imaginary information supplied by "Wilkinson."

"What do we know about today's 'new students'? Perhaps most obviously, we know that these students have been heavily influenced by information technology." Diana Oblinger --Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Milennials (via KairosNews)Educause Review)

The article referenced was pulished as a .pdf document, so I won't bother to transcribe a longer excerpt and post it here. The link above takes you to a summary of the main points.

"The 5k recognizes the roles that constraints play in creativity and discipline in craftsmanship. Please make beautiful things!" --The 5k Awards (the5k.org)

5k websites, sorted according to rating. Plenty of minimalist games. Thanks, Rosemary.

"A political science instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College is being investigated by the Secret Service for telling his students to compose an e- mail to an elected official that included the words 'kill the president, kill the president,' a school administrator said Wednesday." --'Kill the President' E-Mail Sparks Probe (SF Gate)

Google tells me that the instructor, Michael Ballou, maintains an activist web page for adjuncts (part-time faculty members who work for much less money and much less security than those fortunate enough to land tenure-track positions). I'm not sure this particular assignment is going to help his lobbying efforts.

"I had always rejected the suburban ideal of the carefully clipped and methodically poisoned greensward, with its connotations of Babbittry, mundane middle-class aesthetics, and casual ecological depredation. But somehow, in the verdured acreage behind my home--where lately I have taken to carving crop circles and leaving elaborate paisleys of wildflowers intact--I find myself. | I mow, therefore I am." Woody Hochswender --Backyard Philosopher: I Mow, Therefore I Am (Opinion Journal)

I liked this essay, though I find an even greater sense of accomplishment as I develop the ability to fix toilets.

Rosemary Frezza writes: "Google now lists your Seton Hill page first for searches of Dennis Jerz" --Ego-Googling Update: Google Ranks My Seton Hill Site #1

Thanks for notifying me, Rosemary. That was pretty fast, Google. My old UWEC site is now third.

"Crooked Timber is a cabal of philosophers, politicians manque, would-be journalists, sociologues, financial gurus, dilletantes and flaneurs who have assembled to bring you the benefit of their practical and theoretical wisdom on matters historical, literary, political, philosophical, economic, sociological, cultural, sporting, artistic, cinematic, musical, operatic, comedic, tragic, poetic, televisual &c; &c;, all from perspectives somewhere between Guy Debord, Henry George and Dr Stephen Maturin. We hope you?ll enjoy the show." --Crooked Timber

In the past few months I have noticed more group blogs. ProBlogs and GrandTextAuto come to mind. KairosNews is also morphing into something similar.

I have noticed that when two students join to work on a project, they do far more work than one. But I actively discourage groups of three, because I rarely see the cumulative efforts of three students rising above what the two-student groups offer. Will a reverse tragedy of the commons effect kick in? One hopes that, instead, the group bloggers will gain energy from each other. But is a blog supposed to be a "show"? Doesn't that create a distance between author and reader -- the kind of distance that hypertext is supposed to reduce? I like the "carnival" metaphor better.

--Don't Click this Link: Extremely Annoying AdsWired)

There are some extremely annoying ads on this Wired article about "machinima" -- a genre of digital storytelling created by people who use the monster-and-dungeon-creation tools supplied by game designers (or hacked by fans, probably). I didn't get very far in the article because of the hovering ads for Cingular, which overlapped the text and generally annoyed the hell out of me. OK, Wired deserves to try to make money just like anyone else, but... Boo! boo! boo! to Cingular and its annoying ads. Am I overreacting? Are the ads on this page really that annoying? The print version of the machinima article has ads now, too.

"I joined organizations, attended conferences religiously, subscribed to journals, and made every attempt to connect to and garner the attention of those in the 'inner circle' -- the members of steering committees, working groups, and editorial boards, as well as the chairs of leading University departments. But, while I still maintain those ties, I now find that I learn much more about 'what's going on' in my discipline from reading a growing collection of daily personal and professional weblogs than I ever did from the seven papers that would be published once a month in my favorite journal. And, the information currency of these two sources is vastly different. By the time an interesting finding or report makes its way through the critiquing, revision-ing, and publishing process, it's no longer current -- especially when I've read about that idea four months earlier in a weblog." John Kruper --New Rules of the Game, or New Game? Part One (Home on the Blog)

Each year, I find that incoming freshmen are more experienced with the Internet, and need less and less ramp-up time before they are able to think critically about online culture. Incoming freshmen don't have to unlearn three decades spent mastering the printed culture of academia. The experiencded faculty members who make the tenure and promotions decisions often need a much more basic introduction to the culture of online texts. A colleage at Seton Hill was recently asked not to include a CD in his promotion dossier -- only print material, thank you. How does a new media newbie teach the old media experts, without patronizing them or making them feel threatened?

"Looking at this, perhaps having all that fresh new blood from AOL -- all without their little weblogging heros and talk about weblogging and this conference and that and all with little or no interest in the politics of weblogging -- will be a good thing. A very good thing. | Here's hoping for complete and utter anarchy." --I Remember Usenet (Burningbird)

Weblogs democratized hypertext. Is it about time something came along and democratized weblogs?

"It is vitally important that we all realize this and move on. People (eg Bloggers) go on and on about how wonderful it is. About how much information is out there in cyberspace. About the way that everything is within reach in just a few clicks of their mice." --The Internet Is Shit

Eh. This site doesn't do much for me. Move on? To what?

Bloggers know full well that the Internet has a lot of junk on it. And one of the services blogs offer to the general public is critical annotations that separate the wheat from the chaff. And a whole genre of blogs (the online diary genre) has little if anything to do with "information". Whoever wrote this site seems upset at what the marketers and PR flaks of the dot-com era had to say about the Internet.

If I weren't tired right now, I would create a series of spoof websites:

• "The printing press is shit. (Because hand-written manuscripts are so much better.)"
• "Writing is shit. (Because oral communication is so much better.)"
• "Fire is shit. (Because huddling together in the dark enjoying the taste of raw meat is so much better.)"
• "Shitting is shit. (Because wallowing in it is so much better.)"

Well. That little outburst of mine will probably get my blog banned at public libraries across middle America.

"I do understand both of their frustration with empty trackback pages and currently do not have an answer as to why those appear higher in rankings (or at all for that matter). At the same time, I am unsure what either one of them means by ?mindless links? -- that does not help bloggers (like myself) improve their writing." --If At First You Do Not Succeed, Try Try Again (ProBlogs)

Tim Swanson offers a response to Orlowski's latest anti-blogging column, which calls blogs "the lint of the Internet" (a wonderful quote, which he attributes to an anonymous "reader"). In an earlier column, Orlowski snickered over a BlogTalk paper that reported that the majority of Polish bloggers are teenage girls -- though the oversimplified headline reads "Most bloggers 'are teenage girls'". Orlowski, or whoever writes his headlines, ought to know better than to skew facts like that. It may be of some social significance that men are writing publicly about their feelings, mixing their personal and professional lives, on a large scale. This is probably a side-effect of the feminist movement, which, by claiming some of the public ground that had previously been dominated by men, has provided men with a different ways of being masculine. Lucky for those teenage Polish girls that so many male bloggers are preparing an online world that will welcome, rather than ridicule, their cultural values.

He seems on the one hand to be poking fun at the small numbers of readers blogs attract, while at the same time criticizing certain A-list bloggers for jetting from one blogging conference to another. If blogging were really as solipsistic and pointless as Orlowski suggests, nobody would be interested in the conferences -- we'd all just be blogging.

It would be too easy for me to sniff and say "Orlowski doesn't get blogging," because the fact is, I don't get fashion shows or monster truck rallies or lots of other subculture events. And blogging is still a subculture, and some bloggers do act like pouty 14-year-olds, and the A-list is dominated by men.

I do think that every social phenomenon ought to have its critics, especially during the giddy phase when it is expanding but before it becomes mainstream; but Orlowski's essays border on trolling -- he taunts bloggers by noting that a recent article he wrote topped off the metablogging lists for a few days, but wasn't the most-read article on his paper's website. (He's not asking for link love -- he says, "Bring on the link-hate!")

"For many of us, creative life goes beyond machines -- creativity is built in at a very low level of our personalities, and the joy of building things from imagination, then sharing those experiences with others and watching their reactions -- that's what drives us." Richard "Lord British" Garriott, inventor of Ultima Online, in an interview by Xeni Jardin --Secrets of Dungeons and Dreamers (Wired)

A review of Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Comptuer Game Culture From Geek to Chic

"About a month after publication, I received a postcard from an Ohio professor. In my textbook on college writing, I had narrated an anecdote Abraham Lincoln told, in which he referred to a tightrope walker named Blondin. I had spelled it 'Bloudin.' The professor corrected me and added, 'Such egregious errors mar an otherwise fine book.' Ouch! Over the next year and a half I received three more 'Aha!' postcards from Ohio. I fixed the errors and was grateful she took the time to notify me. But I felt nervous. Was a horde of professors hunting for all my obscure, petty flubs? Yes they were. But more surprises were coming." M. Garrett Bauman --Textbook Writing 101 (Chronicle)

College gamers are not necessarily male -- or antisocial hermits. And while about one-third of those surveyed admitted playing computer games during class, the games generally don't conflict with their studies, says the researcher who conducted the survey for the Pew Internet & American Life Project. --Study: Gamers Not Reculsive Nerds (Wired)

The full report is "Gaming technology and entertainment among college students."

A sad finding:

College student gamers’ reported hours studying per week match up closely with those reported by college students in general, with about two-thirds (62%) reporting that they study for classes no more than 7 hours per week, and 15% reported studying 12 or more hours per week.

That means that 2/3 of college students spend half as much time on homework as they spend sitting in their classrooms.

" Having lost its sense of being a rather oversized living room, the student center has assumed something of the impersonal quality of a visitors' center at a national park, or a bus terminal -- buildings whose task it is to orient strangers. And, in truth, the student center is designed in large measure for strangers. It must serve not only college students but also prospective students. And while it is the former who will use the building regularly, it is the latter who, in the scheme of things -- even though many will visit it no more than once -- matter most....As students increasingly select colleges based on what they can see, colleges will spend more money on that which can be seen. Rigor in the classroom and intellect in the faculty cannot easily be seen -- certainly not as easily as a fitness center or a three-story granite fireplace." Michael J. Lewis --Forget Classrooms. How Big Is the Atrium in the New Student Center? (Chronicle)

As a high school senior visiting friends who were freshmen at the University of Virginia, I remember tagging along with Christine Ziegler to a materials science lecture. I remember the lecture was about different kinds of deformation in matter, and I recently came across the notes I took. I don't remember visiting the student center, but UVa's Central Grounds was pretty much all the eye candy I needed.

"PBS has provided enough funding to keep Reading Rainbow alive for one more season. I have seen firsthand how the ability to read can transform a life, and that's why I have worked for literacy for the past 20 years." LeVar Burton --Near the End of 'Rainbow,' but Does Anyone Care? (Houston Chronicle)

Burton notes that Reading Rainbow deliberately chose not to create any marketable merchandise, which robbed it of a revenue stream.

When my son was first learning to read, he enjoyed "Between the Lions," and somewhere in one of our unpacked boxes we have stuffed toys from the series. So we have, in some small way, supported that show.

"Koppel's group found that the single biggest difference is that women are far more likely than men to use personal pronouns-'I', 'you', 'she', 'myself', or 'yourself' and the like. Men, in contrast, are more likely to use determiners-'a,' 'the,' 'that,' and 'these'-as well as cardinal numbers and quantifiers like 'more' or 'some.' As one of the papers published by Koppel's group notes, men are also more likely to use 'post-head noun modification with an of phrase'-phrases like 'garden of roses.'" Clive Thompson summarizes forthcoming schoarship on gender and language. --He and She: What's the Real Difference? (Boston Globe)

I enjoyed reading the tidbit about how the first version of their paper was rejected by a major journal on the grounds that it was anti-feminist. After "[o]ne of the coauthors, Anat Shimoni, added her middle name 'Rachel' to her byline," the authors got no further criticism.

"Next to the table is our water dispenser, which has a tap for warm water and hot water. That's right, no cold water. If you want a cold drink, you need to prepare the drink, then leave it for a while in one of the colder locations on ISS. It will never get really cold, so the next really cold drink I have will be when I get back to the ground! You get used to having warm drinks though, and it really isn't a problem. Speaking of which, we don't have a refrigerator up here either, so all of our food is canned, dehydrated, or otherwise packaged so it doesn't need refrigeration. So of course this means no fresh fruit, vegetables, etc. That also means we can't keep leftovers!" ISS Science Officer Ed Lu --Greetings Earthlings: Eating at Cafe ISS (NASA)

Not quite a blog, but a collection of letters about life on the International Space Station.

"The industrial show had its humble beginnings during the post-WWII boom. Two types of industries began experimenting with the idea: the retail industry and the automobile industry. As far as show collectors know, a department store was the first to jump into the fray - Marshall Field's with Give the Lady What She Wants, a show celebrating the store's history and anniversary, produced in conjunction with a published book of the same name. Even this early, Marshall Field's started the trend of nabbing top talent to produce these gems - in this case a man named Lloyd Norlin, who would go on to pen shows for Ford, Pepsi and Hamm's Beer. And to elaborate on the scarcity of these items, only one single copy of this record seems to be in existence. Fancy, big-budgeted, yearly auto shows had been around for many years prior, and with the long-play record coming into vogue in the early '50's, the opportunity to use recording technology for purposes that were longer than a 3-minute song must have been tempting for the major players. By listening and tracking the automobile industrial shows (released largely to promote new models) produced throughout the fifties, you can see how both corporations and composers gradually worked together to not only, say, explain some delightful new features in next year's line of Oldsmobiles, but to get their troops in a selling mood." Jonathan Ward --Recruit, Train and Motivate: The History of the Industrial Musical (Perfect Sound Forever)

A sample of the amazing lyrics from a Westinghouse show:

The new cold-injector sends a jet-stream of air -
To bring colder temperatures to all the foods there!
The cheese server, butter server, meat-keeper too -
Makes sure your food stays fresh, and stays in view -
And here on the front is a magnetic door!
But don't run away 'cause there's plenty more...

Rosemary Frezza heard about the subject from a recent NPR segment and sent me this link. I have read news reports about skits produced by politicians or comptuer executives, so it stands to reason that older companies would have been doing the same thing. And any fan of MST3K will have seen similar short film classics (such as the Chevrolet motivational drama "Hired!" or Nuveena, the woman of the future).

Update: Rosemary sends links to the full video for "Hired!" and "Design for Dreaming". Thanks for the sleuthing, Rosemary!

"Speech integration technology is nothing new, as any telephone caller who has ever barked back responses to a seemingly endless series of voice prompts can testify. But an improved generation of speech integration software, based on more powerful processors and emerging Internet-focused standards, promises to make the technology more useful and cost-effective." John Edwards --Smooth Talkers (CIO Magazine)

Hmm... I don't find this a terribly informative article. The quotes from business folks do help me assess how this technology might be applied in business -- but the article doesn't focus on the researchers who are developing the technology. Should one expect that from a magazine geared towards executives? I guess so. Maybe an executive will just put the article on someone's desk and say, "I want a full report on this, pronto!"

"Set to gather at 7 p.m. at Grand Central Station for what promised to be an elaborate 'mob ballet,' the crowd of about 250 was greeted by a 'huge' police presence, according to the Mob Project's anonymous organizer known only as Bill. | Bill said the mob moved to the Grand Hyatt next door instead. The crowd walked quietly upstairs to the hotel's mezzanine and gathered shoulder-to-shoulder around the balcony. 'At 7:12, we burst into thunderous, screaming applause for 15 seconds, and then dispersed, just as police cars came screaming around the corner to where we were,' said Bill. 'It was fabulous.'" Leander Kahney --E-Mail Mobs Materialize All Over (Wired)

The reporter's main source for this article is "Bill". Why not interview some of the staff at the hotel where the mob appeared, or ask one of the police officers to comment?

Power OutageLiteracy Weblog)

A storm went through the area a few hours ago, and shortly after that the power went out. My laptop has about an hour of battery left, and the power company expects to have service restored by noon tomorrow. I'll have to ration my blogging time.

Update: Oh, good.. the power went back on just before midnight. Saves me a trip out to the store for ice (to save the food in the fridge).

Blee Blee [Blee]!Literacy Weblog)

My daughter Carolyn looked at me from her high chair and, impatient for the jar of food I was opening, said "Blee blee blee!"

As I gave her the first spoon I said, "That was a little extravagant, sweetheart. You made your point with 'blee blee'."

She looked at me for about fifteen seconds, not knowing how to respond.

"The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable. The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors mandate." --These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed

Thanks for the suggestion, Will.

"Over the years I've met a diverse collection of writers who have never been published or earned any academic credentials, yet whose claim to the title of artist is genuine. These invisible writers are soldiers and bakers, convicts and salesmen, winos, hairdressers, firefighters, farmers and waitresses. Their only qualifications to literary authenticity are their writings and their desire to write. Often the only time they have is stolen time, and their private scrawls end up on cocktail napkins, penciled in the margins of receipts, on any piece of paper handy." Tai Moses --Invisible Writers (Alternet)

The writing is a bit melodramatic ("...the forbidden words found expression anyway, for even the U.S. Army cannot discipline the imagination"), but the insights are provocative. I can't help but think of Tom Wingfield, the narrator-protagonist of The Glass Menagerie, who works in a shoe warehouse and writes poems on box lids. The modernist poets, novelists and playwrights frequently came from immigrant or lower-class backgrounds.

Suggested by Charlie on KairosNews.

Steven Johnson describes the emotional interface over There.

The software translates common emoticons and other abbreviations (such as LOL for "laughing out loud") into gestures and expressions. It also automatically parses a small subset of words: If you type yes, your avatar will nod its head. Most of the time users convey emotion by typing short keystrokes, intensifying or dampening down their feelings depending on the situation. For example, typing angry with one apostrophe in front of the word gets you a scowl, while typing '''angry actually bares the incisors.

--A Chat Room Like No Other (Discover)

"Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do her daily cleaning with a hose." Waldemar Kaemepffert
--Miracles of the Next Fifty Years [2000 as predicted in 1950]

I love retrofuture.

This article is reproduced on the MIT Architecture website, but the page doesn't give full source information, and hacking the URL doesn't work.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Writers of parody news were saddened to learn Monday that merely writing their stories in the clipped, authoritative style of the Associated Press does not make them funny. --AP Style Fake News No Longer Funny (Kuro5hin)

"Graphic designers were often heavily involved in early web development. The role of the graphic designer is greatly diminished today. The Web is about standardized design. Text dominates. Thus, editors and writers are in far greater demand." Gerry McGovern --Web Team Roles and Responsibilities are Changing (Gerry McGovern)

"Simplicity and intuitive appeal are also the main reasons why scientific language has never succeeded in "cleansing" itself from metaphorical "impurities," despite several attempts to do so. Indeed, metaphors appear to be essential to all forms of language and understanding (4). But if scientific language is by necessity to some extent metaphorical, then interpretation of its content depends on the cultural context that generates the metaphors that are used. And here the problems start." Chew and Laubichler --Perceptions of Science: Natural Enemies--Metaphor or Misconception? (Science)

I'm always annoyed when a news summary doesn't link to the full text of the academic article being summarized.

"The ink we print with can cost more than vintage champagne." --Raw Deal on Printer Ink (BBC)

"Television, news papers, books, magazines, and other media perform a task of educating, informing, editorializing, advertising and marketing. In each of those domains, the individual is checked, editorialized, authorized and managed to repress what is truly individual and express a view acceptable for that medium at that time. This new medium is a unique medium, that gives a freedom of individual and group thought, expression and open discussion unlike any other medium. The ecosystem is alive, it is ours, it is there . . . this is the blogosphere." Elwyn Jenkins --Zacheus Manifesto (ProBlogs)

To defend weblogs against Orlowski-style attacks, Elwyn suggests 13 principles and invites comment. I'll bite.

I like the concept, but have plenty of questions and suggestions. Consider this a "friendly fisking".

1. A weblog (blog) is the domain of an individual or entity.

This is a bit general for my taste... while I suppose it makes sense to start with non-controversial statements to lay a foundation for more complex statements, I think maybe this could be reducded to a subordinate part of some other point (which might help get the number down to a nice round 10 points)

2. Within the domain of the blog an individual or entity can choose to say, present or represent any comment, idea or perception as the individual chooses.

As a goal worthy of defending, this sounds fair -- but it conflicts with point 7, which says the blogger has a duty to avoid ad hominem attacks.

3. Any individual or entity that chooses to construct a blog belongs to the blogosphere and is deemed to be a blogger.

The part about "belongs to the blogosphere" overlaps with #4. Another opportunity to compress?

4. Every blogger that creates a blog and who writes posts is present in the blogosphere.

Hmm... since we've already defined "blogger" as one who creates a weblog, this could be simplified as "Every blogger belongs to the blogosphere." But this might benefit from clarification -- there are other ways to belong to the blogoshpere: one might comment regularly on somebody else's blog, or a large number of blogs, without actually keeping a blog of one's own; one might run weblog-related service (Blogshares, Technorati, etc.,) that definitely contributes to the blogosphere, but that does not fit the standard definition of a blog; or, one might be dragged into the blogosphere because one's work in other media regularly attracts the interest of webloggers.

5. There is no obligation bloggers have to any other bloggers to act or not to act; each blogger has complete autonomy to choose to act or not to act as and when the blogger sees fit.

This might more efficiently be phrased as "Each blogger has complete autonomy; no blogger has an obligation to any other blogger." But that seems to contradict #7 and perhaps some of the following points.

6. Any blogger who chooses to recognize another blogger as having a blog worth recommending to others will create a link to that blog and will keep the link to that site up-to-date as and when changes occur.

It would probably be too crass to take advantage of this opportunity to note that weblog has changed its URL, so I will resist the temptation. :) I don't use any blogrolling tools, and I know that keeping a blogroll up-to-date is time-consuming. But since #5 says no blogger has an obligation to other bloggers, might it make sense to re-cast some of these points into suggestions that are phrased in the positive rather than statements of negation or denial? Just a thought.

7. Any blogger who points to a post of another blog has a duty to respect the independence of that other person and while having independence to write any comment so desired will at a minimum refrain from ad hominem remarks.

Hmm. On Canadian TV there used to be (maybe still is) a sort of fake talk show in which an obnoxious sock puppet named Ed the Sock interviews celebrity has-beens (former child stars, that sort of thing) and intentionally tries to upset them. It's not "nice", and it's not journalism, but it has quite a following. There are certain occasions when an ad hominem attack is appropriate. When supermodels or actors use their celebrity as a platform for their political views, when politicians or religious leaders are exposed as hypocrites, or when a dairy-blogger wants to rant about somebody who made them angry, well then, the blog will probably contain ad hominem attacks. But bloggers who are prone to this kind of attitude will become the targets of trolls and flamers; and if they can't stand the heat, they will get out of the kitchen. Of course, it's another thing entirely if a blog contains death threats, or publishes private information, or slander. Just as, a little while ago, I suggested that Jill Walker's definition of weblogs was skewed towards the personal/storytelling model, these points seem to be focusing on the other end of the scale -- the information/professional blogs.

8. There is no central agency, governing body or company that has the right to regulate what a blogger states, what claims are made and how a blogger composes blogging posts.

Hmm... if I sign on to be a game-tester, and sign a non-disclosure agreement that says I can't reveal what I learn, does point #8 mean that I should be able to blog about it anyway? But maybe #9 answers my question...

9. A blogger is governed by the land within which normal residence of the blogger is situated and is subject to those laws.

I think the perspective of bloggers who live in repressive regimes, and whose blogging is their only means of speaking out, might be useful in assessing the value of this point.

10. The web space within which all blogs are included is a part of a larger space of the entire Internet.

Ok, no arguments here... but it doesn't follow from #9. Perhaps join all these simple, foundational statements under an extended "Whereas" clause?

11. Bloggers respect other online properties and while free to write anything in blogs that they shall desire, they do so in such a manner not to harm other Internet property owners.

Hmm. If I write a review that tells people service A is overhyped and overpriced and not nearly as good as product B, would that harm the online property of product A? While it's certainly possible to post constructive criticism instead of harmful criticism, I think I'd have to know more about what "harm" means in this context.

12. Bloggers are part of the wider Internet and in all respects particpate actively in the wider community and do so in a manner that bloggers and non-bloggers can benefit alike.

Hmm... we've already established that the blogosphere is part of the Internet, so here's another opportunity to trim. Is it a statement of fact or a requirement that bloggers "in all respects participate actively in the wider community"? I personally don't participate actively in online dating services or chat rooms. Perhaps a revision such as "Bloggers are a cross-section of the Internet population" or something else that allows for the fact that every single blogger does not participate in every single way.

13. Bloggers have a duty of honesty first to themselves, then secondly a duty to other bloggers and then to the rest of the world.

I'm not really sure what to make of this, since it seems to contradict #5, unless what it means is something like "If a blogger does choose to take on an obligation towards anyone else, then an obligation towards other bloggers should take precedence over an obligation to the rest of the world." That decision would seem to me best left up to personal preference, since strict adherence to it would pretty much prove one of the anti-bloggers' chief complaints, which is that the blogosphere is too interested in itself and isolated from the world at large. Of course, that's not a fair complaint -- bloggers are so diverse that about the only thing they agree on is that blogging is cool, so naturally the most popular blog links (ones everyone agrees are worth linking to) are going to be about blogging.

Well... that's almost definitely the longest post I've written. I hope my comments were helpful.

Clancy Ratliff links to three articles on blogging in the current issue of The Technology Source. --Blogging in Technology Source (KairosNews)

"The alien system is just 90 light years away in the constellation Puppis. The star is at a similar stage of life as our sun and has no companion star, Jones said. It also is in the same galactic neighborhood, so background radiation levels should be about as low as in our solar system." Erik Barrd --Alien Solar System Much Like Ours (Wired)

"What no one imagined -- least of all The Sims' designers -- was that thousands of players would quickly bypass the album's intended use and instead use it to create dozens of staged snapshots, crafting what can be complex, scripted, multi-episode social commentaries, graphic novels or even movies, as it were, with the Sims starring in the lead roles....Initially, it was all superheroes all the time. But users quickly began making the albums richer, with multilayered characters and multiple episodes." Daniel Terdiman --Every Sims Picture Tells a Story (Wired)

I think it's a stretch to call a series of still photos with textual labels "novels or even movies". They are certainly digital narratives, created with a new media tool that happens to have been marketed for a different purpose.

"The main concept behind Eon of Tears is that the player will get a shot at the biggest events in the Bible: unleashing the ten plagues of Egypt, seeing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, leading the conquest of Canaan, or performing some of the miracles as Jesus-Christ. Basically we are taking a look at the different theories regarding some of those events and we try to answer the 'What if?' question, wrapping everything in a coherent gaming experience. Fantasy is a huge part of it. For example, how were Sodom and Gomorrha destroyed? Our answer on that is?you?ll see in the upcoming playable demo . But there'smore to it than a volcanic explosion or a simplistic 'sinners will be punished!'. " Dominic Arsenault --Eon of Tears [Biblical Role-playing Game] (RPG Radar)

So... will this game feature a "God" mode? If so, we'd all better get new keyboards with a "smite" key.

"For years, Hormel Foods Corp. has watched as the name of its famous product has come to mean junk e-mail, a source of heartburn for computer users. | Now Hormel is asserting its trademark rights, filing complaints against Spam Arrest LLC, a Seattle technology company that provides spam-blocking software." Jonathan Krim --Hormel's pique e-rupts over Spam mail (Star Tribune)

When given the choice between two slices of bread stuffed full of Spam (tm) and an in-box suffed full of spam, I'm slightly inclined to choose the mysterious meat mass (which has over the years pretty much stayed the same, in terms of horror-generating potential) over the maddening mass mail (which gets worse every year).

You'd think that Hormel would be glad that e-mail spam is despised so much.

"I think he more closely resembles a very clever script, which writes personal emails and funny comments to its blogposts, but has as its main function to scoure the web searching for things to link to from its blog. It is an extremely clever script that grades papers and applies for jobs, and convinces undergraduate students to install and improve upon its different functions when it moves from one site to an other. I believe the Dennis G. Jerz entity is proof of how far artificial intelligence has been developed." --Torill on Jerz's Literacy Weblog: 'Indecently Active' (Thinking With My Fingers)

Now that Torill has figured it all out, she will have to be dealt with. Severely. I will link to her and link to her and keep linking to her until she stops praising my blog. That'll teach her. ;)

Thanks to the Seton Hill University IT folks, who supply free unlimited modem dial-up (though the modem is only 24.4 kb); thanks also to UWEC computer science student Will Gayther, who initially set me up so that my home-grown blogging software would let me post remotely, and then who started over from scratch and created a MySQL-based blogging tool to my specifications. (It's still under development, but right now it's far better than the miserable slop of PERL script that I had created for myself -- and that encourages me to use it more. Well done, Will. How's the "comment" functionality coming along, buddy?) And knowing that Rosemary Frezza will always e-mail me to tell me about broken links and typos means that I might add one or two more posts in the time I might otherwise have spent proofreading.

Update: Will writes, "hehe...I suppose I could add 'functionality' to your weblog, where every time you post an entry with 'Will Gayther' in it, it automatically links to my site." That won't be necessary, Will -- I'll add the link!

"Though it may seem like a more recent creation, the pixel first appeared in New Jersey in 1954, the same year that Elvis cut his first record and the transistor radio was invented. At Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, mathematicians and engineers created the first computer graphic--and the first instance of digital typography--on a computer the size of a Manhattan apartment...The Princetonian pixels were as primitive as one could imagine--literally the glowing filaments of the machine's vacuum memory registers--but they marked the beginning of a sea-change in how we represent and see the world." Andrew Zolli --Pixelvision: A Meditation (Core 77)

In The Language of New Media, Manovich notes that, even before digital images chopped up an image into pixels, cinema chopped up actions into pictures. I also note Zolli's observation that "the pixel has been slowly dematerializing, losing mass and gaining verisimilitude."

Hmm. A pixel may be losing area, but can it really be said to have mass? If you want to say that a photon or the electrons that store a pixel in memory have mass, well, then as pictures have increased in resolution, requiring an increse in the number of bits it requires to store the color information for each pixel, then wouldn't the pixel be gaining mass?

I'm also a bit troubled by the implication that "verisimilitude" or the approximation of the "real" world is / should be the goal of computer-assisted creative media. Yes, there's a place for photorealistic simulation, but that's only scratching the surface of what computers can do.

"I say only three types of people claim they don't like Krispy Kremes: nutritionists (your basic glazed has 200 calories and 12 grams of fat), Dunkin' Donuts franchisees, and compulsive liars....It was Mack who came up with the concept of "doughnut theater." They put the doughnut-making equipment in stores so that people could see the doughnuts cook for exactly 115 seconds in 365-degree vegetable shortening, after which the precious confections plow through a glaze waterfall before curving 180 degrees around to the counter so that a salesperson can pluck a hot one right off the line and hand it to the drooling customer." Andy Serwer --The Hole Story: How Krispy Kreme Became the Hottest Brand (Fortune)

During the summer after I graduated from high school, my buddy Eric and I would buy a couple boxes of Krispy Kremes and drive around late at night to the houses of girls we knew.

When they opened the door at 10pm on a weeknight, instead of saying, "It's 10pm on a weeknight!" they would say, "Donuts!"

If they invited us in, great. If not, we'd move on.

And yes, I am filing this under "Technology" because them things are engineering marvels. Mmmm...

"If the funding is approved, the Bush Administration will act swiftly to shore up numerous areas of vulnerability. Among the actions: ensuring that the White House is defended against verbal snipers, safeguarding the president's past illicit actions from biographical weapons, and sealing off the largest sources of domestic criticism by securing and patrolling the nation's newsrooms." --Bush Asks Congress for $30 Billion To Help Fight War On Criticism (The Onion)

"Lawmakers, consumer advocates and Internet industry officials gathered for the latest in a string of discussions on harmonizing international laws to cut back on spam, which now accounts for nearly half of all global e-mail. Spam has become a hot-button issue for politicians and business officials, who worry that unless it's criminalized, spamming could become an increasingly costly nuisance for companies and individuals." --Declaring a World War on Spam (Wired)

"It is the kind of thing that most Japanese young women wouldn't think twice about doing.... They might spot a new hairstyle or a new dress in a glossy fashion magazine and they want to know what their friends think - so they take a quick snap with their mobile phone camera and send everybody a picture. | But the publishers of those magazines feel they are being cheated out of valuable sales." Quentin Sommerville --Japan's 'Digital Shoplifting' Plague (BBC)

This is yet another attempt to preserve an Old Media way of thinking about the world.

While I can certianly understand their efforts -- nobody wants to see their business model go down the drain -- it's not going to work. What about bypassing all the paper costs, and selling access to a subscription service that e-mails trendy photos directly to the phones of those who want them, for a few pennies per photo?

My wife saves whole magazines just because there is a single photo of something she likes; what a waste of trees (and space!).

"I'm closing OpenContent because I think Creative Commons is doing a better job of providing licensing options which will stand up in court. As I close OpenContent, I join Creative Commons as Director of Educational Licenses. Now I can focus in on facilitating the kind of sharing most interesting to me - that which supports learning - with the pro bono support of really good IP lawyers. And I couldn't be happier." David Wiley --OpenContent is Dead. Long Live OpenContent!OpenContent.org)

"The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Tuesday that Web loggers, website operators and e-mail list editors can't be held responsible for libel for information they republish, extending crucial First Amendment protections to do-it-yourself online publishers. | Online free speech advocates praised the decision as a victory. The ruling effectively differentiates conventional news media, which can be sued relatively easily for libel, from certain forms of online communication such as moderated e-mail lists." Xeni Jardin --Bloggers Gain Libel Protection (Wired)

Hmm... on the other hand, by holding webloggers to less strict legal guidelines, this ruling puts do-it-yourself publication in a second class.