January 9, 2007 – 9:08 pm
Susan Gibb sends this link to if:Book’s snip of Linden Lab’s announcement opening its Second Life’s code to the public. Exciting stuff.
December 31, 2006 – 9:59 pm
From Verlyn Klinkenborg
Nearly every image of nature I have ever come across misses the sense of intricate confusion underfoot in the woods, the thickets of goldenrod collapsing into each other along the roadsides, the rotting tusks of fallen beeches broken against the western hillside. It almost never makes sense to talk about the purpose of [...]
December 28, 2006 – 7:48 pm
UNC at Chapel Hill is up to some interesting work under the rubric of mapping
In referring to the work of Foucault and post-Foucaultian social theory as the ‘new cartographer’ (along with the new archivist), Gilles Deleuze pointed to a mode of investigation and writing that sought, not to trace out representations of the real, but [...]
December 14, 2006 – 7:16 pm
In one of our favorite fun games, the main character must save a people from an evil, world dominator. The character must, however, purchase weapons and upgrades from the very people she’s trying to save. Fun game, really dumb concept, and easily fixed.
So what to make of the NCEE’s $20 Saveus proposal. Maybe this [...]
December 13, 2006 – 8:19 pm
A list of responses to Time’s recent headliner:
The way we teach kids has not changed very much over the years. Yet all around our schools, society has changed in astounding ways. We are able to put humans into space, and yet, students in America’s urban schools couldn’t explain how a vehicle put into space is [...]
December 1, 2006 – 9:18 pm
How Far Can We Extend This?
Here’s an interesting take from Seed:
Experiments have shown that social rejection prompts people to make poor decisions, such as eating more than they know they should or drinking too much. Now, a study in the current issue of the journal Social Neuroscience uncovers the neural basis for such poor decision-making. [...]
November 29, 2006 – 8:42 pm
I love it: Sketch Furniture.
November 10, 2006 – 7:57 pm
I’m currently in Lewisburg doing a tour with K of Bucknell U. The food is great, the company engaging at my brother-in-law’s place across the street from the university. We’re here to think about the science offerings and the next four or five years. It’s been a wonderful road trip. More soon.
November 4, 2006 – 10:33 am
Here’s a quote from the Toronto Star
Researchers warn in the journal Science that 90 per cent of present-day marine fish, crustaceans, shellfish and other currently eaten species of seafood could vanish in 50 years.
The truth of this will be born out someday but such a potential problem is a real issue. This is one frustrating [...]
October 29, 2006 – 7:35 pm
It strikes me that in Frost’s poem, Mending Wall, fence is a term used somewhat loosely. There’s a difference between a wall as border and fence as border. I’d suggest that animals are more tied to fences than borders and that walls imply more of something permanent. A border fence is a dumb idea, I [...]
October 26, 2006 – 7:08 pm
One of the problems with updating this space for the last couple of weeks is that I’ve been working elsewhere, behind the scenes with another weblog, in front using one as a course hub, and doing a whole bunch of thinking about RSS, library research work with some fabulous colleagues (R and A), and Ability-based [...]
October 8, 2006 – 4:51 pm
Ray Hudson in the October Progress in Human Geography writes in “Regions and place: music, identity and place”:
‘Places’ can be thought of as complex entities, ensembles of material objects, people, and systems of social relationships embodying distinct cultures and multiple meanings, identities and practices. As such, places are contested and continually in the process of [...]
September 30, 2006 – 9:49 am
In the United States we now have a concrete star chamber. It’s all about trust, right. The press, in mind, hasn’t done enough to inform and evaluate citizens about the language of 3929. If this can be said
SEC. 106. HABEAS CORPUS MATTERS.
(a) In General- Section 2241 of [...]
September 24, 2006 – 7:09 pm
I find myself in an odd place. I’m projectless. That’s not the right word and its not really true. I have a new novel in the works, but I can’t really get to any of it at the moment. We have the comp game to work on but that’s too complicated to even look at [...]
August 18, 2006 – 1:58 pm
Until someone in charge figures out that it’s not the schools that are the problem, test scores and school-based solutions will be meaningless.
Rick Green is right to emphasize wasted time and human potential, especially in terms of our region, but the question or premise flooring No Child Left Behind types of policy misses the wider [...]
